Postage

Stamps.com Inc. was typical of many companies that imploded during the dot-com crash more than a decade ago. Flush with start-up cash, it spent recklessly on employees, sprawling office space and acquisitions. Workers raced through the company's 90,000-square-foot Santa Monica headquarters on Razor scooters, ate catered meals and tracked the company's stock price with visions of riches. Executives spoke of a day when everyone would print their own postage - and pay Stamps.com a monthly fee for the opportunity.

It is unfortunate to see you attempt to malign Rep. Anthony Beilenson over his postage expenditures. He is the only representative in Washington who I feel communicates with me about what is going on there. Further, he is the only one I have ever met in my own neighborhood and who has taken the time to come here for community meetings. I would much rather see him spend the postage to inform us of what it happening and what issues are current, and of upcoming meetings, than just to fly in for the photo opportunities around disasters.

It's fair to say that any business losing almost $1 billion a month needs to rethink it's game plan. And that's what the U.S. Postal Service says it's doing. The Postal Service lost $3.2 billion in the quarter ended March 31, a hefty increase from $2.2 billion in red ink a year earlier. The cause is obvious: Mail volume is plunging as electronic communications become the norm. A record loss of more than $14 billion is forecast for the entire fiscal year. That's a huge chunk of change for a federal agency that receives no tax money.

Even though the price of a first-class stamp will increase by 2 cents to 44 cents on Monday, there are still savings -- of time and money -- to be had online, at the U.S. Postal Service's website, www.usps.com. You can buy stamps by the sheet and postage-paid Priority Mail envelopes. There's an 8% discount on international Express shipping and a 5% discount for commercial Priority Mail. The site also will send you -- with no shipping charge -- the boxes and envelopes you get for free at the post office.

Re "California Bans Spam, Sets Fines," Sept. 24: A penny per e-mail postage for e-mail delivered in the U.S. would bring spam to a halt. If you asked the public to pay postage fees for e-mail, considering the trade-off, I think most would embrace it. Jim Ketcham Malibu

I hope that Venus Williams put enough postage on her match with her sister Serena, because she certainly mailed it in. Harris J. Levey Los Angeles

Since going public in 1999, Stamps.com has fired nearly 90% of its staff, burned through more than $200 million and hired its third chief executive. But after more than a year of restructuring, the online postage service hasn't been licked. Among the Internet's first high-profile start-ups, Stamps.com was also among the first dot-coms to go public, watch its stock rise and fall dramatically and lay off hundreds of employees in what became a familiar cycle of boom and bust.

More than my displeasure at the rising costs of postage over the years is my sadness/amazement as to the postmaster general's refusal to honor Laurel and Hardy on a postage stamp ("The Pictures on Our Postal Stamps" by Betty Cuniberti, Aug. 23). In my opinion, lesser individuals have been so honored, and during the hard times of the Great Depression in America, these two comic "geniuses" brought laughs to people (those fortunate enough to have the admission . . . ) during a period when laughs were "very" difficult/impossible?

Regarding "Drivers Keep On Pumping, Paying" (March 28): The American Petroleum Institute's contention that "gasoline is a bargain because over the last two decades, prices of beer, cereal and postage have risen at much faster rates" is irrelevant, because few pensions and salaries have kept pace with inflation. Most people can do without beer, and free e-mail has eased the burden of higher postage costs, but gasoline is not a discretionary expense. You have to drive your car to get around in California.

It isn't every day that Pamela Anderson shares billing with Pythagoras. But that was just one of many oddities on display Tuesday outside the Hollywood Post Office, where the blond bombshell joined former game-show host Bob Barker to promote postage stamps featuring famous vegetarians. The limited-edition sheet of 20 44-cent stamps produced and sold by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, makes for an unusual assemblage — linking Anderson, Barker, Woody Harrelson and Joan Jett to Pythagoras, Mohandas Gandhi, Leonardo da Vinci and Leo Tolstoy.

"The past is never dead. It's not even past," William Faulkner wrote in 1951, two years after winning the Nobel Prize for literature. It's one of his best-known lines, but I don't think I ever truly understood it until I came to Oxford. For more than three decades, since I first read "As I Lay Dying" as a high school senior, I regarded such a sentiment as a key to Faulkner's writing — which continues to resonate because it comes drenched in history, in the interplay of the past and present, the bitter weight of heritage, the understanding that we cannot be cut free of our roots — without quite realizing that it was also a key to his life . Without quite realizing, in other words, the extent to which it has to do with Oxford, the college town 85 miles southeast of Memphis where Faulkner was raised and where he lived and died and where he is buried, and where, beginning with his third novel, "Sartoris" (1929)

A postage stamp honoring the late Oscar-winning actor Gregory Peck will be presented Thursday at a ceremony at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The timing seems appropriate, since one of his most popular films, the World War II action adventure "The Guns of Navarone," celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including best picture, director (J. Lee Thompson) and screenplay (Carl Foreman), and winning for special effects. "Guns of Navarone" is based on Alistair MacLean's novel about six men who are sent to the Aegean Sea island of Navarone to destroy a supposedly impenetrable Nazi military operation.

The Lady Liberty of the Las Vegas Strip lacks the gravitas of her East Coast lookalike. She is half the size, a century younger and represents a coarser form of democracy: the freedom to choose which slot machine gobbles up your savings. Yet the Las Vegas replica recently snatched an honor from Lower Manhattan's celebrated greeter of the tired, poor and huddled masses: a star turn on a U.S. postage stamp. Postal Service officials, who issued the stamp in December, apparently thought the photo they'd selected was of the Lady Liberty dedicated in 1886 — not her progeny, who since 1997 has beckoned gamblers outside the New York New York Hotel & Casino, alongside an imitation Empire State Building.

Lady Luck or Lady Liberty? Las Vegas edged out the Big Apple on a postage stamp that bears the likeness of Sin City's diminutive replica of the New York City landmark instead of the original. It wasn't intentional, U.S. Postal Service officials said, but there are no plans to correct the mistake. Though 2 billion of the stamps were issued Dec. 1 -- and 3 billion were printed -- the agency learned of the discrepancy only last month. "A stamp collector looked at the image and noticed that's not the original, that's the replica, the Las Vegas version," said Roy Betts, manager of community relations for the Postal Service in Washington.

The panel that regulates the U.S. Postal Service denied a proposal to increase postage rates Thursday, blaming the agency's business model for its recent financial hardships. The Postal Regulatory Commission said in a news conference that the Postal Service had failed to justify the requested 5.6% increase. In July, the Postal Service proposed increasing the price of first-class postage from 44 cents to 46 cents in an attempt to compensate for decreasing revenue and declining mail volume.

We are spending millions to get people to vote. Yet, our absentee ballot form on the city's voter information pamphlet is oversize, requiring 33 cents postage rather than 20 cents. If 100,000 people request absentee ballots, that is $13,000 in unnecessary postage each time. By a simple perforation while printing that would cost nothing, the problem is solved. Aren't we glad we are not getting all the government we are paying for! FREEMAN F. GOSDEN JR. Los Angeles

Recently, when I walked a few blocks to mail some letters, I discovered that the three mailboxes closest to my home had suddenly disappeared. Upon calling the local post office I was told that a massive removal of curbside mailboxes has been ordered "to cut costs." Once again an increase in postage rates is accompanied by yet another deterioration in service. What's next? Perhaps there will be a mass closure of post offices until only the main downtown office remains. Well, I can cut costs too. Faxing this letter to The Times results in immediate delivery, plus a 29-cent savings in postage.

The story you are about to read is true. The names have not been changed to protect the innocent. The television series "Dragnet," which first aired more than 50 years ago, ensured the Los Angeles Police Department's place in Hollywood lore. Now the department is helping return the favor by hosting an event Tuesday at the Police Academy in Elysian Park to commemorate the release of a "Dragnet" postage stamp, authorities said. A program will include the widow of actor Jack Webb, who played LAPD Sgt. Joe Friday; actor Harry Morgan, who played Friday's partner; and LAPD Chief William J. Bratton.