The Late Great Flat Rate Support Our Soldiers Date!

This is the second in a series of diaries I'll be posting this week about the impact of the upcoming USPS rate increase on our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. For those of you who missed it, here's a link to the first one:

http://www.dailykos.com/...

I'm trying to get the word out to everyone who relies on the Priority Flat Rate service to send items to soldiers at an affordable rate. I'm also trying to encourage people who've never sent a package to a soldier to do so before the rate goes up.

I send out packages almost every week, and, most of the time, the cost of the postage exceeds the cost of the items I'm sending.  True, that's mostly because I'm a skinflinty shopper, but still.  The cost of the postage isn't trivial, especially to military families who are on a tight budget as it is.

This is an update on my progress...

As you can see, I've now got a title, not just for this diary, but for my action. (Gotta have a title!) I also got a domain name and now I have a website that's about half finished.  I plan to finish it up this weekend for the Big Release! on Monday morning, although I'll probably continue to fiddle with it as I think of things through the week.

I would really appreciate some DKos feedback on what I've done so far:

http://www.lategreatflatratedate.info/

I would appreciate hearing about any typos or glitches, and I welcome any suggestions for content as long as they aren't too ambitious...I'm working a very short time frame here and need to KISS.

It would be especially helpful if some of you would try to download the flyer on the Get Word Out page.  I haven't done this much. The flyer is still in Word. It looks great when I download it, but I'm thinking it might not hold up so well if downloaded by folks who have a different version than I do. (I don't necessarilyy mean the 6.0 level version, but the 6.1.2.3.3.6 level versions, which I understand can have slightly different versions of the fonts.) I will probably convert it to PDF anyway, but I'm still curious as to what happens when people try to download it in Word.

Thanks for the assist, you kwazy Kossacks!

•  Tips welcomed..

  ...about improving the website, I mean.

  by Free Spirit on Sat May 05, 2007 at 08:12:29 AM PDT

•  Off to the post office now...

  ...to mail packages to a couple of my soldiers.  Back soon.  Thanks for the tips and recs.  Our soldiers thank you too!

  by Free Spirit on Sat May 05, 2007 at 08:50:11 AM PDT

•  Website looks good

  Easy to navigate so far and the text, colors and graphics are easy to read and work well together.  I'm going to link to that site on the military spouse message board I belong to.

  by silvercedes on Sat May 05, 2007 at 08:58:58 AM PDT

  •  Wow...thanks for helping to get the word out!

    That would be great, sc.  I'm hoping to plaster the internet with this little action, but obviously I can't do it all on my ownsome.

    by Free Spirit on Sat May 05, 2007 at 09:46:16 AM PDT

•  the site looks great. info is well-organized

  very nice site.

  the download went fine on my dial-up system, and my really old Word from 2002 opened the flyer fine.

  A quick read finds 1 typo on the site, none on the flyer. Should be: "as long as it takes" at the end of below paragraph on the Lobby page:

  We can lobby for a special rate for our soldiers after May 14.  That effort is going to be a little more challenging than just putting a package in the mail.  Let's concentrate on getting enough supplies to our soldiers to tide them over for a bit first. Then we can take up lobbying for a long as it takes.

  thanks for promoting anysoldier.com

  by jennifer poole on Sat May 05, 2007 at 09:26:09 AM PDT

  •  Thanks for the feedback

    A fresh pair of eyes is always welcomed.

    Glad to hear the flyer downloaded okay for you.  Although maybe it just means your version of Word is as old as mine is. :-)  But I've got a lot to pull together in a short time, so converting the flyer to PDF is something I'll put off a bit longer.

    Right now, I'm prioritizing getting the site itself finished and also putting together an email distribution list of all the activists I know, so I can zap them all on Monday when the site officially opens.

    by Free Spirit on Sat May 05, 2007 at 09:49:31 AM PDT

•  You suggest sending Vienna sausages,

  but these should be the ones which contain no pork, as postal regs do not allow sending of pork to Islamic countries. (Even though the DFACs serve plenty of it.)

  Also, do not combine food items with toiletries. In the time it takes for the package to arrive, and, especially in high heat, the granola bars will taste like the shampoo.

  Some items such as chocolate and waxy things should only be sent in cooler weather.

  by operculum on Sat May 05, 2007 at 01:45:22 PM PDT

  •  Thanks!

    Yes, I forgot to mention no pork.

    You are right about your other suggestions, too, but my list is really meant to be a guide to someone to help them find a soldier who is in need of some of the more common heavy items requested on AnySoldier.com.  That site has very detailed information on what to send and not send, and the soldiers often include the information in their requests.

    by Free Spirit on Sat May 05, 2007 at 03:08:25 PM PDT

  •  I did a little more thinking on this

    I assume these regs are aimed at the distributors of commercial products intended for sale to the local population. I'm not sure they really apply to food sent to soldiers, because the military is the one delivering overseas, not the USPS...just as it is the military (presumably?) that delivers the the pork served by their DFACs. Seems like if it's not a violation of postal regs for them to deliver them to the DFACs, it shouldn't be a violation for them to deliver them to individual soldiers, either. However, it might be a violation of military policy...on the theory that stuff going to the soldiers is less tightly controlled than the stuff going to the DFACs and perhaps more likely to wind up in the "wrong" (Muslim) hands. I can easily imagine a well-intentioned young soldier offering to share some of his goodies with one of the Iraqis he or she works with.

    That said, I would not send anything with "Pork" plastered conspicuously on the front of the label.  But, me personally, I'm not going to worry about what's in the fine print on the back, given that these items are specifically intended for consumption by our soldiers, rather than the local population, and shipped directly to them, rather than to a retail distributor.

    by Free Spirit on Sun May 06, 2007 at 10:57:45 AM PDT

    •  Search anysoldier contacts for the word pork.

      You will notice the staff inserts the comment [non-pork only], generally after Vienna sausages are mentioned. Packages to soldiers should comform to USPS regs. In Iraq and Afghanistan; no pork, no porn, no alcohol, no weapons.

      The regs are made up by the USPS for all packages they ship to Islamic countries. Since you must fill out an international customs form to send care packages to soldiers, their rules apply. Suppliers to the DFACs don't ship their foodstuffs by mail.

      by operculum on Sun May 06, 2007 at 12:52:11 PM PDT

      •  Which raises the question:

        I wonder how suppliers to the DFACs do ship their foodstuffs?

        by Free Spirit on Sun May 06, 2007 at 01:36:26 PM PDT

        •  By ship to Kuwait,

          then by truck convoys. A few perishable supplies may go by air, sometimes just to pad the bill. Contractors also use the airport in Dubai, but this is mostly for personnel.

          Whistleblower Rory Mayberry

          Another whistleblower who testified at the hearing is Rory Mayberry, who worked as a food production manager for KBR at Camp Anaconda, Iraq.

          When Mayberry complained about food overcharges, KBR managers told him that "this needed to be done" because the company lost money in prior months due to the temporary suspension of payments considered suspicious by Pentagon auditors.

          "The KBR managers would triple the order every week to bring in much more food than we needed," Mayberry said. KBR would charge for an extra 5,000 meals for troops who would never be served, meaning the food became refuse.

          Mayberry said KBR would pay $13 to $15 for a box of tomatoes flown in from Philadelphia even though a local box of tomatoes cost only $5. Same goes for bacon. KBR would purchase an $80 box of bacon flown in from Philadelphia even though a local box cost only $12.
          The reason KBR prefers to incur high costs is because its contracts are "cost-plus," meaning the Pentagon pays the company for all costs plus a fee of 1 to 3 percent of those costs. So, the higher the costs incurred by KBR, the higher its fee from the Pentagon. Another KBR whistleblower said the company's motto is "Don't worry about price, it's cost-plus."

          Mayberry also described instances where the troops were fed outdated food or food that had expired over a year ago. Company policy also required purchasing food even if it was spoiled when delivered. When the subcontractor dropped off food at KBR locations, there was often no place to store it, so the food would sit in KBR freezers on the trucks until the fuel ran out. "KBR wouldn't refuel the trucks so the food would spoil," Mayberry said. "This happened quite a bit."

          Mayberry also described how KBR managers would hide from military auditors and not answer radios when summoned by them. KBR punished Mayberry for speaking to the auditors by sending him to work in the notoriously violent town of Fallujah, Iraq. "The manager told me I was being sent away until the auditors were gone because I had opened my mouth to the auditors," he said.

          by operculum on Sun May 06, 2007 at 02:20:57 PM PDT

  •  What about batteries?

    I've never sent any, but soldiers ask for them all the time.  Yet it looks like they may be considered hazardous materials under postal regulations.  Then again, they might not.  They specify certain types of batteries as restricted, but I don't know enough about batteries for that to be of much help.

    by Free Spirit on Sun May 06, 2007 at 12:44:01 PM PDT

    •  I haven't seen prohibitions of batteries.

      I have sent scads of them, always listed on the customs form, they have been received and no one at my PO has ever questioned them. While I can see that they might be a hazard, should they leak, anysoldier.com lists requests for them all the time, so I think they are OK to send.

      by operculum on Sun May 06, 2007 at 12:56:59 PM PDT

      •  Cool

        I'm inclined to think they mean things like car batteries (that's what the photos always show), not little household batteries, which seem pretty innocuous.

        by Free Spirit on Sun May 06, 2007 at 01:34:30 PM PDT