Through Wind and Rain--Even If It’s 19 Cents Short

William Holmes says he has the Constitution on his side, and so the Post Office be damned.

Holmes, 41, a General Dynamics/Convair engineer living in Escondido, says he discovered recently that the 1961 law setting first-class postage at 6 cents has never been changed. Forget that 25-cent stuff.

Since November, Holmes has sent out 200-plus letters, each with only 6 cents postage and a stamp that says: “First Class Mail. 81 U.S. Statute L. 613. No Postage Due.” He became a Libertarian a few years back and it changed his life.

“We are tired of administrative organizations making law and ignoring the supreme law of the land, the Constitution,” Holmes said.

Postal officials have heard it all before. Across the land, the Post Office has gotten 250 court orders against other postal protesters using the 6-cent scheme.

“It’s an old scam,” said Ken Boyd, spokesman for the Post Office in San Diego. If Holmes persists, he’ll wind up in federal court, Boyd said.

But the 6-cent flap points out a little-known chink in Post Office armor: the use of correct postage depends more on voluntary compliance than the public thinks. All but three of Holmes’ letters were delivered undetected.

Sorting machines detect whether postage is being used (by sensing the ink on stamps) but cannot tell whether the postage is “short-paid.” If the letter carrier doesn’t catch it, it doesn’t get caught.

Holmes vows to take the 6-cent issue to the Libertarian state convention later this month in Mission Valley.

He’s also decided to stop paying federal income taxes. He found a law that says only residents of the District of Columbia need to file a 1040 form.

If he thinks the Post Office is unforgiving, wait until he meets the Internal Revenue Service, said Boyd.

A Cross to Bear

It depends on how you look at it.

- The local branch of the American Civil Liberties Union is suing the city of La Mesa to make police officers remove patches on their uniforms showing the Mt. Helix cross as part of the city emblem.

This is the same ACLU that finds nothing wrong with nunchakus , now being used by police against uncooperative anti-abortion protesters. The San Diego City Council votes $80,000 to increase the Police Department’s stockpile of nunchakus , and the ACLU is silent.

Why do I feel I’m more likely to have my arm busted by a martial-arts weapon than a shoulder patch?

- The state attorney general’s office in San Diego is trying to ensure that Roger Hedgecock’s felony conviction is upheld and Hedgecock goes to jail.

Howard Wayne, a deputy attorney general in San Diego, is running for Assembly. He hired Tom Shepard, Hedgecock’s convicted co-conspirator, as a political consultant, and Bob Meadow, labeled by the grand jury an unindicted co-conspirator, as a pollster.

Wayne sees nothing incongruous in this. He says he is not handling the Hedgecock case and, besides, Shepard and Meadow are not defendants in the case.

Law and order and ethics in government are major issues in his campaign, he says.

Say Pretty-Please

Words, words, words.

- More on the Great City Hall Lockout.

San Diego Councilman Bruce Henderson has asked a council committee to discuss Deputy Mayor Abbe Wolfsheimer’s decision to reduce reporters’ access to City Council offices.

Wolfsheimer this week had the security code changed on the door to the 10th-floor offices.

Henderson is always eager to tweak Wolfsheimer. He issued a statement saying reporters “don’t need a note from their mother or the deputy mayor” to talk to him.

- The California Highway Patrol could use San Diego’s Grammar Policeman.

The CHP form for stolen vehicles asks whether the vehicle’s transmission is automatic or manuel.

- Bumper sticker spotted in Del Mar: “Free Nancy Hunter.”

- In case you thought such thinking was dead in this slow-growth era.

Sign at a shopping center construction site in El Cajon: “Watch Us Grow.”