Re: Microsoft's compelled speech, compelled marketing

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

Declan McCullagh wrote:
> 
> I am very amused to see the Naderites on the warpath again. Better yet is
> their claim that the Microsoft DoJ action is divorced from politics. 
   Declan, what exactly is that "claim" that you refer to?  Are you
referring to my note on AM-INFO that DOJ filed against Microsoft without
consulting the White House?  (Something that has been reported in the
press..  WSJ?).  Or is there something else you are referring to.  I
don't think I would say any antitrust action is "divorced" from
politics, including this one.  

  Jamie



This
> is an excerpt from a message I posted to another list. Might be interesting.
> 
> -Declan
> 
> ---
> 
> >     "Fundamentally, I think it's a legal issue," says
> >Ed Black, president of the Computer and Communications
> >Industry Association. "But to say whenever the
> >wealthiest man in America and one of the most powerful
> >companies in America is challenged by a cabinet
> >official, you can't say there's no political impact.
> >You're in a political world at that level."
> 
> And if we look at the history of antitrust we see that the political world
> is often the most important one:
> 
> -- Nixon intervened in an antitrust action against ITT in 1971 in exchange
> for a bribe: a hefty contribution to the 1972 Republican convention. "I
> don't know whether ITT is bad, good or indifferent," he said on April 19,
> 1971, the White House tapes reveal. "But there is not going to be any more
> antitrust actions as long as I am in this chair...goddam it, we're going to
> stop it."
> 
> -- Bush's assistant attorney general derailed a criminal investigation of
> Georgia Power. This after the U.S. attorney in Atlanta had issued more than
> five hundred subpoenas and two hundred witnesses were called to testify
> before the grand jury. Why? Months earlier, the company's CEO raised
> millions of dollars for the Republicans in 1988.
> 
> -- AT&T and its manufacturing subsidary were engaged in a
> billion-dollar-a-year price fixing scheme, the Justice Department claimed
> in a complaint filed in January 1949. AT&T persuaded a slew of high Defense
> Department officials to oppose the action on national security grounds. The
> Defense Secretary himself opposed it because of the "Korean emergency."
> They forced the DoJ to settle the case without getting what it wanted: AT&T
> to sell Western Electric.
> 
> -- Teddy Roosevelt (who Jamie might recall was widely reported to be a
> "trust buster") headed off a DoJ antitrust investigation of the electrical
> industry. Roosevelt wrote: "I feel very strongly that the less activity
> there is during the presidential election, unless it is necessary, the
> better it will be."
> 
> Former NY Times and Newseek reporter David Burnham writes in his book about
> the Justice Department: "The record is clear. Political campaign
> contributions, personal bribes and other direct and indirect favors have
> frequently influenced important Justice Department disions about the
> enforcement of law... Virtually every administration has demanded that the
> Justice Department bend the law..."
> 
> -Declan

-- 
James Packard Love
Consumer Project on Technology
P.O. Box 19367 | Washington, DC 20036 
voice 202.387.8030  | fax 202.234.5176 
love@cptech.org | http://www.cptech.org