THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz Paul Craig Roberts -- former Treasury Department subaltern during the Reagan administration -- makes a convincing case that America's "Department of Justice" is now engaging in fund-raising tactics little removed from that old standby of Tijuana justice. "Junk Bond King" Michael Milken -- now semi-retired to Northern Nevada -- "has been thrice held for ransom" in unjustified prosecutions, Roberts argues in a March 31 column in Investor's Business Daily. "Milken forked over $600 million to buy his way out of a 98-count indictment that University of Chicago law professor Daniel Fischal has shown to be as phony as a $3 bill. "Milken was next seized by the Resolution Trust Corp. and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. To buy his way out of endless litigation" -- funded by the taxpayers, of course -- "Milken handed over $900 million." Casting covetous eyes on the $42 million consulting fee Milken had been paid by News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch and MCI's Bert Roberts, the regulators demanded Milken fork it over -- plus a $5 million bonus -- before they would give him a clean bill of health with his parole judge. Once the government had his money in hand, the Justice Department wrote to the judge, indicating it had found no reason to pursue Milken for parole violations -- that Justice had decided he was innocent of any wrongdoing (start ital)before(end ital) he handed over his latest ransom. Milken was held up and robbed by the SEC in broad daylight for no other reason than the power the SEC has to extract ransoms from chosen victims." Furthermore, Robert concludes, "...What we have witnessed is a conspiracy between the SEC and the Justice Department to rob a man of $47 million." All this would be bad enough if we could believe Mr. Milken alone had been singled out for such attentions. But in a passing reference in its March 9 coverage of the federal "antitrust" case against Bill Gates' Microsoft, Newsweek mentions the same antitrust team has "painful memories of the endless 1970s and '80s IBM breakup case, which turned into an O.J.-like courtroom comedy until it was rendered moot by a market-spawned challenger to IBM ... Microsoft." How's that again? The "crimes" in question became "moot" once the chosen victim lost his preeminence in the market, and thus his attractiveness for milking? So a necessary part of the definition of this "crime" is success, while all one must do to escape official "justice" is to lose market share? Curiouser and curiouser. Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Readers may contact him via e-mail at vin@lvrj.com. The web site for the Suprynowicz column is at http://www.nguworld.com/vindex/. The column is syndicated in the United States and Canada via Mountain Media Syndications, P.O. Box 4422, Las Vegas Nev. 89127. ~~~~ Toto <toto@sk.sympatico.ca> ~~~~ "The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre" http://bureau42.base.org/public/xenix "WebWorld & the Mythical Circle of Eunuchs" http://bureau42.base.org/public/webworld "InfoWar -- The Digital Revolution" http://bureau42.base.org/public/infowar3 "Space Aliens Hide My Drugs" http://bureau42.base.org/public/sahmd