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
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"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