Slick Willie has nothing to do with current prosperity and polls show he rightfully gets little credit. The Great Boom has been going on for 18 years with a brief 2qtr recession in 90-91. The economy began growing again 13 months before Slick took office and the market has almost tripled since his party lost Congress in November 1994, effectively neutering him policy-wise.
Slick is out to get MSFT:
Microsoft under fire around the
globe
September 23, 1999
BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
David Boies, the antitrust hired gun who argued the government's case against
Microsoft in Washington Tuesday, was in London last month suggesting that British
users of Windows software get in on the fun and sue Bill Gates' company for triple
damages--using an American attorney.
Could that attorney be Boies? An "exclusive interview" in the Aug. 15 London
Observer quoted the Microsoft case's lead trial lawyer: "U.S. law permits anyone
outside the United States harmed by a U.S.-based pricing conspiracy to receive the
same recovery as U.S. citizens."
The newspaper added, based on the Boies interview, that "this would require British
citizens to contact a U.S. lawyer in private practice to represent them." Boies is
described by the Observer as "America's top antitrust lawyer," but he sounds here
more like a trans-Atlantic ambulance chaser.
Microsoft's friends in Congress this week asked Attorney General Janet Reno
whether Justice Department regulations preclude personal profit for Boies derived
from his prosecution. But the issue transcends individual ethics. Boies was hired for
the Microsoft case by Assistant Attorney General Joel L. Klein, who had come
over to Justice's Antitrust Division from the Clinton White House counsel's office.
Microsoft was targeted by Klein in a prosecution that effectively extends beyond
American borders.
Apart from Boies's London visit, Klein and lieutenants circled the globe in 1997 and
1998 importuning foreigners to move against this country's most successful
company.
Brazil: In Brasilia on May 20, 1998, the Justice Department's Russell Pittman
briefed Brazil's top antitrust officials about Microsoft. According to a Brazilian
lawyer present, Pittman said: "Because Microsoft exerts an arrogant monopoly,
behaving often in an arrogant fashion before the antitrust authorities, it would get
from the antitrust agencies what it deserves." One week later, Brazilian authorities
announced they were exploring legal action against Microsoft. Brazil's investigation
continues.
Israel: At an antitrust seminar in Herzliya on May 26, 1998, Deputy Assistant
Attorney General Daniel Rubinfeld called it essential "to stop the use of monopoly
power" by Microsoft "before the market tips." Israel's investigation continues.
Japan: In early December 1997, Klein traveled to Tokyo to meet with senior
officials of the Japanese Fair Trade Commission. Six weeks later, on Jan. 13, 1998,
20 JFTC inspectors conducted a raid on Microsoft's Tokyo offices to probe the
American company's competition with Japanese agencies. The investigation
continued with threatened legal action against Microsoft for unfairly competing with
a Japanese firm but was officially closed last February.
Europe: On June 8, 1998, in Paris, Deputy Assistant Attorney General A. Douglas
Melamed briefed the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
about antitrust cases in the United States. Coincidentally or not, action is pending
against Microsoft in France and Italy.
A bipartisan House group of three Republicans and four Democrats (all but one
from Microsoft's home state of Washington) in their letter to the Attorney General
Monday concentrated on Boies' remarks in London: "It appears that Mr. Boies,
while on foreign soil, was encouraging non-U.S. citizens to hire private lawyers to
pursue private litigation against an American corporation." They said this is "highly
inappropriate" and enclosed Justice Department regulations prohibiting lawyers
involved in litigation from making extrajudicial statements.
And what about the litigator's return to private life? The House members, headed by
Democrat Jay Inslee and Republican Jennifer Dunn, questioned whether "Mr. Boies
and his firm have agreed to forego representing civil claimants against Microsoft."
The broader oversight question for Congress should be why Joel Klein and his hired
gun are conducting a global vendetta against Microsoft. It would be interesting to
know whether they moved on their own or received presidential sanction when
Klein left the White House to begin his prosecution of Microsoft, but Bill Clinton
surely would invoke executive privilege if Congress asked.
suntimes.com |
