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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DMaA who wrote (20411)	6/8/2000 11:17:00 AM
From: MulhollandDrive	Respond to of 769667

That is excellent, DMA. Great lead, btw.

To: DMaA who wrote (20411)	6/8/2000 11:56:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Gates Pays for Not Aiding Democrats newsmax.com ...Microsoft paid the price because the company and its executives failed to contribute enough money to the Democratic Party. You can bet your last nickel that if Bill Gates had been paying gaudy sums to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom or sponsoring illegal fund raisers in Buddhist temples, he would never have been targeted by Janet Reno's brigade. Had Gates contributed as avidly to the Clinton re-election as the People's Liberation Army, Microsoft would not only have its near-term future intact, it would probably be running the Panama Canal to boot. If Gates had contributed to politicians instead of to education, the Antitrust division of the Justice Department would have spent the last two years filling crates with useless documents about the courtship between Exxon and Mobil. Why did the Clinton administration go after Gates but leave Exxon alone? Because there was no need for the politicians to pound the oil industry over the head. Oil executives have known that their industry was in thrall to politicians since even before an antitrust ruling broke John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil into 30 pieces at the beginning of the 20th century. By its end, the Clinton administration was perfectly content to let two of the bigger of those pieces merge back together. Make no mistake. The government attack on Microsoft is not a genuine, if misbegotten, attempt to make markets work better, as some infatuated A-Level students of antitrust theory suppose. It is something less exalted and far more primitive: a power play. Politicians act like jealous dogs. They want to establish their dominion over any new sphere of wealth that technology and economic development bring to the fore. Once upon a time, they fretted that John D. Rockefeller was becoming too powerful. So they sliced and diced his company. The politicians want to be the big dogs in the road. To that end, they are content to impose ruinous costs on anyone who threatens to escape from their thrall....