Re: The Barkto Incident

[Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>]

At 12:47 PM 4/13/98 -0400, James Love wrote:

>During the Staples Merger, the FTC accepted public comments on the
>merger by electronic mail.  The FTC received more than 3,000 comments. 
>A majority were in support of the merger.  The FTC staff believed that
>many of these were created by investors in the deal, or Staples
>employees.   We were told by arbitrage investors that they were having
>their staffs spend email messages all day to the FTC in support of the
>merger.  
>
>   jamie

This is why Congressmen don't read their e-mail, alas. A durn shame.
It could be the best medium ever for communication with elected
representatives, but they'd have to have confidence that the 
messages were authentic. (Of course, they'd have to care what
people thought, too, instead of following a party line. But that's
another issue.)

--Brett