Re: Biased journalism, or let's try to ask Declan some questionshe can sink his teeth into

["Eric M. Bennett" <ericb@pobox.com>]

>These are just some brief ideas. More at:
>
>   Linkname: "In God We Antitrust"
>   Filename: http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/article/0,2334,12942,00.html

I'm not sure whether your examples constitute a random sample of clearly
bogus antitrust issues, but they do confirm what I have tended to suspect:
the Republican administrations probably tend to undersue as much as the
Democrats tend to oversue.

I think it is interesting in this light to consider Boeing and McDonnell
Douglas.  In May, our good friend Slade Gorton (R-Washington) urged Clinton
to ensure that the merger would get an "impartial" evaulation from U.S.
authorities after comments were made by E.U. officials that a merger might
negatively affect competition.  Both Gorton and the E.U. have obvious
political incentives (protecting another potential monopolist on Gorton's
home turf vs. keeping a foreign company from biting into sales of Airbus
Industries).




--
Eric Bennett (http://www.pobox.com/~ericb/), Cornell Biochemistry Department

Windows 98 is not the first product Microsoft has botched, nor will it be
the last.  But it is the last straw. . . . Users who do install it do so at
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