“It’s the economy, stupid,” was the theme of Bill Clinton’s first
presidential bid in 1991. The point, we were told, was that this man
Clinton would be good for business. Uh-huh.
The American economy, by all facts and figures, is indeed moving
along swimmingly, but it is doing so despite the man who would be
king for life, if only we’d let him.
The Clinton administration’s army of bureaucrats have foisted a ton
of new costly regulatory burdens on U.S. businesses since 1992, and
still many industries have succeeded anyway. Many more, however,
have gone the way of the Dodo bird, leaving America’s once receptive
climes for the business-friendly environments of other countries awash
in poverty.
Therefore I can only conclude that the government’s attack on
Microsoft has more
to do with a warped quest for power than sound legal principles.
Success must really bother those in government who want Americans to
rely only upon them for survival.
I say that because it seems, for some reason, the most successful
American industries are systematically being laid waste by an
administration that, for all its proclamations otherwise, is behaving
about as anti-business as you can get. Forget, for a moment, all of the
politically correct hype and propaganda — when you destroy or break a
huge corporation, billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs are
also destroyed. This is the dirty little secret of the administration’s
war on key industries — the unseen and little publicized effect it has
on those who work for these companies.
With all of this in mind, readers of this column may remember a
piece I wrote
some weeks ago decrying the “fascism” of the Clinton administration in
its treatment of select industries and businesses. Then, I asserted,
“Most other countries seem to go out of their way to harbor and protect
their industries and corporations, but here in the U.S. we seem to be
satisfied with wrecking ours.” I’ll bet Bill Gates agrees, now that a
lone federal judge has decided his company represents a monopoly where
none actually exists.
What is worse is all of the congressional indifference to this
administration’s use of the Justice Department and various bureaucracies
as political tools to destroy key U.S. corporations.
I remember some months back, after the Senate’s failure to remove the
impeached Clinton from office, both Republicans and Democrats were heard
excusing their complicit incompetence by saying, in effect, that Clinton
only had a short while left in office and he could do no further
damage. After all, he had been impeached — what kind of moral
authority could he muster to pass unpopular and destructive policy
initiatives?
I ask those lawmakers now, as I asked then, “Are you kidding?”
When has Clinton ever worried about possessing “moral
authority?” He doesn’t need it — he has over 900 FBI files, and in
today’s political climate that trumps morality any day. Besides,
congressmen, you were talking about a guy who got oral sex in the
Oval Office of the White House and couldn’t even admit he was
wrong.
In the meantime, despite Clinton’s “lack of moral authority,” the
attack on American business continues. But who in Congress hears? Who
in Congress sees?
The cigar-smoking Clinton’s vile hypocrisy towards the tobacco
industry is understandable; so too is his legendary hatred of the gun
industry. As long as Clinton and the Democrats are seen attacking these
two industries they get votes, so perceived political expedience against
these two industries is expected. Worse, however, it that it has been
excused and allowed. Consequently the administration has expanded
its tactic of using the so-called mandate of the Justice Department as a
vehicle to legitimize otherwise bogus attacks on other companies and
industries.
Microsoft is just the latest casualty of this tactic. What a
computer software manufacturer did to attract the ire of a Justice
Department wholly intent on retribution is anybody’s guess, but the fact
remains that it is an improper and unwarranted attack in the first
place. Microsoft has a monopoly on software like WorldNetDaily has a
monopoly on news coverage. Wanting to be the biggest game or name in
town is one thing but actually becoming the sole provider of
something is quite another and on this principle alone hinges the lack
of credibility of Justice’s attack on Bill Gates. Where, pray tell, is
his software monopoly? Where?
It can’t be on Internet browsers because we all know that Netscape
users, as well as Internet Explorer users, visit us here on the web
every day. It can’t be on software because Microsoft doesn’t make
every single software program or application known to exist. And
it can’t be “all about competition” because the whiny,
competition-challenged losers at Netscape and Novell, like Microsoft,
also give away much of their software.
And the government can’t be serious about prosecuting Microsoft for
“monopolistic practices” as long as Uncle Sam maintains his monopoly
over postal service, government education, conventional versus
alternative medicine, and — for that matter — the “two-party”
political “system.” Give me a break.
Besides, if the government were doing the same thing to Netscape and
Novell — which will indeed happen someday, if they get “too big” —
they’d be screaming bloody murder.
So what gives? We’re witnessing the slow destruction of the free
market system in this country, and nobody with any authority or power to
stop it is doing so. Why?
Maybe Clinton, his bureaucracy, most congressmen and most federal
judges really just believe an impoverished America is a better America,
for some deranged reason. Maybe they so resent our success — due to
their own personal and business failures perhaps — they will stop at
nothing to “get even” with those of us who are successful. Maybe that’s
why they created (and now enforce) such legalized theft as a capital
gains tax and a 50 percent Estate tax — because it gives their egos an
opportunity to “smack” us down.
In my view this lawsuit is simply about a loss of power. We
all know how much the control freaks in D.C. hate to lose power
and influence.
Successful people like Gates are an empowered people, devoid of the
need for government “oversight” and “intervention.” But to control
freaks our success represents a “threat” to their existence. These
corporate attacks are little more than attacks against the kind of
success that threaten to alienate an oppressive government with a loss
of dependency and power. There is an element of greed here, too —
lawmakers and lawyers alike are now fussing over who should get more of
the extorted tobacco company billions. So if Gates ultimately loses this
fight on appeal, look for Uncle Sam to claim he owes billions in
“damages” as well.
These control freaks hate the thought of success so much that,
apparently, they’re willing to sacrifice all of our prosperity
for the sake of it. That is nothing more than small-minded cowardice.
Americans need to decide rather quickly if they want an economically
destitute country led by a few wealthy power elite (see Communism) or
one that continues to be the shining economic example of freedom we used
to be. Microsoft is the ultimate example of the success of a free market
society, but in Bill Clinton’s America, we’ll need to change our name to
the United Soviet Socialist Republic.
And we all know how successful that experiment was.
