Slashdot Mirror
Details of MSFT's Antitrust Lobbying
An anonymous sent in linkage to "A new ZDNet article detailing new evidence presented to the judge presiding over the Microsoft anti-trust case. It shows that Microsoft made political contributions during last year's (well, 2000's) elections on a scale never seen before... over $6 million. As comparison, this is four times the amount spent by Enron.
It also reveals that Microsoft has been hiring every political lobbyist, and every law firm, with anti-trust expertise and putting them to work on unrelated projects- anything to make them unavailable to work for critics of Microsoft."
The only truly effective Campaign Finance Reform is to reduce the power of the federal government. As long as the turnip remains large, and growing larger, every goat on the planet will be fighting for a piece of it.
If the Federal government were actually limited in scope (refer to Constitution here), then there would be a lot less to lobby for, to "contribute soft money" for, etc.
I would like to not only limit the power of the government, but prevent lawyers from holding office.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
... charges that Microsoft buys (bought?) shelf space in stores to prevent competing products from even being visible?
So, in other words, this is really nothing new. This is Microsoft being Microsoft; now, does anyone seriously doubt that this is an organization bent on doing whatever it takes, including things that are not just immoral, or violate common sense, but possibly things that are criminal, in order to ... what, make money?
Has American society fallen so far into the pit of jade and cynicism that we shrug off the Enrons and Microsofts of the world as merely maladjusted money-seeking sycophants, instead of being so violently outraged that we take every chance to make them wish they'd never even started a business? What the hell are we doing?
Every person who reads about Microsoft's behavior should be so sickened that they vomit. This is not normal. This is not acceptable. This is not "business as usual" in the United States. Just because it seems to happen a lot does not make it something we should tolerate, not even for a millisecond, and not for any reason.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
The Best Government Money Can Buy (tm)
The real problem here is the idea of "corporate personhood" which extends all the civil rights meant for people (including buying congressmen, senators, presidents and supreme court justices) to corporations.
individual people, and and not-for-profit groups can not compete with the cash generated by a large corporation.
there is one easy solution to this (unfortunately, it's not easy:).
make all elections 100% publicly funded (I believe that england does this and each candidate can only spend something like 10,000 pounds), ban any political advertizing by any non candidate which mentions, depicts or hints where a particlar candidate or party stands on an issue.
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
Currently, Enron is the posterchild for the reason for campaign finance reform. If our politicians are swayed by the campaign contributions of Enron's scale, what corruption is seeded by a larger sum of money? If the advertising power of the campaigns is knocked askew by some soft money, isn't it knocked asunder by larger sums?
For a few stories linking Enron to campaign finance, you can look at this topic list on Salon.com. The topic is campaign finance. The headlines mostly discuss Enron in recent weeks.
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As a Canadian, reading the reactions of various slashdotters, I find it very interesting.
We as a tech community are so ready to shout that Microsoft is evil. You guys are forgetting that this is the American way (which applies to us up too...). Remember those Railroad Tycoons, the Oil Tycoons? The Rockafellers of the world are still around. Why do you think Texas has so many industries that could have been put elsewhere? (Count how many military bases that there are in Texas?)Prominent Texans ensured that Texas was given the goods, and in our present system of government they did not only what they could, but what was expected and did what benefited Texans and especially those prominant citizens. (Sorry Texans, but its the only example I know of as an ignorant canuck ;)
Using money to influence government policy is how government has functioned for a long time. Remember in Ancient Rome, being in position of political power made you rich as businesses petitioned for your support. This is not going to change anytime soon unless we as a society decide that is unacceptable.
America is the land of the free. Its the land of who has got more $$$. The more dough you have, the more freedom you have to do as you wish for good or ill.
Don't piss on M$ because they are doing what is in their best interests and that they have the freedom to do so. Its disgusting that they did do it, but I am much more revolted that the so called democracy of the world is nothing more than auction and that THIS seems news to people . We have to as a society against this truly undemocratic behaviour.
Hopefully this will serve as a case in point for seriously look at our Politicians and their Political Parties and how they govern us.
Though I suppose it could be worse... at least we pretend to have democracy.
Don't mind me though I am just a jaded youth....