Playing Ball With Microsoft
Here comes the All-Star Squad! No, not Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, or Sammy Sosa — the real heavy hitters, like Tom Downey, Vin Webber, and Slade Gorton.
Who do these guys play for? They’re all former members of Congress, and they’ve joined the Microsoft Monopolists to compete in the World Series of Lobbying in Washington, D.C. They’ve been signed by the software Goliath to lobby the White House, Justice Department, and Congress to get them to drop their antitrust case against Microsoft. If you thought that this case was a matter for the courts to decide, you don’t know how the game is played.
In the last two election cycles, the company not only hired an army of attorneys, but became a big-time political player. It’s now the fifth-largest political donor in the nation, and it has spent $12 million on fees for lobbyists. Now, Microsoft is bulking up with more K Street clout. They company has also has hired a former Republican party chairman, three former White House counselors, and even Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition and an advisor to George Bush the Second. All of these are hardball players with lots of insider connections, and they’re going all-out to crush the competition.
But the competition is no pushover. Corporate opponents such as AOL Time Warner, which want the government to take the case to the Supreme Court, are battling the Microsoft Monopolists with their own powerhouse lineup of lobbyists. Among others, they’ve hired Robert Bork, the right-wing judicial activist, and Ken Starr, the former special prosecutor.
Justice might be blind when it applies to you and me, but when it comes to Big Money, special influence is the name of the game.
The CIA’s Peruvian Asset
With at least $264 million in the bank, Vladimiro Montesinos was one of the wealthiest men in Latin America, and he got it the old-fashioned way — he got the CIA to give it to him.
The watchdog group Center for Public Integrity has revealed that the CIA has once again been caught in its own dirty tricks. Since the mid-1970s, the CIA had been supporting Montesinos, from the time he was a mid-rank Peruvian military officer and through his rise to power at that nation’s spy agency, known by its Spanish acronym S.I.N. But Montesinos was bigger than S.I.N.: He was the manipulative power behind the throne of Peru’s former right-wing president, Alberto Fujimori.
Together, these two were guilty of personal corruption, human rights abuses, and wholesale anti-democratic actions. Although they knew this, the CIA continued to funnel $10 million in cash to Montesinos over the years and provided high tech surveillance equipment, which he then used against his political enemies. Montesinos also used this equipment for a little Rent-a-Spy business he ran on the side, allowing wealthy supporters of the Fujimori regime to pay him in return for getting surveillance of any person of their choosing.
This was all fine with the CIA as long as Montesinos used his power against Peru’s peasant guerillas, opposition journalists, and politicians — people deemed expendable by U.S. policymakers. But then, in the late Nineties, Montesinos secretly cut a multimillion-dollar arms deal with leftist guerillas in neighboring Colombia — a group the U.S. had been trying to destroy. Suddenly, the CIA became morally outraged, condemning Montesinos’ corruption and helping to bring down both him and Fujimori.
It’s time the CIA learned the old lesson: When you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas.
The Devil at Play
There’s a bit of urban folklore that says: “Satan wears a suit and tie, and Satan never sleeps.”
I’ve come across two recent news items that I think not only confirm this saying, but also indicate that Satan is winning against the forces of good. Item No. 1 comes from the Knight-Ridder news service, which informs us that the business suit is back with a vengeance. In this case, the devil is implementing his will through George W. Bush, the demise of dot-coms, and the resurgence of corporate autocracy.
Start with Little George. In an effort to look like an adult, he wears a suit and tie to the office every day and has decreed that all other White House employees must do the same. Then, with the recent dot-com meltdown, the laid-back dress ethic of the techies is now being choked off by tech executives demanding that employees come to work in ties. Following suit, uptight corporate chieftains are even canceling dress-down Fridays, claiming that casual dress encouraged tardiness, absenteeism, and “workplace laxity.” So button down, shut up, and keep your nose to the grindstone, you drones.
Item No. 2 is from the Miami Herald, which reports on Satan’s work in Nicaragua. Saying the new global economy demands a more regimented work force, Nicaraguan officials have terminated the siesta. Yes, the age-old practice of taking off a couple of hours in the sweltering afternoon for lunch and a nap is finito! Now, the government demands that its workers be on the job from 7am to 2pm, with no lunch breaks.
Well, then they can always grab a siesta after work, right? Not in the new work-’til-you-drop global economy. The Nicaraguan chamber of commerce says devilishly that the earlier quitting time will allow people to work a second job.
The hell with the Devil — our world needs more siestas and fewer suits.
Jim Hightower’s latest book, If the Gods Had Meant Us to Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates, is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.
This article appears in July 20 • 2001.