Letters to the Editor
MacK..
Published Letters: 477 Editor's Choice: 49
-
I agree with the author -- but then I wish Salon and he would not just discuss the first amendment, civil rights and abortion
[Read the article: Free speech for the rich and powerful]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A much bigger part of the conservative movement in the courts is in economic law, particularly antitrust law, the bane of seriously big business. And yesterday a venerable precedent prohibiting resale price maintenance, holding RPM automatically illegal, was swept away after 96 years, to be replaced by a rule-or-reason test that will inevitably mean that no RPM is found illegal. They did not even do the reasonable thing as establish a rebuttable presumption that an RPM arrangement is illegal -- no they went the whole hog.
RPM refers to agreements, arrangements, activities, or practices between supplier and dealer/retailer to establish a minimum price or price level to be observed by the dealer when reselling a products or services to customers. RPM can be achieved directly or indirectly. RPM arrangements and activities are almost always regarded as serious violations of competition and antitrust law.
This is a huge change in US economic law, one that will slowly cost every ordinary American dear as companies slowly force up prices through the distribution channel. It really is a gift for big companies and big retailers, and it runs contrary to the rest of world competition law, where RPM is automatically illegal.
What drives me nuts is that we are so obsessed with the idea that the conservative agenda is just abortion, civil rights and free speech. In reality, the things that are having the biggest impact are the economic decisions, the gutting of securities laws, the emasculation of antitrust, the shear taste of Roberts et al for removing the pesky laws that so troubled the Wall Streeters who employed him and his buddies in private practice.
I am a firm believer in law and economics, but I do not believe the Chicago School anymore -- they have sold out their intellectual integrity years ago, to ponder to people who will pay them for expensive economic rationalizations of breathtaking absurdity -- so much so that in internal legal jargon the slang for the consultant economists is "the whores" as in "has anyone told the whores what to write yet" -- but you know what, the judges, who must know better, buy this crap.
The US legal system is slowly shedding every piece of law designed to level the playing field between the rich and powerful and the weak.
And by the way, mostly I work for the rich and powerful, and I still don't agree with shredding the rules. I suppose it is fair to say that it is not in my economic interest, since if there is no trouble to get into, the rich and powerful will not pay me to get them out of it.
-
Tricky Dick v. Dubya
[Read the article: There's always Nixon]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think Dubya will end up lower than Nixon. To put is more simply, lousy President that Nixon was, he was not an unmitigated disaster, indeed he did a few positive things.
Vietnam -- Nixon did not actually get the US into Vietnam, and in the end get the US out. Moreover, for various reasons, on a geopolitical level Vietnam was not the total mess that Iraq is (mostly because of oil(, so on the Vietnam front, I think Nixon edges Dubya.
Nixon did not allow the US to be attacked by a group of terrorists after discounting warnings from various entities as politically motivated.
Nixon did preside (unenthusiastically) over the enforcement of civil rights rather than the dismantling thereof.
Nixon did not inherit a massive fiscal surplus and blow the budget into a deficit that threatens the longterm viability of the US economy.
Nixon did reach a raprochment with China and engage in Realpolitic which involved discussions with enemies, ratcheting down tensions, rather than encouraging various yahoos to casually suggest nuking countries like Iran.
Nixon resigned, as did Spiro Agnew, any sign of Bush or Cheney doing that?