OFFICE POLITICS
Offtce Poitttcs This week, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia will hear a case called Federal Trade Commission v. Staples, Inc. and Office Depot, Inc. The Clinton FTC is suing the...
...Hmmm . . . a sudden interest in the history of pop culture...
...Time Still Loathes the Eighties Time published an article last week about how great life is in the United States...
...Update_ Last December, we noted on this page that New York philanthropist Virginia Gilder had offered a scholarship to every student unfortunate enough to be attending Albany's worst public elementary school...
...Maybe you remember life in the U.S.A...
...We don't want to compromise our reporter's "sources and methods," as the intelligence jargon has it...
...Maggie The Center of the American Experiment, a think tank in Minneapolis, hosted Margaret Thatcher at its May 9 annual dinner...
...The government alleges that the merger will reduce competition and raise consumer prices...
...More than one-third of the students have now applied for scholarships, which cover 90 percent of the cost of tuition at any school of their choosing, up to a maximum of $2,000 a year...
...Margaret Thatcher has opposed that struggle . . ." Pearlstein wrote back, after the event, calling the letter an ugly example of both "political correctness" and "old style, ethnically flavored pandering" and "the most remarkable piece of political grandstanding I've ever seen up close and personal...
...This analysis is sufficiently misguided that it doesn't merit a serious rebuttal, except to point out that it was "junk bonds" that financed (among many other useful things) the rise of the Turner Broadcasting System, which last time we checked had merged with Pooley's employers, making him, we suppose, the "perfect mirror image" of a low-level dealer...
...And applications are still coming in...
...The Los Angeles Times referred to early childhood development as an issue "of particular interest to the first couple...
...The anecdote was drawn from a contemporaneous account in Daily Variety, which had managed to obtain a tape recording of the Gores' self-humiliation...
...In this case, though, the transmission belt is running in the other direction...
...So how exactly can this merger pose an antitrust problem...
...And taxpayers, in whose name the FTC claims to be working, will foot the bill...
...Crime is in a free fall . . . and the downtowns we once gave up for dead are bristling with coffee bars, green markets, life...
...Well...
...Six members of the city council—one short of a majority—worked themselves up into a snit...
...Prominent on the list: the offices of Democrat Dick Gephardt of Missouri and Republican John Kasich of Ohio...
...The FTC appears to have manufactured its feeble evidence from thin air, in other words...
...Attorneys for Staples and Office Depot interviewed Callaway...
...And Lady Thatcher was a big hit...
...One Hill staffer let us know that there is a waiting list at the Library of Congress for Daily Variety back issues...
...But it's fair to say that sometimes in reporting on major political figures who will probably be running in the next presidential election, good material about their past is made available by opponents, who keep files familiarly known as "oppo," short for "opposition research...
...No way, says Time...
...It is a hotbed of competition...
...Minneapolis vs...
...the president's slip into irreverent hilarity gives rise to the suspicion that only half of that couple is really full of liberal piety on this issue...
...Our City Council," wrote the Minneapolis Six, "has supported the struggle for justice and civil rights in Ireland...
...Junk-bond dealers as crack dealers...
...In one particularly egregious instance, the FTC drafted an affidavit about office-products competition in Tampa, Florida, and then somehow persuaded Cindy Callaway, the business manager of a local company, to sign it...
...Come again...
...In the context of Minneapolis politics, Pearlstein's response was positively Thatcherian...
...Callaway's FTC affidavit says: "I can purchase all my office supply needs at the office supply superstores without having to go from store to store...
...We do know that the FTC has behaved badly in this case...
...She told them, and swore in a subsequent affidavit, that she makes 80 to 90 percent of her company's purchases at a place called Viking Office Supply...
...Staples and Office Depot, of course, are two of the major pioneers in office-supply "superstore" marketing, which has dropped consumer prices throughout the office-products industry rather dramatically...
...We don't know...
...And if the proposed merger takes place, the FTC document continues, "prices may increase" because there would remain "no satisfactory alternatives" in the area...
...In any case, "There are many places in the Tampa Bay area to shop for general office supplies...
...The Clinton FTC is suing the two companies to block their proposed merger as a violation of federal antitrust law...
...Some might have thought that the blame-it-on-Reagan ethic that once pervaded establishment journalism had run its course, but it still thrives in the Time-Life building...
...Viking, she says, is "more convenient" and "sometimes cheaper" than either Staples or Office Depot...
...Other retailers . . . do not carry all the items that I need...
...Time's Eric Pooley asserts that "in the '80s, morning in America sounded good but proved to be a false dawn...
...In the week since Carlson's story on Gore appeared, there has been a groundswell of interest in obtaining copies of the original Daily Variety account...
...Or does this count as a hat in the ring, guys...
...But they're going to court anyway...
...And yet, put together, the two companies still control only 5 percent of that market...
...He said it was an "embarrassment" to all Minneapolitans...
...As reported by both the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, the president was asked by one of his entourage to speculate on the deleterious effect this might have had on early childhood development—an obvious reference to the recent White House conference on that subject hosted by Mrs...
...This generous program, known as A Better Choice, provoked a Stalinoid reaction by the education establishment but much interest and from the parents of these inner-city children...
...We're living longer, breathing cleaner air, drinking cleaner water...
...as being pretty good in the '80s, too...
...But the visit of the former British prime minister was not universally welcomed...
...The expansion was fueled by 'high-yield' junk bonds and government debt, and when interest rates soared and the market crashed, the junk dealers on Wall Street started to look like perfect mirror images of the crack entrepreneurs in the slums...
...Three days before her arrival, they wrote to Mitch Pearlstein, president of the think tank, to "express our serious concern" over the invitation (translated: please disinvite her...
...The Wtt of Btll Clinton In his first foray into anthropology since last year's memorable encounter with the 500-year-old mummy of a 14-year-old Incan girl ("If I were a single man, I might ask that mummy out"), President Clinton toured a museum in Mexico last week that included in its collection two human skulls—relics of the ancient Olmec culture of southern Mexico best known for its custom of "beautifying" infants by screwing their heads in a vise-like contraption, thus flattening their skulls...
...It depends," said our prez, "on whether you read to them or sing to them while you're squeezing their heads...
...That allegation is almost mind-bogglingly stupid...
...And they're probably going to lose...
...Al Gore's Paper Trail In our cover story last week on Al Gore, Tucker Carlson reported on the October 1987 Hollywood lunch where Al and Tipper Gore recanted their opposition to obscene rock lyrics and groveled for forgiveness before a group of show-biz execs...
Vol. 2 • May 1997 • No. 36
