the archives of f/k/a . . .

You may recall our blurb from last June, reporting that the non-profit

Voluntary Trade Council, a free-market and rabidly anti-antitrust group,

had branded the American Antitrust Institute a “criminal organization,”

for taking a cy pres award (to use to make educational materials) as  

part of the Vitamin Price Fixing Settlement.  Today, a new wrinkle

appeared, caused by the following blurb, which I (being its volunteer

editor), had added two days ago to the AAI’s online Antitrust Guide,

in a section called The Factions (Schools) of Antitrust, under the

heading “Libertarian Approach to Antitrust”:

The Voluntary Trade Council Formerly known as Citizens

for Voluntary Trade, VTC is a nonprofit research and education

organization that opposes “violent state intervention in free

markets,” focusing “on the harm caused to individuals and

businesses by the enforcement of antitrust and other ‘competition’

laws. It claims to apply “the principles of free market economics

and rational ethics to contemporary antitrust policies and cases.”

Today, Oct. 1, 2005, S.M. “Skip” Oliva, President & CEO of VTC, 

sent an email to AAI President Bert Foer, asking Bert to remove the link

to VTC’s website.  Oliva wrote: “we consider you and your organization to

be criminals, and thus your link to our website is considered an unfriendly

act.”

 

scolding
vain man…
the autumn moon

 

Kobayashi Issa 

  translated by David G. Lanoue  

 

Although we believe AAI is under no legal obligation to remove the link, we 

have done so, while leaving our description of VTC, and pointing to the prior 

f/k/a weblog post for an explanation of the criminal charges and a link back

to the VCT website.  You might want to check out this center of “rational

ethics.”

p.s. to Skip:  This website will continue to link to your dandy

organization.

 

  By the way, as Walter Olson noted earlier this month,

a VCT weblog now exists. And, today its pledge month begins!!

 

                                                                                           

 

Update (Oct. 2, 2005): Yesterday evening, Skip Oliva wrote to Bert Foer,

informing Bert that he can “rest assured I have no interest in sharing my
thoughts about you with anyone.  To emphasize this point, I have deleted

the few references to AAI and you from VTC’s website, and you have my

assurance that I will never refer to AAI or yourself, for any reason, in the

future on any website under my control.”

Mr. Oliva added “P.S.  No need to reply to this e-mail, as my

spam filter has been been programmed to block your address.”

Thanks to the Google cache of the page in question, I have salvaged

the original news release by VTC, which can be seen here.

 

in the harvest moonlight
unruffled, unaffected
scarecrow

 

 

 

 

under my bottom
the stone warms up…
moonlit night

 

 

Kobayashi Issa 

       translated by David G. Lanoue   

 

 

my arm snagged —

a good look at

the wild rose

 

fall colors

in the lake –

one thought after another

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

her tossed jacket

another place

for the cat

 

 

 

 

 

 

one short chapter –

I move the lawn chair

to reclaim the sun

 

 

 

Tom Clausen  

from Upstate Dim Sum  (2005/I) 

 

• 
  
  from dagosan: 

two days without

turning on a fan –

now, it’s autumn

 

 

[Oct. 1, 2005]

 

 

As the Washington Nationals Major League Baseball team completes its

first season, Bruce Fein has penned “Baseball’s Privileged Antitrust Exemption”

(Washington Lawyer, Oct. 2005), in which he argues:

“[T]he message to the Supreme Court should be, be done

with this indefensible judicial error perpetrated many long

innings ago.”

  Fein describes the history of the exemption, beginning with the

1922 Federal Base Ball Case, in which the Supreme Court declared

that baseball is not interstate commerce, and thus is not subject to 

the Sherman Act.  [No other professional sport has been granted this

court-made exemption, and Congress has not extended the blanket

exemption to other sports.]  He focuses on the harm that MLB has

done to the baseball fans of Washington, DC, due to the demands of

Peter Angelos, owned of the Baltimore Orioles, and the protection of

the antitrust exemption.  Fein explains further that Angelos:

“eventually lost that battle against the arrival of a new team,

but seemingly has won the war by obtaining monopolistic

control over that team’s television rights. In a largely secret

part of the Washington franchise award, MLB bowed to

Angelos’s ultimatum that the new team be forced to become

a fringe minority partner in a new regional sports network, the

Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN), controlled by him, with

broadcast rights for both the Orioles and the Nationals. Angelos

will own 90 percent of MASN, which might recede to 67 percent

over the next 30 years.  

 

                                                                                           

 

“The 90–10 split favoring Angelos is incontestably a noncompetitive

arrangement. Baltimore’s broadcast rights are decidedly inferior to

Washington’s. Baltimore is the 23rd largest media market, whereas

Washington is the eighth largest. Washington features more than

twice the number of television sets and twice the personal income

of Baltimore.”

 

You can learn more about the Baseball Antitrust Exemption at the  

American Antitrust Institute’s Research Guide.  It was discussed

last December at the Sports Law Blog, and here by Skip Sauer,

the Sports Economist.  f/k/a discussed the exemption last year

in baseball: intestate commerce (stare decisis on steroids?).

 

We welcomed the new DC Nats, here.  Skip Sauer described

the deal that made it possible here.

 

 

 

lightning…

i lose jeter’s pop-up

in a blaze of static

 

 

 

 

 

 

rainy night

a hole in the radio

where a ballgame should be

 

 

 

 

                                                                 Ed Markwoski

                                                                 “baseballg”  for more real baseball haiku click here

 

“OHolmes”  Lawyer Fein seems to find it a bit ironic that Justice

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who authored the majority opinion in

the Federal Baseball Case had the following to say in his “The

Path of the Law:

“It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law

than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It

is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was

laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply

persists from blind imitation of the past.”