The anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws got their start when America became a coast-to-coast society, and various businesses stepped in to fill the bill for services needed everywhere. The oil companies were the really big ones in those days. Although there were many different oil companies, therefore not having a technically monopolistic situation, it made no difference. The existing companies conspired together to keep prices at various levels and to control the supply to the people, creating the same sort of situation as a monopoly would have. That was known as a "trust." So the politicians passed anti-trust laws as well as anti-monopoly ones in those days. It wasn't so much that the politicians didn't like the businesses, it was the fact that the heads of these businesses were getting very rich and powerful, and the politicians didn't want any business people getting more powerful than they were, so they passed laws restricting the ways that businesses could grow. That way, it meant that Mr. Businessman has to pay off Mr. Politician to get what he wanted, so just his money alone did not make him all-powerful. To prove the point, these laws were enforced on some of these businesses. The oil companies were hit hard by this, and the government succeeded in making them divest a bit and allow more " competition." Doing that had no real benefit for the consumer. The prices of gas and shit like that were low in those monopolistic days, and they stayed low for a long time, until the 1970's, when foreign unrest was used as an excuse to inflate prices across the board, just as the old trusts had done decades earlier using no real concrete reason. The railroad companies were also hit by these laws, for they controlled a lot of money, but also a lot of valuable real estate along which their right-of-ways ( railroad tracks) ran. The government had gone and stolen that land for the railroads, and killed and tortured many people (mostly native Americans) in the process. They were not about to let the railroads get bigger than they were. They were also divested, but they were also soon taken out of their place of pre-eminence by the advent of air travel, so there was no benefit to the people again. The owners of these businesses got the message, though. They paid off the politicians and all that shit, and got to make a lot of money for themselves by getting what they wanted. Everyone was happy, except for the consumer, the very one that these laws were supposed to help. They never saw a steep downturn in any prices of anything that was forced to break itself up by the government. As the 20th Century rolled along, these laws were enforced less and less. The last time that they were really enforced was when they were used to make American Telephone And Telegraph company break itself apart, thus ending a monopoly on the electronic right-of-ways that this corporation had ever since the invention of the telegraph, for they were the ones that built those right-of-ways in the first place, not the government as was done for the railroads. It took the government until the 1980's to make this monopoly break up any way. They never cared about the electronic right-of-way so much, for they got paid off when they wanted to be by the company and all that, but they saw the advent of today's new technology on the horizon. They saw that they would have to get paid off for a lot of new and different things, and one company wouldn't be able to pay them off enough, for if they owned everything, then they could pay significantly less that many companies could if they all owned some of the shit. For then the political Pigs get to deal with many companies instead of just one,and they get paid off by many companies instead of just one. They also saw that the average person was going to be able to get in on this electronic highway thing via the computer, and this meant them, so they needed their palms greased because after all,isn't that what politicians are supposed to do? So they broke up the phone company monopoly, and again, nothign happened for the consumer, for the phone is a much worse scene now than it was when it was a monopoly. Besides that, the phone company set out to rebuild their monopoly almost right away using various tricks and loopholes, and they have most of it back in place now anyway. So that one was truly for naught.
It was also the last gasp for this anti-monopoly shit in America until Bogus Billy C. Dusted it off and brought it back out again. Therte are good reasons why these laws are seldom enforced. They go against the very center of the money-oriented philosophy. That is that you are to get as much motherfuckin' money as you can however you can, and then squash all those that may pose any threat to you of taking any of that away in any way, be that through being a business competitor, or whatever. That money-oriented philosophy is one of the basic precepts of the capitalist way, and America has always said that it was a capitalist society. So, in that sense, restriction of business in any way is not a good thing. Businesses made that fact known to the politicians, and they were told why they were being gone after, and once they realized that these political Pigs were going to be above them in a power play sort of way no matter what, they went along with it, and everything was cool. Mr. Businessman went and did his thing, and Mr. Politician went and did his thing, and the people suffered in between the two. Both of them got a lot of fuckin' money out of this and they were happy as the proverbial clams.
This is obviously the way that Bush views this arrangement, This is hardly a surprise since he was basically reared in this same scene, being part of Big Business right out of school, and then going into politics and playing both sides of the fence on this one. So he's going to have absolutely no problem with anything that Mr. Businessman wants to do. Bush also isn't burdened by a scandal of any type, so he doesn't need anyone in particular to throw his weight around at. So he has no reason to do anything other than give Gates a slap on the wrist and call it even. There is no fuckin' way that Bush isn't totally envious of what Bill Gates is and what he's done. He has gone and lived the ultimate capitalist's dream. He went and made himself so fabulously wealthy that it's almost unimaginable, and he figuratively conquered the entire world in the process. Bush would look on this guy as a shining example of American style capitalism and what it can accomplish. He sees Gates as proof that this American shit can indeed be thrown around the globe in the name of something or another. No way does he want to fuck with this guy. Not because he's scared of his money or power or whatever, but he wants to use him as a propaganda tool. And Gates is happy to oblige. You never hear that guy saying anything that could even be remotely taken as anything against the American way, do you? I am sure that he firmly believes that his success directly stems from the fact that he's from America. Never mind the fact that he did develop a technology that revolutionized the world, and that if he did that it would have come out and been in his favor no matter where he would have resided in the world. He's glad to sing God Bless America if the government doesn't fuck with him. He hasn't ben singing it lately, but Bush seems to long to hear that tune out of him, and he's willing to stop the legal shit in order to hear it.
I am sure that Bush doesn't really care that Gates used all sorts of cut throat type tactics to get where he is today. The fact that he used any and all ways that he could think of to drive his competition out of business is a great turn-on to Bush. Every President sees himself as the most powerful man in the world, and they all want to use that power totally, and they all dream of crushing all opposition worldwide in the name of America and all it stands for. Nixon started up a War On Drugs for him and succeeding Presidents to try and do just that. Bush is getting fuckin' sick and tired of the growing opposition to his part of this absurd war, and he would very much like to steamroll over this opposition, and maybe if he studies how Bill Gates did it, he may be able to figure it all out for himself. Clinton wanted to roll over the opposition too, but Gates wouldn't help him any since he was being bothered by the Justice Department. Bush clearly doesn't really know what the fuck he's doing on too many fronts, and Mr. Businessman has been his mentor since he was just a pup. He needs to be friends with someone that is the head of a major multi-national corporation so that he can learn how to be the CEO of the United States, which is what the President essentially is. Since Bush has that background in Big Business that Clinton didn't, I am sure that we are not going to see any anti-trust or anti-monopoly cases started under his administration unless some business just gets way the fuck out of hand in the way that they are conducting themselves.
This isn't going to affect the consumer much anyway.Big Business shall continue to conduct itself in any way that it wishes as it always has, for America is not about to give up its slavish devotion to all things money any time soon, and as long as that's the case, businesses shall be allowed to go and make their money however they wish, for America insists that accumulation of money is equivalent to accumulation of greatness,for the businessman, and for American society as a whole. As long as money remains the center of American society, any and all things shall be done in pursuit of it, and any laws on the books that seem to prevent that will be just window dressing for the propangandists to use to defend this unequal and basically flawed system.