Jacob Grier

Janet Reno, not Janet Jackson. My friend Chad Wilcox thought he should share with me the gratitude he feels toward you for the Microsoft anti-trust settlement in Tennessee. I thought he should share it with the world. So, here’s Chad:

“Look, out there unbeknownst to me some computer manufacturers fought a lengthy legal battle against evil money-grubbing bloodsucking Microsoft, and now because I was possibly (though never proven in a court of law) overcharged I, an upper middle class citizen who neither needs the money nor was aware I was financially knifed in the back by some corporate mogul, may be entitled to like $30 in vouchers that I, if I actually receive them and remember to do so, may be allowed to use to purchase any number of inferior products sold by the plaintiffs who possibly (though not officially) could have succeeded in arguing that the source of the inferiority of their products was illegal pricing action by the owner of the higher quality product that I actually chose to purchase. Thank you, Janet Reno, for using what was hopefully not in excess of $30 of every American taxpayer’s money to spearhead an investigation that resulted in the discovery that what my father’s upper middle class bank account thought was $600 worth of software purchased over a seven year period may in fact have been only $570 worth of software, and for leading directly to the enormously expensive class action lawsuit that resulted in the reallocation of this $30 from Microsoft to other less successful computer industry entrepreneurs. I genuinely hope the hundreds, possibly thousands, of lower middle class citizens who were encouraged to contribute to the legal fees necessary for such a lawsuit, who probably did not even purchase amounts of software entitling them to more than $5 or $10 in vouchers, know just how grateful I am for receiving this blessing at the hands of yet another now-vanquished corporate enemy.”