Conversation 482-017

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And by then it may be too late, in a sense, in the ITT case, where you've got to know your position as clear as you could with Mr. what's his name over there?

And John has said because ITT is involved, he's not involved because he's got a conflict of interest going back to the old law firm.

has been supervising McLaren's work in the Grinnell case.

It involves an attack on conglomerates, a theory which specifically had been contemplated by the Johnson administration and laid aside .

Well, they filed a notice of appeal.

If we do not file a statement of jurisdiction by tomorrow, the case is dead.

And the Justice Department, they're not going to file it.

Well, I thought that was your position.

I've been trying to get signals on this, and they've been harshing us pretty steadily.

Uh, Janine stated jurisdiction, right?

I don't know anything about the case.

Don't talk to them about it.

I don't know about Janine.

I've met her tonight.

I don't know if I know their IDs, the stats that are in there, but there's not going to be any more anti-trust actions as long as I'm in this chair.

There's one guy that we're going to stop.

All right, there's this other one.

She's going to talk to John tomorrow.

That works.

Well, I didn't want him to do that for other reasons.

Well, that's right.

This is the wrong time.

These are all coming together.

We wanted to do that at another time.

Okay, but that's not all coming together, you see, at this one time.

So, uh, it's a cordial response.

He's just in here in town.

Yeah, he's at his office.

I just talked to him about an hour ago.

And I'm there.

We'll take care of it.

Okay.

Beyond that, I'll just stand and think about it, John.

And this, the truck that

there's a section on the question of is there something new about the economy today has business become more monopolistic and so on and i go through the various studies of

I'm going to talk to John tomorrow about my general attitude on having trust in the meeting arm.

I know that he's left with you, the IT&T thing, because apparently he says he had something to do with it once.

Well, I have nothing to do with it, and I thought something clearly understood, and if it is not understood, McLaren's asked to be out in one hour.

The IT&T thing, say the hell out.

Is that clear?

That's an order.

The order is to leave the goddamn thing alone.

I said this to a number of times.

You folks apparently don't get the message over there.

I do not want McLaren to run around prosecuting people, raising hell up in large, stirring things up at this point.

Are you eating the hell out of that?

Is that clear?

Or are you eating the hell out of that?

I don't like this on the bench.

The question is, I know that the juristic, I know all the legal things.

You mentioned a lot of legal things.

Your mind order is to drop the goddamn thing.

Is that clear?

Okay.

I hope he resigns.

Amen.

If you look at concentration ratios over a period of time on horizontal integration, if you look at ratios of sales to value added on vertical integration,

what you find is no evidence of any increase in monopoly in American business.

In fact, over a 30-year period, and I checked this over with my friend Stigler, who has made a lot of these studies, you may see a decline.

And the conglomerate area is what I think is sort of a reaction to the buildup of conglomerates, which is perhaps affected somewhat by the antitrust.

But basically,

The marketplace is taken care of in the sense that a lot of the firms that acquired businesses that they really didn't know anything about are finding that they can't run those businesses very well, and they're getting rid of them.

So there's a cleansing process taking place.

Where you have the stronger conglomerates, I believe the case can be made rather readily in many, many instances.

they add to the sharpness of competition because they acquire a relatively small firm, they give it muscle, and they send it into competition and make the market work better.

At least this is the general posture that I'm taking in this talk.

I believe that the evidence, I don't, I'm not a lawyer, I don't know all that side of it, but from the standpoint of the accounting center, I don't know

We've got to be the last to say we can not continue to pursue the anti-trust laws in the proper way, but I think the conglomerates have taken a number of actions.

Listen, this is the problem.

The problem is that Clarence is a little boss.

He's a little anti-trust lawyer out in Chicago.

All these radical bastards have worked for the U.S. for years and years and years, and he's in the same business.

He's in the same business.

They have taken him over.

Then, of course, the player is the man.

They go in the client.

He's just busy talking to judges.

Mitchell is busy doing other things.

So they're afraid to open the door.

By the way, they're not going to do it.

I mean, the client is the only center.

They have deliberately gone into a number of areas which have no relationship with each other, whether it's a question of operating more efficiently or simply a question of technically

They're going off on a kick.

It'll make them big time and crossbusters.

That was all right 50 years ago.

50 years ago, maybe it was a different country.

It's not a good thing for the country today.

That's my view.

We've been through this traffic.

I'm sterile already.

I have a great holy hell with the people that we do.

Janine, he's no contributor.

He's not into us.

I don't care about him.

I can't understand what the trouble is.

Well, it's McLaren.

McLaren has a very strong sense of mission.

Good.

He can get him out.

We want him out.

He's not going to be in charge either.

He is probably the best man ever.

Just like that regional office man in San Francisco.

I put an order in the hall today.

He had lied.

Anybody that didn't follow what we did on Earth Vegas should have his ass out.

Unless he is a... What is he?

Is he a Republican hack or something?

No idea.

Don't even know what he does.

And that's ridiculous that he went through there and won 5 applications out of 400,000 that had been processed and he didn't follow what we said.

We've got to be a little bit more effective here.

You're going to get an admission from him, Jeff.

Oh, I know what my barrier is.

He believes this, Jeff.

I know.

What does it help?

He wasn't elected, Jeff.

That's the point.

He's here to stop us.

That's the point.

And he is not going to stay on a minute.

I'm telling you.

Because he's going after everybody.

You know, he just might as well go after somebody that's been suggested.

Your television status is apparently pretty good.

You know, we've got an archive show on.

called O'Hara, the United States Treasury, and it had a hell of a rating.

It's called O'Hara, the United States Treasury.

I saw it.

They sent it over.

They got a .8 in 70 cities.

So it's apparently pretty popular.

So all those buy shows get great things.

Yep.

Anyway.

It was a good show.

It was like all those things.

My God, they have the guys chasing people with airplanes and all that sort of thing.

I don't think it quite worked that way, but at least they showed how to bring the stuff in.

Fascinating.

That's a 13-week series.

You asked for a PR plan on crime.

Well, we've got our bodies working out and it's going to take a little time because we're shifting into another phase on this whole thing now.

Well, crime statistics are going to start running against us regardless of that.

kids into that, what is it, 15 to 20 age bracket, they expect that burglaries and robbery incidents are going to go up 30% in the next few years just from the number of 15 to 24-year-olds that are going to increase and have that many more.

So just statistically.

But there are a lot of other things that we can do, and we're trying to gin up a bunch of stuff on other aspects of crime that we can get into, other than .

We're still doing pretty well there.

We can do that.

And we've been working with Wilson on some more things that we can do here.

But George and I are going to talk a little bit about

It's going to be a situation and we're going to have to be sure that our management of that is very tight.

The only way that we get these results is by just really keeping on top of these things every day.

So, anyway, there'll be some kind of program and there'll be some kind of organization.

Mayor Nathan right now, having been to the mayor, they've walked the deputy mayor who's coming to the city now.

And the chief of police, one of those folks,

Andy, you work out this wall right there.

The PR campaign and stuff, that's going to take a little more time than has been allowed.

So could you bear with us a little bit more?

Well, if you're wanting drugs, I just want to be sure that we're going to have a fight.

That's what's going to do us something, John.

Well, the mafia, the organized crime thing, shows quite a lot of action.

Bombing, they're going to bring in a capital bombing case one of these days.

They think they know who...

They're about to bust the FBI burglary in that French office.

And that comes all back to the burial ground.

And they've got to reindicate all that very good bunch of co-conspirators on a broader type of basis that has to do with subverting the whole selective service system.

And each one of these burglaries and each one of these destruction of files and all that fits within the larger context.

So they're going through another criteria machine right now.

There'd be quite a lot of activity on that kind of extreme violence front, even though the street crime thing is not going to show up very often.

I have to put our accent where we can.

The prison thing, the court reform thing, and those other things that are really significant but are less sexy will continue to push along.

And there's some people who do that.

I don't think others do this.

Well, the kind of thing we were talking about, will you visit this facility and some of those things to begin to point at some of these areas that you're interested in and so on.

We'll be coming at you.

Perfect.

Suburban housing.

Springport decided to case it and call it the Lackawanna case.

Lackawanna, New York.

That's a case where the

Struck the zoning down.

I think there's enough in that decision that you can say, okay, we now know what the law is.

We now know what the law is.

So we're going to enforce the law and that's going to take care of all these associated problems here.

What does it do again?

Well, in effect, it announces the law with regard to racial discrimination.

in the location of federally assisted housing by council and says what?

Says that the trier fact will determine whether or not there was an original motivation for the exclusion of this.

If he finds that there was, he'll say, wait, if he finds there wasn't, then it isn't.

And so this comes down to a question of fact in each case for the court, for the trier fact.

The court is the proper forum for this, not the administrative officer in HUD.

So I think we can make something that will be along the lines of your basic thinking.

Because it's down the middle of the case.

Well, it isn't down the middle.

What it says is that every one of these is a separate case to be decided on your own backs by the court.

You don't have that in the national.

So it's not a military case.

Well, it says the blackjack case ought to be litigated.

And all of these cases, I mean, this is the Supreme Court.

In the Supreme Court, the United States of America, we told John Romney, you know, this.

Well, he knows the case came down.

Does he understand it?

I think so.

I think he does.

But I called everybody off, pretty much, and said, this thing is now in process.

And we're just pulling it there.

But I've got to make a trip west.

I'm just denying certiorari.

Denying certiorari, so we don't know.

The circuit court was a very strong opinion.

And I don't know.

I think probably it's good law, but... Of course, the court decided not to get into this.

That's good.

Now, about the first of next week, we're going to be in shape to start drafting a policy statement on this, if you wish.

The other thing we could do is simply make an announcement that, as far as the Blackjack case itself is concerned, in view of the Lackawanna case and some of these other considerations, we're going to take the position that the party should litigate these without the intervention of the drug business.

Inspector, the main point is to keep us out of it if you can.

I mean, it's a can of worms.

Oh, wait a minute.

I've heard of it, of course.

Once you get, but then the question is, does the Department of Justice intervene in all those cases?

Once you start that, uh, you've got to, you've got to find a point of traction.

You know, it would be an indefinite case.

Yeah.

So, what we'll try and do is to begin to draft a concise statement.

A concise statement.

Well, we're not going to be permitted a very good walk-on.

It's going to be such a tremendous scrutiny.

But we'll try to make it as tight as we can and indicate why it is that the federal government cannot be intervening in every way.

One of the reasons, George, that you've got to act on that SBA guy, I don't care if he's a kid with 18 kids, is that we have no respect for the SBA Rockers.

We never fire anybody.

We never recommend anybody.

We never promote anybody.

We always promote something that just hits us in the ass.

That's true in the State Department, that's true in the ATW, that's true in OVN, that's true in every case house.

It's gotta stop.

This Paul, no good really.

He did not.

I read the memorandum.

He did not carry out the order that I personally gave.

I wrote that order out on the first place.

And the son of a bitch did not do it.

And I don't care what he did.

Get out of there.

Get out of San Francisco.

He's got a role.

I'd roll Puppies.

If it weren't for the fact that I know that Puppie wasn't in there wrong, that's nowhere to talk about.

This guy in San Francisco was the head of the office.

He was incompetent.

I'm sure it wasn't deliberate.

He was either incompetent or deliberately just didn't do it.

So, but the main point is, as I told all of them, it's got to be done with publicity and letting it roll.

So that as it warned a few other people around in this government that we're going to quit being a bunch of goddamn soft-headed managers.

Everything's got to do it.

Got to do it.

That's the trouble with McLaren.

McLaren thinks he's going to do everything.

Hell with him.

I mean, we're willing to go along with it, but he cannot deliver just from his nose everything that comes from this office, John.

He's not that big.

And, of course, John Mitchell won't stand up on my road.

I don't want to have to.

We are not going to have to.

All they have to do in this case, I don't know what the procedure is, is that the Justice Department decides

whether or not it's going to continue to fight the case.

And that's what it is.

They lost on them.

They lost the case before.

Lose it.

Lose it for once.

They fought the good fight and they lost.

Let those little bastards work on something else.

Work on the study that you've asked for the sentence.

Have you done that?

I'll say.

That is a missile, George.

You've got to get it.

And the only way you get it is when a bureaucrat

The Liberty Thones is known to be going to get it.

The next year, we're going to get this.

That time after time after time after time.

For the boys over in the state in particular.

Advanced ATW.

Those three areas in particular.

They've got to know that if they deliver, something's going to happen to them.

Where, if anything, I call the Civil Service Commission.

But you can do a lot there, too.

There are many unpleasant places where Civil Service people can be sent.

We just don't have any discipline in that room.

That's our trouble.

I'm getting a little around the White House, but we've got to get it in these departments.

That should not have happened.

That was a terrible thing.

105 applications processed out of 4,000 in four months, three months, or whatever it was, two months.

God damn it, that's terrible.

We talked some time ago about rural revenue sharing.

It comes up as a result of

We talked about John Connolly being the conservative administration admiral on this.

This would be a place for him to sort of kick it off.

And if you have no objection, I'd like to get him breathed up and lined up to go in on this and say, just put the heart in.

If, if we lead off the ground weakly, uh, I think the heart would have to be in it.

But to get this thing off on the right foot, I'd like to, I'd like to start from the top.

I mean, we, we ought to remember it's a big gun.

You don't want to pop it too hard.

Oh, no.

No, but it'll waste it.

This is the, this is one that everybody's going to be watching.

Okay.

Really?

Well, I have to assume so.

It would be the first incineration.

We won't get to general revenue sharing in ways and means for another, oh, I guess six weeks, probably, in the majority.

Before that, since I spoke somewhat on whether or not we can work out anything with metals, do you have a chance to look at the various formulas that Parker and O'Neill...

I haven't talked to him about it, though, because I don't understand it.

It just came to me that it was the first hearing on the subject that we would be advised to get Tom to put it in context.

I think it looks better now than it did because we gave them an extension.

And this is a reorganization.

Oh, yes.

That had to do with both.

Oh, I see.

I mean, is that right?

I see.

So that would be the fangs of a particular lawyer?

All right.

We'll see if he knows that.

He knows that part of the country.

He knows the farmers.

He knows sort of what you call reorganization.

He'd be an excellent guy to

I haven't been back to him since the last time we talked because we're trying to

to see what kind of a proposal we can get up and what, how different formulas work and how they affect the various states and so forth.

So I have, that's what I did, too.

Oh, I see.

The right time I talked to him, I just described the general approach.

And we talked about it, and he liked it.

So I said, well, I'd work on it some more, and I'd talk to you about it.

So I didn't know whether you would buy this kind of thing or not, but anyway, this was an effort to try to see if there wasn't some common ground, and that we'd try to develop something a little bit more specific so we could see how it affects this state and that state and so on.

be the case that Mills or Fernandes or anybody else ever come up with anything else of their own.

Right?

But then really, we just got to press ours.

If that's the case, there's your lease.

And if anybody's got a better thing,

last week about our problem with Burns.

Yeah, he knows him well.

And he's going to talk to him over the weekend and see if he could midwife some accommodation.

Yes.

So I expect to hear from him.

We're going to see where he blows into the hands of our political opponents hereby.

So talk to him about it.

All it does is simply

And so Mel was going to talk to him in those terms.

But Al said, you think Mel will?

Yeah, we've said it.

I think so.

See, we hopped over there in response to his remark to you, where he said, you know, Revenue Sheriff wasn't fully.

So, we all said it.

He said that to you one day.

I'm sure you said it in memo.

And we arrived in force and sat down with him and said, okay, what's wrong with it?

What can we do better?

Where are we wrong?

And this and that kind of thought.

And so, we then got into a discussion about the committee problems.

which is his strong suit, and he quickly started it out and said, well, I think John Burns is the key to this.

He's probably not going to run for re-election.

He's being very independent in his Congress.

But the only way he said we can work this is for me to talk to him.

So he says, I'll talk to him on the weekend.

I'll be in touch.

What we'll build toward, if we can, is a meeting with all the Republicans.

talk out the issues, talk about the alternatives, go over the details, ask them to spend an afternoon with us.

And then, see at the end of that, when we don't at least have the rest of the Republicans with us, even if we can't get Burns, maybe they can bring him along with them.

So that's kind of our strategy on that side.

I don't bring these guys to bear on the merits.

I think we do.

I would say that Mill's readiness to agree to the sort of thing we talked about is pretty clear indication that he sees

Yeah, that's something that has to be done about the area.

Because by the time you say, all right, we're going to have a state with a purpose that's going to be as broad as all outdoors, and he accepts that, well, that's just accepting general revenue sharing.

Whether the formulations that do more in the direction of need can be worked out satisfactorily, I don't know.

But that's the other thing he talks about.

I've talked to Burns about this as well as Bill.

Burns is not as enthusiastic about it as Bill is.

Burns is just very difficult to

I started giving him a compromise that would get him off the hook, and he won't take it.

He keeps on the tax credit idea.

Take that off of you.

You're responsible.

It's great business, Ron.

It's the second man on the committee.

Like I said, he's always going to object to bets.

Well, let's do it.

That's just a guy who's out seeking out a lot of Latin for us.

We've got him very far from the border.

Oh, yeah.

How many have you got?

About 15?

17.

17 must be his last name.

Okay.

Well, I haven't in a while since apparently coming inside.

Yeah, they set up a

They seem, at the time, I suppose, a good idea.

They are some sort of a foundation that you have to have.

Teach teachers to teach the two-party system.

That's a silly damn thing.

They're not a two-party system.

But nevertheless, they're all in this tension, so I got to praise them.

They're nice people.

They're all our friends.

Bob Knapp, probably one of my enemies.

You get that guy fired, George.

I came out of there and I went to ricochet all around the Eagle Beach and I went to ricochet all around HEW and let the people know that when they don't produce this administration, somebody's ass is kicked out.

This will be the first person we fire except him.

I got that.

Those are the bad guys.

The guys down in the woodwork.

We didn't get one.

This guy goes.

He's out.