Known informally as the blacklisting regulations, the draft rules, published in the July 9 Federal Register, were proposed by NASA, the Defense Department and the General Services Administration. In reality, the proposed changes arose from a union-inspired initiative that Vice President Al Gore has been pushing. The changes would give contracting officers broader powers to determine whether a contractor is responsible. This determination is the legal prerequisite for obtaining a government contract. The premise of the regulations states that the federal government should not enter into contracts with contractors who do not comply with the law.
Fine print Sounds innocuous, but the devil is in the details.
Look carefully at the proposed rules, and you will see that an antitrust law violation is one of the grounds a contracting officer could use to deny a contract. The regulations merely require a contracting officer to ferret out substantial noncompliance with antitrust laws. Legally that's a somewhat squishy standard. But Jackson's findings of fact would seem to make Microsoft meet the standard quite nicely. I don't think so, and I would be surprised if any contracting officer were willing to stick his neck out that far.