Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Captured Author: Sheldon Whitehouse and Melanie Wachtell Stinnett Publisher: The New Press ASIN: 1620972077

About This Book

U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse employs history, legal scholarship and personal experiences to provide an in-depth explanation of what’s gone wrong with the corporate influence game. He and his co-author Melanie Wachtell Stinnett expose multiple avenues through which our government has been infiltrated and disabled by corporate powers. Captured reveals an original oversight by the founders, and examines how and why corporate power has exploited that vulnerability: to strike fear in elected representatives who don’t “get right,” by threatening million-dollar “dark money” election attacks (a threat more effective and less expensive than the actual attack); to stack the judiciary—even the Supreme Court—in “business-friendly” ways; to “capture” the administrative agencies meant to regulate corporate behavior; to undermine the civil jury, the Constitution’s last bastion for ordinary citizens, and to create a corporate “alternate reality” on public health and safety issues like climate change.

Captured exposes the struggle between corporate power and individual liberty and shines light on the pervidious aims of so-called "corporatists" in today's society, who want "hands off" business but are perfectly happy to steal rights from individuals.