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The Al Franken Podcast

78: R.I. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on the Corporate Capture of the Courts

The Al Franken Podcast

The Al Franken Podcast

Government, Progressive, Politics, Senate, Liberal, Senator, Minnesota, Franken, News, Saturday Night Live, Comedy, Snl

4.67.7K Ratings

🗓️ 12 September 2021

⏱️ 64 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A great discussion on how the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence isn’t conservative. It’s corporatist.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey everybody. I'm really excited about today's podcast with Rhode Island Senator Sheldon White House.

0:11.4

And this time I mean it. I serve with Sheldon on the Judiciary Committee and really got to know him as a brilliant legal mind, as a politician in the best sense, and as a friend.

0:25.1

I think, I know you're going to enjoy this one because he really knows what he's talking about.

0:33.0

Sheldon was a U.S. attorney for Rhode Island before he became senator.

0:37.1

He wrote a book a few years ago

0:39.6

captured. And it's about the capture of our government, especially the regulatory agencies

0:46.4

by corporate interests. I think people know there's a revolving door in D.C. It's bad. The pattern is, of course, people serve in a

0:58.5

regulatory agency, say the FCC, and they may make a favorable decision for, say,

1:06.1

oh, Comcast, then lo and behold, a few months later, they've got a nice high-paying job in Philadelphia

1:14.3

working for Comcast.

1:17.5

Or they don't have to move to Philadelphia from D.C.

1:21.9

They can just stay in D.C. and put out their shingle as a lobbyist.

1:26.5

I saw some ugly stuff, and this is Democratic

1:29.4

administration. I saw a guy at of an agency, I won't say. I became a lobbyist, and during a

1:37.4

regulatory matter that I was very on one side of, very involved in, eventually won, but this took a long time. This fellow was paid

1:47.8

by a huge corporation on whose side I was not. He was paid not to lobby for the company's

1:59.2

physician before the agency that he headed, but to stay on the sidelines.

2:04.9

In other words, this big corporation paid him a lot of money not to do anything.

2:12.4

As we say in Minnesota, must be nice.

2:16.2

In this podcast, we turn our attention to the federal courts, and it's very ugly, very disturbing

2:22.3

story, but one that I think you'd be really glad you listen to.

2:28.9

So we will turn to Sheldon Whitehouse in a couple minutes, but I wanted to tell you about an experience

...

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