In Captured, U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) offers an eye-opening take on what corporate influence looks like today from the Senate floor and what it means for American democracy.
Americans know something is wrong in their government. Sen. Whitehouse, a former federal prosecutor, combines history, legal scholarship, and personal experiences to provide a comprehensive explanation of what has gone wrong, exposing multiple avenues through which the government has been infiltrated and disabled by corporate powers. This corporate power aims to stoke fear in elected representatives who don’t “get right” by threatening million-dollar dark money election attacks, threats that are more effective and less expensive than the actual attacks. Moreover, it seeks 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 such as climate change.
Captured shows that in the struggle between corporate power and individual liberty, like generations before, Americans can and must take the government back into their own hands.
Please join the Center for American Progress and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse for a discussion of Captured: The Corporate Infiltration of American Democracy.