Sen. Whitehouse: How Corporate America Screws Us All

The 2016 election season revealed the United States gripped in a newfound populist fervor. Donald Trump on the right, and Bernie Sanders on the left, whipped up the masses by denouncing American politics and big business. And, both said, this cabal worked hand in glove against the interests of ordinary, wage-earning Americans.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, agrees with the diagnosis. His new book “Captured: The Corporate Infiltration of American Democracy,” paints a bleak picture of a rapacious corporate class that bends the will of the nation to fit its needs. Co-authored with Boston-based Melanie Wachtell Stinnett, “Captured” was written during the months Sanders and Trump were campaigning against their party establishments.

As Whitehouse notes, voters increasingly agree with this assessment. As evidence, he cites surveys that show Americans perceive Congress and the court system to be rigged in favor of corporations. Sanders made similar points in his book – “Our Revolution” – published several months ago. And Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, also a Democrat, will no doubt cover similar terrain when her contribution – “This Fight Is Our Fight” – arrives in bookstores next week.

In theory, then, Whitehouse delivers his message at an intense populist moment.

Yet you’d be hard-pressed to find any evidence of that in Washington. Just last week, Trump signed a bill allowing corporations to profit from online users’ private information; the Senate voted to rescind a rule allowing states to provide “safe harbor” retirement accounts; U.S. House members used a Congressional Hearing to repeatedly call for the firing of the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; and, of course, the Senate confirmed a pro-business justice to join the Supreme Court.

Read more: http://news.wgbh.org/2017/04/11/politics-government/sen-whitehouse-how-corporate-america-screws-us-all-2