Sheldon Whitehouse: “I am here for what is No. 30 in my series of ``Scheme'' speeches, about the scheme to capture the Supreme Court. And I…”

“I am here for what is No. 30 in my series of ``Scheme'' speeches, about the scheme to capture the Supreme Court. And I thought this would be a good time to give sort of a quick overview of where we have been since most of my speeches have been rifle-shot speeches at individual issues that the Court has caused us to have to face up to. So the fundamental problem here is that we have a Supreme Court that has been captured by rightwing special interests, and we see this in decision after decision after decision. And it is affecting the lives of ordinary Americans all over. When I say that this is a Court that has been captured by rightwing special interests, what do I mean? Well, there is considerable research out there and considerable literature out there about a phenomenon that is sometimes called Agency capture, and it is sometimes called regulatory capture. It is the same thing. It is the capture of regulatory Agencies. And you can look it up in your library. You can look it up on the internet, and you can get a sense of the extent to which this is recognized in the economic literature, recognized in the administrative law literature. And it is a frequent avenue, unfortunately, of corruption into government decision making. And if you want an example to think about, you could imagine a railroad commission whose job is to set rates for the railroad, back in the era of the railroad barons, and the railroad barons have chosen who is on the railroad commission.…”