Sheldon Whitehouse > Quotes

“when the EPA issued its first-ever plan to limit carbon emissions from power plants and five conservative justices (then including Justice Scalia) blocked the law while it was still under review in the lower courts, before it had even reached them. This was a procedural eyebrow-raiser of a ruling without precedent in U.S. history, one that I reckon saved the fossil fuel industry $100 billion per year (assuming it would have cost them about one-sixth of their annual federal pollution subsidy).3”
― Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court

“James Madison is said to have warned that “the day will come when our Republic will be an impossibility. It will be an impossibility because wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few. A republic can not stand upon bayonets, and when that day comes, when the wealth of the nation will be in the hands of a few, then we must rely upon the wisdom of the best elements in the country to readjust the laws of the nation to the changed conditions.”
― Sheldon Whitehouse, Captured: The Corporate Infiltration of American Democracy

“A single anonymous donor spent more than $17 million in both the Gorsuch and the Kavanaugh confirmation battles to secure the nominee’s ascension to the Court (and in a sign of how broken our disclosure system is, we will likely never know who the donor is or what business he or she had before the Court—nor do we yet know what money was spent on the Barrett confirmation).”
― Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court

“Don’t condemn yourself or lose heart when you sometimes fail to measure up to your own principles; instead, get back up, embrace the imperfection of your own humanity, and go back with confidence and energy to your pursuit. —MARCUS AURELIUS”
― Sheldon Whitehouse, On Virtues: Quotations and Insight to Live a Full, Honorable, and Truly American Life

“at the time the Constitution was ratified, corporations were usually chartered for what we think of today as an infrastructure project, like building a road or a canal. State legislatures had the power to revoke their charters if they exceeded their mandate or harmed the local community.”
― Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court

“I don’t say “radical” lightly. I don’t know how else to describe a philosophy that elevates a corporation’s “freedom” to pollute over the freedom of everyone else to breathe clean air and drink clean water, that seeks to replace trial by jury with a private process funded by the very corporations whose actions are being challenged (guess how often the little guy wins), or that actively works to squelch public participation in the world’s greatest democracy.”
― Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court

“The secret Powell manifesto was dated August 23, 1971. Two months later, President Nixon nominated Lewis Powell to the U.S. Supreme Court to replace Hugo Black, an FDR appointee, former U.S. senator, and one of the longest-serving members of the Supreme Court. The report was not disclosed to the Senate during Powell’s confirmation hearings. Strangely, even his authorized biographer gave it no mention, although it is arguably one of the most consequential pieces of writing Powell ever produced. Justice Powell’s nomination was confirmed in the Senate by a vote of 89–1. He was sworn in as Justice Powell on January 7, 1972, less than six months after he delivered his secret report to the Chamber. They had a motive; they had a plan; and now they had a man on the Court.”
― Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court

“Justice Harlan, warned of a “kind of slavery sought to be fastened on the American people; namely, the slavery that would result from aggregations of capital in the hands of a few individuals and corporations controlling, for their own profit and advantage exclusively, the entire business of the country.”
― Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court

“The Founders did not intend a partisan conveyor belt to run through the Senate’s “advise and consent” function. They had no intent to unleash a flood of dark big-donor and corporate money into the country’s elections. And they did not intend courts as an anti-majoritarian back door for billionaire anti-government donors frustrated that the public hates their ideology.”
― Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court

“As early as 1853, the Supreme Court saw that “to subject the state governments to the combined capital of wealthy corporations [could] produce universal corruption,” and warned of “the power and influence” of “the combined wealth wielded by corporations in almost every State.”
― Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court

“The Bellotti majority leapt over this fundamental problem with a clever logical somersault, saying that if corporations had something to say relevant to public debate, the public had a right to hear it. This “right to hear” trick perpetuated the Republican justices’ recurring stratagem of conflating corporations with people and money with speech—to the great advantage of corporate money.”
― Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court

“Justice Brandeis spoke of the “insidious menace inherent in large aggregations of capital, particularly when held by corporations.”22 That was then.”
― Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court

“President Teddy Roosevelt’s own address to Congress warned that “[t]he fortunes amassed through corporate organization are now so large, and vest such power in those that wield them, as to make it a matter of necessity to give to the sovereign—that is, to the Government, which represents the people as a whole—some effective power of supervision over their corporate use.”
― Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court

“By the time President Trump left office, the Senate had confirmed 234 judges to lifetime appointments—more than a quarter of the federal judiciary and nearly a third of the active federal appellate”
― Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court