Big Corporations promised that they would hire workers after getting a massive tax cut. But so far it looks like they’re pocketing all the money. ...… - Mike Papantonio

Corporations understand that not every legal battle is gonna make it to the Supreme Court. In fact, most cases won’t even make it to federal court at all. That’s why corporate dark money is starting to flood local judicial races... People have to understand that these state court judges affect the environment. They affect wage and hour. They affect every aspect of what I call the dinner table issues. That’s mom and pop talking about we don’t have enough money to pay our mortgage. We don’t have enough money to pay the rent. We can’t afford food...Mom and pop care that this local judge can shut down a union, that this local judge can destroy the environment that the local judge can affect wage and hour issues.... social issues are a problem, but what mom and pop care about when you talk about issues like this, how does this affect me?

Texas has a new law that could result in prison sentences for up to 10 years in jail for anyone who protests a new fossil fuel pipeline. I couldn’t make that up. This is just one of the many anti protest bills that states have passed... I looked at this and it was almost as if there’s this notion that if it’s fossil fuel industry, then nothing really applies constitutionally. First Amendment really doesn’t apply. You know, the right to protest, right to free speech. I don’t know how they get here. Now let me back up and say yes, there are times when the right to protest can be controlled. You can say you can protest over here. There are times when you say that, that your speech is so angry or it’s so dangerous that it can cause harm and so we can put some kind of regulator on this. But this is crazy talk. Let me add one other point. They’re calling it riot boosting. That’s the term. Again, riot boosting... we’re talking about putting people in prison for 5 years, 10 years, $100,000 fine... If we have some honest appellate courts, in the old days when we had that, this thing would be dead on arrival.

When you have, say MSNBC, and they’ve got eight pharmaceutical advertisements an hour and you want to do a story on Bayer because their product, Yaz, has killed women between the ages of 18-35. You would think the producers would say, “This is an important story,” but unfortunately the power of money, especially in television and cooperate media is overwhelming. You can’t tell the stories.
So what’s happened is, in order for people to hear these stories, sometimes this [legal thriller novels] is the only kind of vehicle they can have. They can read a good thriller and hopefully it’s going to be an entertaining thriller for them, but then they can walk away and say “Well, what did I learn?” In these books they learn an awful lot about the dysfunction of the Department of Justice. They learn how predatory the pharmaceutical industry is, they learn that everything is stacked against the whistle blower. So I think it opens some peoples’ eyes along the way... I think it’s kind of incumbent on a lawyer that’s writing about issues that they’re aware of to understand that maybe nobody else is aware of them and to try to get those stories out.