Zephyr Teachout

Lobbyists in Washington have a saying, "If you're not at the table, you're on the menu." You know who is at the table? It's lobbyists for big corporations. It's lobbyists for the wealthiest people in world history. Guess who's not at the table right now. Working families. Clean water. Public education. And our infrastructure.

Zephyr Rain Teachout (born October 24, 1971) is an American academic, political activist, and former political candidate. She is an Associate Professor of Law at Fordham University

Quotes

• Lobbyists in Washington have a saying, "If you're not at the table, you're on the menu." You know who is at the table? It's lobbyists for big corporations. It's lobbyists for the wealthiest people in world history. Guess who's not at the table right now. Working families. Clean water. Public education. And our infrastructure.
  • "Corruption 101" youtube.com

• On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg was in the hot seat. Cameras surrounded him. The energy in the room – and on Twitter – was electric. At last, the reluctant CEO is made to answer some questions! Except it failed. It was designed to fail. It was a show designed to get Zuckerberg off the hook after only a few hours in Washington DC. It was a show that gave the pretense of a hearing without a real hearing. It was designed to deflect and confuse. ... The worst moments of the hearing for us, as citizens, were when senators asked if Zuckerberg would support legislation that would regulate Facebook. I don’t care whether Zuckerberg supports Honest Ads or privacy laws or GDPR. By asking him if he would support legislation, the senators elevated him to a kind of co-equal philosopher king whose view on Facebook regulation carried special weight. It shouldn’t. Facebook is a known behemoth corporate monopoly. It has exposed at least 87 million people’s data, enabled foreign propaganda and perpetuated discrimination. We shouldn’t be begging for Facebook’s endorsement of laws, or for Mark Zuckerberg’s promises of self-regulation. We should treat him as a danger to democracy and demand our senators get a real hearing.
  • Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was an utter sham (11 April 2018), The Guardian.

• The tools Facebook provides make discrimination easy. Facebook has monopoly profit margins, so it could easily provide real staffing to protect against discrimination, if it wanted to. It doesn’t want to.
  • Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was an utter sham (11 April 2018), The Guardian.

External links

• (2009). "The Anti-Corruption Principle". Cornell Law Review 94: 341–413.
• (2011). "The Unenforceable Corrupt Contract: Corruption and 19th Century Contract Law". NYU Review of Law and Social Change 35.

• "Cuomo Opponent Unbowed by Underdog Status " The New York Times, 25 August 2014, on page A15.

• Official biodata from Fordham University
• Publications and papers by Zephyr Teachout in the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) (abstracts; full texts).