Name: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Captured Agencies
Uploaded: 2021-12-09T10:01:10.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Captured Agencies' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-12-09. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Captured Agencies' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-12-09. Transcript available.

I have a peculiar insight into the phenomena of agency capture, and that is the
dynamic by which
environmental agencies and public health agencies become sock puppets of the
industries they're
supposed to regulate. It happens with every agency. It happens with everything.
It happens
with all of them, whether it's the SEC or the FDA or any of the three-letter
agencies. Ultimately,
over time, the industry figures out how to infiltrate them, how to control the
senators and
the congressmen that write their budgets, how to get control of that agency
because it's so
important for their profit ambitions. And so I probably brought over 500
lawsuits as an
environmental lawyer, mainly against polluters who are discharging into the
environment, into the air
or whatever. But probably during the 38 years that I was doing that, probably
20% of my lawsuits were
against the EPA or the state environmental agencies for issuing these kind of
sweetheart illegal permits.
Because they get compromised also, you're saying?
Because they get compromised. So I was used to that dynamic.
Right. It's going to be hard to navigate.
Yeah, of seeing the agency that's supposed to be my friend but is actually my
enemy, you know,
on these environmental issues. I was accustomed to that dynamic is particularly
acute. It's really on steroids
in the public health agencies because there are these unprecedented entanglements,
financial
entanglements. For example, FDA gets 45% of its annual budget from
pharmaceutical companies.
So they're really, you know, there's really no, it's kind of a seamless subsidiary
of the industry.
And it's really, it's an agency capture on steroids.
So the FDA is funded mostly by pharmaceutical companies.
About half of their money comes from pharmaceutical companies. And that's
because
we passed a law in the, in the nineties at a lot, actually in the, in the early
two thousands that
allows it's called fast track approval. So the drug companies were complaining
that, you know,
these drugs take 10 years to get approved. And a lot of the, particularly the
Republicans on Capitol
Hill who want the agencies to be more industry friendly, they said, there ought
to be a process where the,
where the industry can come in and pay to get a very, very quick approval. And
so now that seems dirty
business. It is dirty business. It's, there's a kind of a rational reason for
it is the agency would
said, we simply don't have enough personnel to quickly process these
applications. So Congress said,
okay, well, we're going to get the industry to give you the money to hire the
people to process it.
But really what happens is the agency is now being paid to do its job by the
industry and they become
partners and they're no longer a regulatory agency. They're really, you know,
their, their regulatory
mission gets subsumed by these commercial and mercantile, you know, forces,
business, big business.
Hope you enjoyed that video and you can watch another and you can watch this
one. You can watch this one,
different options, different choices. Some guy just brings you a one option,
not this guy, two options.
Watch one, this one, this one.