Ken Picard writes up an interview with David Sirota, one-time press secretary for Bernie Sanders, in the latest issue of Seven Days.

Sirota will be appearing at Borders in Burlington on Saturday, June 17 at 6 p.m. for a talk and book signing for Hostile Takeover: How Big Money & Corruption Conquered Our Government — and How We Take It Back.

Excerpt:

David Sirota is a rare breed among political strategists — a successful idealist. Capitol Hill is rife with ambitious, young wonks with overachiever resumes and public-policy degrees from elite institutions like Harvard, Georgetown and the LBJ School. But few are able to convert their elite academic pedigrees into careers of national prominence, while still remaining true to their populist roots.

Sirota, a former press secretary for Congressman Bernie Sanders, has earned his populist credentials and his whiz-kid reputation — at age 30, he’s already considered a veteran campaign operative, nationally acclaimed commentator, blogger and now bestselling author. Like his former boss in Vermont, Sirota is also known as a straight-shooting iconoclast who isn’t afraid to call bullshit on Washington’s powerful movers and shakers who suckle at the corporate teat. His first book, Hostile Takeover: How Big Money & Corruption Conquered Our Government — and How We Take It Back, may be the most scathing indictment yet of how both political parties have been hijacked by Big Money.

“Just as the mom-and-pop store in your town was bought out by the big corporate conglomerate, so has our government been the victim of a hostile takeover,” Sirota writes. “Over the last 30 years, Corporate America has applied its most effective business tactics to the task of purchasing the one commodity that’s not supposed to be for sale: American democracy.”