From the preface:
A democracy is a system of government by the eligible members of a nation, typically through elected representatives.
If the majority of these elected officials do not represent a nation’s citizens, if instead they chiefly represent the interests of one affluent class, that nation is not a democracy. In the United States, the wealthy 1 percent, and the wealthier 0.1 percent, pay for the campaigns of the vast majority of the candidates in Senate, House and Presidential races. As a result, these candidates, once elected, serve that elite group. Our representatives are in fact political servants of this class. This is only one method of legalized bribery where the elite funnels money to politicians. If the rich control the decisions of our government, they are our rulers, not co-equal citizens. A political system controlled by a wealthy elite is a plutocracy. The United States is not a democracy; it is a plutocracy. The purpose of this book is to transform the US plutocracy into a democracy.
The results of such a system is that corporations damage the environment through global warming, pollution and habitat destruction. They cause opioid deaths in the tens of thousands, sell commercial airplanes that they know have dangerous technical faults causing thousands more deaths, hire thugs to murder international labor organizers and rainforest activists, and numerous other assaults on the people. They periodically crash the US economy through irresponsible investment devices, then use our taxes to bail them out. They are able to commit these offenses because the government, which is meant to protect its citizens, is controlled by them and refuses to effectively regulate their activity.
The richest 1 percent control more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. They have reduced their taxes from 70 percent to 37 percent over 35 years, leaving our children with a debt of 23 trillion dollars. As they become wealthier, the rest of us become poorer as our well-paying jobs are replaced with less lucrative ones. They encourage division to keep us fighting for scraps rather than uniting to demand that our government represent us and prevent corporate or class misconduct.
In our America, the Senate is dominated by members of the 1 percent. Presidential candidates are billionaires or, with few exceptions, backed by billionaires.
But we can claim our government from the plutocrats. We have the tools given to us by the authors of our constitution, the intelligence to organize in our defense and the numbers of citizens to accomplish our objective. We are the 99 percent. This book will show you how to awaken democracy.
