Throughout the time when the committee has been meeting they have been holding fundraisers across the country. This open money-taking while making decisions that affect those who are giving money is the kind of open corruption that has led to a loss of faith in government.
It is not only donations that will impact the committee, but a major lobbying onslaught by 400 groups who report lobbying the Super Committee. About 30% of these organizations -- 118 groups in total -- were from the health sector. The finance insurance and real estate sector ranked third, with 40 companies within that sector reporting lobbying activity during the third quarter that targeted the super committee. And 39 groups in the energy sector reported lobbying the super committee. Both the communications and electronics sector and the general business sector saw 26 companies and organizations explicitly mention the super committee in their third-quarter lobbying reports. These are many of the same concentrated corporate interests that have funded the campaigns of super committee members.
Conclusion: Revolt against Economics for the 1%
Once again, the people of the United States will see corruption reign supreme. Despite evident solutions to the deficit and the economic collapse, the Congress will show its corruption and dysfunction and be unable to put forward real solutions.
We issue this report to alert everyone -- the political system is broken. It is corrupted by the power of concentrated wealth, campaign donations and corporate power. The job of the occupations across the country is to build an independent nonviolent movement that replaces this corrupt system with one in which the people rule. The battle between concentrated wealth and participatory democracy will be heightened by the evident corruption of the Super Committee which will not challenge the unfair policies of the 1% while requiring austerity for the 99%.
The economic and political elite should expect protests to grow. We are at the beginning of what will be seen as a historic revolt against status quo elites that will transform this economy as well as how the United States is governed.
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[1] The evidence-based solutions in this report come from people who are experts in the fields addressed as well as the views of people affected by the policies. We relied on a range of sources and have provided links to those sources in the on-line version of this report. In addition, Occupy Washington, DC held a public hearing on Wednesday, November 9th. You can see the public hearing at: CSPAN Coverage of Occupied Super Committee Hearings. Participants included: Kevin Zeese an organizer of Occupy Washington, DC and co-director of It's Our Economy and co-chair of Come Home America; Andrew Fieldhouse of the Economic Policy Institute; Carl Conetta of the Project on Defense Alternatives; Kenneth Peres is an economist with the Communications Workers of America; Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research; Margaret Flowers an organizer of Occupy Washington DC and congressional fellow for Physicians for National Health Program; Gar Alperovitz is a founding principal of the Democracy Collaborative and with the National Center for Economic and Security Alternatives.
[2] This is commonly known as corporate welfare. All corporate welfare should be stopped until the Congress passes laws transforming corporate welfare into taxpayer investment. There are reasons for government to invest in building the economy, for example there is a need to invest in a new energy economy, but the profits from these investments should not only go to the 1% who own energy companies, they should be treated as taxpayer investment and all taxpayers should share in the profit from the investment. Such a system could be modeled after the Alaska Permanent Trust which has existed for oil exploration on state lands in Alaska since 1980. Such a system could develop into a guaranteed national income that would lift people out of poverty and provide a safety net to all. This is a critical part of a democratized economy. See: Agenda for a Democratized Economy, http://itsoureconomy.us/issues/.
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