Letter: We Need to Take Back America

This week, J. P. Morgan reported $2 billion in trading losses. Jamie Dimon, the company's CEO, has been lobbying for less government regulation of Wall Street so that companies like his can make more money through higher risk investments.

However, in 2008, when everything collapsed, the banks came begging to the government for a bailout of trillions of dollars that we, the people, are supposed to be responsible for. They aren't taking the risk—the risk is transferred to us.

That isn't fair. Why should we, the people, just hand these companies, which represent a minority in this country, trillions of dollars that we will have to pay back to them? Why should we deregulate these businesses and ask the people to pick up their losses?

The founders of this country were trying to keep the U.S. from becoming a kingdom ruled by a king. They also were trying to prevent the U.S. from turning into a feudalistic society where the peasant class—what can be referred to as the 99 Percent—was forever enslaved through bondage, in the form of debt, to the "lord of the manor," or the top one percent of the population.

We are a country where all people were created equal.

When the United States Supreme Court ruled that corporations are people, citizens of this country became non-people. America is supposed to be a democracy created to serve real people and people alone, not corporations.

The top one percent is sucking the life out of America. That's why we need to tax the rich to get the money back that they stole from us in 2008. These investors are not "job creators." Rather, they are turning into slave owners and our debt becomes the mechanism for instituting slavery.

If the phrase "We the People" means anything to Americans, then we need to rise up against our oppressors and tell them that we, not corporations, are the people and that we are going to take America back from the rich. We are going to make them pay off the national debt that they created and tried to put on us.

I'm Marc Perkel, and I approve this message!