Analyst: US Congress ‘puppet of corporate machine’

The comments were made by Leah Bolger, the Oregon-based president of the antiwar organization Veterans for Peace, who was sentenced to 60 days in jail for disrupting a Congress session.

“On the 12th of April, I went to the court and I pleaded guilty to a charge of unlawful conduct of disruption of Congress. And I pleaded guilty because yes I did disrupt Congress and actually I wish I could have disrupted it more,” she said.

“I wish I could have changed the status quo that the Congress has become just a puppet of the corporate machine,” the anti-corporate activist added.

Bolger disrupted a public hearing of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction in the US Congress on October 26, 2011.

“I have come to understand what millions of Americans already know - that the actual majority will of the people is of little concern to those in power,” Bolger said in her defense statement to Judge Stuart Nash in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, Washington.

She went on to say that nationwide campaigns against the excessive power of corporations in the US do not get anywhere because of “the power of the money coming from the lobbyists and corporate interests.”

“We can demonstrate and petition and write letters until we are blue in the face, but those actions are virtually worthless, as we can't compete. Our voice is drowned out by the power of the money coming from the lobbyists and corporate interests. Money equals speech,” she pointed out.

The president of Veterans for Peace finally noted that she was speaking at the court “on behalf of 99 percent” of Americans.

The term 99-percenters is derived from the mantra “We are the 99 percent" used by anti-corporate protesters in the US who want to distinguish themselves from the one percent of Americans in possession of the greatest portion of the nation's wealth.

The anti-corporate campaign in the United States erupted under the name of Occupy Wall Street on September 17, 2011 when a group of protesters marched toward the country's financial center in protest against corporate greed and the excessive influence of corporations on the US political system.