Past the ballot box

GUEST: Josh Hoxie, director of the Project on Opportunity and Taxation at the Institute for Policy Studies and coeditor of Inequality.org, talks about his new report, Billionaire Bonanza 2017: The Forbes 400 and the Rest of Us. (Note: due to a studio problem, this program did not play from Vassar College Radio on November 30. It was re-recorded as a podcast and broadcast the following Sunday from 5 - 6 pm on www.PRN.fm.)

Josh Hoxie sounded like he was giving a speech at an occupy encampment, with those of us in the audience knowing full well that the outrageous things he was saying were all true. The billionaires are calling all the shots, and they are after the rest of the nation's wealth. 

Now, most Americans recognize that we are all bit players in a well established kleptocracy. The problem is that one way to break the system is to vote for a hate-monger like Trump. We all want to "drain the swamp" of elite rich men who work together in robbing the working class. Bernie had about the same message, without the explicit appeal to racist ideologies. Since Hillary was widely seen as part of the same swamp, the Republican Party seemed a more effective agent of change.

Now that Trump is cornered, he could easily start a Third World War to get himself out of impeachment. We are living in the most dangerous of times. Are these the "end of times" that his fanatical, Christian base so fervently believes in? 

So we can try to elect more Democrats in Congress, as Josh Hoxie urges us to. Or we can recognize that both parties produced the tyrant we now have in the White House. Middle of the road Democratic candidates will give us more Clinton/Obama betrayals, only to be followed by another lurch to the right. The system needs radical changes, starting with the breakup of both corporate controlled parties.

Vote for reformers, and follow up by taking to the streets. We are past the ballot box for really changing the system.