In hushed voice he intoned that Obama is an "elitist" who flies his hair stylist weekly to D.C. for updates. He lamented rumors that a certain mayoral candidate sent his kids to a prestigious school in town for free. And he rightly pointed out former Congress members' penchant for hiring on at huge corporations as lobbyists and consultants to cash in on their connections.

My recent visit popped into my head while reading Columbia University economist Joseph E. Stiglitz's rail against the machine in the May issue of Vanity Fair in which he states the obvious: "Wealth begets power, which begets more wealth." But it's a must-read polemic against America's growing income imbalance and the current power structure that serves only the wealthy and connected.

"The top 1 percent may complain about the kind of government we have in America, but in truth they like it just fine: too gridlocked to re-distribute, too divided to do anything but lower taxes," he writes.

Although Stiglitz intends to tell a cautionary tale about how America's rich risk rebellion from the nation's poor, his chief success is accurately portraying how government has become one big favor machine while supposed go limp while patrolling those with power.

"...One big part of the reason we have so much inequality is that the top 1 percent want it that way,'' Stiglitz asserts. "The most obvious example involves tax policy. Lowering tax rates on capital gains, which is how the rich receive a large portion of their income, has given the wealthiest Americans close to a free ride." And "much of today’s inequality is due to manipulation of the financial system, enabled by changes in the rules that have been bought and paid for by the financial industry itself -- one of its best investments ever. The government lent money to financial institutions at close to 0 percent interest and provided generous bailouts on favorable terms when all else failed. Regulators turned a blind eye to a lack of transparency and to conflicts of interest."

Stiglitz warns that the revolts that are upturning governments throughout the Middle East may end up here: "Governments have been toppled in Egypt and Tunisia. Protests have erupted in Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain.... These are societies where a minuscule fraction of the population—less than 1 percent—controls the lion’s share of the wealth; where wealth is a main determinant of power; where entrenched corruption of one sort or another is a way of life; and where the wealthiest often stand actively in the way of policies that would improve life for people in general.

"As we gaze out at the popular fervor in the streets, one question to ask ourselves is this: When will it come to America?"

My short answer: not soon enough. The hopelessness and injustice and ultimate rage fueled by income inequality seem absent from our political landscape, no doubt in part because corporate media isn't telling the story. (Note: It's also not capturing people's panic about the Fukushima nuclear disaster, but that's another story.) Only just yesterday the New York Times published a story headlined "Many Low-Wage Jobs Seen as Failing to Meet Basic Needs" -- as though that hasn't been painfully obvious for about two decades to anybody who works for a living. Note the "seems" used so as to make sure everybody knows the paper's editors didn't reach that conclusion. The same story was conveniently echoed by the aggregating Huffington Post, which is only too happy not to pay writers.

When you're economically advantaged dentist rumbles about the fixed game of the rich and the politically powerful, you know discontentment reaches deep in the nation.

If voting doesn't fundamentally change things -- if yo-yoing back and forth between political parties doesn't work -- the rich and powerful leave the masses very few options.