Emma Berry is running for congress as an independent in Texas’s third congressional district. In a recent post on her website, she calls for opposition to the Democratic-Republican two-party state and urges voters not to “settle for their political cliches again,” writing:

My hope is that Americans are ready to take charge of their votes and get off the Republican/Democrat see-saw. Year after year both candidates from both parties say and promise basically the same things and the majority of them end up doing the same thing when they get to Congress–represent their own personal interests and those of their friends or the highest bidder while pretending to be “for the people.” We do not have a two-party system, people. That is an illusion. We have a one-party system and currently it is driven by a core team of 263 multimillionaires in both chamber of Congress. And this core team is not a bunch of “liberals” or a bunch of “Conservatives”. It is a bunch of Wall Street multimillionaires–most of whom all have the same aim–to secure and grow their own personal wealth. Yes, there are notable exceptions, but basically this is the corrupt system in Washington DC that we face and must change. Our only weapon is our vote . . . [Emphasis added.]

F YOU ARE AN ORDINARY AMERICAN AND YOU WANT REAL CHANGE AND A REAL IMPROVEMENT IN OUR ECONOMY, YOUR FIRST LESSON IS TO STOP THINKING THAT THERE IS SOME SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A DEMOCRAT OR A REPUBLICAN or that the current mess of our economy is the fault of “the liberals” or “the conservatives” in Washington . . . As long as you shut out their rhetoric and just pay attention to what they actually do, you will see that there is barely a degree of separation between the two parties. The only noticeable difference is that the Democrats throw larger crumbs. As long as you don’t mind living off crumbs, then you’ll get by as long as the Democrats are in offices. As for me? I’ve decided that crumbs are not good enough. I want a real government–that works for all the people–not a government welfare feedbag for Wall Street corporations like Archer Daniels Midland and other convicted felons.

In denouncing the Democratic-Republican Party’s particular “class character,” Berry is likely drawing upon a report from late last year by the Center for Responsive Politics, which found that there were 237 millionaires in the Congress. Politico summed up the findings:

Two-hundred-and-thirty-seven members of Congress are millionaires. That’s 44 percent of the body – compared to about 1 percent of Americans overall . . . Some lawmakers have profited from investments in companies that have received federal bailouts; dozens of lawmakers are invested in Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America.

Cross-posted from Poli-Tea.