>>>I despair of getting my point across, since apparently I'm going to have to spell it out on wooden blocks or something.

As usual, you don't understand the distinction between someone not understanding you, and someone disagreeing with you.

>>>I would bet that you have never worked for a profit-making company larger than a coffeehouse. Am I right?

Nice bit of nastiness there. "If you can't persuade 'em, discredit 'em!"

>>>Through decades of Supreme Court decisions.........

And as usual, when someone scores a debating point against you, you try to drown them with a long-winded post that ignores the scored point rather than refuting it.

For the record my thoughts:
Corruption of our elected officials by corporate or private cash, is no more inevitable than steroid use in amature sports. And it shares the same lame-brained excuse: "Everyone else is doing it. If I don't do it too, then my competitors will bury me."

Believe me, we are a country of very clever people. We can come up with technological, or political solutions to both problems. After we have installed proper monitoring facilities, and after we have thrown a few athletes out of the Olympics, and put a few companies out of business, and put a few politicians in prison, these problems will slow to a manageable trickle.

Draconian? Yep. I say that rather than insisting that our children ruin their bodies in order to be in the Olympics, we cancel the Olympics (if we can't find an alternative). I say that if our democracy permits the extremely wealthy and corporate America to a) dictate who gets elected, and b) dictate the behavior of our "elected" officials (if we can't find an alternative), then we should declare the country dissolved, and make paper airplanes out of the constitution.