<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.

The Constitution is already flying around the room, and will probably land in the toilet. Use some logic on this.

To run for a national office nowadays a politician MUST have someone pay millions for his campaign, unless he is personally wealthy. If we outlaw all contributions, then only the rich will be politicians. This bothers a lot of people, although it's been true through most of recorded history.

If contributions are made, rich people will contribute more than poor people because, surprise, they have more money. Again, this bothers a lot of people. Artificial limits on contributions are a joke. They were a joke two seconds after they were enacted. Only an idiot thinks a Senator is going to actually be able to run a campaign on $4,000 chunks from all different people. Check out Ralph Nader's numbers on this chart--he tried to run a campaign without big donors. It's instructive to examine the detailed numbers on all these candidates.

If a rich guy can't contribute hard money, he will contribute soft money. If he can't contribute soft money, he will make radio and TV commercials on his own or figure out some other way to get his support into the arena. And if these alternatives are outlawed...

We are being herded like stupid sheep. There are more than a few people in the Federal government who are trying to make it impossible to operate campaigns in any way except one: public campaign financing. We are being funneled toward this solution like sheep to a slaughterhouse, much the same way as the deliberate destruction of the private insurance system is funneling us toward socialized medicine.

Once this concept gets in the door, and our Lords in Washington are in charge of deciding who gets to campaign and who doesn't--and believe me, there is no other way this can turn out--then we might as well just recycle the voting booths into soft drink cans. At least we won't hear any more bitching about hanging chads.