"Many of these folks attack each other and try to push their way in front of the father figures (govenrment) who have the public pocket which can afford the billions of dollars needed to either seed the "plan" or execute it."

That's very true, Chris.
We all notice the endless personal attacks between ME, EP and BD and every time one is starting a thread attacking one or the 2 others, I wonder how long the thread will get the next morning. But I don't read them anyway.
OTOH, thanks partly to the internet, I've joined a group of people all over Flanders, here in Belgium, who are all space entusiasts. They speak flemish, know that I'm more french speaking but I've noticed we became real good friends (we're about a small dozen) and we inform each other about TV programs, visits, meetings, conferences, we go there, take pictures of each other (and the guest of honor) and share them afterwards, through the net. Culturally, we might be different but we share the same passion and generally have a great time. One has passion for predicting satellite passages, another has good contacts with the press, another used to work in our Belgian Spacecamp.
But there's another thing I've noticed: our space enthusiast group and others are really not very big and we all know each other more or less.
Because we're so few, we should unite more than fight each other.
In that case, when there's a discussion about a policy for instance, there's always one guy who emerges, who has the most powerful arguments. It might not be very helpful if he's conterproductive, but if that's the case, the others should lead him to a better path.
Not that easy.

Raoul