It has been obvious for quite some time that the people have lost control of the United States government; emotional wedge issues are a fine distraction from what is really happening.
We need a bloodless revolution and publically funded elections might be just the thing for us to impose.
I've known for a long, long time that a few wedge issues coupled with our overall national lack of education have kept important, long term decisions out of the public eye. The war in Iraq was just too juicy of an opportunity for the Halliburton's of the world to pass up and now we've got a one of those back room things that is visible every single day.
It is truly sad that we've lost over 2,000 troops in Iraq since the 'end of major operations', but lets give them a fitting memorial in the form of a renewed government by the people, for the people. Publically funded elections can do that.
If you pay any attention at all to global warming you're aware that its not an 'if' any more, its a 'when'. The only ones who say otherwise are straight up paid by big oil to make those statements; 75% of all peer reviewed science on the matter reports that global warming is happening as a direct results of human activity, and the 25% that doesn't say just exactly that does't disagree, it simply reports on effects and draws no conclusions. I invite you to check me on this :: http://realclimate.org is the nerve center for such things. Publically funded elections will lead to people in office listening to constituents with children and grandchildren rather than constituents with quarterly numbers they need to make.
The United States was a peaceful country until George Bush got into office and squandered fifty years of carefully accumulated political capital on some ill conceived theocon theories. Oh, if you're reading here you probably lack a proper definition of peace, too. Peace is the situation where the majority have a shared set of principles they observe and they're willing to gather round and pound anyone who doesn't get with the program. The United States made a fine policeman for the world and a congress elected by publically funded elections would have the sand to restore our national prestige.
Is this a plank in the Democratic party platform for 2006? Maybe this is too radical ... unless every candidate who takes this position gets elected by a landslide in 2006, in which case we'll see a stampede of a much different sort in 2008 than the one that got us into Iraq in the first place.
I'd write more, but my future congressman, Jim Esch, says he isn't ever going to take PAC money, and I've got some things to tend to today. If you're going to respond write your own paragraph that closes with "... and publically funded elections will fix this."