I've been reading here for years, but this is my first diary. Please be kind. :)
This opinion piece by Frank Rich really taps what pisses me off about all that is wrong in government and it isn't left or right. It's behind. The behind the curtain moneyed interested that screw the whole system up. And there is plenty there on the Democratic side to be sure. Not so much in the least 10 years but only because the money flows to power and the dems weren't in power then.
Then there are the 52 conservative Blue Dog Democrats, who have balked at the public option for health insurance. Their cash intake from insurers and drug companies outpaces their Democratic peers by an average of 25 percent, according to The Post. And let’s not forget the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, which has raked in nearly $500,000 from a single doctor-owned hospital in McAllen, Tex. — the very one that Obama has cited as a symbol of runaway medical costs ever since it was profiled in The New Yorker this spring.
Honestly... what I have thought for the last few years is that the single best thing we could do would be to have 100% publicly financed federal elections. It would cost a fraction of what we give away in corporate tax loopholes that are bought by "donations".
How we get there, I don't really know. But there are some good ideas out there that could work. Some states have done it.