Don't you see that in the current system most of us are deprived access to influence? Our votes are the only power we have in this system. I'll never be able to influence my local congressman to pass legislation that favors me, especially if the local corporation can work against me and contribute far more money to their campaign than I can. The simple reality is that this is about who should have the political influence in our country. Because if money is removed from the electoral process then you pretty much remove the influence of corporations and give the power back to the individual voter. But that will never happen will it? Politicians love their money too much and corporations love their influence too much and the American public just sleeps.

"In the case of this issue, you have huge corporations with vast sums of money working on both sides of the issue." That's your justification? So it's not corruption because we have huge corporate proxies fighting for both sides? This is laughable. It' not about which side you are on. It's about the fact that money is involved in influencing a politician to legislate favorably to those who support their campaign efforts. I don't care which side you are on, this is corrupt and it's not how our government is supposed to work. There was never any vision for paid lobbyists within our system. Congressmen and Senators are supposed to be influenced by the voters in their states and districts, not to the corporation who throws the most money at them.

Well, it is all well and good to bring in so called "expertise and nuance" into government so that legislators can make informed decisions. So can I assume that you would be OK with eliminating campaign contributions from these so called experts? Because if not, what you wrote is a bunch of BS and just a convenient excuse for buying off politicians.

Just because it is technically legal doesn't mean it isn't corrupt. There is such a thing as rigging the system to legally profit from selling influence. That is pretty much what lobbying has become. Sure, if we all had the same amount of money to throw around at politicians maybe it would work for everyone. But since a very small percentage of US citizens hold most of the money, that influence is unevenly distributed.

Funny thing is that I don't manually file any of my emails. That's what filters are for.

You are an excellent debater.

I'd let Google collect all the marketable data they wanted on me if they provided free high speed internet access and they make sure that there are no shady tactics like throttling.

No one seems to be mentioning the loss of picture quality with this move towards streaming.

Well, I just think you need to give credit to the progenitor of our current economy. We can't afford a new economy so Obama got old George's used, beat up hand me down economy.

I don't mean to be a stickler, but I think you mean the Bush economy. I'm pretty sure that's who you meant.