The corporate money lobbying is polluting and destroying the representative environment of our political system by appealing to the base career interests of our representatives.

It is quite natural that they are interested in their careers, but it should not preempt or put them in conflict with their representing us. However, we, the people, affect them once every four years by our vote (on an average), but the corporate lobbyists not only affect them more frequently with personal contacts, they affect them with BIG campaign donations throughout all their period in office. If political philosophy is put in direct competition with career interests, experience and history shows that career interests prevail and corporate money lobbyists know how to hit a home run with this very well.

I agree that we, the people, do contribute some money to their campaigns (mostly only near the time of their re-elections every four years), but what we contribute is mostly just dumped into corporate advertising firms, which create and distribute images designed to influence (but not necessarily inform) the vote. As most adults know from personal experience, advertising is not well known as a source of truth (truth telling is what we used to call the news, before it became a corporate, money-making empire similar to advertising corporations). Do we get smoke and mirrors, propaganda, or reliable information about what is going on when our campaign contributions are manipulated by advertising agencies and then it gets reported back to us by corporate news agencies which are ALL owned by only a few power brokers? These news corporations may be more interested in being politically correct or appeasing to other corporate power groups as a way of making money than in rocking the boat with non-corporate information, since there's little profit in it. How do we see clearly? How can we tell what the truth is or who is representing whom? Yes, we do contribute too, but what do we get for it? I'm not sure we should be contributing any more than corporations should be contributing; perhaps the political playing field would be more level if all runners in a political race had the same equal share of public financial resources, and nothing more!

Corporations cast NOT one vote, yet they now seem to own America's government through corporate money and power lobbying. This is not "talk" lobbying; it's "money" and "power" lobbying that outstrips what the people can provide their politicians. If the money is taken out of the corporate lobbying picture, a lot of the power will disappear too, and we'll be left with corporate "talk" lobbying, which is on par with what the people can provide their politicians individually, or in "talk" lobby groups representing people collectively.

Corporate lobbying without money should be allowed, but get the money out of the business so our representatives belong to us, the people who vote. Maybe then again we'll return to a representative democracy instead of a country run by-and-for the corporations that buy their way into the career-interest hearts of our politicians. The base career interests of our politicians needs to be controlled by forcing them to stop taking the influence-pedaling campaign contributions, much like we control the base instincts of our children. This can't be the politicians' choice, because they'll take the career-building, career-interest, career-protecting money almost every time like a drug addict needs their drugs. We do not elect people into office as a career-building move, but we elect them usually to represent our ideas, our hearts, and our hopes for America. Corporate lobbying WITH money must be made illegal so our politicians will again represent US in the U.S.!