I'm going to have to disagree with you here. First off, we have grown adults doing so on this forum who are also certainly self-aware (muon, who you praised above, comes to mind, as well as Torie). While it's not the definition of freedom -- America was not exactly a repressive society before Citizens United -- I think it's reasonable to say people (corporations are only people in the strictly legal sense, but they are certainly composed of people) should be able to spend their money to buy what they want (ad space) without government interference. Ad campaigns are not always successful; corporations can no more 'buy' an election, as some like to say, than they could before; they can simply run a bigger ad campaign. People choose what they listen to.
this election it's estimated over $7 billion dollars is going to be spent. over a billion in ads. you don't see a massive problem there? the severe conflicts of interest? democracy is bad enough when it comes to people voting themselves benefits regardless of the ability of the state and tax payers to actually pay for them, but modern lobbying is even worse.
what??? most americans are drowning in debt. over 23% have no savings at all, nothing. in this depression americans lost 40% (!) of their wealth on average between 2007-2010 alone. you seriously expect people to pay down their health bills? the us should be adopting single payer imho. yes it's not perfect, yes adjustments will have to be made but its a million times better than what the us has now and its an easy sell to the public. i wouldn't even particularly mind if taxes went up in that scenario for once although obviously the us spends far too much on useless special interests (i.e. the military industrial complex, wall street, etc.).
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