[Jeff Higgins]

Wow Bill, very well said. I might add public apathy has led to this. We can vote the bastards out every 2, 4, and 6 years. I honestly wonder why we don't.

If everyone could make a simple personal vow to never again vote for an incumbent, we would be most of the way home. I don't care what party they are with, how "good" of a job they are doing; simply never vote for them after one term.

I did that in our last election and found myself voting against Republicans. I felt at the time that "voting the bastards out" was more important than their party or their stand on the issues. Since we can no longer trust them to actually adhere to whatever stand they presented to get elected, why not? We don't know what we are getting anymore anyway.

A couple of cycles of this should weed out the riff-raff. The folks looking for careers would have to look elsewhere, and they would know it. The ones looking for power to share with their friends that got them there would have a tough time marshalling their resources and favors to acquire that power. They would have no reason to think they would ever get re-elected, so that would not taint their decisions. If we, the people, could get into this pattern of absolutely no re-elections, we could win back our country. It's worth a try.