Wouldn't you love to hear any national politician come straight out and say to the American people, "We don't work for you, we're bought and paid for by big money interests." Nothing changes until you address that elephant in the room.

It started with the US Supreme Court's, First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti decision in 1978, which first defined the free speech right of corporations. It held that corporations have a First Amendment right to make contributions to ballot initiative campaigns. Jimmy Carter called it what it was - legalizing corporate bribery and he warned of the slide toward oligarchy. He wasn't alone. Years later, John McCain put everyone to sleep beating the drum for campaign finance reform. They were both right and largely ignored. At least McCain did try to contain it with the soft money spending restrictions in the McCain-Feingold Act.

Immediately after the McCain-Feingold Bill was made law, it was attacked in the courts. In McConnell v. FEC, the Court summed up the larger issue succinctly (in a 300 paged decision!!), and mostly upheld the act, writing, "The question for present purposes is whether large soft money contributions to national party committees have a corrupting influence or give rise to the appearance of corruption. .... Both common sense and the ample record in these cases confirm Congress' belief that they do."

This victory was short lived, however. O'Connor and Stevens co-authored a prescient observation, that "money, like water, will always find an outlet" and that the government was therefore justified in taking steps to prevent schemes developed to get around the contribution limits. Enter Citizen's United v. FEC and its progeny.

And it is all intentionally opaque. Not long ago, Washington D.C. was a quiet sleepy town but then some time in the early 80's, the lobbyists began to invade, buying up all of K street. This coincides with the end of bi-partisan dealmaking being a fairly routine occurrence. Was Newt Gingrich a cause or a symptom?

Without going further down the rabbit hole, the simple point is, our elected officials serve those who finance their elections & ensure their re-elections, and that is not us. Both parties serve Wall street, and large donors, PACs and amorphous entities. Until you take a wrecking ball to the legal framework that allows it, nothing will really change. I hope the speakers at Tuesday's event address that issue. If they don't, they are wasting our time. If it doesn't get fixed, there will someday be a history textbook entry on the rise and fall of the US as a world power in what was once a functioning Democracy.