A: Your Congressman is working for special interests and elections are the reason.

We Americans are pretty proud of our democracy. While we didn't exactly invent the thing (that would the ancient Greeks and then the French philosophes), we are the first country in the modern world with an elected executive. We are so proud of our democracy that we've even tried to spread it to other countries, usually with mixed results. Still, a lot of what makes Americans patriotic about their country is their democracy, and we don't tend to be too critical of it.

Last Saturday I saw Michael Moore's new film "Sicko," which is both raucously funny and horribly sad (see it for yourself and find out how). As you know, the film is about how for-profit HMO's and health insurance companies have destroyed the healthcare system because they only make money when they deny care. Indeed, though it is the richest country in the world, America is the only developed western country without free universal healthcare.

One of the most memorable scenes in the film is one in which Congressmen walk out on a stage to celebrate the signing of a piece of healthcare legislation which benefits the HMOs (see photo above). Little green balloons appear over their heads showing how much drug companies paid them to support their profit-making goals over the goals of most Americans: quality medical care at an affordable price. It was a really excellent example of how money and special internest groups have corrupted American democracy.

Our elected representatives aren't looking out for our welfare, but rather for the welfare of the special interest groups that hand them big checks. Why is that? Simple economics really. According to OpenSecrets.org, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist received $193,105 in campaign donations in 2004. How much did he earn from his congressional salary that same year? Only $175,700, according to the Congressional Research Service. If donors are paying him $193,105 and the American tax-payers are paying him $175,700, it's not quite clear who he's working for.

Why is this allowed to happen? Why do the economics of legal (yes legal) contributions actually encourage our representatives not to fairly represent us? Well, there's this funny thing: elections. The reason Congressmen (and women) are allowed to collect such large contributons from special interest groups is that they need that money to be competitive in America's ever more expensive election campaigns. Elections are supposed to be the bed-rock of a democracy, but the way we practice elections actually makes our country less democratic. By accepting big checks from special interest groups, elected official are beholden to those groups when they are elected. Who are you going to dance with, the kids who elected you Homecoming queen or the date that brought you in his limousine? The answer is obvious : "you dance with the one that brought you."

There are ways to fix this, of course. We could put limits on campaign spending, as many honest legislators have tried to do over the years, but the campaigns always find a loophole and the money keeps pouring in. Why? Because politicians and special interest groups benefit from the current system. Politicians are more electorally competitive the more money they have and special interest groups gain a lot of influence over elected representatives when they give them money. The only people who do not benefit from the system the current system are the majority of American citizens, who find that the representative they just elected will not be working for them.

There is hope and, not surprisingly for this blog, it does come from the internet. According the Joe Trippi, one of my personal heroes (see left) the internet could blow this whole campaign finance thing wide open. In the July/August issue of Mother Jones (oops, guess now you know I'm a liberal) Trippi is quoted as saying, "The Net and all of us being able to connect with each other will make campaign-finance reform obsolete. We are campaign-finance reform, all of us. If 5 million Americans decided tomorrow morning to give $100 to a candidate—that's half a billion dollars. There would be no reason for that candidate to talk to an oil company, an energy company, a health care company ever again."

But there's more to it than that. This problem is not going to magically -and digitally- right itself. If we really love our democracy, we have to fix it.