Ian, I liked your article overall.  However the paragraph: "No wonder so many average people don’t bother to vote. After all, they can look at these contributions and quite reasonably assume that their interests can’t compete for the attention of their elected officials. Money talks, we all know. Yes, it leads to cynicism, but not unreasonably so."  BUT wish you'd left off the last four words.  They contradict the intent of that paragraph and article overall.  Maybe what we need is a "Citizens (yes people) Against Big Money in Politics" movement.