The root of the problem is in Congress.  Various industries and corporations have veritable employees acting as our Representatives and Senators.  While we may pay such elected officals a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year,  that is a mere pittance compared to what they can receive in campaign contributions (which would more accurately referred to as "bribes" or "salaries").    Besides, without those "contributions", many elected officials could not get re-elected.  If you also consider future salaries, favors, and the power that lobbyists lend to their minions, our elected "representatives" do much better when they do the bidding of the corporations than act in the people's interest.

Until we opt for public campaign financing and overturn the Supreme Court's ruling that money is constitutionally equivalent to speech, then all of our other efforts at reform -- of any kind -- are wasted.  If anyone needs any further proof, the corruption evident in Congressional health care finance reform proposals should be sufficient. (I still don't understand why Republicans are protesting it.  A vote for it would look good to their constituents while assuring that their corporate employers would receive even more taxpayer dollars with few -- if any -- strings attached.)

We're doing things in the wrong order.  We have to get the corporations out of government first.  And while what Obama is doing seems to be a step in the right direction, it will be ineffective without campaing fianace reform.   It's not the executive branch, from which he appears to be cleaning the lobbyists, that passes laws and budgets.  It's Congress that does those things, and it's Congressional corruption that is the main problem.

But obama dumped public campaign financing from his platform just before the election.

It's time that we started admitting that Obama is not a victim of bad advice.  He's getting the advice he wants from the people he wants.  He's surrounded himself with corporatists because he is one, and that makes him part of the problem.