>What does a congressional canidate gain by having an educated voter populattion?

Nothing, in fact he lose. The higher the education of the voter, the less likely the candidate will succeed in fooling him.

>How much harder do advertising or media executives have to work if their target market for poor qualitiy goods and services has room temperatue intelligence?

Even easier if it's in celsius :)

>I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but its pretty obvious that the people with money and power are not interested in sharing, and therefore would oppose the steps forward that we need to take.

I have no choice but to agree here.