I think your criticism are on point - except the part about company funding. It is a little more complicated than that. Interest groups - including labor unions and soft money pacs funded by everyone from crazy right wing oil millionaires ( Clay Murchison in the LBJ days ) to crazy left wing currency speculators ( George Sjoros ) make the whole money process very ugly.
But remember this is a very very big country with huge media markets and unfortunately most people get their info from TV
By comparison, Holland has the population and media complexity of a medium sized American city, so your political process could be better compared to running for mayor of Philadelphia.
It is a very imperfect system, but it has lead to the peaceful transfer of power in the most powerful country on earth and has worked for over 200 years.
As Churchill said, the worst form of government, except for all the others.
>Charles,
>
>>Of course you are free to express whatever opinion you like, just as someone who has never written a line of code is free come into a technical discussion and say Access is superior to SQL Server because he saw it on TV. I was responding to a remark you made about the lack of democracy in my country. I really felt the idea had no merit and said so. I meant my remark only as a suggestion that if you are going to speak with such authority on this subject you should probably expect someone will take exception. <s>
>
>OK let's focus on that one.
>
>Do you agree that the political parties are depended on:
>- Losts of media are not unbiased, but either are republican or democrat oriented.
>- Without massive (many millions of dollars) fundings you don't have a chance at all
>- The small parties don't stand a chance because of they never are going to get the needed fundings.
>- Big companies funding the campain of the elections.
>- Companies themselves are not democratic, but a dictatorship by nature
>- The campaigns are about mud throwing and putting the other one down as much as you can.
>
>Take your answers and make the puzzle.
>
>Walter,
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
