....And, raystone, not only did AT&T get their bill thru the legislature nearly unscathed, now Charter is moving the local access channels to a digital tier where we have to rent equipment from them or buy a new TV set to see our local channels which carry local candidate forums.

I think you misunderstood my point. Corporate interests are not responsible for reelecting polititians, WE are. I place the blame solely on us, the voters. If we voted with any kind of informed education then it wouldn't matter what corporate interests donated. Don't blame corporate interests (who are actually people, remember) for our own stupidity.

ktaustin, you're absolutely right. Corporate special interests are paying for the elected officials to get reelected. Then, the reps and senators write up and pass legislation to benefit them as a thank you.
For example, in the first six months of 2007, telecommunications interests gave $24,175 to Assembly members. Then, the legislature took up Assembly Bill 207, a measure backed by telephone giant AT&T and much of the telecommunications industry because it changed cable regulations to make it easier for telephone companies to break into the cable market. But has your cable bill gone down due to increased competition ?
After insurance companies donated thousands of dollars to the Representatives, a bridge project sought by an insurance company in a town that was not consulted about it, was proposed and approved as well as hundreds of millions of dollars in additional spending on road construction. And you paid for it.

This is largely true, ktaustin. One way to counteract this is with stronger parties. Ironically, one of the Progressive Movement's hallmarks, the open primary, challenges control by parties and is now seen as a more democratic ideal, but caucuses would put some of that control back in the hands of the parties. The television era has really intensified this personality-based politics, and barring constitutional acceptance of McCain-Feingold and similar legislation (which the Supreme Court ruled violated free speech, where $$$=speech), we're not likely to see major changes anytime soon.
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One of the more interesting developments, however, is the use of social networking by the Obama campaign, now being imitated by McCain's. This creates an entire grassroots network from scratch, rather than relying on party organizations. One can see this as both positive and negative in terms of party politics and personality politics.

I love how people are always quick to critisize polititians for raising exorbant amounts of campaign money (in addition to critisizing the sources of the money), yet nobody seems to think about the fact that most of that campaign money is used for advertising. This is because the more you advertise, the better your chances are, because many voters are voting based on a few commertials and popularity, rather than doing any real research into all the candidates. The voters are to blame. I think if that's what we're basing our vote on, then we deserve the greedy rich polititions that we get.

And much of that big money is from special interest/lobby groups that "buy" legislation (with our tax $) good for corporations but bad for WI. Check it out at wisdc.org