You hit on the exact point that I left out and was wishing I had covered -- I have no problem with individuals, or politically organized groups of individuals,

You hit on the exact point that I left out and was wishing I had covered -- I have no problem with individuals, or politically organized groups of individuals, mobilizing politically even if they have more money than me, and regardless of where that money came from. That applies to PACs, too, as long as they aren't blatant fronts for corporate interests, which we have a bunch of today anyways. I suppose my real issue is that if you can't motivate individuals to give money/time out of their own pockets, you don't deserve to be part of the political process. If we remove all restraints on the ability of corporations to influence the process, it rapidly becomes something that they can't afford not to do -- then we get someplace where corporations "just doing business" have 10X the impact of individuals who are genuinely motivated by their principles or even their selfish interests. The damage from that scenario isn't really quantifiable -- either you get what I'm saying, or you don't. I'd consider it another major leap on our trajectory, as a nation, towards idiocracy.