actually has any say in national gov't (unless they give huge amounts of money or head a big corporation that does).

Princeton did research on this not too long ago and the data they crunched shows very clearly - our national government is not of/by/for the people. Not even a little bit. Not at all. "But what about?" Nope.

Our government is of/by/for the corporations.

If we want to have a voice again, we have got to start taking corruption seriously. Start locally. Pass tough anti-corruption laws. Send people to actual prison for breaking them.  And if the anti-corruption movement gets big enough, we may get our voice back.

The flow of people in the public->federal office->high-paid lobbyist pipeline is only increasing. The the bigger govt gets, the more opportunities there are for monetization and the faster the self-perpetuated system grows. It used to be the military-industrial complex, now it's the federal-provider (defense, medical, finance, education, whatever) complex.

I don't know how the hell you can stop it. If you put moratoriums on the federal office->lobbyist part, they'll just wait it out in private sector jobs. The only way out I can see is decreasing the size of govt, thus the opportunities for monetization. That's why govt reduction is the most important thing on my list.