Hard to say who I trust. There are certain politicians I feel some trust in, one of which is Barney Franks from Massachusetts. I wish Mario Cuomo had...oh well, that's an old wish never to come true.

Re-establishing trust make take a whole new makeover, ya know? I think it may be difficult to attain w/out lots of new faces in Congress. Barring that, which is probably too much to hope for, I think we need to look at term limits (something I used to oppose, now I don't know) and definitely campaign finance reform. The latter could go a long way in improving the public trust, imo.

Not sure on your last question. Right now, it is difficult for me to see that we have any kind of widespread and popular basis for re-establishing cooperative government. So many people are so disgusted, etc.

I do think ordinary citizens can use the Internet to their advantage by participating in things such as www.moveon.org, which I have noted before.

Good questions, Bartholomew, thanks for getting things back on track, I hope:-)

kat