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Toody Healey is heavily involved in public television education programming. She LOVES political rhetoric, even the name calling between parties. Toody made her first trip to a presidential convention as a delegate in 1996. When she's not stumping for more funding for education she loves to read.

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Attention all congressmen & women...
I don't care who had Costa Rican coffee with the president; I do care that we craft a fair trade policy in the Caribbean as we expand NAFTA.

I don't care how many Chinese people had their picture taken with the President; I do care that we address human rights issues in China as the global economy brings us closer.

I don't care if Cabinet members got great seats from rich CEOs for a boxing match; I do care that Madeleine Albright has enough money in her budget for the fight to preserve and expand democracy.

I don't care who slept in the Lincoln bedroom; I do care that president Lincoln's admonition that government "...of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth" be heeded.

We all know that money and influence provide access. I'm all for access--without it a representational democracy can not function. The big issue in the campaign finance debate is whether access, via campaign donations, buys results and drowns out the vox populi. If it has and laws have been broken, justice must be served. If the culprit is the system itself, let's fix it and move on. Congress is charged with oversight, but they should remember that the American public pays the bill. As the party that controls both Houses, the Republicans have failed to conduct a bipartisan investigation and as such have lost credibility. Let's spend time and energy on the issues of reform--free TV time, public financing, spending caps, all of the above or none of the above. Let's have these debates, rather than spending millions on gotcha games and political voyeurism. I can't help but lament how many millions of tax dollars have been spent on partisan. politicized investigations that would be better spent on drug trade intervention, job training, student aid, or community policing. to name a few.

Common sense tells me that many of the recent fundraising practices by both parties push the limits of a complex and confusing set of laws. Common sense tells me that a Republican party that raised three times as much money as its Democratic counterpart, probably engaged in the same tactics. And common sense tells me that no reform will be possible until both political parties come to the table as equals, engage in honest debate. work through to consensus, and abide by the results. That's the process that made our democracy a reality in the first place. And if all else fails, Congress should enter into dispute resolution with Madeleine Albright as moderator. Anyone who has the resolve to tell the Israelis and the Palestinians that they should take a "time-out" might be able to save "a house divided against itself" before it falls.