edit: Actually a question comes to mind. What can we as the voting/etc public do to make our will felt in this scenario? With the parties involved I don't know of a way and that really, really irks me.
But when government has its fingers in every pie, we all have to "make our will known" about every freakin' pie.
And then watch as it is ignored because there are way too many pies for people to notice everything everyone is saying about every pie.
But each pie is of special concern to some well-monied interest and they will make their views known to those stuffing their pie holes.
What would give their activities meaning?
And how do you define clap-trap?
After some searching the best I could find is this group (http://www.citizen.org/), which seems to be a non-profit working in the general area of disentangling government/corporate interests.