As to your #1, I would suggest that the two major political parties in this country (Dem/Repub) hold a virtual monopoly between them on the political process. Each party knows 1) if they are in power, they don't need the other party (and this was demonstrated perfectly in the last few years by the Repuglicans under Bush); and 2) if they are not currently in power, there's a reasonable chance they will regain power within a few years. The net result of this situation is, political gridlock at best (i.e., your spaghetti scrimmage), or complete non-responsiveness to the will of the people, at worst (and I believe our current government is completely unresponsive - witness the recent "roll over and play dead" maneuver by the Dems on the Iraq war funding issue. Without getting into the merits of the issue, the Dems were recently elected into power in the Congress, which was considered a broad mandate to change the course of the Iraq war. The Dems answer? Stay the course - in effect, completely ignoring the will of the people).
Of course, the foregoing assumes the elections are fair in the first instance, which is no longer an assumption which can be made blindly and without question - particularly in light of the "machinations" involved in the elections of the last 8 years.
There is nothing written into the US Constitution which requires that only two parties maintain control over the entire political process, nor is there anything inherently good or efficient about it. Efficiency would be best achieved by one party only (and our two parties largely resemble only one), while the public good would be best served by more choices. Yes, there already exist any number of smaller fringe parties, but among all of them, I believe the only Congressional seat they have is Ron Paul of TX, Libertarian party. I'm not counting Lieberman, technically an independant, but in reality a Dem who votes mainly lockstep with the Repuglicans. It is easily, but inappropriately I believe, argued that the political "market" has chosen to have only two primary choices. This begs the question of the near monopoly control. In a capitalist system, the best way to maximize profits or returns is to obtain a monopoly. This country (at least previously) has also decided on the public policy that monopolistic practices should be restrained, for the greater public good. Why then is this principle not applied to the political market? The Dem/Repug parties are profit-making organizations, very similar to any other corporation. I would argue that, for the greater public good, the monopolistic stranglehold held by the Big Two must be broken, whatever the cost required. Break it up so that at least one more party (I don't care which) controls a few Congressional seats, at the very least. Subsidize the additional parties with public funds, whatever it takes. Only then will you begin to see more responsiveness to the will of the people.
As to your #2, transparency is a good thing. If we were to achieve it, the first thing you would clearly see is that the wealthy people and corporations in this country control most of the assets and all the political power. I won't bother to provide precise data, as you can obtain it easily for yourself, even on the Internet (example: just google "distribution of wealth" - "In the United States at the end of 2001, 10% of the population owned 71% of the wealth, and the top 1% controlled 38%. On the other hand, the bottom 40% owned less than 1% of the nation's wealth.").
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, whose primary purpose may be to distract you from seeing the obvious. The wealthy own everything, the poor own nothing - this is not merely a tautological definition, it's a sad fact of life. What's more, despite what Santa Claus says about working hard to make money and get ahead in life, the other sad fact is that in the USA, the most likely way for a person to become rich is through inheritance, which likelihood dwarfs all other means of obtaining wealth.
There are a few self-made wealthy people, but not many. Donald Trump (you're fired), for instance, talks the talk of being self-made. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the 1950's, his father loaned / gave him over $500,000 to start his enterprise. Back then, that was considered a sum of money only wealthy people had - the minimum wage was about $1/hour, the price of gasoline was about $0.15/gallon, the price of a new car was less than $2,000, and the price of a new house in most of the country was less than $20,000 (though I hear you can still buy a house in Detroit today for that price, due to economic depression in that area). So no, Trump is decidedly not a self-made man, he was rich to begin with; he inherited his money just like most wealthy people do. To his credit, Trump did take that initial sum and transform it into a much larger sum over the years, at a reasonably impressive compounded rate of return (I haven't done the math, but I'll bet it's about 20% compounded annually). So yes, Trump does have reasonably good business acumen (unless his compounded rate of return is less than 10%, in which case he didn't outperform the market), but under no circumstance could he be considered self-made.
Bill Gates of Microsoft might be an exception, although Gates' father is/was a high powered attorney in Seattle who already had substantial assets prior to Bill's ascent into the financial stratosphere. Considering that Microsoft probably began with only modest funding, argument could be made that Gates is self-made. Nonetheless, Gates' personal current fortune is estimated to be equal to the combined assets of the bottom 40% of America.
In reality, the primary avenue for poor people to become wealthy is in entertainment, which includes sports. Oprah Winfrey, Johnny Carson, Tom Cruise, Michael Jordan, Shaquille, the list is long of entertainers/athletes who became wealthy on their own. However, even among these, many are unable to keep their wealth. Kareem Abdul Jabbar, formerly of the Lakers, is a classic and tragic example.
Which brings us to the Congress, a millionaire's club if there ever was one. http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/overview.asp
From the wealthy person's perspective, it's imperative that the wealthy maintain control of the political process in this country because that is where the biggest risk lies, when it comes to losing assets. In the financial markets, fortunes are made and lost, but this is the nature of the game, and it's accepted. However, in the political market, fortunes are made and lost even more easily, with nothing more than the stroke of a pen; i.e., new legislation passed into law. If Congress suddenly became populated with poor people, what do you think those poor people would do as their first act of Congress? Undoubtedly, they would take from the wealthy (through taxation, or otherwise) and line their own pockets. And if they remembered their roots, they might also line the pockets of their friends and family. In other words, income redistribution. And this, I assure you, the wealthy people simply will not tolerate. They stole the money fair and square, and they are not about to allow anyone else to play the same trick on them.
From the poor person's perspective, they might just dream of not having to worry about where the next meal or paycheck is coming from. But if the poor could look beyond the hunger pangs to obtain some political power, undoubtedly the status quo would be in for a big shake-up, no surprise there. Yes, a simple law could upset the entire apple cart. Example: a law which severely curtails inheritance. That would sting pretty bad for all those trust fund kids in Congress and elsewhere, and that's why it will never happen. Even if it did, the wealthy would find a way around it, so don't get your hopes up.
As to your point #3, I'm not even gonna get started on that, I've already taken up too much time with my diatribe.
Thanks for reading, if you did. good luck.