I'm really kind of surprised that private citizens haven't started banding their dollars together to buy lobbyists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs
Back when labor unions were a new thing, they would hire political candidates. The thinking worked like this: this is a (coal-mining, steel-smelting, textile fabricating, whatever) town and given that most of the people in this town are (coal-miners, steel smelters, textile workers, or whatever), if we all band together in a union, pick out a guy that WE want to run for office, pay for his campaign, then maybe we can actually get some things changed around here.
And for a while they were successful.
Nowadays, based on my experience, the only thing unions are really useful for is collecting dues.
We need a new type of union. Not a union tied to labor or skills, but just straight up citizen unions. They ought to collect dues and in addition to trying to get certain people into political office they should hire lobbyists to represent the needs of the people. Because as it stands, politicians don't hear the needs of the people, they have too many lobbyists in and out of their offices all day representing the corporations.