Quick quiz: Name ten movie stars.

Ten musicians.

Ten comedians.

Ten football or basketball stars.

Odds are, you made a 100 on that quiz just from off the top of your head. But the odds also say you probably don’t know who your state representative is, your Federal representative or the Speaker of the House. Some of you don’t even know what the Speaker of the House is – but you’ve heard the term before.

It’s not because you’re dumb – if you were, you wouldn’t be able to remember not only your favorite movies stars but several of their movies without having to think. It’s because you take interest in one, but not the other.

Nor is it some big failing – heck, I can’t tell you who the current coroner of my county is without checking – and I’m pretty sure I voted for him or her. There are some advantages to knowing the Who’s Who of politics – same advantages that we have when we keep up with office politics – but it’s not essential.

For one thing, it’s easy enough to look up if you don’t happen to remember the name of your state senator – that mini-computer in your pocket can do that quickly enough. For another, the names change – sometimes very fast. But you do need to know a bit about how the system works – what’s government like under the hood?

Knowing how the thing works makes it easier to decide when you DO need to figure out who’s in office – and who the guy is that wants to be in office. But here again, it’s not like you need to understand the House Committee system – it’s debatable whether the House parliamentarian understands it either – and it’s his job.

But even the most basic diagram of legislation will send most folks looking for an exciting paint drying contest. It’s BORING – and it seems to take care of itself, so why bother?

Because you’re part of the oversight system. Humans don’t come in size perfect. Humans plus enormous power – yeah, this isn’t going to end well if we put it on autopilot. Think of the stupidest thing that your government has done lately – part of the problem that led to that stupidity is politicians believing no one is paying much, if any, attention. A few political junkies getting upset is just not a threat to them.

But a whole bunch of constituents? THAT’S a problem – one politicians spend time and effort to avoid. There’s that old adage about the cat and the mice – we’re the kitty, and far too many of us are away. We shouldn’t be surprised that the mice are at play – with our tax dollars. But when that cat is at home, even just keeping a watchful eye out? Nary a mouse to be seen.

Darkness is the hiding place for evil. When We the People ignore our political representatives it’s an invitation for abuse. Billions of dollars of ill spent, misappropriated, and just plain stupid allocations are not far behind.

The Federal government is awash in cash – and there are 465 congressmen who have a hundred different lobbyists with a thousand different ways to spend money to ‘fix’ or ‘help’ – and no one bothering to find out if there is money already being spent on that, or if decades old programs are still needed or much of any significant accounting – plenty of actual accounting, you’d be amazed at how much the Federal government spends on bean counters – but very little of the accounting necessary to eliminate the bloated waste that is the Federal budget.

It’s easy to blame the mice – but we need to have a sit down with that cat. If the cat – us – is derelict in its duty, why are we expecting anything other than the morass of corruption and stupidity that we have now? The waste and the overreach – the out and out greed – of the Federal government all trace to our apathy.

So what can we do? Well, reading the Federal budget is out – it’s thousands of pages long and not written to be read. Even the pdf’s are hysterically large for any given section. Pretty much, if you aren’t an accountant or don’t know exactly what you are looking for, don’t bother reading it, you’ll never find it.

But there’s no good reason why that should be the case – we pay BILLIONS for the Federal government to have computers and software – I think we can hire a couple guys that know how to use spreadsheets and make accessible databases out of the word and number salad that is the Federal budget. No one does – because we don’t DEMAND it.

You’re thinking, “I couldn’t read it even then!’ – me neither. BUT there are 327,000,000 of We the People – which means we have plenty of folks who can sort it out and break it down for us so we can decide whether we want the government doing such and such. But we shouldn’t have to hire people to figure out the Byzantine Federal budget – it should be accessible to anyone willing and able to slog through it – both in publication (which the government already does) and in coherence (which is writing in good, standard English instead of 16th Century legalese). But for that to happen – WE have to demand it.

And for it to matter, WE have to use it – either reading it ourselves or reading trusted analysists. And then taking action accordingly.

Because when we don’t, what we get is a house full of mice – and those mice are spending OUR money like it’s going out of style.