The public interests are unprotected.

There are two shields against the waste of tax dollars;

1. trust, and
2. standards and accountability.

Trust; you simply trust that you can hand over the control over your power and resources to politicians and public servants and trust them to spent them honestly, wisely and well.

Standards and accountability; you write or have written, standards of conduct and competence that are high enough to prevent the squandering of your trust and treasure. And then you enforce them without exception.

Clearly, the public interests are not protected. There is not day that goes by without the revelation of more tax dollars wasted or stolen. Whether by trust or by standards and accountability, the public interests are unprotected.

If you accept that the public interests are not well protected, you have conceded that trusting politicians and public servants is not working; and there are not standards and accountability enough to compensate for the lack of trustworthiness.

Some argue the solution is as simple as electing politicians and hiring public servants who are both competent and honest. I would argue, if that strategy was truly viable, sometime in the last two hundred years, the strategy would have worked; we would have elected politicians and public servants that ended the culture of corruption and incompetence in government and public service.

Through how many more elections will we blithely assume that we can expect that this time, we will finally elect and hire politicians and public servants who are up to the task of ending the culture of corruption and incompetence in government and public service?

It is widely argued that doing the same thing over and over,
and expecting a different outcome, is crazy.

In contrast, we have never tried establishing unequivocal standards of conduct and competence for politicians and public servants. Proof of that premise; those standards do not now exist.

We have never tried holding politicians and public servants inescapably accountable to any standards at all, not even the law.

Even if there were trustworthiness, it would run a far distant second to inescapable accountability to unequivocal standards; meaningful standards, in protecting the public interests.

The incontrovertible proof that politics and public service cannot be trusted is; between them, they have never established honest accountability meaningful standards of conduct and competence for politicians and public servants.

But what the heck, let's give it one more try. Let's go into another election season with the hope that this time we can elect politicians and hire public servants who can be trusted to spend our power and resources honestly, wisely and well.

Or, we can stand up and demand honest accountability to meaningful standards of conduct and competence in politics and public service.