The Cheat Beat

Is it just me or are we seeing a rise in scandals involving governments, politicians, bureaucrats, and our tax dollars? I'm no history buff nor do I have the stats to back it up, but my gut feeling is that as our standard of living goes up, financial pressures increase as well. Thus, the temptation to dip into the pool we aren't supposed to dip into becomes stronger and stronger, and more of us start falling for it.

It's not only politicians and bureaucrats. We've all witnessed recent corporate accounting scandals.

Corporate scandals are bad, but government scandals bother me the most, since cheating politicians and bureaucrats defy the public trust - my trust and your trust.

Every time I hear about misuse of public dollars, I wonder how many more cases are out there that we just don't know about.

Perhaps it's time for the cheat beat. Have investigative reporters devoted to finding and exposing public cheaters and thieves by investigating tips and conducting random checks.

Maybe the big shots will be more careful if they know there are people out there intent on exposing the blatant misuse of our money.