Over much of the last 30 years, the majority of us have been willing to turn the reign of government over to someone else while we enjoyed our double decaf lattes and spent Saturday afternoons shopping.

Beginning with the Reagan administration right through to the current Bush administration, almost without interruption, we have handed over our civil rights as if we were returning a pair of slacks that didn't quite fit.  

We've stood at the curb like little children watching a parade as the greatest shift of wealth in human history has transformed our society.

And we've allowed our government to start not one, but two major wars with little to no shared sacrifice or public debate.

Government oversight and accountability has become virtually nonexistent, the equivalent of nailing Jell-O to the wall.

Arianna Huffington calls it the "Who Could Have Known?" era. Who could have known that there were no WMD's? Who could have known that the levies wouldn't hold in New Orleans? Who could have known that so many bad mortgages would end in millions of foreclosures?

The answer: many people knew and did nothing about it.

The feds have reduced interest rates to 0.25 percent in a frantic move to keep the economy from total collapse - but who could have known we were heading for this much trouble?

Bernie Madoff makes off with billions in his investment scheme and the head of the SEC, after admitting his agency received complaints about Madoff as far back as 1999, offered up a weak apology, but not his resignation.

As former New York Times writer and Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston pointed out at a talk last night, the relationship between regulators and those they are supposed to be monitoring has become cozy. Couple that with an Internal Revenue System that fears taxing the rich, Johnston says, and we weaken the stability of our society.

Elected officials have our attention now.

For the first time in decades, Americans seem tuned in to what is happening at nearly every level of government.

And we aren't thrilled at what we're seeing.