Keller @ Large: Government Incompetence May Be Public Enemy Number 1

BOSTON (CBS) - Who's responsible for the deep-seated anger at Washington that fueled the rise of both Donald Trump on the right and Bernie Sanders on the left?

The answer is complicated, and there's plenty of blame to go around.

But a key part of the problem landed in my inbox Wednesday night, in the form of a press release from the US Attorney in New York City announcing the arrest of a local pharmacist who swindled the taxpayers out of $8.5 million in fraudulent Medicaid and Medicare payments.

This guy owned nine pharmacies in Brooklyn and Queens, a license to print money legally. But that allegedly wasn't enough for him.

He would pay customers to hand over their prescriptions, then bill the feds for drugs that were never actually distributed.

And get this – the arrest of this alleged greedhead was part of a nationwide sweep that nabbed more than 300 doctors, nurses and other medical personnel for close to a billion dollars worth of fraud schemes.

Since its formation nine years ago, the Medicare Fraud Strike Force has busted nearly 3,000 people in Medicare scams worth almost $9 billion, that's billion with a "b."

Yes, it's a government agency making these arrests, and yes, it's private citizens doing the stealing.

But the ineptitude of a system that is so easily bilked out of so much in precious funds fuels a broader narrative – that government incompetence is, if not public enemy number one, certainly in the top five.

That's what Trump and company are feeding off of. That's the main problem people who believe in government have to fix.

Because if they don't, the waste and fraud will continue, and so will the political backlash.

Listen to Jon's commentary: