In most respects, this months horror story about the incredibly corrupt officials of Bell, California doesn’t require any ethics commentary. The verdict is obvious. Robert Rizzo, Bell’s city manager, was collecting an $800,000 a year salary to run a dirt-poor town of  40,000 residents. Part-time city council members took home almost $100,000 annually, mostly by paying themselves to serve on municipal boards and commissions. Rizzo stood to collect a $600,000-a-year pension, and police chief Randy Adams, who was paid more than most big city police chiefs, had arranged for a $411,300-a-year pension. The city officials of Bell were predators, using their positions to steal money from the cities citizens. To pay for all the rich salaries and pensions, Bell’s crooked officials passed unconscionable property taxes, levied on a city population that averaged income less than $25,000 per capita . Even Charlie Rangel wouldn’t argue that this is politics as usual.

Nevertheless, this is a republic, and citizens, even citizens of small towns, have an obligation to pay attention to what their elected officials are doing. They have an obligation to understand the system, vote, and pay attention to what laws are passed. It is clear that for years, Bell’s residents did none of that. Rizzo and his gang got the power to vote themselves huge salaries and pensions because nobody, or almost nobody, bothered to vote. In the special election that was intended to law the groundwork for the Bell heist, fewer than 400 votes were cast—less than 1%. There is evidence that the crooked pols of Bell used absentee ballot fraud to make sure they got the votes necessary to let them loot the town treasury, but that’s awfully easy when only a handful of citizens bother to show up at the polls.

The citizens of Bell, were betrayed by their leaders, and nothing could excuse the conduct of Rizzo and the rest. Still, this outrage could only occur because Bell’s residents abdicated their obligations as citizens. They were not informed, they were not involved, they were not diligent, and they were not responsible. They must share the blame for their own mistreatment.

This is true of all of us. Americans’ participation in elections is a lot better than 1%, but it is still less than half the population, and I don’t want to think about how much of that is genuinely informed participation. I know that I have voted for candidates in local elections about whom I knew next to nothing, other than their party affiliation and their official photograph. That’s not responsible voting, and the cautionary tale of Bell, California shows why. If we don’t perform our duties as engaged citizens, we have to share accountability when our leaders and representatives turn out to be thieves, low-lifes, liars and dolts.

The officials of Bell, California deserve to be in jail, but the citizens of Bell should be ashamed of themselves.

Oh yes: I should mention that the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, which exists to stop abuses like this, knew about the outrageous salaries and pensions in Bell years ago, and inexplicably did nothing— a complete failure of competence and responsibility.