[Amezarak]

I would actually wager the average American understands the federal government much better than their state government, due to the hyperfocus in schools and in the media on the federal government. State and local governments get away with incredible amounts of nonsense because people don't know or care anything about them.

[epalmer]

I agree. My daughter knows both. She just graduated High School. She has lobbied Congress and The Senate at the federal level and written a state bill (with 2 other high school students) that passed and was signed by our governor. While her experience is unusual, the schools here focus on us history and us government history.

I do think when I was in high school I learned more about the rest of the world than they do. And that is sad.

[Inthenameofmine]

> She has lobbied Congress and The Senate at the federal level and written a state bill (with 2 other high school students) that passed and was signed by our governor.

At least doing auch lobbying and drafting was possible. This would be unthinkable in the EU. The disconnect to even the highly involved politically aware person in the EU to the power structures is huge. In manu cases purposefully and by design so. After all, the EU was born oit of a price pact essentially stablished though conglomerate economic interest. (steel, coal, electricity, transport, machinery).

[epalmer]

That is sad. In the us it is easy to lobby congress and the senate. It takes coordination and determination. Whether they listen is another story. But my daughter's cause is something that both sides of the isle care about.

Writing the state bill turned out to be easier than we would have thought but it took a lot of presentations and having the right people listening the presentations. She actually had surprising cooperation from a democratic state chairwoman of education and a republican state senator.

The cause is funding for afterschool STEM competitions for disadvantaged schools.

https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?161+sum+SB246