I ran into this today on a tech site I read. The article refers to the city of Bozeman Montana and applying for city employment. On the employment application they request not just if you have participated in any social networking sites or other on line participation but also your USERNAMES and PASSWORDS for those accounts. I read this twice and three times just to be sure I read it correctly. There were many commenters on this and one person says he checked it out and confirmed it.

http://www.dailytech.com/City+Requests+Facebook+MySpace+Google+Logins
+and+Passwords+of+Job+Applicants/article15465.htm

This is an indicator of just how much the mentaility of government is changing and how abusive government power can become.

It should come as no surprise that our government has been the driver of so many awful results of late. Our elected officials are truly clueless. This nation is being swept away in a flood of ignorance and stupidity.

It occurred to me to ask which of the two, knowledge or money, is more valable a resource for citizens?

I ask this question in the context of information made available on the Interent.

I'm thinking that ultimately no amount of money can withstand the truth.

In a topsy turvy post 9/11 and financial collapsed world I'm uncertain of the wisdom of compromises being made on our behalf.

The Saudi state is proclaimed as a staunch ally yet the majority of 9/11 hijackers came from there and vast sums of terrorist dollars came from there and probably still do. Now we are supposed to accept a continuation of trying the diplomatic approach with Iran even though what has just apparently occurred is so dramatically in conflict with our perceptions of equitable governance.

The same is true of the actions of our government with the handling of the financial collapse. The compromises made and which are continuing have done little to rectify the lack of systemic accountability or gross negligence of financial regulators. In fact we have the opposite. People who were very close to what has occurred are the very ones involved in 'fixing' it. This is absurd, is just stupid beyond belief and shows a complete lack of common sense.

The same is true for health care. Medical costs have risen 50% in the last six or seven years but that ridiculous increase is of no apparent concern to federal regulators.

Our crazy system of taxation has allowed U.S. corporations to avoid paying taxes through manipulation of offshore accounting schemes or Swiss bank accounts while wage earners pay their fair share.

Jobs have disappeared by the millions and have been transferred to nations which are our competitors in the global economy. But that hasn't done shit to keep prices for goods and services from going up, up and up. How dumb is that?

Compromise is fine for a masochist I suppose. For everyone else it equates to being royally screwed.