>>Anyways to me there's something fishy when I see a guy that earned 400000$ a year going for a job where he'll get 125000 per year. And for a reason he'll say "I'm doing it to help ______ (replace with "The planet", "My country", "My fellow citizens"). What I admire from them is their ability to say that without laughing.
>
>Don't you do any volunteer work? I give away a lot of my time for free because it's good for my community or my country. Right now, I'm giving one day a week to the Obama campaign.
>
>As long as you have enough to pay the bills, there are other things in life more important than money.
>
>Tamar

The last thing I wanted to do is to insult you Tamar. Sorry if I did. Volunteer work is a really nice thing to do but you're not a politician. I'm sure that only in the writing of your "Hacker's guide" books there must have been many hours of volunteer work ;-)

Here's a story. This is only one from many many stories that others could share I'm sure.

We have a guy over here that was a very good surgeon. He left his job to become the minister responsible for health in the province. The guy always talked saying that the public system was the best thing and that the private system was not an option yada yada yada. The guy just resigned from his job as a politician. Buuuut not long before he left he helped to pass some laws to help the private industry. Oh and by the way guess what he left for.... If you said a job in the private medical care bingo you're a winner.

But to top it off now some politicians are saying that perhaps he did some things illegal. So they're going to look into that.

Now they say that the perception people have about them doesn't reflect who they really are. That only a tiny tiny minority is doing bad things. What I don't understand is that here in that case even if the ex minister of health didn't do anything wrong it really looks that way. Shouldn't these guys pass a law so that a situation like that never occur again..... hmm from what I saw from politicians in the last 20 years I'd say no.

Volunteer work or any kind of work is good when you do it for the right reasons. It's when there are hidden agendas that things turn ugly.