Government – it’s by the people and for the people…right? Transparency is a hot topic these days, and it should be, because taxpayers and citizens have a right to know exactly what their government is up to.

Since the government is for and by the people, it would follow that people should know more about the government than the government knows about the people.

That’s not the case, according to the rather disturbing video below, an ad from the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue, which clearly want Pennsylvania’s residents to know…”we’re watching you!”

I don’t know about you, but this gives me the creeps. It’s one thing for a government to have information about citizens, it’s another thing entirely to flaunt it and use it as a bully stick.

This is a great example of why, now more than ever, taxpayers need tools to make sure they know what’s going on inside government. That’s why transparency tools like MaineOpenGov.org are so popular and vital to our free society. They make sure that citizens are armed with enough information about government to hold them accountable.

Now if we could just get Google maps to zoom in on Maine government’s wasteful spending