It may have been before my time, here, but I'm not aware of any controversy over pay scales being published. I think it's a good thing when we can compare individual contracts.

As far as politics, JC has the Lav. I don't see any reason why this site couldn't have a "politics" forum. Speaking for myself, I'm not the slight bit interested in political posts at an aviation site. I think it would be fair game to move threads that turn political in nature to a political forum, if we had one, and that would tick off those who weren't involved in the "political thread creep". I could see that as being a problem.