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Bullshit. This study by the GAO (Government Accountability Office) http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05464.pdf investigated 7 cities across the U.S. Nowhere (that I saw) in the article does it mention that the officers have to be shot by the taser as part of the training.

Now it is possible that specific states/cities might require it, but it is certainly not universal. Also, tasers are not classified as firearms by the ATF, so any schmuck can legally purchase and carry one. Again, specific states might be more stringent.

http://www.gao.gov/

I see the ACLU and EFF serving the same purpose, except they're the investigative/defensive arm of the general citizenry.

The same place they were for the other seventy-nine. The reason you haven't heard of them isn't because they aren't around and it isn't because they aren't doing their job. It's because the vast bulk of people just never research what's going on deeply enough to have even a passing familiarity with the groups involved. GAO's been around since 1921. They were hugely involved with The New Deal. Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt tried to get rid of the GAO, but failed. Why? Because they're deeply influential and hugely involved with the history of this nation.

It never ceases to amaze me how SlashDotters confuse "I haven't heard of it" with "it hasn't been succeeding."

source: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04375.pdf

Unless your definition of "almost forever" is considerably shorter than mine.

Here http://archive.gao.gov/paprpdf2/160369.pdf/ is a GAO report that (among other things)documents IBM telling the US Federal Government that they will no longer be stocking spare parts for air traffic control mainframes that IBM installed only 13 years earlier.

Actually, many pesticides are at least somewhat effective nerve agents against mammals in high enough concentrations. Certain people can be extremely effected by certain pesticides over and above average reactions, too. Many of them are toxic in other ways instead of or in addition to being nerve agents in people. In the U.S., the EPA makes no suggestion that pesticides are not toxic to humans. They rate them by how toxic they are and how quickly they break down. They then clear some of them for use in certain concentrations with certain labels and certain restrictions on who can use some of them. Pesticides are known to be a danger to the nervous, endocrine, and reproductive systems. The health benefits of having higher yields and therefore cheaper prices on foods -- especially fruits and vegetables -- is often thought to outweigh the risks. This may be true when properly designed pesticides are properly used and your food is properly cleaned before you eat it. As with most things in life, though, there are trade-offs.

I, for one, have been in the emergency room for a number of hours before with what the doctors called giant hives due to exposure to pesticides. Giant hives are just like regular hives, only my hives were 2-3 inches wide, 4-8 inches long, and up to a quarter of an inch raised from the normal surface of the skin. They itch like hell, are pretty painful, they're very discolored, and they can last for days or weeks. They're caused by a number of things, but mine were caused by pesticide exposure. The doctors were monitoring to make sure my throat didn't close since I had such a strong reaction in the skin.

Lots of people are even saying that lower IQ scores, more asthma, and other health problems among children are due the amount of pesticides used in schools. ADD, Asperger's, and many of the issues that have been increasingly diagnosed are neurological in nature. Those rates may or may not have something to do with pesticides. The truth is, no one really knows what the levels of pesticides in U.S. schools is doing to kids. The EPA has guidelines to reduce exposure due to suspicion that it can't be good to have children inundated with the stuff. The state of Washington a few years ago pass a law stating that parents must be notified when there children's schools would be using pesticides. The state of New York has a nice writeup on a study it did in which it states that 87% of schools in NY used pesticides, that no pesticide be considered completely safe, and lists the more usual effects of several common pesticides and herbicides.

The Soviets that Reagan faced had thousands of nuclear warheads targeting the entire continental United States and all of our allies...

Can you explain how proxy wars in Afghanistan or in other places around the world changes this situation? I'm failing to see your logic.

Of course, and all methods prior to war should be employed since violence should be reserved for the court of very last appeal...

The simple fact is that all methods prior to war is not how it happens. Under the lesser of two evils mentality, force is actually one of the first options considered. Iraq is just one of many examples going back to World War II.

The world court is useful for the prosecution of war criminals...

Not even that, see Nicaragua v. United States. I am leery of any government, including ours, that thinks is can conduct wars of aggression with impunity. When sovereignty of nations is held up as an excuse for war criminals to hide behind, then international law and the World Court have no meaning.

The military contractors employed by the United States government in Iraq are not mercenaries because they are nationals (i.e. US Citizens) of party to the conflict or residents of territory (Iraqis) controlled by a Party to the conflict.

I'll quote from the Government Accountability Office since you keep asserting what is false:

DOD estimates that it has more than 50,000 contractor employees in support of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.1 Depending on the types of services being provided [which include combat operations] contractor employees may be U.S. citizens or third country nationals from countries such as the United Kingdom, the Philippines, Bangladesh, India, or Pakistan [we won't mention South Africa or Chile - not good politics]...Additionally, contractor employees have been responsible for additional illegal activities, including acts of theft and black market activities [not to mention murder, sexual assault and other villianry]...Contractors may find it difficult to complete background screenings of their Iraqi and third country national employees because of a lack of reliable information...As GAO reported in July 2005,11 screening for human rights violators is problematic, and others we have spoken with agree that screening individuals for human rights abuses or convictions is very difficult.

According to this article: "There are more than 1,500 South Africans in Iraq today, most of whom are former members of the South African Defense Force and South African Police."

I think you'll have to work a little harder to "prove" that it doesn't meet the criteria under the definition that you have supplied. Clearly, it does - do a little more research if you don't like the "liberal" news source.

As for civilians not having any business making that choice for other people...

My argument is not that citizens shouldn't be involved. My argument is that if citizens are going to decide on military operations, they should be part of them. You support the war? You should have the courage of your convictions and join it or be able to explain why someone else - someone that is probably poorer, less educated, and with a darker skin color than you - should die in your place.

Your excuse seems to be that those in the military "volunteered" to do it. So many people "volunteering" in fact, that the U.S. needs to hire mercenaries to do the fighting. So many people that they are offering sign-up bonuses and other incentives in the neighborhood of $16,000 dollars per recruit to entice people from lower income strata to join. And you have the gall to sit here and claim mercenaries aren'

Medical insurance is rising rapidly, but the average settlement is about a half million dollars. Further, 5% of doctors are responsible for most settlements. It seems that shitcanning doctors that routinely screw up is a much faster way to reduce insurance costs. check the second link - in Nevada, two doctors were responsible for 2/3rds of the awards for one year. Maybe they had a bad year, or maybe they shouldn't be practicing.

NASA is in the awful position of trying to pretend that Bush's lunar program is real. Congress isn't going to appropriate the money. Smart people aren't going to come to work on the program. The date is always a decade or two off. It's vaporware. So they futz around with stuff like this, lacking the money or capability to develop a new launch vehicle.

NASA barely has a manned launch capability. The Shuttles will be retired in three years, and the "Crew Exploration Vehicle" program is vaporware. The General Accounting Office was very critical of the program in 2006: NASA has attempted several expensive endeavors such as the National Aero-Space Plane, the X-33 and X-34, and the Space Launch Initiative, among others. While these endeavors have helped to advance scientific and technical knowledge, none have completed their objective of fielding a new reusable space vehicle. We estimate that these unsuccessful development efforts have cost approximately $4.8 billion since the 1980s." The original schedule called for contract award for the CEV in 2006 after the preliminary design review, but although a contract has been awarded, the PDR has been pushed back to 2008.

Originally, the CRV was supposed to fly in 2014. Unlikely at this point.

It's sad to note that the Big Gemini spacecraft, proposed in 1967 and mocked up by McDonnell Douglas, was intended to take 9 people to a space station in low orbit. If that had been built, reusing the Gemini technology (which was quite good), the US would have had a low-end crew vehicle. So NASA is now trying to replicate 1967 technology. But with the second team; who goes to work for NASA today?

Realistically, the US manned space effort ends in 2010.

It seems that the Carpenter debacle is only the latest of a string of management failures at the facility. A big of Googling turned up a cache of PDFs posted to a Los Alamos related web site (LANL, The Real Story). The site is no longer maintained, but available. The letters are PDFs of actual correspondence from Senator Grassley to the Secretary of Energy, the Department of Energy Inspector General, and other high-ranking officials regarding security problems and retaliation issues at Sandia. Sandia has a separate Corporate Investigations division, and in 2003 and 2004 they turned up some interesting items in their investigations. From the correspondence, however, it seems that Sandia management wasn't too pleased when they got the bad news from the investigators, who were simply trying to do their jobs.

The investigators were threatened, transferred to rodent-infested trailers, and were written up. According to two of the letters, Senator Grassley's office saved their jobs by intervening on their behalf, issuing several strong warnings to Sandia about retaliating against whistleblowers.

Here's some highlights: After investigating an incident in Sandia's SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) that involved alleged sexual liaisons between highly cleared staff members, the Sandia Vice President in charge at the time -- David Nokes -- ordered a subordinate to destroy a hard drive that was assigned as evidence to the investigation. The subordinate complied by "smashing the hard drive with a sledge hammer." The SCIF employee in question was also found to have been hacking into Sandia Intranet computers. It became impossible to find out exactly what the employee was doing after the drive was destroyed. The drive was presumably destroyed because the VP wanted to "avoid embarrassment" to the organization.

After being "forced" to resign, C. Paul Robinson and Mr. Nokes publicly sparred in the press. While this public display was going on, Dr. Robinson was quietly reinstating Mr. Nokes' security clearances and hiring him back as a "security consultant". Now that seems odd, given the circumstances of his departure. It was only until an unknown Sandia employee anonymously faxed Mr. Nokes' clearance reinstatement paperwork to Senator Grassley's office did the good Senator become aware of what was going on.

After the smoke cleared from Sandia executive management's "sham internal review" of what happened (the Senator's words, not mine), Sandia quietly handed out huge bonuses to the employees that toed the company line -- including the hard drive smasher (who was in charge of security at the SCIF). None of this became public until they were posted on the LANL site by -- you guessed it -- an anonymous person. The Albuquerque Journal ran a story about the huge bonuses and pay raises awarded to every employee that was disciplined in the matter in the fall of 2006. While disciplined publicly, they all received huge cash awards ($20,000 non-base award to the drive smasher) and unheard of pay raises. That seems like sort of a red flag to me, especially since the American tax payer is doling out the cash for this nonsense.

BTW, Sandia Corporation is a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation. It was set up as an at-will employer, so staff can be fired for any reason and at any time. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on the Department of Energy reimbursement of contractor litigation expenses can be found here: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04148r.pdf

The GAO found that almost all claims are summarily reimbursed by the DOE, even in cases of malfeasance, fraudulent conduct, etc ($330 million between 1998 and 2003). DOE contractors only picked up a paltry $12 million of the tab.

There's all kinds of goodies in the PDFs, so I won't ruin the suspense for those of you that are interested.

The Sandia National Laboratories / Senator Grassley docume

The GAO is supposed to deal with this issue.

Here is the URL, anyone effected by this (or any concerned citizen) may report this Microshafted again bogusness

http://www.gao.gov/fraudnet/fraudnet.htm

I know I am beyond annoyed with even a single penny of my tax money, federal, state or local going to those convicted liars and thuggish bully boy monopolists. That company has needed to be broken up, corporate charters revoked, and their executives chucked in jail a long time ago. And what about security? How the HELL is forcing people to run WINDOWS supposed to be secure?

Have at it, lads.

Just two days ago, the editors published this so-called "article" which claimed that the GAO did a study and "found" that patents are harming innovation in the pharmaceutical industry. Not only was the article they linked to a fairly blatant re-republication of Democratic party spin, but the editors clearly did not even read the actual GAO report. You can see my comments that pointed it out largely fell on deaf ears (Hint: the GAO said nothing like what they claimed).

This is hardly the first time I've seen slashdot do stuff like this. Given a choice between publishing what amounts of outright lies and distortions and a user (be it a lone person or even an organization) submitting articles that favor one particular news organization (particularly not an unreasonable one)... I'd certainly pick the latter. I frankly fail to see the problem with this if there is not a question of accuracy. If slashdot cannot find a more newsworthy article to publish through their usual means, why shouldn't a pro-active news organization help them and profit in the meantime?

First, let's start with a link to the report itself, rather than a blog entry about the report:

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0749.pdf

Second, you'll find the blog entry to be mostly 'spin' of the GAO report. The GAO report pretty much restricts itself to reporting what a 'panel of experts' they convened said about declining research productivity in pharmaceuticals - the usual industry criticisms are there together with the standard rebuttals, with the report presenting almost no consensus conclusions beyond the basic numbers/graphs on drug approvals. In fact, I tried multiple substring searches of the one quote in the blog entry claimed to be from the report and I couldn't find it. Maybe the blog writer too got confused about what someone said about the report and what the report itself says!

Sorry for the factual interruption. We now return you to the highly-moderated pharma-bashing party.

Disclaimer: I work for a pharma company

During our review, we found a wide variety of views among consumer advocates, drug development experts and analysts, and industry representatives regarding how the protection of intellectual property affects innovation in drug development. Intellectual property protections are designed to help encourage innovation by providing financial incentives to engage in research and development efforts.

One form of intellectual property protection is a patent, which provides its owner with the right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for 20 years. In the United States, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issues patents. Typically, companies that develop brand-name drugs obtain a patent on the active ingredient used in the drug. Patents are seen as playing a key role in drug development, because they allow pharmaceutical companies to charge prices that allow them to recover their investments made in discovering and developing a new drug and earn a profit.

Through both their reports and our interviews with them, consumer advocates and some pharmaceutical industry analysts expressed concerns that certain intellectual property protections do not encourage innovation. First, they contended that companies can easily obtain new patents by making minor changes to existing products regardless of whether the drugs offer significant therapeutic advances. Second, they indicated that pharmaceutical companies may develop new uses for previously approved drugs that have no patent protection and receive an additional 3 years of "market exclusivity." According to these sources, these intellectual property protections enable companies to earn significant profits while reducing the incentive to develop more innovative drugs. These sources pointed to the relatively high percentage of non-NMEs, and standard NMEs in particular, that have been approved over the past decade as evidence that development efforts have focused on making changes to existing drugs. Some analysts specifically highlighted the practice commonly known as producing line extensions--deriving new products from existing compounds by making small changes to existing products, such as changing a drug's dosage, or changing a drug from a tablet to a capsule. According to analysts, these changes are typically made to blockbuster drugs shortly before their patents expire. Some analysts also concluded that this practice redirects resources that otherwise could be applied to developing new and innovative drugs.

In contrast, the pharmaceutical industry contended that due to the rising costs and complexity of developing new drugs, these intellectual property protections are crucial to maintaining drug development efforts. Drug sponsors and industry analysts also indicated that new drugs produced by modifying existing compounds are the result of incremental innovation, and such drugs can result in important therapies. For example, by changing a medicine to reduce its dosage schedule requirements, some industry analysts indicated that patients are more likely to comply with their prescription's instructions. Finally, some analysts assert that the revenues generated from incremental innovation are needed to fund the more risky ongoing research and development efforts, which can lead to new innovations.

GAO is now the Government Accountability Office. Here's a link to the report.

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0749.pdf

GAO Junkie

GAO Junkie

GAO Junkie

The only way to stop Bush from using "politics" to subvert our government to his destructive corporate agenda is to impeach him. He doesn't care about "accountability moments" anymore, because he's a "lame duck", no reelection carrot to discipline his manners. And losing his Republican Congress means he's extremely dangerous, because he has nothing left to lose except his Executive privileges. Which are huge, especially since Bush has spent his 6 years remaking the government according to the Unitary Executive "theory" that is his only real ideology other than unlimited money and power. He's spending OVER $3 TRILLION of your money (paid over the rest of your life) every year, on his priorities, not yours.

Stop him now. Impeach him now. It's the only way to stop the damage before he starts "upgrading" the impeachment process itself.

and frankly, it seems the police can't be trusted with tasers

How many abuse incidents were there in the more than 70,000 times that tasers have been used by police? Instead of making overbroad generalizations, you should realize that tasers (and other weapons like bean bag shotgun rounds, pepper spray, and hopefully the microwave pain ray that the military's been working on) are an effective way of apprehending criminals and protecting the public without causing lasting, disfiguring injury or death in all but the most exceptional of cases. Yes, they can be abused, but so can a firearm or a broomstick.

Damn cops, can't trust 'em with a broomstick.

The physical factors account for some of it, but not much. For one thing, the suburban qualities of America doesn't give much insight into why it is that city dwellers in most of America still have broadband speeds that pale in comparison to those in much of Europe and Asia. Remember that according to the FCC, broadband means anything over 200kbs, so talking about "broadband" in America and South Korea is really talking about two completely different things.

The "America is so huge" argument doesn't work when you also recognize that most Americans only have two broadband providers to choose from. The consolidation of the telecom market means that it is a losing proposition for one carrier to enter a geographic market that another carrier has already taken. Usually it comes down to "competition" in the form of a choice between the dominant local telecom and whichever cable operator has the contract for the area. You can drink anything you want, as long as it is Coke or Pepsi.

By defining broadband as an "information service" the FCC and the Supreme Court (in the Brand X decision) turned the incombent telecos and cable companies loose. They no longer had to lease excess capacity to new entrants in the market. The anti-competitive measures taken by the Baby Bells in the late 1990s were essentially excused and ratified, and almost all of the plucky broadband competitors that sprung up to bring broadband to the masses were squashed by the giant, slow-moving, ever-consolidating telecom entities.

The South Korean approach worked in part because the government created an initial infrastructure and allowed carriers to compete on top of it. Here in the US, we talk about the free market incessantly, but in reality we have coddled the Baby Bells. They are the severed pieces of the old AT&T, which was essentially a government-protected monopoly for decades. So when the heads of these companies talk about how pissed off they are at Google, et. al., for using "their" networks, just remember that they were born rich. Sure, they built the fiber optic networks and invested billions in infrastructure, but were it not for government intervention in the early years of telecom, they would have been in the same place as Covad and all the other newcomers. Anyone can compete in the broadband market in theory, but in reality if the incumbents have a decades-long lead on you and billions of dollars, how in the hell are you going to get the funding necessary to compete? Of course, with that nice head start, the mutant offspring of the Baby Bells are fervent supporters of free market competition. Funny how that works, isn't it?

Look up broadband prices in the US from 10 years ago, five years ago, and now. Evidence of a truly competitive market? Check prices per megabyte in the US against those in the OECD report linked to below. Something isn't right.

I could go on and on about this, but Copps is right. The US is getting its ass kicked in broadband, and the "hands off" approach the government has taken over the last ten years has clearly not worked. Sure, we're a big country, but the technical aspects are the smallest part of the equation. After all, the Internet was started here. DSL was invented here. Fiber optic cable was first put to practical use here. We screwed up politically, and now we're paying for it.

Broadband Reality Check II (PDF)

OECD report on broadband access in several countries

GAO report on broadband (PDF) - takes the FCC to task for failures in its methodology for determining broadband penetration.

Umm, currently Customs & Border Patrol runs "interior checkpoints" throughout San Diego County, part of their "defense-in-depth" approach.

See
GAO report (pdf)
Northeast interior checkpoints to become permanent
CBP Border Patrol Checkpoint Seizes Arsenal of Weapons (google cache)

Basically, federal and state laws have all sorts of different restrictions. Related to this topic, it says:

The Michigan law also contains a prohibition against the use of SSNs on identification and membership cards, permits, and licenses. Missouri's law includes a prohibition against requiring an individual to use his or her SSN as an employee number. Oklahoma's law is unique in that it only limits the ways in which employers may use their employees' SSNs, and does not apply more generally to other types of transactions and activities.

Since I haven't seen anyone else mention it yet, I just thought I'd point out that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) exists to ensure the GOVERNMENT'S accountability, not some public group like the ESRB. Methinks some senator hasn't been paying attention in class.

From the GAO's site (emphasis mine):

Under recently passed legislation, we have changed our name from the General Accounting Office to the Government Accountability Office. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is an agency that works for Congress and the American people. Congress asks GAO to study the programs and expenditures of the federal government. GAO, commonly called the investigative arm of Congress or the congressional watchdog, is independent and nonpartisan. It studies how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars. GAO advises Congress and the heads of executive agencies (such as Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, Department of Defense, DOD, and Health and Human Services, HHS) about ways to make government more effective and responsive. GAO evaluates federal programs, audits federal expenditures, and issues legal opinions. When GAO reports its findings to Congress, it recommends actions. Its work leads to laws and acts that improve government operations, and save billions of dollars.

That's easy. The Government Accountability Office.

The law is aimed preventing wasteful spending by opening the federal budget to greater scrutiny. The information is already available, but the Web site would make it easier for those who aren't experts on the process to see how taxpayer dollars are being spent.

Now, If you're on the public sector side and attempting to protect national interests and understand the global scope of the infrastructure involved, how do you go about that? I would argue that it's hard even under the best conspiracy-theory/tinfoil-hat environment. You have to first get people to show up and without legislation forcing people to show up (read: industry regulation), it is hard to be completely effective.

I think he'll do the best job he can under the circumstances, which is challenging to say the least. These people who work in DC doing these jobs have incredible stamina to put up with challenges that i suspect 99% of people reading this would be unwilling to stand at their job. To get simple things done sometimes can literally take an act of congress. And you thought your boss was slow and intrusive, think about having the GAO coming in and interviewing you every few weeks about how your job is going and what you've done recently on topics X, Y and Z.

While there are those people that I think are truly "evil" in this space, people who take public sector jobs like this are rarely the type. Just think, next virus outbreak or internet worm everyone is gonna be clammoring at you for what's going on. Starting from the tech savvy Senator Stevens(R-AK) asking about his e-mail to those that actually "get-it". I don't envy him this job/work but I do wish him the best of luck. I will point him to this discussion and conversation just to make everyone here happy though ;)

Google doesn't win arguments for you if you don't bother to read the documents that come up in a search.

The term officially used by the GAO at least is "undocumented immigrant", which is defined in the definitions section of e.g. this document as "A person entering the United States without inspection by the INS or with fraudulent documentation, or one who enters legally but subsequently violates the visa terms."

The same document defines "illegal alien" as "a commonly used synonym for Undocumented Immigrant".

BTW, "undocumented" implies that they don't have legal documentation. Your idea that someone with fraudulent documentation qualifies as "documented" is a bit strange, and it's easy to see why official terminology wouldn't follow that approach, since it implicitly grants some kind of valid status to fraudulent documents -- even though it's only in language, misleading language can lead to problems.

Probably should have been called "Apollo 2.0", but that would have been embarassing.

The names for the boosters, "Aries I" and "Aries V", aren't that great either. There's already been an "Aries I" booster, used for a missile defense test in 1992.

Here's the General Accounting Office analysis of the program. GAO says it's already in trouble, and it hasn't even really been started yet. That's so NASA.

Under recently passed legislation, we have changed our name from the General Accounting Office to the Government Accountability Office. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is an agency that works for Congress and the American people. Congress asks GAO to study the programs and expenditures of the federal government. GAO, commonly called the investigative arm of Congress or the congressional watchdog, is independent and nonpartisan. It studies how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars. GAO advises Congress and the heads of executive agencies (such as Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, Department of Defense, DOD, and Health and Human Services, HHS) about ways to make government more effective and responsive. GAO evaluates federal programs, audits federal expenditures, and issues legal opinions. When GAO reports its findings to Congress, it recommends actions. Its work leads to laws and acts that improve government operations, and save billions of dollars.

But this article is bogus. You have anonymous sources, who are supposedly federal air marshals, who are supposedly under pressure to file one report per month, come rain or shine. Notice that these "sources" are complaining about the quota system while still participating in it. That's some integrity for ya.

Do you know what a *trustworthy* air marshal would do in this situation? He (gender-neutrally speaking) has at least two options:

1. He could resign under protest and take his story to the NYTimes or Washington Post. Even if he's worried about losing his job, a book deal would take care of him for life. Denver Channel 7? Please.
2. He could appeal to the General Accounting Office, which has oversight over all federal programs and runs accountability audits for each of them. There are even Whistleblower Laws to protect sources who call foul. There is *no way* that a quota system could be hidden, because an audit would pick it up. A memo like the one alleged in the article is a smoking gun.

"I would like to see an investigation -- a real investigation conducted into the ways things are done here," the air marshal in Las Vegas said.

Troubling indeed. In 2003 the GAO found that their oversight of
contractors was lacking. The NNSA got a panel together to review the issues mentioned by the GAO, and after a couple of years came up with the Mies report. Here's an overview of that. Chapter 5, "Cyber System Security" mentions a lack of secure voice and data networks.

If you want to talk about security problems, this is the worst possible
situation. NNSA is responsible for security operations of contractors at
nuclear facilities, and has itself been breached.

It would be ironic if Dr. Rice's "mushroom cloud" smoking gun turned out
to be from nuclear material MADE PROUDLY IN THE USA.

Given that the Federal (US) government is required by the OMB to switch to IPv6 by June 2008, I seriously hope you are not looking to do any business with them or any federal contractor after that date.

On the other hand, in typical US government fashion, according to the GAO implementation speed is seriously behind schedule.

http://www.gao.gov/docsearch/abstract.php?rptno=GA O-03-1173

http://www.fcw.com/article88762-05-02-05-Web

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,153647,00.html

Meanwhile in many sections of Iraq, people have their first clean water...

From Wikipedia: "Although the water supply has reached prewar levels in some provinces, ageing and poorly maintained equipment combined with looting and vandalism leaves the drinking water system substandard."

their first reliable electricity...

From the GAO: "However, electrical service in the country as a whole has not shown a marked improvement over the immediate postwar levels of May 2003 and has worsened in some governorates." Not only is electrical service worse than during Saddam's rule, it's even worse than after much of their electrical capacity was destroyed DURING the war.

their first real sewer system, ever...

From Wikipedia (same link as before): "Untreated waste is polluting the Euphrates River, and many treatment plants require repair. More than 45 pipelines have exploded"

Hundreds of schools, dozens of hospitals exist where no service was available for at least 20 years

Right. And they're built to inferior standards, and you can't go to them in any case without risking death. I don't need to provide a link, you can see the story every day on CNN.

So, by a conservative estimate, the regime was killing civilians at an average rate of at least 16,000 a year between 1979 and March 2003."

From Iraqi Body Count: estimates range from 28 - 32K deaths just from coalition military activity since the start of the war. Other estimates, some of which include deaths from lawlessness and terrorist activity, are much higher, ranging up to a quarter of a million.

Way to distort the facts. Maybe you should try getting your news from somewhere other than the Weekly Standard.

Sean

I can't see the inherant bias on NPR's side if they use a term that the GAO uses:
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04472.pdf
Or the DOJ/INS:
http://uscis.gov/graphics/publicaffairs/summaries/ undocres.htm

Please do your research before spouting off about something you know nothing about. You only prove your own bias and obscure the argument with unfounded speculation.

Sure, *this* is just one guy. But just because the present story doesn't mention other cases of bogus resumes or degrees it doesn't mean that there aren't more out there. A little Google-searching would have shown that a GAO audit of several Federal Agencies back in 2004 turned up 463 employees with bogus degrees. Id's day that we have a problem.

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04771t.pdf

"And I have again observed, my dear friend, in this trifling affair, that misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness. At all events, the two latter are of less frequent occurrence." -Goethe

My personal preference would be for a constitutional amendment that added a wholly new branch of Government - outside the Executive, Legislative and Judicial - that has all the necessary powers, clearances, means and protections to investigate corruption at absolutely any level in every branch of Government. That is it. That is all it would do. Just investigate.

There is a pretty similar thing already in the GAO. Corruption generally being tied to money(follow the money), the auditors are the ones to sniff out the corruption.

As a geoscientist who has benefited immensely from using various datasets provided by NASA researchers and spacecraft, I have to completely disagree with you and assume you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about

I hold that it would have been a far greater benefit to mankind to spend the money spent on the Mars Rover programs on, say, a bloodless, stripless glucose tester for diabetics, sonoluminescent equipment for oncology clinics or EM shielding for the nation's power grid.

I continue to hold that Exxon or Shell could have produced better satellites for less money than NASA has.

(which is made doubly obvious by your statement about them spending money with almost no accountability).

GAO's analysis of available reported data related to NASA passenger aircraft services during fiscal years 2003 and 2004 showed NASA reported costs were nearly $25 million compared with estimated commercial airline coach transportation costs of about $5 million. Further, this relative cost comparison, based on available NASA reported costs, did not take into account all applicable types of costs associated with its passenger aircraft services, including, for example, depreciation associated with the estimated $14 million NASA paid in 2001 to acquire several aircraft used for passenger transportation. Consequently, NASA's passenger air transportation services are much more costly than indicated by available data. ... GAO's analysis of NASA passenger aircraft flights for fiscal years 2003 and 2004 showed that an estimated 86 percent--about seven out of every eight flights--were taken to support routine business operations specifically prohibited by federal policy regarding aircraft ownership, including routine site visits, meetings, speeches, and conferences. Further, agencywide oversight and management of its passenger aircraft services was not effective.

If the GAO says that NASA is recklessly spending without sufficient restraint, accountability or oversight, who are you to claim otherwise? When you can identify a single individual ever disciplined for violating federal laws regarding spending then try to convince me that people at NASA are held accountable for their mistakes.

300 each of three TLDs = 900 domains.

900*0.0514 = 46.26.

Truth is, though, that the GAO report (highlights here, pdf: http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d06165high.pdf

don't say that 5.14% of the sample used incorrect info -- the GAO estimates that 5.14% of all domains use false info.

The sample showed results of 45 false data sets (out of 900 domains), which is exactly 5%. Given the figures shown on the highlights I've linked above (especially the chart), I'm thinking that the 5.14% comes from having to extrapolate from data that includes both patently false, and missing, information.

Also, the margin of error is +- 5%, so the difference in the percentages is statistically within reason.

You're a prolific patenter, I'm a Poli Sci student in the middle of writing a research paper about the bureaucratic pathologies of the patent office.

on point one, you're wrong. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05720.pdf , a report by the Government Accountibility Office, details that examiners are expected to review 87 patents a year, spending 19 hours each on them, on average. Other sources, including congressional testimony by the undersecretary of commerce on intellectual property and the head of POPA, the examiner's union, describe examiners having between 11 and 22 hours for each patent, depending on the complexity of the field (agricultural inventions vs. telecommunications, for example).

On point two, a real problem is the "continuing education" of examiners. For the most part, experienced examiners are at the top of the field simply because they're constantly exposed to it. New examiners, of which there are a lot, are not, for reasons you describe. There are a ton of new examiners because the patent office has been hiring more to deal with the pendency problem, and also because it has the highest firing rate in the federal government. In addition, turnover for examiners is usually 2 years - the patent office can't keep its examiners. Probably because it trains them so well that they can get better jobs outside the patent office, not to mention the horrible labor conditions at the office.

On point 4, that sounds like total conjecture. Unlike what you describe, there's an incentive for examiners to approve patents, not reject them. Approved patents are added to the examiner's "count"; rejected patents aren't added to the count if they are challenged. This leads to examiners approving patents they aren't sure about. Don't believe me? check out the GAO report above.

on point 5, what you're talking about is challenging a rejection, in which case a second examiner reviews the patent.

Finally, the amount of money the patent office makes, and that congress takes (which, by the way, it didn't for last year; excess money was spent on internal improvements) is a drop in the bucket for the federal government.

On the subject of elections and electronic voting machines, this report, from the US GAO is worth reading.

No. 2-3B$ is for kickbacks only (the GAO estimates a bit over 4B$). You have to add in oil smuggling to make the 10-20B$ estimates. I suggest you read the various reports, including the congressional report, on the subject - here, I'll save you the time (this is one of the most hostile reports out there, BTW).

Oil smuggling was not under the jurisdiction of the OFF's committee that had the authority to block contracts (the "661 committee"), so it's unfair to pretend that they're at fault. In fact, it's not really even fair to fault them for not blocking companies that did kickbacks, as they didn't have authority to block that either (or even launch investigations on it) - they only were supposed to refer such cases to the Security Council, which they did on a number of occasions when they suspected it. The only cases they had the authority to block were cases of attempting to smuggle in banned supplies, which they did like crazy, thanks to US influence.

"Kickbacks" in the sense used in the reports are *not* payments to officials (of which there were very few, although there were some; the al-Mada list (which accused everyone under the sun) turned out to trace its way back to the Chalabi-led oil ministry, and has been discredited by the investigators after many of the things that it alleged were shown to be demonstratably false). Those are not "kickbacks", but payoffs; they got no money to the Iraqi government; only favorable treatment. "Kickbacks" were a way to get Iraq's oil money to Iraqi government discretely (this is very common in many third world countries, by the way - don't even think about doing major business in Nigeria, for example, without a large kickbacks budget - there, the money indirectly moves from the government to government officials). The Iraqi government would grant a contract to a company who was not the lowest bidder. The company would be charging a surcharge on their products; they then pay the Iraqi government the amount of money that they charged extra, under the table. Thus, the net effect is that in addition to an ordinary purchase, the Iraqi government moves money from funds that it doesn't control (OFF) to its treasury or to the pockets of individual members of the government. 2-3B$ was diverted in this manner.

I suggest you read up more on the mechanisms of the OFF committee functionality and the specific details of the scandal before you continue.

*Cheese releases fumes that many chemical sniffers will register as those of an explosive. **Kitty litter is often slightly radioactive. It's probably a beta emitter - alpha gets absorbed too easily - but I can't find a definitive source of information.

If these new detectors can detect a nanogram of stilton, but still miss people with semi-automatics, then I don't see we've gained much. Unless there's a plan to use the next NASA mission to the moon to verify its composition is not, as Google claim, swiss cheese.

Of course, we could run into other problems. Will there be false alarms from residue? A lot of Americans do own guns, which means residue on the sorts of scale we're talking about is certainly possible. The security guards are also armed, which means there will be a background reading from those weapons. If cheese is still detected, then not only will we have to deal with actual pieces of cheese, but also any person who has eaten cheese in the past month.

There is no doubt we need a good, functioning weapons detector. I am rather hoping these guys have figured out how to build one. If I am skeptical, it is because I want to see better evidence that they really HAVE figured out how to build one.

The old government General Accounting Office is now the Government Accountability Office.

There are significant differences between the two genders, and the reason feminists are full of shit is because they refuse to realise this.

A difference may exist on average. It is unknown how much of this difference is a socially created "self-fulfilling prophecy" and how much is intrinsic.

Women make less on average because they like spending more time with their family.

No. Even when differences in work patterns are controlled for, a 20% wage gap remains.

Can you point me to a study that comes to this conclusion that accounts for continuity of employment?

This study by the GAO found a 20% salary gap, even after correcting for the facts that on average women have fewer years of work experience, work fewer hours per year, are less likely to work a full-time schedule, and leave the labor force for longer periods of time than men; and also for factors such as industry, occupation, race, marital status, and job tenure.

What a strange thing to say. Is there some movement afoot to prevent women from getting x-rays or diabetes medication? Or are you being incredibly disingenuous in order to make the legitimate disagreement over abortion seem illegitimate?

I was speaking primarily of wingnut pharmacists, though wingnuts who want to roll back the clock and send women to back-alley abortionists also qualify.

The major cause is rank and seniority. When these are factored in, most of the differences disappear. The remaining difference is cause by a greater portion of women valuing family over career.

And you don't see inequity in a social system in which it is overwhelmingly the woman of a couple who is expected to sacrifice her career to be the primary caregiver?

But even with those factors taken into account, there's still a significant gap. The GAO found a 44% total gap; factoring out industry, occupation, union status, demographics, work experience, number of hours, and full/part time status, they still found a 20% gap.

Though, they don't seem to be crying over the horrendous underrepresentation of men in the child-care and nursing professions? It doesn't seem to be an "equality" thing; lots of people just hate men.

Please. One natually makes a bigger fuss about bigger problems; the continuing discrimination against women is a bigger problem, i.e. occurs more often, than discrimination against men in certain fields. That doesn't make anti-male discrimination all right, or mean that those in favor of equality for women "hate men", a ludicrous charge.

But if it makes you happy, I now shed one official tear for male nurses who have been the victim of discrimination. Things are hard enough for our overworked and underappreciated nurses of either gender, without throwing bias into the mix.

(Yes, I have encountered extremists who do blame everything wrong in the world on those of us with Y-chomosomes and penises; thankfully they are few and far between.)