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IRS Freely Gives Out Employee User Name/Password Info
An anonymous reader writes "The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration reports that its inspectors were able to get IRS employees to improperly disclose their user names and passwords over 61% of the time. 60,000 of the IRS's 100,000 employees and contractors thus are susceptible to computer hackers, putting personal taxpayer information at risk for unauthorized disclosure, theft and fraud. 'Only eight of the 102 employees contacted either the inspector general's office or IRS security offices to validate the legitimacy of the caller ... The IRS agreed with recommendations from the inspector general that it should take steps to make employees more aware of hacker tactics such as posing as an internal employee and to remind people to report such incidents to security officials.'"
No taxpayer information was given out...just the IRS employee's user name and password for the internal IRS system (through which someone could potentially gain access to taxpayer information).
--Thomas J. Owens
However, future entitlements have to be factored in, pensions which I think you are underestimating, and space. People don't work in the outdoors. They were in buildings that have to built and paid for, with airconditioning and maintenance, and do they use computers? A car?
I looked up the budget for the IRS in 2008, a little more than $11B. Divided by 100K employees, that is $9167 per employee per month to operate - so I guess I am correct.
You think flying a jet makes you "smart"? Sure... smarter than your average bear, but we're talking about the president of the US here. I don't think being a fighter pilot indicates that you have the strategic thinking abilities and grasp of subtlety needed to lead the country.
I've worked with a number of Harvard folks, MBAs and more. Yeah, they're smart, but they can be stupid in many situations, like anyone. I doubt any one of them would be a particularly smart president. And neither is Bush. He's blown it. Even by his own standards. He's a lousy leader and he is, in this role... stupid.
Have our standards really fallen so low? Sigh.
Bush had a C- average in school, and took classes in large groups with other jocks, then did the work together with them. This was back when a C- was very difficult to receive at Yale. There was a long story about this in the Yale alumni magazine a couple years ago, which also pointed out that John Kerry had many similar problems, though his were apparently due to disinterest instead of lack of intelligence.
that's how statistics work.