The Internal Revenue Service today announced the availability of a new job search tool on YouTube dedicated to helping job seekers learn about employment opportunities at the IRS.
“Whether you’re a veteran or a recent college graduate, the IRS is a great place to work and build a career. The IRS has a wide range of jobs and needs a variety of skills to serve the nation’s taxpayers,” said IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman. “Our goal is to make the IRS the best place to work in government.”
As many recent high school and college graduates actively seek employment, the IRS’s new YouTube playlist, Working at the IRS, provides information about various career paths available throughout the nation’s tax administration agency. The playlist features “Day in the Life” videos in which IRS employees discuss their jobs, the diversity of the IRS workforce and the culture of the agency.
“This is a great opportunity for new graduates and applicants to explore employment with the IRS and join a dedicated workforce serving our nation’s taxpayers,” IRS Chief Human Capital Officer James Falcone said. “Potential applicants can learn a lot from a job description. But showcasing our talented employees on YouTube gives applicants first-hand insight into whether or not they would be a good fit for a particular position.”
The IRS has more than 100,000 full-time and seasonal employees and hires new employees throughout the year to fill a wide array of positions, including revenue agents, revenue officers, criminal investigation special agents, financial analysts and economists.
The YouTube playlist complements numerous other videos currently available on the IRS YouTube channel (IRSvideos). IRS videos provide tax tips for individuals and businesses and information about new credits, deductions and changes in tax law, including tax provisions pertaining to Recovery and health care. The IRS has also posted videos in American Sign Language (IRSvideosASL) and Spanish (IRSvideosmultilingual).
New IRS Careers Website
In addition to the new YouTube playlist, the IRS Human Capital Office recently launched a new and improved IRS Careers Website with more detailed information on job openings, how to apply for new positions, what qualifications are needed in potential candidates and information on the benefits of working at the IRS. The site features a direct link to the IRS on USAJobs.com, the main source for federal employment opportunities, allowing candidates to focus their job search.
As the economy continues to plummet, employee fraud continues to rise. While it may not be your job, many of your clients will expect you to detect and eliminate employee fraud. In this issue, a certified fraud examiners gives us some pointers on doing just that.
The economic downturn has triggered an alarming increase of fraud. Taking center stage is the small business which still ranks highest in occupational fraud frequency. That trend toward fraud, according to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners’ 2006 and 2008 report to the nation, is only increasing.
A California congressman known for edgy sarcasm mocked an opponent of illegal immigration during a town hall meeting last week, asking, “Who are you going to kill today?” before the constituent, a self-identified Minuteman, posed his question.
Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., no stranger to controversy, mocked the idea that the borders are not secure when asked about the federal government’s lack of activity on border security.
“We can’t get enough Minutemen armed. We’d like to get all the Minutemen armed so they can stop shooting people here,” Stark said.
Eventually, members of the audience urged Stark to offer a serious answer.
“If you knew anything about our borders, you would know that’s not the case. Our borders are quite secure, thank you,” Stark said, drawing jeers.
A California congressman known for edgy sarcasm mocked an opponent of illegal immigration during a town hall meeting last week, asking, “Who are you going to kill today?” before the constituent, a self-identified Minuteman, posed his question.
Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., no stranger to controversy, mocked the idea that the borders are not secure when asked about the federal government’s lack of activity on border security.
“We can’t get enough Minutemen armed. We’d like to get all the Minutemen armed so they can stop shooting people here,” Stark said.
The IRS has recently announced that victims of recent severe storms, flooding, landslides, and mudslides in counties of West Virginia have more time to make tax payments and file returns if they are affected taxpayers in counties that have been designated as federal disaster areas qualifying for individual assistance. Certain other time-sensitive acts are also postponed.
Full details on all designated disaster areas are available on the IRS website.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott today demanded that President Obama send more troops to the Texas-Mexico border and used the shots that hit El Paso City Hall as an example of increased violence on the border.
Abbott said in a letter that the seven shots that hit City Hall in El Paso were an example of the violence that is plaguing the border area and that sending 1,200 National Guard soldiers to the entire U.S.-Mexico border is not enough.
He also cited the violence in Juarez and said that Americans lives are at risk.
“More than 1,300 people have been murdered in Juárez this year as a war continues relentlessly between the Juárez and Sinaloa drug cartels,” he told Obama.
He also said the “time for talk has passed.”
Here is the letter by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott:
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
Deadly violence from drug cartels and transnational gangs in Mexico is knocking on the United States’ door with ever increasing frequency.
Yesterday, gunfire from the cartels pierced that threshold and struck City Hall in El Paso. Fortunately no one was injured or killed. But that good fortune was not the result of effective border control – it was mere luck that the bullets struck buildings rather than bodies.
Luck and good fortune are not effective border enforcement policies. The shocking reality of cross border gunfire proves the cold reality: American lives are at risk. As the attached news article notes: “More than 1,300 people have been murdered in Juárez this year as a war continues relentlessly between the Juárez and Sinaloa drug cartels.” Americans must be protected as this deadly war bulges at our border.
Law enforcement officials with the Texas Department of Public Safety and your own U.S. Customs and Border Protection will reveal the hard truth. Our state is under constant assault from illegal activity threatening a porous border.
The time for talk has passed. The time for action is now. The need is urgent. Each day that passes increases the likelihood that an American life will be lost because of the federal government’s failure to secure the border.
This threat demands immediate and effective action by your Administration to secure our border. As the Attorney General of Texas, I urge you to make border security your top priority so that no more innocent lives are lost to border violence.
Members of the New Mexico National Guard, Spc. Rolinda Apodaca, foreground, and Sgt. Janilee Whiterock, look out toward the border just west of Columbus, N.M. (Times file photo)
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has ordered about 200,000 state workers to be paid the federal minimum wage because the state Legislature has not passed a budget.
Department of Personnel Administration Director Debbie Endsley sent the order Thursday in a letter to the state controller. Most state employees will be paid the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour for the July pay period.
Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear says the change should be reflected in state employees’ next paycheck. Workers will be paid in full retroactively once a budget is passed.
Controller John Chiang said earlier Thursday that he wouldn’t comply with the minimum wage order, KCRA-TV said.
California Assembly Speaker John Perez, D-Los Angeles, expressed his disdain late Thursday in a statement, saying that that he’s disappointed in the governor’s actions.
“This is not a realistic proposal to save the state cash any more than his budget plan, which kills 430,000 jobs, is a realistic proposal to close our deficit. Using working families as leverage is not the kind of leadership we need to get through this budget process,” Perez said.
California Cities Shutting Police Forces to Close Budget Gaps
San Carlos, a Silicon Valley suburb that calls itself the City of Good Living, will hire contractors to maintain parks and negotiate with county officials to take over policing, becoming the latest California community eliminating basic services to close budget deficits.
Governor Jan Brewer sparked a national debate on border security and illegal immigration when she signed SB1070. While Brewer has been celebrated by many for taking action to enforce laws that Washington has long ignored, those who oppose the law have chosen pithy punch lines over aggressive action. Far away from the border at the White House Correspondents Dinner, President Obama decided that Arizonas unsecured borders and illegal immigration crisis are a laughing matter. Unfortunately, no one in Arizona is laughing.
Patrick Buchanan once again has said some thing both simple and direct. We may be at a cross road not only politically but economically and socially. The question that many are asking is what event will be the deciding catalyst to move ahead. Is it a crisis that pushes the American people to act or the election?
What are your thoughts, I look forward to your comments
Though green shoots have appeared in the economy, Americans no longer believe it. Only one-third thinks things will get better before they get worse again. Independents are deserting Obama. One in six Democrats now disapproves of the job he is doing.
Americans have been through periods of malaise before. But where FDR raised spirits after Herbert Hoover, and Reagan did after Jimmy Carter, the optimism about an Age of Obama is vanishing like the morning mist.
Disenchantment appears pervasive, and the causes apparent:
The Obama economic program — $800 billion in stimulus money piled on top of the Federal Reserve’s doubling the money supply, giving us two straight deficits of 10 percent of gross domestic product — has failed to ignite a robust recovery. Unemployment still hovers just below 10 percent.
The two-month-old oil spill, where BP’s malfeasance was matched by government incompetence in preventing it from destroying the gulf ecology and economy from Louisiana to Florida, has cast a pall over America’s spirit as wide and deep as the oil slick itself.
The war in Afghanistan is not going well, casualties are running at a nine-year high, and the country no longer wants to fight it, but to get out and come home.
Obama’s “reset” in foreign policy seems to have yielded no more fruit than George W. Bush’s crusade to “end tyranny in our world.”
Three months after Iraqi elections, there is no government in Baghdad. The August deadline for withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops will likely be missed. U.S. relations with Israel have rarely been worse.
Turkey, black-balled by the European Union, a friend and ally of 60 years, is thickening ties to Tehran and Damascus and emerging as first Muslim state of the Middle East and principal patron of the Palestinian cause.
The Russians are pushing Kyrgyzstan to force the United States out of Manas air base, a critical link in the resupply chain to Afghanistan.
Brazil is bitter that America trashed the deal it helped to negotiate to transfer half of Iran’s nuclear fuel out of the country.
For the first time since the late 19th century, the United States is about to be surpassed as the world’s first manufacturing power — by China, which in Mao’s time was still trying to make steel in backyard furnaces.
The British, rejecting Obama’s call to continue stimulating the world’s largest economies until sustainable growth is achieved, have decided to follow Greece and Spain into austerity and retrenchment.
Fearing debt defaults, European nations are slashing government payrolls and pensions, just as California, New York and other states are being forced to do to meet the constitutional requirement to balance their budgets.
America is facing a crisis of confidence in government, with the nation unable to win its wars, balance its budgets, control its borders, stop the bleeding of its manufacturing base or plug a hole in the ocean floor.
Should the sovereign debt bombs start going off, as they have lately threatened to do in Greece, bringing on another financial crisis to dwarf the one we have lately gone through, the crisis of democratic governments will become a crisis of democracy itself.
Perceived to have failed the country, the Bush Republicans were summarily dismissed in 2006 and 2008. Obama’s Democrats go to the wall in November. Republicans will inherit the windfall. Yet, few harbor great hopes that the GOP has the cure for what ails America.
Perhaps the answers lie beyond the parameters of our present politics.
History Channel “Mega Disasters” series. This explores the controversial paper published by Northwestern University’s Gregory Ryskin. His thesis: the oceans periodically produce massive eruptions of explosive methane gas… enough to cause global catastrophe on a regular basis!
As much as 1 million times the normal level of methane gas has been found in some regions near the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, enough to potentially deplete oxygen and create a dead zone, U.S. scientists said on Tuesday.
Texas A&M University oceanography professor John Kessler, just back from a 10-day research expedition near the BP Plc oil spill in the gulf, says methane gas levels in some areas are “astonishingly high.”
Kessler’s crew took measurements of both surface and deep water within a 5-mile (8 kilometer) radius of BP’s broken wellhead.
“There is an incredible amount of methane in there,” Kessler told reporters in a telephone briefing.
In some areas, the crew of 12 scientists found concentrations that were 100,000 times higher than normal.
“We saw them approach a million times above background concentrations” in some areas, Kessler said.
The scientists were looking for signs that the methane gas had depleted levels of oxygen dissolved in the water needed to sustain marine life.
“At some locations, we saw depletions of up to 30 percent of oxygen based on its natural concentration in the waters. At other places, we saw no depletion of oxygen in the waters. We need to determine why that is,” he told the briefing.
Methane occurs naturally in sea water, but high concentrations can encourage the growth of microbes that gobble up oxygen needed by marine life.
Kessler said oxygen depletions have not reached a critical level yet, but the oil is still spilling into the Gulf, now at a rate of as much as 60,000 barrels a day, according to U.S. government estimates.
“What is it going to look like two months down the road, six months down the road, two years down the road?” he asked.
A new and less well known asymmetric threat has surfaced in the Gulf of Mexico oil gusher. Methane or CH4 gas is being released in vast quantities in the Gulf waters. Seismic data shows huge pools of methane gas at the location immediately below and around the damaged “Macondo” oil well. Methane is a colourless, odourless and highly flammable substance which forms a major component in natural gas. This is the same gas that blew the top off Deepwater Horizon and killed 11 people. The “flow team” of the US Geological Survey estimates that 2,900 cubic feet of natural gas, which primarily contains methane, is being released into the Gulf waters with every barrel of oil. The constant flow of over 50,000 barrels of crude oil places the total daily amount of natural gas at over 145 million cubic feet. So far, over 8 billion cubic feet may have been released, making it one of the most vigorous methane eruptions in modern human history. If the estimates of 100,000 barrels a day — that have emerged from a BP internal document — are true, then the estimates for methane gas release might have to be doubled.
Warnings
Older documents indicate that the subterranean geological formation below the “Macondo” well in the Gulf of Mexico may contain the presence of a huge methane deposit. It has been a well known fact that the methane in that oil deposit was problematic. As a result, there was a much higher risk of a blow out. Macondo shares its name with the cursed town in the novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by the Nobel-prize winning writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
By some geologists’ estimates, the methane could be a massive bubble trapped for thousands of years under the Gulf of Mexico sea floor. More than a year ago, geologists expressed alarm in regard to BP and Transocean putting their exploratory rig directly over this massive underground reservoir of methane. Warnings were raised before the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe that the area of seabed chosen might be unstable and inherently dangerous.
Methane and Poison Gas Bubble
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has found high concentrations of gases in the Gulf of Mexico area. The escape of other poisonous gases associated with an underground methane bubble — such as hydrogen sulfide, benzene and methylene chloride — have also been found. Recently, the EPA measured hydrogen sulfide at more than 1,000 parts per billion (ppb) — well above the normal 5 to 10 ppb. Some benzene levels were measured near the Gulf of Mexico in the range of 3,000 to 4,000 ppb — up from the normal 0 to 4 ppb. Benzene gas is water soluble and is a carcinogen at levels of 1,000 ppb according to the EPA. Upon using a GPS and depth finder system, experts have discovered a large gas bubble, 15 to 20 miles wide and tens of feet high, under the ocean floor. These bubbles are common. Some even believe that the rapid release of similar bubbles may have caused the sinking of ships and planes in the Bermuda Triangle.
50,000 to 100,000 PSI
The intractable problem is that this methane, located deep in the bowels of the earth, is under tremendous pressure. Experts agree that the pressure that blows the oil into the Gulf waters is estimated to be between 30,000 and 70,000 pounds per square inch (psi). Some speculate that the pressure of the methane at the base of the well head, deep under the ocean floor, may be as high as 100,000 psi — far too much for current technology to contain. The shutoff valves and safety measures were only built for thousands of psi at best. There is no known device to cap a well with such an ultra high pressure.
Oxygen Depletion
The crude oil from the “Macondo” well, which is damaging the Gulf of Mexico, contains around 40 percent methane, compared with about 5 percent found in typical oil deposits. Scientists warn that gases such as methane, hydrogen sulfide and benzene, along with oil, are now depleting the oxygen in the water and are beginning to suffocate marine life creating vast “dead zones”. As small microbes living in the sea feed on oil and natural gas, they consume large amounts of oxygen which they require in order to digest food, ie, convert it into energy. There is an environmental ripple effect: when oxygen levels decrease, the breakdown of oil can’t advance any further.
Fissures or Cracks
According to geologists, the first signs that the methane may burst its way through the bottom of the ocean would be manifest via fissures or cracks appearing on the ocean floor near the path of least resistance, ie, the damaged well head. Evidence of fissures opening up on the seabed have been captured by the robotic midget submarines working to repair and contain the ruptured well. Smaller, independent plumes have also appeared outside the nearby radius of the bore hole. When reviewing video tapes of the live BP feeds, one can see in the tapes of mid-June that there is oil spewing up from visible fissions. Geologists are pointing to new fissures and cracks that are appearing on the ocean floor.
Fault Areas
The stretching and compression of the earth’s crust causes minor cracking, called faults, and the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico has many such fault areas. Fault areas run along the Gulf of Mexico and well inland in Mexico, South and East Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the extreme western Florida Panhandle. The close coupling of new fissures and cracks with natural fault areas could prove to be lethal.
Bubble Eruption
A methane bubble this large — if able to escape from under the ocean floor through fissures, cracks and fault areas — is likely to cause a gas explosion. With the emerging evidence of fissures, the tacit fear now is this: the methane bubble may rupture the seabed and may then erupt with an explosion within the Gulf of Mexico waters. The bubble is likely to explode upwards propelled by more than 50,000 psi of pressure, bursting through the cracks and fissures of the sea floor, fracturing and rupturing miles of ocean bottom with a single extreme explosion.
Cascading Catastrophe Scenarios
1. Loss of Buoyancy
Huge methane gas bubbles under a ship can cause a sudden buoyancy loss. This causes a ship to tilt adversely or worse. Every ship, drilling rig and structure within a ten mile radius of the escaping methane bubble would have to deal with a rapid change in buoyancy, causing many oil structures in its vicinity to become unstable and ships to sink. The lives of all the workers, engineers, coast guard personnel and marine biologists — measuring and mitigating the oil plumes’ advance and assisting with the clean up — could be in some danger. Therefore, advanced safety measures should be put in place.
2. First Tsunami with Toxic Cloud
If the toxic gas bubble explodes, it might simultaneously set off a tsunami travelling at a high speed of hundreds of miles per hour. Florida might be most exposed to the fury of a tsunami wave. The entire Gulf coastline would be vulnerable, if the tsunami is manifest. Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and southern region of Georgia might experience the effects of the tsunami according to some sources.
3. Second Tsunami via Vaporisation
After several billion barrels of oil and billions of cubic feet of gas have been released, the massive cavity beneath the ocean floor will begin to normalise, allowing freezing water to be forced naturally into the huge cavity where the oil and gas once were. The temperature in that cavity can be extremely hot at around 150 degrees celsius or more. The incoming water will be vaporised and turned into steam, creating an enormous force, which could actually lift the Gulf floor. According to computer models, a second massive tsunami wave might occur.
Conclusion
The danger of loss of buoyancy and cascading tsunamis in the Gulf of Mexico — caused by the release of the massive methane and poisonous gas bubble — has been a much lower probability in the early period of the crisis, which began on April 20th. However, as time goes by and the risk increases, this low probability high impact scenario ought not to be ignored, given that the safety and security of the personnel involved remains paramount. Could this be how nature eventually seals the hole created by the Gulf of Mexico oil gusher?
If the huge methane bubble breaches the seabed, it will erupt with an explosive fury similar to that experienced during the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens in the Pacific Northwest. A gas gusher will surge upwards through miles of ancient sedimentary rock—layer after layer—past the oil reservoir.
Report about the Late Paleocene Thermal Maximum (LPTM), which occurred around 55 million years ago and lasted about 100,000 years. Large undersea methane caused explosions and mass extinctions.
This explores the controversial paper published by Northwestern University’s Gregory Ryskin. His thesis: the oceans periodically produce massive eruptions of explosive methane gas.
