What is it about the NM environment that leads to repeat waste, fraud and abuse at the NNSA labs?
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-procurement-officer-federally-funded-nuclear-research-and-development-facility
Former Procurement Officer at Federally Funded Nuclear Research and Development Facility Indicted on Charges of Wire Fraud, Major Fraud and Money Laundering
8 comments:
What makes you think fraud is only happening in New Mexico?
"What is it about the NM environment that leads to repeat waste, fraud and abuse at the NNSA labs? "
Yep totally crazy it just does not make sense, as New Mexico is just a run of the mill average state.
"What makes you think fraud is only happening in New Mexico?
November 17, 2017 at 12:22 PM"
Good point but fraud is a crime so good starting point would be to ask if there is anything special about crime in New Mexico. Lets check:
http://www.usa.com/rank/us--crime-index--state-rank.htm
This puts New Mexico 2nd in terms of highest crime out of the 50 states. All you have to do is go on the web and look for crime rates ect and you will always find New Mexico way up there. So the posters question still holds what is is about New Mexico that could lead to higher crime at the labs, well that would appear to correlate with New Mexico itself having a very high crime rate. Now for 12:22 PM response of " what makes you think fraud is only happing in New Mexico," this is a rather odd response
as it does not appear to address the point made by the original poster. Perhaps 12:22PM thinks that the crime rate of New Mexico is the same as every other state so asking what makes New Mexico special is pointless because New Mexico is not special. However as easily checked on the interment New Mexico is in fact very special in terms of criminal behavior. So a better question is why is the crime rate so high in New Mexico. Now responding that crime also occurs in Vermont is not exactly a good reply, since the actual questions is why is there so much more crime in New Mexico than Vermont or rest of the United States.
I do not know the answer to the last question since there could be many causes. I will venture to make a more speculative one but one that has or could be made by the Los Alamos Study group or some folks in Santa Fe. Crime is high in New Mexico because of Los Alamos. The crime rate it in Vermont and New Hampshire are the lowest in the nation because they do not have Los Alamos. I have no problem with this argument but the same could be said about the Los Alamos Study group itself.
newmexicopanda
I had to laugh at the name. What are the odds that New Mexico would ever get to host a giant panda bear at say the ABQ zoo
after their Tasmanian Devil was killed by someone.
d http://krqe.com/2014/10/17/police-report-zoos-tasmanian-devil-killed/
I know the response "What makes you think people killing zoo animals is only happening in New Mexico? Look New Mexico is different, like or not you have to agree that it is different so yes lots of stuff only happens in New Mexico.
November 17, 2017 at 11:11 PM
I looked at the website you cite and I have some problems:
The first line says:
"The crime index value is calculated based on the data using USA.com algorithms"
This then made me search for some quotes on statistics and I really liked the following:
Statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination. Vin Scully
But back to your contribution, could you explain to me what the USA.com algorithm is?
Giving me a ranking based on an unspecified algorithm is pretty useless. I am sure I can cook up a crime statistic, where NM is ranked last.
I did a bit more browsing on the USA.com website and came up with this additional information about NM:
White: 1,521,876 (73.16%, #34)
Black: 42,515 (2.04%, #40)
Hispanic: 978,189 (47.03%, #1)
Asian: 28,578 (1.37%, #38)
Native (American Indian, Alaska Native, Hawaiian Native, etc.): 191,621 (9.21%, #3)
One Race, Other: 230,398 (11.08%, see rank)
Two or More Races: 65,097 (3.13%, see rank)
Clearly their algorithms seem to need further clarification. If I add up all the different population groups I get around 132% not even adding the Others or the two or more races. Even taking the two or more races to help explain the 132% does actually not work.
Dear newmexicopanda I appreciate you skepticism of the USA.com results. However I found about 10 other websites with various statistics some of them are much more crime specific so I just chose the USA site, but all the results all find New Mexico has a much higher crime that other states, so it it pretty safe to assume that NM is in the top 5 percent in terms of crimes per every 100000. I am not going to go through all the sites you can simply go to Google and type in crime rates per state ect. I am pretty sure that USA.com is not using any algorithm but jus collating some data off other sites or from the FBI crime reports.
By the way the 132% does seem odd but what I think is going on is that it is counting Hispanics as white since it is mixing ethnicity and race as Hispanics considered white. If you care to look at another source where I bet USA.com got its numbers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexico by birth
It states white (82.0%)
but non-hispanic whites as 7,157 (27.7%)s
and "it even states on the site
"Note: Births in table don't add up, because Hispanics are counted both by their ethnicity and by their race, giving a higher overall number."
"Statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination. Vin Scully"
Cute but why does Vin give the batting average, ERA, and other season averages for every single ball player that comes to the plate unless he also thought statistics have some value? By the way ever see the movie Money Ball?
Ok, I give you credit for looking into issues with the USA today data but you should also look at some other sites as well. What Vin and Mark Twain really mean is that you should always be careful with statistics but they are not saying statistics
cannot be valuable or that statistics are always inaccurate and always give you a wrong picture. That being said one should always question statistics especially when they come from the media.
A few other sites.
https://www.abqjournal.com/1070482/fbi-data-new-mexico-ranked-no-1-in-nation-in-property-crime-rates.html
This is only one specific type crime but it probably correlates with other crimes such as fraud.
https://www.watchdog.org/new_mexico/fbi-crime-stats-nm-worst-in-the-nation-in-burglaries/article_2a930274-c0c8-579e-8852-63f2ddac43f6.html
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2015/01/03/24-7-wall-st-most-dangerous-states/21214169/
Ok anther USA today thing but it has some links.
November 18, 2017 at 4:05 PM
The data includes Hispanics as both Hispanic and white. If you subtract off the 47% from the 73% and add everything else up you
get 100%. The USA today "algorithm" is the FBI crime data base.
I know that since a old baseball sportscaster said statistics are bad that it nullifies all statistics. That makes complete sense.
Hey how about "people that quote other people usually not only misunderstand the issue but also misunderstand the quote since they take quotes literally " You know "it ain't over until the fat lady sings" does not mean in all things that a fat lady must come out and sing for things to be over. Maybe in the one opera this is true.
November 18, 2017 at 9:52 PM
I appreciate your thoughtful response. I still have problems with the population distribution (it could just be my own ignorance), but since this is not really the issue here, I leave this.
Thanks
Post a Comment