Posted on 04/23/2010 4:48:16 PM PDT by Titus-Maximus
Employee misconduct investigations, often involving workers accessing pornography from their government computers, grew sixfold last year inside the taxpayer-funded foundation that doles out billions of dollars of scientific research grants, according to budget documents and other records obtained by The Washington Times.
The problems at the National Science Foundation (NSF) were so pervasive they swamped the agency's inspector general and forced the internal watchdog to cut back on its primary mission of investigating grant fraud and recovering misspent tax dollars.
"To manage this dramatic increase without an increase in staff required us to significantly reduce our efforts to investigate grant fraud," the inspector general recently told Congress in a budget request. "We anticipate a significant decline in investigative recoveries and prosecutions in coming years as a direct result."
The budget request doesn't state the nature or number of the misconduct cases, but records obtained by The Times through the Freedom of Information Act laid bare the extent of the well-publicized porn problem inside the government-backed foundation.
For instance, one senior executive spent at least 331 days looking at pornography on his government computer and chatting online with nude or partially clad women without being detected, the records show.
When finally caught, the NSF official retired. He even offered, among other explanations, a humanitarian defense, suggesting that he frequented the porn sites to provide a living to the poor overseas women. Investigators put the cost to taxpayers of the senior official's porn surfing at between $13,800 and about $58,000.
"He explained that these young women are from poor countries and need to make money to help their parents and this site helps them do that," investigators wrote in a memo.
The independent foundation, funded by taxpayers to the tune of $6 billion in 2008, is tasked with handing out scientific
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Is this what we are paying for?
It’s all about global warming.
Perhaps these porn-watching employees don’t have enough work to do. If that’s the case, why does the payroll keep growing? Fire them. That’s what would happen in a private corporation.
Bunch of baboons.
This might help explain why so many of these “science” guys think that the planet is getting hotter. Maybe a long cold shower is the way to stop “global warming”.
SEC, then scientists, who else? The whole government???
Wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
It’s the closest many of these nerds at the NSF have ever gotten to having sex.
They place a guard on school computers to keep kids aay from porn, dont they?
Why cant they just place porn sites on a status that these guys cannot get into? Why not have the bells and whistles go off in the Managers office when someone goes to one of these sites?
They may as well surf porn.
Ain’t much science coming outta there in the past few years.
If these “people” have spouses, how do the spouses feel about their obsession with porn? What a bunch of life’s losers. Hey, fools, maybe do the job you being paid for????????
Doesn’t it just fill you with dread that our government doesn’t secure their network firewalls any better than that? Where I used to work you couldn’t even get to a breast cancer site because it was blocked.
Maybe they are doing scientific research on the reproductive system??? Didn’t Kinsey and his guys do some group things together, all in the name of research????
“”He explained that these young women are from poor countries and need to make money to help their parents and this site helps them do that,” investigators wrote in a memo.”
Why yes, it was actually charity and a tax deduction should be allowed for time spent.
I would be willing to bet that if I accessed porn on my computer at work I would be immediately fired and pretty embarrassed.
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