Patent office workers bilked the government of millions by playing hooky, watchdog finds; Washington Post, 8/31/16

Lisa Rein, Washington Post; Patent office workers bilked the government of millions by playing hooky, watchdog finds:

"Thousands of employees who review patents for the federal government potentially cheated taxpayers out of at least $18.3 million as they billed the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for almost 300,000 hours they never worked, according to a new investigation...

The investigation scheduled for release Wednesday by the independent watchdog for the Commerce Department, the patent office’s parent agency, determined that the real scale of fraud is probably double those numbers..."

Investigators also found widespread time and attendance abuse at another Commerce agency, the U.S. Census Bureau, where employees in the small hiring office overcharged the government for thousands of hours of time they never worked. The fraud, also carried out by supervisors, involved 40 employees, more than half of the staff of the small office."

Letter From the Editor: Illuminating Gay America; New York Times, 3/20/15

David Leonhardt, New York Times; Letter From the Editor: Illuminating Gay America:

"Last year, we began looking for a more detailed portrait of gay and lesbian America. The Census Bureau doesn’t have it, because it doesn’t ask about sexual orientation. And most national polls don’t have a large enough sample to say anything meaningful on a local level. But Gallup itself surveys thousands and thousands of people every month, and it ultimately told us that it was planning to release data about sexual orientation and metropolitan areas. Claire Cain Miller and I have an article about that data.

The new data is not the last word on gay America, because it doesn’t get any more detailed than metropolitan areas and covers only the 50 largest ones. But it’s the most detailed statistical portrait that’s yet to be released. (Previous work has tended to cover only same-sex couples.)...

Eventually, I expect that the Census Bureau will solve this data problem. As Americans become more accepting of gays and lesbians, sexual orientation seems likely to join race, income and other subjects included on the census. But that can’t happen until 2020 — the date of the next decennial census — at the earliest. Until then, we’ll have to rely on other sources of data to understand the country’s full demographics."

The Metro Areas With the Largest, and Smallest, Gay Populations; New York Times, 3/20/15

David Leonhardt and Claire Cain Miller, New York Times; The Metro Areas With the Largest, and Smallest, Gay Populations:

"The Census Bureau asks Americans about subjects as varied as race, age, annual income and even their source of home heating. But there is one glaring demographic omission: The census does not ask people about their sexual orientation. As a result, there has long been a shroud of uncertainty around the geography of gay and lesbian Americans.

A new analysis of Gallup survey data offers the most detailed estimates yet about where people who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender live."