Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Among the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) many tools to collect outstanding taxes is its ability to use the property of a taxpayer as security for an outstanding tax debt. IRS exercises this power when it files a federal tax lien against the property of a taxpayer. As part of its tax collection activities, IRS reported filing more than 548,000 tax liens against taxpayer property in fiscal year 2003. Since a lien encumbers taxpayer property, IRS's ability to file a lien is a powerful tool in enforcing the tax laws. With this power, however, comes the responsibility to ensure that liens are released timely once taxpayers satisfy their tax debt. The Internal Revenue Code (IRC) addresses timeliness by requiring IRS to release liens within 30 days of the tax debt's satisfaction. If IRS fails to timely release federal tax liens, taxpayers can suffer undue hardship and burden. Because federal tax liens appear on commercial credit reports, (1) businesses may be unable to obtain necessary credit because lenders may assume they are bad credit risks, (2) individuals may miss an opportunity to buy a home or an automobile because they …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In the 1990s, several reforms to Medicare physician fees were implemented to help control spending growth in the traditional Medicare program, known as fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare. Concerns were raised that these reforms might have a negative impact on Medicare beneficiaries' access to physician services, but at the end of the decade, there was little or no evidence of nationwide access problems. In 2002, access concerns were again raised when Medicare physician fees were reduced 5.4 percent. Some policymakers have questioned whether access to physician services may have diminished either nationwide, in certain geographic areas, or for certain beneficiaries needing high-cost services. In October 2003, we briefed the Senate Finance Committee on trends from 2000 to 2002 in (1) Medicare beneficiaries' use of physician services, an indicator of access to these services, and (2) physicians' decisions to "accept assignment," that is, accept Medicare's fee as payment in full. This report addresses the same two objectives and expands on the information provided in our October 2003 briefing."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "China's 2001 accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) raised expectations with Congress and the private sector about the prospects for China to reform its markets and allow greater access to foreign goods and services. As part of our long-term body of work related to China's membership in the WTO, we reported in October 2004 on how the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) and the Departments of Commerce, State, and Agriculture were positioned to monitor and enforce China's compliance with its WTO commitments in 2003. In that report, we examined the multilateral annual WTO review of China's progress, referred to as the Transitional Review Mechanism (TRM). We found that the TRM has ongoing limitations in its participation and its procedures. We made recommendations to improve related U.S. government activities. In a subsequent request, Congress asked us to provide detailed information about the TRM process in 2003 so that they could better gauge the level of activity and the efficacy of the United States and other WTO members' efforts to utilize it."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Under Section 655 of the Foreign Assistance Act, as amended, the Department of State reports annually to Congress on the aggregate dollar value and quantity of all defense articles and services that State licensed for direct commercial sale to each country. State's report is intended to be an accurate record to ensure that Congress and the public are informed regarding foreign arms sales by U.S. industry. In the course of a previous GAO review on the proliferation of man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS),we found that State reported to Congress that it had approved licenses for the commercial sale of Stinger missiles to foreign countries in five instances during fiscal years 2000 and 2002. However, U.S. government policy precludes the commercial sale of Stinger missiles, and State had not approved licenses for the commercial sale of Stinger missiles. State officials stated in May 2004 that the information the department had reported in its fiscal years 2000 and 2002 reports was incorrect. In response to our ongoing review, State submitted an amended 2002 report to Congress in September 2004 and posted corrected 2000 and 2002 reports to its Web site. …

Other written product issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This report presents the highlights of GAO's fiscal year 2004 Performance and Accountability report. In short, fiscal year 2004 was an exceptional year for GAO. For example, we received a clean opinion from independent auditors on our financial statements and met or exceeded all but one of our key performance measures. In addition, we exceeded or equaled our all-time record for six of our seven key performance indicators while continuing to improve our client and employee feedback survey results. We documented $44 billion in financial benefits--a return of $95 for every dollar spent, or $13.7 million per employee. We also recorded over 1,000 nonfinancial benefits that helped to shape important legislation and increase the efficiency of various federal programs, thus improving the lives of millions of Americans. In addition, the rate at which our recommendations had been implemented by the Congress or federal agencies rose to 83 percent, and we made over 2,700 new recommendations in fiscal year 2004. We just missed our timeliness goal by delivering 97 percent of our products to the Congress when promised. This summary of our performance and accountability report highlights …

This research shows perennial Arctic ice is melting by nearly 10% a decade. It’s on course to disappear entirely by the end of the century. This means polar bears, walrus and seals living on the ice could become extinct. Many other Arctic species would also feel severe impacts. The fears of Inuit communities from Greenland to eastern Russia are also covered in the WWF report. Global warming puts traditional hunting and food-sharing at great risk." Sixty per cent of the tundra habitat of birds like ravens, snow buntings, falcons, loons, sandpipers and terns could be lost in the 2°C warming scenario. Migratory birds will lose vital staging and breeding grounds, affecting biodiversity around the world. So, two degrees? It’s too much!

BRAC 2005 Intelligence Joint Cross-Service Group Meeting Minutes of January 5, 2005. The document is redacted.

First part of the BRAC 2005 Intelligence Joint Cross-Service Group Meeting Minutes of January 12, 2005. The document is redacted and includes pages 1-44 of the IJCSG Principals Meeting Brief (PowerPoint slides).

Second part of the BRAC 2005 Intelligence Joint Cross-Service Group Meeting Minutes of January 12, 2005. The document is redacted and consists of pages 45-74 of the IJCSG Principals Meeting Brief (PowerPoint slides).

BRAC 2005 Intelligence Joint Cross-Service Group Meeting Minutes of January 26, 2005. The document is redacted, and the meeting minutes were withheld as classified information.

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether an applicant for a commercial pesticide applicator license is required to furnish a social security number for purposes of child support enforcement (RQ-0247-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is authorized to raise the environmental cleanup level at a specific site, and if so, what procedures must it follow (RQ-0245-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether, given that Senate Bill 319, Act of May 31, 2003, 78th Leg. R.S., ch. 822, 2003 Tex. Gen. Laws 2607, defines the word "individual" for certain purposes to include "an unborn child," a physician must report a pregnant patient's use of illegal controlled substances such as child abuse or as the delivery of controlled substances to a child (RQ-0250-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether section 1305.003(14) of the Texas Occupations Code exempts from state licensing requirements all persons performing electrical work for a private industrial business, even if a person is not an employee of the private industrial business (RQ-0233-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Effect of amended article VII, section 5(b) of the Texas Constitution on the State Board of Education's management of the permenent school fund (RQ-0249-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Authority of the Railroad Commission to use monies from the Oil Field Cleanup Fund to plug oil and gas wells and perform other activities (RQ-0253-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Operation of the ex officio road commissioner system and allocation of road and bridge funds in Denton County (RQ-0254-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether the Texas Commission of Fire Protection may provide reimbursement for room and board as part of a Fire Department Emergency Program tuition scholarship for students who attend a training school (RQ-0255-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether Local Government Code section 214.212(c)(1), which permits a municipality to adopt local amendments to the International Residential Code, limits the municipality to adopting only amendments that are equivalent to or more stringent than the the standards of the International Residential Code (RQ-0256-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a Texas inmate violates the Texas forfeiture statute by selling his artwork on an Internet website (RQ-0252-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a bail bond surety who is convicted of violating section 1704-304(c) of the Occupations Code has committed a crime of moral turpitude for purposes of section 1704.302(c) thereof (RQ-0259-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether payment for accumulated vacation time, paid as salary under an employment contract, is creditable compensation for purposes of determining Teacher Retirement System benefits (RQ-0251-GA)

At Formosa Plastics Corporation's plant in Point Comfort, Texas, a plant-wide assessment team analyzed process energy requirements, reviewed new technologies for applicability, and found ways to improve the plant's energy efficiency. The assessment team identified the energy requirements of each process and compared actual energy consumption with theoretical process requirements. The team estimated that total annual energy savings would be about 115,000 MBtu for natural gas and nearly 14 million kWh for electricity if the plant makes several improvements, which include upgrading the gas compressor impeller, improving the vent blower system, and recovering steam condensate for reuse. Total annual cost savings could be $1.5 million. The U.S. Department of Energy's Industrial Technologies Program cosponsored this assessment.

RadHeat is a one dimensional finite difference heat transfer code that can determine the transient temperature evolution of layered targets in pulsed penetrating radiation environments. It makes use of energy dependent opacity and stopping data to model the volumetric deposition of any number of photon or ion spectra each incident at arbitrary angles. Convective and radiative boundary conditions are handled as well as the ability to impose any initial temperature profile. The heat diffusion equation is formulated implicitly to eliminate timestep dependent stability issues. Simulations are, therefore, able to achieve high fidelity during times of thermal activity and greater speed elsewhere. The prototypical physical situation simulated by RadHeat is illustrated. RadHeat was originally written to study the temperature response of tungsten-armored target-facing walls to the pulsed photon and ion radiation emanating from fusion microexplosions in future IFE power plants. RadHeat's implementation is quite general, though, and the code can be applied to a very broad range of problems. Anything from the heating of the Earth's crust on a warm summer day to the temperature rise in a mirror after a laser pulse could potentially be modeled. This manual was written to help new users learn how to run the code …