For your last point, that's why I made the clarifying comment about using education for entry level. I strongly disagree with past experience being hard to verify. Sure, the exact details may be hard to verify, what you can verify is whether or not they developed the expected level of skill in the given amount of time. If I ask for 5 years of java experience, that's really a proxy for having developed core competency with the language (along with some of the technologies in the ecosystem), and that's what I'll test for in the actual interview.

People who get fired for incompetence or social problems are both pretty easy to pick out in an interview.

Now that's not true at all. Let's be fair.

Both parties are absolutely LIVID if the dickheads running the country into the ground are wearing the other team's jersey.

Oh great. Now we've got Pierson's Pupeteers in the HR office...

Uh... you might want to check usernames there, champ. I didn't say anything at all about ex-presidents. I said this one was completely full of shit, as is anyone making the "too many problems to fix it in one term" excuse.

And, for the record, I refer to ALL presidents, sitting or ex, live or dead, perjoratively (the last one was 'Redneck Nero'). That's not bias.

I've always found past job experience + #2 for confirmation to be best. Better, even, than #1 + #2, for anything other than entry level.

Wow, it works! I'm wondering why I don't get invited to more parties.

Your bias is showing, too. You can only give his water-walking holiness a pass by saying "he can't fix it all in one term" by conveniently ignoring that he and his administration are actually making negative progress, by continuing and even expanding the same abuses that have been going on for the past 30 years.

So I would argue the current system is broken. For all the energy, time, and money our government puts into accountability you'd think we would not be reading headlines about how the GAO (Government Accountability Office) itself miss used all sorts of funds to throw wild parties. I am sure that the accountability processes and procedures and auditing do in fact prevent lots of fraud and abuse. The trouble is I am not sure they are cost effective.

You don't install a million dollar security system to protect a couple hundred thousand in other assets do you?

Perhaps accountability should be results focused. Did your your office/department/bureau accomplish its assigned objectives using the funds allotted? If bSuccess goto :quit; Else DisciplineTheResponsibleParty(Audit());

  In the end there may be a little moral victory in seeing the money not go out the door to fraud and abuse, but if it costs as much to prevent that as the fraud an abuse costs does it matter to the tax payer in the end? As I see it either way my pockets been picked, and the money is been spent. I only care at that point society got the benefit was supposed to get from that.

The lesson there would seem to be: you cannot account for all externalities. And thus, long term planning is generally useless.