WASHINGTON — The U.S. government has a problem with dead people.
For one thing, it pays them way too much money.  In the past few
years, Social Security paid $133 million to beneficiaries who
were deceased. The federal employee retirement system paid more
than $400 million to retirees who had passed away. And an aid
program spent $3.9 million in federal money to pay heating and
air-conditioning bills for more than 11,000 of the dead.  These
mistakes are part of a surprising glitch at the heart of the
federal bureaucracy. Because of a jury-rigged and outdated
system meant to track deaths, the government has trouble
determining exactly which Americans are deceased.  As a result,
Washington is bedeviled by both the living dead and the dead
living.  The first group are people who have died but are
counted as alive in federal records. Their benefits keep coming.
Millions of dollars pile up in unwatched accounts. Millions more
are spent by feckless relatives. In one recent record-breaking
case, a son stole his dead