Free Republic

Considering the state of this state and the condition of the world, the so-called "Public Employees Bill of Rights Act" might be mistaken for satire. The problem is, Assembly Bill 1655, is serious. It aims to give unionized California government workers "more workplace discipline protections and first dibs on state government work," as the Sacramento Bee put it...

Troops get paid in lots of different ways. There’s basic pay, allowances, bonuses, incentives and assorted housing, health and retirement bennies. Is this the best way to compensate U.S. military personnel? In other words, are we getting the biggest bang for the taxpayer’s buck with this rucksack of options? Defense budget pro Todd Harrison of the independent Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments is trying to figure this out. He’s launching an on-line survey to see what the troops think.

House Democrats prepping for fight over proposed cuts to jobless benefitsBy Vicki Needham - 12/26/11 07:15 AM ET House Democrats are critical of GOP proposals that make sweeping changes to the federal unemployment benefits program, but are holding back specifics on how they intend to work out those differences as both sides line up for a battle over extending jobless assistance. The two sides face a deep divide on what to include and how to cover the $200 billion cost of jobless benefits legislation that is expected to extend the policies through the 2012 elections. On the cusp of early...

Via CNS News and our friend and Townhall colleague Greg Hengler, Nancy Pelosi lectured America on macroeconomics yesterday by insisting that an extension of unemployment benefits would “make a difference of 600,000 jobs to our economy.” Greg recalled a similar claim from Pelosi about ObamaCare, and adds it to the end of Pelosi’s claim from yesterday: “Christmas is 10 days away,” said Pelosi at a press briefing on Capitol Hill today. “The president and Democrats in Congress have been very clear. We’re not going home without enacting a payroll tax cut for America’s working families and extending unemployment insurance for...

While the Occupy Wall Street protesters’ wrath has been focused on "the rich" from the private sector, there are plenty of public-sector employees in Michigan who are among the top wage earners in the country. The Tax Foundation found that the top 5 percent of income earners in the U.S. in 2009 made at least $154,643. Michigan Capitol Confidential took a look at some of Michigan’s government employees who are paid with tax dollars who fall in that top 5 percent. The salaries listed are the most recent available from public records or news reports. Those “rich” employees came from...

Despite recent layoffs, teachers still have greater job security than workers in private businesses. While employment in education declined by 2.9% between September 2008 and July 2011, according to BLS data, overall private-sector employment declined by 4.4%. Moreover, from 2005 through 2010 the unemployment rate for public school teachers averaged 2.1%, versus 4.1% for private school teachers and 3.8% for occupations that some consider comparable, such as computer programmers and insurance underwriters.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The jobs crisis has left so many people out of work for so long that most of America's unemployed are no longer receiving unemployment benefits. Early last year, 75 percent were receiving checks. The figure is now 48 percent — a shift that points to a growing crisis of long-term unemployment. Nearly one-third of America's 14 million unemployed have had no job for a year or more. Congress is expected to decide by year's end whether to continue providing emergency unemployment benefits for up to 99 weeks in the hardest-hit states. If the emergency benefits expire, the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The jobs crisis has left so many people out of work for so long that most of America's unemployed are no longer receiving unemployment benefits. Early last year, 75 percent were receiving checks. The figure is now 48 percent — a shift that points to a growing crisis of long-term unemployment. Nearly one-third of America's 14 million unemployed have had no job for a year or more. Congress is expected to decide by year's end whether to continue providing emergency unemployment benefits for up to 99 weeks in the hardest-hit states. If the emergency benefits expire, the...

Last year, as a debate over the runaway national debt gathered steam in Washington, Social Security passed a treacherous milestone. It went “cash negative.” For most of its 75-year history, the program had paid its own way through a dedicated stream of payroll taxes, even generating huge surpluses for the past two decades. But in 2010, under the strain of a recession that caused tax revenue to plummet, the cost of benefits outstripped tax collections for the first time since the early 1980s. Now, Social Security is sucking money out of the Treasury. This year, it will add a projected...

Lawmakers open to changes in military benefitsBy DONNA CASSATA Associated Press Originally published Saturday, October 22, 2011 at 4:43 AM WASHINGTON — The government's promise of lifetime health care for the military's men and women is suddenly a little less sacrosanct as Congress looks to slash trillion-dollar-plus deficits. Republicans and Democrats alike are signaling a willingness - unheard of at the height of two post-Sept. 11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - to make military retirees pay more for coverage. It's a reflection of Washington's newfound embrace of fiscal austerity and the Pentagon's push to cut health care costs that...

VACATION: Vacation is earned from the first day of employment, but cannot be used until the employee has six months classified service. Full-time employees earn vacation based on the following table. Less than full-time employees earn vacation on a pro-rated basis. Employee status under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) Years of Service Non-Exempt Hours Earned Each Year Exempt* Hours Earned Each Year During first 5 104 120 5+ to 10 144 160 10+ to 15 160 176 15+ to 20 184 200 20+ to 25 200 216 25 and Over 216 216 * Some Exempt employees do not...

Millions of unemployed Americans are waiting for Congress to do something other than trade barbs over their job creation plans. If lawmakers don't act soon, the jobless see their unemployment checks start to disappear come January. More than 6 million Americans are set to lose federal unemployment benefits in 2012, with 1.8 million running out in January alone, according to new figures from the National Employment Law Project. President Obama's $447 billion American Jobs Act would extend the deadline to file for federal unemployment benefits for another year. Though the Senate is expected to take up the controversial jobs bill...

Families were more dependent on government programs than ever last year. Nearly half, 48.5%, of the population lived in a household that received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2010, according to Census data. Those numbers have risen since the middle of the recession when 44.4% lived households receiving benefits in the third quarter of 2008. The share of people relying on government benefits has reached a historic high, in large part from the deep recession and meager recovery, but also because of the expansion of government programs over the years. (See a timeline on the...

The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971...before computers, before e-mail, before cell phones, etc. Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land...all because of public pressure. I'm asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise. In three days, most people in The United States of...

“I just swipe my EBT .. . Every day I get my ‘swipe’ on . . . I mean who cares? It’s the EBT it’s not food stamps.” — YouTube rap song, “My EBT.” Welcome to EBT Nation! Gone are the days of food stamps and social embarrassment. Forget using taxpayer benefits for government cheese and day-old bread. When you’re “EBT’n’ ” (like the cool kids call it), you’re livin’ large! Walk through Downtown Crossing, for example, and you’ll see signs at Tello’s for hip jeans, tops and lingerie. You’ll also see another sign: “We Accept EBT!” Now nobody’s going to confuse Tello’s with...

<p>CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) -- Being behind bars usually means an end to unemployment benefits. But that didn't happen in the case of dozens of West Virginia inmates.</p> <p>A legislative audit released Tuesday says around $150,000 in benefits were paid over the last three years on behalf of claimants who were either in prison or jail. Click here to find out more!</p>

Here’s the latest on who makes what from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (whose workers, we’ll point out here, happen to be public employees): Workers in the private sector made an average of $28.13 per hour in total compensation in June (wages contributed $19.81 to that, and benefits added $8.32)While state and local government workers made an average of $40.40 per hour (wages were $26.41, and benefits, $13.99). Of course, the amount one earns is a function of the skills and education one possesses. Our colleague Jan Norman tells you a bit more about the breakdown by job type here.It is often argued that many state and local government workers...

In 2009, Arizona passed a law that eliminated health-insurance coverage for same-sex partners of public employees. But the 9th Circuit yesterday ruled that the law violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, the Arizona Republic reports. The 9th Circuit upheld a lower court injunction that has blocked the law from taking effect. A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit concluded that while the state is not obligated to provide health-care benefits it cannot deny them to a specific group of employees, the Republic reports.

The head of the U.S. Postal Service said in an interview that the organization will default -- perhaps as early as this winter -- unless Congress intervenes. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe's comments reflect a well-known reality that the Postal Service is in dire financial straits. The rise of email and online bill-paying has steadily eroded its profits over the years while labor costs soar. Donahoe is calling for a host of changes, including the elimination of Saturday delivery, to close a deficit projected to top $9 billion this year. But he said Congress needs to step in to help keep...

For decades I was told by friends who work in government that they were entitled to higher job benefits than private sector workers because they received less salary. Why is it I don’t hear that anymore? It’s because the numbers decisively show that now most government workers earn more pay than "privates" and earn far more in benefits. In fact, the bennies are four times greater for federal workers than private workers. Even union-friendly media are turning a critical eye to public sector unions, who throw up picket lines and pack the halls of government to bleed dry the American...

I earned these 'entitlements' I believe that most citizens do not understand what a federal entitlement program is. There are earned entitlements versus a special government entitlement that is given to an individual who needs assistance that is mandated by law. What is a government entitlement? Note below that some are free and some are not! Why the government is lumping these programs together is beyond me: Only Congress would think this was a proper thing to do. How can a program like military retirement be linked with food stamps? The programs I am associated with should never be diminished...

Ministers are drawing up controversial plans to remove benefits from those convicted of taking part in the riots that engulfed England last week, in a move Liberal Democrats and independent experts have condemned as counter-productive and overly expensive. Officials in Number 10 and the department for work and pensions are putting together plans for the harsh punishment of those found guilty of even the most minor infringements during the riots after a public petition calling for such a move gathered nearly 200,000 signatures. David Cameron will lay the ground for such a move on Monday, in a speech a week...

A suspected looter in this week’s riots and his mother are being thrown out of their council home. In the first case of its kind, Daniel Sartain-Clarke, 18, and his mother have been served with an eviction notice as council bosses seek to turf them out of their £225,000 taxpayer-subsidised flat. Sartain-Clarke is charged with violent disorder and attempting to steal electronic goods from the Currys store at Clapham Junction, South London, on Monday night.

The day the law took effect, so did a policy at the University of Rochester. Same-sex partners who work for the university now have to be married by June 30 if they want to keep their partners’ benefits. “The unfortunate side is there are a lot of families that will lose their health care benefits that have been relying on domestic partner benefits,” said Scott Fearing, program director for the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley.

A class action settlement announced Friday between the federal government and a group of disabled veterans will award lifetime health-care benefits to more than 1,000 veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who were discharged from the service because of post-traumatic stress disorder. In a motion filed Thursday with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, the National Veterans Legal Service Program and the government jointly asked the court to approve lifetime disability retirement benefits to 1,029 veterans with PTSD who were denied those benefits upon discharge from the military following their wartime service. “It’s getting your dignity back,” said...

Who says smoking cigarettes is so bad ... well, aside from the World Health Organization, Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and every medical board and association on the face of the Earth? But should smokers be fortunate enough to dodge all that cancer, heart disease, emphysema and the like, they will be uniquely protected — for reasons unexplained by science — against a handful of diseases and afflictions. Call it a silver lining in their otherwise blackened lungs. Although long-term smoking is largely a ticket to early death, here are (gulp) five possible benefits...

“The fact that the President comes out and threatens to take away our social security checks and not pay the veterans is despicable,” said David Hern, a veteran who fought in Korea.

To help American carmakers stay in business, autoworkers grudgingly gave up pay raises and some benefits four years ago. Now that General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are making money again, workers want compensation for their sacrifice. Just how much they get is the central question hanging over contract talks that start this week between Detroit and one of the nation's largest and most powerful unions. The negotiations, the first since Chrysler and GM took government aid and emerged from bankruptcy, will set wages and benefits for 111,000 members of the United Auto Workers, including those at Ford, which avoided bankruptcy...

Rep. Jon Runyan, (R-N.J.), statement: H.R. 2349, the Veterans' Benefits Training Improvement Act of 2011, aims to improve benefit claims processing through focusing on individualized training and skills assessment. The bill creates an individualized training program for all employees and managers who process or supervise the processing of disability claims. Annually, these employees would take a test that assesses their skills relating to claims processing. Following this test, VA will create an individualized training program for each employee who took the test. This individualized program will focus on the areas of the test where the employee showed the greatest deficiency...

Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled VA's mental health care system and disability claims system remain badly broken, and veterans face long delays to see doctors and obtain benefits. The Court of Appeals ordered VA to fix what it descrbed "egregious problems." VCS believes now is the time for our President, VA Secretary, and Congress to fix VA. The lengthy bureaucratic delays our veterans face must end now. The Court of Appeals concluded, "VA's unchecked incompetence has gone on long enough; no more veterans should be compelled to agonize or perish while the government fails...

A growing number of states are shifting health care costs to the federal government by finding military veterans who receive Medicaid and signing them up for medical benefits through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

That question will undoubtedly wait until after the debt-ceiling negotiations have finished, but probably not long afterward. The deal signed that kept tax rates in place also extended jobless benefit funding for those who had not yet hit the 99-week maximum, a controversial decision that essentially set up yet another controversial decision. Those funds run out at the end of 2011, and Yahoo’s Zachary Roth previews what the argument will be for yet another funding extension: The recovery is weak now–but it could be headed for a major hit that will leave it even weaker.At the start of 2012, the...

We may never know how he did it. It could have involved some sort of broad scale mind control experiment. Perhaps he brought in somebody from over the border in Delaware to cast a spell on the state legislature. But in New Jersey – a state generally defined by partisan warfare between liberal Democrats and really liberal Democrats – Governor Chris Christie has met the public workers unions on the field of battle and sent them running like pigs from the gun. New Jersey lawmakers on Thursday approved a broad rollback of benefits for 750,000 government workers and retirees, the...

The Bloomberg Businessweek cover story on the U.S. Postal Service a couple weeks ago was a real stunner - filled with so many juicy tidbits that it took a while to digest.  It is just phenomenal that a handful of ingnoramuses (ignorami?) are doing this to a once proud example of American ingenuity. We've heard the story over the past several years - the rise of email has demolished traditional first class mail.  Free markets created the likes of UPS and FedEx, and thanks to better and more reliable service customers willingly paid substantially more for those products.  So what...

A surprising new government report shows that taxpayers have been footing the bill for retiree benefits not just for federal workers, but for independent freelance contractors who do work for the government as well. And no one is watching the store to see if your tax dollars are being wasted. Taxpayers for years have been covering private contractors' retiree costs for things like pensions and health care, even though these workers are not on the federal payroll. Taxpayers also cover these retiree costs for contractors' spouses, too, and in some cases if contractors want to retire early (at age 50),...

Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week delivered his “last major policy speech” and, in it, suggested that politicians show courage in the fiscal crisis by making the military compensation system more efficient. Gates has the department preparing such a set of recommendations to be part of a $400 billion defense savings package over the next 12 years. Specifically he criticized a “one-size-fits-all approach” to basic pay and retirement, suggesting “tiered and targeted” methods could cost less but pay more to service members in “high demand and dangerous specialties.” He implied pay levels overall are set too high as evidenced by...

About 550,000 full-time career federal government and U.S. Postal Service could hang it up and move on at anytime because they are eligible to retire, according to government statistics. The eligible workers represent about a quarter of the 2.4 million permanent full-time employees collecting government or postal paychecks.

Equity among workers is one of Republican Gov. John Kasich’s most consistent arguments in favor of Ohio’s new collective bargaining law. The law, Senate Bill 5, will bring Ohio’s public workers closer in line with private sector workers, who, on average, pay more for health care benefits and have weaker pensions, Kasich repeatedly has said. Now the governor is weaving collective bargaining for federal workers – or lack thereof – into his support for the law. Even though SB 5 restricts collective bargaining for the state’s 360,000 public workers, they would still be better off than federal workers, Kasich recently...

Before the president's speech this week, there was speculation that he would adopt the recommendations of the deficit recommendation commission. The commission made its recommendations late last year and, among other things, recommended changes to the federal retirement system and the federal employee health insurance system as part of reducing the federal government's massive spending deficit. But that did not happen.

Unemployment Drops In 93 North Carolina CountiesThe state says unemployment increased in just one county in the state, and that county is here in Eastern Carolina. Posted: 1:46 PM Apr 6, 2011 County unemployment rates dropped in all but seven of North Carolina's counties in February. In six of those counties the rate remained the same, while only in Perquimans County did the unemployment rate actually rise, by .3% from January. Here in Eastern Carolina unemployment in the Greenville metro area dropped by a full percent to 9.7%, in Jacksonville down by .3% to 8.7%, in Goldsboro the rate also...

<p>MILWAUKEE (AP) -- Marquette University in Milwaukee will begin offering domestic partner benefits to its employees beginning next year.</p> <p>The move by the Catholic, Jesuit university comes about a year after the school rescinded a job offer to a lesbian and scholar at Seattle University. Marquette officials said at the time, rescinding the job offer to Jodi O'Brien had nothing to do with her sexual orientation. But, it triggered heated debate on campus over the issue.</p>

"Madison is just the beginning!" AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka told a union rally in Annapolis on Monday. "Like that old song goes, 'You ain't seen n-n-n-n-nothing yet!' " Fresh from defeat in Wisconsin, union leaders are planning a new campaign not just to head off future challenges to their collective bargaining powers but also to make the case that organized labor's benefits and prerogatives -- wages, health care, and pensions that are more generous than those of comparable workers in the private sector -- are the moral equivalent of rights won by black Americans

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's support has been found, but to do so it looks like a reporter needs to leave Milwaukee and Madison. Bloomberg observes that Katherine Cramer Walsh of the University of Wisconsin-Madison reports that she found "bitterness while doing research in 27 communities, where many residents work multiple jobs without benefits while local government employees have health coverage and pensions." "I heard a lot of comments and conversations about the rural-urban divide in our state," said Walsh, an associate professor of political science. "I was very struck by how resentful people in so-called outstate Wisconsin are of Madison...

When Erin McFarlane looks at public workers, she sees lucrative pension benefits she doesn't ever expect to get. And it makes her mad. "I don't think that a federal employee or government employee is worth any more than anybody else who does their job and does it well," said the Slinger, Wis., woman. She's been working a couple of bartending jobs since January, when she was laid off from her job at a Harley Davidson plant after almost a decade. She's not alone in seeing public servants as public enemies in some ways. It's a case of pension envy.

I am proud to be a federal employee. Let me repeat, proud to be one of millions across the nation who work as a public servant and who believes that public employees choose careers so they can be a vital part of the glue that holds this nation together. Who are we? We are your neighbors, we are your friends, we are your fellow parishioners, and the people who sit with you watching the children and grandchildren at the ballpark or the basketball court. We are not faceless and anonymous "others." We are people you have known all your lives.

Thousands of firefighters in uniform on paid agency time came from different fire agencies all over Southern California to attend Glenn Allen's funeral bringing with them tens of millions of dollars of firefighting equipment, helicopters. Just the cost of fuel alone must have cost in the tens of thousands of dollars, notwithstanding the cost of salaries and accrued benefits of thousands of active duty firefighters. His funeral must have cost the taxpayers millions of dollars thanks to union rules that permit such a waste of taxpayer funds. I personally mean no disrespect to his family, but if it were not...

Christie: Wis. a class clash Chris Christie invoked Wisconsin's massive union-rights clash in his second annual budget address Tuesday, saying the protests are over a system with "two classes of citizens" — the people who get benefits, and the taxpayers who pay for them. Christie hailed New Jersey as leading the charge for other states with the belt-tightening practices he prescribed in his budget last year. And now, he said, the Garden State will follow what he coined as the "New Normal" of spending as they have the money, to try to ease the crush of debt. "In Wisconsin and...

However, public sector "collective bargaining" is a bad joke, given that there are only chairs on one side of the bargaining table. The bigger universe of interested parties have zero representation in the process. There is no natural force working to keep costs in line...

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The latest information about the salaries and benefits of each San Jose city employee was posted online Friday in an effort to maintain transparency in the city's government. The compensation information, which can be accessed at www.sanjoseca.gov/salary, is from 2010, the latest year available, according to city officials. Former police Chief Robert Davis had the highest total compensation - more than $534,000 in salary and benefits - for the year, according to the report. City Manager Debra Figone - who made more than $276,000 in 2010 - said the release of the information is an example...

AUSTIN (KXAN) - With Texas facing a multi-billion dollar budget shortfall, every school district is facing tough decisions. Some districts are considering closing schools and laying off teachers. So, why are some districts giving their superintendent raises and super-sized benefits? And do parents really know what their superintendent earns? Apparently, not. (exerpt - continues at link below) http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/investigations/kxan-investigates-super-salaries