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<p>ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Maryland lawmakers will receive a 15.7 percent pay raise over the next four years.</p> <p>Sources report that a salary commission recommended the increase, which will take effect automatically. A Republican resolution to stop the pay hikes is going nowhere.</p>

nyone heard about this....student has to pay back for 10 years, and then loan can be forgiven....??? 501c3's and government work qualify...

President Obama signed a bill that eliminates a financial disclosure requirement for some government employees, the White House announced. Here's the White House's statement: Statement by the Press Secretary on S. 716 On Monday, April 15, 2013, the President signed into law: S. 716, which eliminates the requirement in the STOCK Act to make available on official websites the financial disclosure forms of employees of the executive and legislative branches other than the President, the Vice President, Members of and candidates for Congress, and several specified Presidentially nominated and Senate-confirmed officers; and delays until January 1, 2014, the date by...

Roughly 100 students, alumni and government officials gathered in Linsly-Chittenden Hall Friday to commemorate the 60th anniversary of “Witness,” an anti-communist manifesto written by conservative columnist Whittaker Chambers. The event, hosted by the William F. Buckley Program, aimed to examine “Witness” from both historical and present-day perspectives through three panels and a dinner with Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels. Panelists such as John Gaddis, a history professor, and Elliott Abrams, former assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs, discussed the book’s controversial history in sparking the beginning of the conservative movement. Daniels said he agreed with the book’s...

My Cato Institute colleague, Chris Edwards, put together a remarkable (and depressing) chart showing that federal bureaucrats get almost twice the level of compensation as workers in the productive sector of the economy. Defenders of the bureaucracy (including a federal pay panel dominated by bureaucrats) claim that government employees actually are underpaid because…well…just because.My modest contribution to the debate was to put together a chart based on the Labor Department’s JOLTS data, which shows that bureaucrats are far less likely to voluntarily leave their jobs than folks in the private sector, which is very strong evidence that they are being...

Just when you thought yesterday’s dismal jobs numbers couldn’t get any worse -- they did. According to CNSNews.com, nearly seventy-five percent of all civilian jobs created since the beginning of last summer are in the public sector: Seventy-three percent of the new civilian jobs created in the United States over the last five months are in government, according to official data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In June, a total of 142,415,000 people were employed in the U.S, according to the BLS, including 19,938,000 who were employed by federal, state and local governments. By November, according to data...

The unemployment rate for civilian government workers plunged from 4.2 percent in October to 3.8 percent in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as government added 35,000 to its taxpayer-funded payrolls during the month. In October, federal, state and local governments in the United States employed 20,524,000 people. In November, that climbed to 20,559,000. As recently as July, the unemployment rate for government workers was as high as 5.7 percent, according to the BLS. That month, government employed only 20,015,000. Since July, times have been very good for government in the United States, with governments managing to add...

Gov. Pat Quinn today approved legislation requiring thousands of retired state employees to chip in on the costs of health care insurance that many of them get for little or nothing. The law attempts to rein in the state’s rising costs but also seeks to share the expense with the 78,000 retirees who pay no premiums for their insurance now. The Quinn administration will set premiums each year for the group health program, which includes retired judges, lawmakers, university employees and rank-and-file state workers. Currently, retired legislators get free premium health insurance after four years, retired judges after six years...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker established a program that has given hundreds of thousands of dollars in merit raises and bonuses to some state workers even as he preached cost-cutting and pushed through a law reducing most public workers' pay and eliminating their union rights. Read more: http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/walker-reinstates-bonuses-despite-budget-shortfall/article_3d9e5de4-8b0f-11e1-affa-001a4bcf887a.html#ixzz1shWTttZu

Nearly all negative spending by super PACs in the presidential campaign over the past week has gone toward opposing Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who trailed badly in polls leading up to today’s New Hampshire primary, according to a WSJ analysis of expenditures reported to the Federal Election Commission. In total, anti-Gingrich super PAC Restore Our Future disclosed $89,962 in expenditures opposing Mr. Gingrich’s candidacy since the Jan. 3 caucuses in Iowa, where he came in fourth. That’s 96% of all negative spending in the past week by super PACs, the newest and most controversial form of political action...

Not going to go into what brought this topic up for me. But anyway. It seems to me it would be the sport of wise guys and semi-alcoholic losers. Wouldn't screwing over peasants be the sport of kings?

It's difficult to divine exactly what the Occupy demonstrators in California cities and on university campuses are protesting. ... We needn't weep for the wealthy; they can take care of themselves. But their incomes are much more volatile than those of us who earn paychecks because they are much more dependent on capital gains from stocks and other investments, and when recession hits, their income streams decline sharply. That's where the effect on college fees comes into the equation. California has a particularly progressive personal income tax system, which means that it's extraordinarily dependent on high-income taxpayers. In fact, the...

The best thing that can be said about Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s economic plan and its Tuesday rollout speech is that before now, he didn’t have a plan, and now he does. He can check that box. There wasn’t anything wrong with it, and, as a good Republican, I support everything he said. The problem is, we have supported it all before. Our voters want and appreciate creativity. This didn’t offer much in the way of anything new. This program is Steve Forbes-lite. But it is what it is. Now he has to stick with it. “Cut, Balance, and Grow”...

The number of people who filed for unemployment assistance in the U.S. last week declined less-than-expected, official data showed on Thursday. In a report, the U.S. Department of Labor said the number of individuals filing for initial jobless benefits in the week ending September 16 fell by 9,000 to a seasonally adjusted 423,000, falling short of expectations for a decline to 420,000. The previous week’s figure was revised up to 432,000 from 428,000. Continuing jobless claims in the week ended September 10 fell to 3.727 million from a revised 3.755 million in the preceding week. Analysts had expected continuing jobless...

President Barack Obama has signed an executive order directing the federal government to design a new strategy for hiring, promoting and keeping workers of diverse backgrounds. The three-page order released Thursday directs the head of the Office of Personnel Management, a deputy director at the Office of Management and Budget and two other agencies to develop the strategy within 90 days. Agencies then have 120 days to implement it. An Office of Personnel Management report says that in fiscal year 2010, the federal workforce was 66.2 percent white, 17.7 percent black, 8 percent Hispanic, 5.6 percent Asian/Pacific Islander, 1.8 percent...

INDIANAPOLIS - This week on Eyewitness News, we begin what we call the Generations Project. All this week, we will look at baby boomers. If you are one, you may learn something about yourself. If you're not, perhaps you will recognize characteristics in someone you know. Either way, we hope it will lead us all to a better understanding of each other. We've all heard the term "baby boomer." But who fits into the generation? Baby boomers were born from 1946 to 1964. Their age today is 47 to 65. Like every generation, boomers have unique characteristics and values that...

After 34 years of teaching sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, I recently retired at age 64 at 80 percent of my pay for life. This calculation was based on a salary spiked by summer teaching, and since I no longer pay into the retirement fund, I now receive significantly more than when I “worked.” But that’s not all: There’s a generous health insurance plan, a guaranteed 3 percent annual cost of living increase, and a few other perquisites. Having overinvested in my retirement annuity, I received a fat refund and—when it rains, it pours—another for unused sick...

Pinks Slips Coming For 450,000 State and Local Government Employees in 2012 Mac Slavo May 26th, 2011 In June of 2010 we noted that well known financial sector analyst and the woman who blew the doors open on the 2008 mortgage crisis, Meredith Whitney, was forecasting that two million government employees would see their jobs cut over coming years because of fiscal problems. It’s happening. Over 300,000 jobs have been cut in fiscal year 2011, and that number is about to increase 50% going into 2012: Around 450,000 people who work for U.S. states, counties, cities, towns and villages could...

It appears that state agencies loaned government employees millions of dollars without getting repaid, according to the state controller’s office. Millions in interest-free salary and travel advances have been made to state employees without collecting repayment, according to audits from the controller. . .

If you’re collecting a federal paycheck, you should pay federal taxes. That’s the premise of a bill I introduced last week to require federal employees to pay their taxes or be fired. The IRS reports that 100,000 federal civilian employees are seriously delinquent on their federal taxes. These aren’t just people who fell behind. These are people who have actively defied IRS letters and phone calls seeking payment. In 2009, the US government failed to collect $1 billion a year from federal employees alone. While the number of delinquent federal employees has remained fairly constant since 2004, the amount owed...