Free Republic

In a measure of solidarity with those affected by the budget-slashing government sequestration, President Obama is giving up 5 percent of his salary for rest of the year, which is almost as admirable and sensible as a mansion-owner shutting off his marble fountains during a drought. This is not to imply that the president shouldn't demonstrate some unity with those who've been furloughed or lost work because of the blind slashing the sequestration prompted. People like Jeff Maryak, profiled by BuzzFeed, who is considering re-enlisting to make ends meet after a 27 percent pay cut. People like those who've lost...

Seventy-percent of the White House staffers who made the top annual salary of $172,200 in 2012 were men and 30 percent were women, according to a White House report on staff compensation. In addition, men on the White House staff are paid, on average, $86,260.89 and women are paid, on average, $76,162.65. That means the average man on the White House staff is paid about $10,098--about 13 percent--more than the average woman. In Obama's White House, women on average earn only 88.3 percent of what the men earn.

The Michigan Civil Service Commission’s website boasts: "Invest your talent with the state of Michigan. The rewards are enormous." In fact, for the first time, the average salary and benefit package for state employees surpassed $100,000 a year in 2011-2012. The average combined cost of salary and benefits for a state worker jumped to $104,067 in 2011-12, increasing from $97,883 in 2010-11. James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, did the analysis using the Michigan Civil Service Commission’s certified aggregate payroll. When factoring in inflation, the cost of benefits for a state employee...

Michigan teachers rank second in the nation in terms of salary when the cost-of-living is factored in, according to an analysis done by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Maryland ranked No. 1; Illinois was No. 3 followed by New York and California. The analysis of salaries comes after Michigan Superintendent of Education Mike Flanagan said he would like to see all full-time public schools teachers make $100,000 a year in salary, which he said would attract higher quality teachers. Michael Van Beek, education policy director at the Mackinac Center, estimated it would take $4.2 billion to increase all teachers...

President Obama will propose a 1 percent pay raise for federal civilian employees in the administration’s fiscal 2014 budget proposal, the Washington Post has learned. At the same time, the House plans to vote soon on legislation that would extend the current freeze on basic pay rates through the end of calendar 2013. The freeze was originally set for two years and scheduled to expire at the end of last year, but it was extended until a temporary budget measure expires next month. When the measure expires, federal employees will receive a 0.5 percent raise for the remainder of 2013,...

Adam Kredo reports that Chuck Hagel’s anti-Israel animosity was obvious well before his career in Congress. While heading up the USO, he clashed with Jewish leaders over a USO port in Haifa: Hagel, who served as president and CEO of the World USO from 1987 to 1990, expressed intense opposition to the USO Haifa Center during a tumultuous 1989 meeting with Jewish leaders, according to multiple sources involved in the fight to keep the post open. “He said to me, ‘Let the Jews pay for it’,” said Marsha Halteman, director for military and law enforcement programs at the Jewish Institute...

Back in early December, I posted on Obama's soon-to-be-announced Jew-hater pick for Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel. Much handwringing and chatter followed from Obama's Jews, as if they have anything to say. lml Did they really think Obama would change his mind? He knew what he was doing. There was no way Obama was going to withdraw this Jew-hater. Obama has been crapping on the Jews since he took power, and instead of throwing his pro-jihad ass out in 2012, they line up for more abuse with a knife and fork: "Please, sir, may we have some more?" Obama expected...

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi isn't ruling out pushing for upper-income earners to pay more even after the "fiscal cliff" deal that raised their taxes. She tells CBS' "Face the Nation" that "I'm saying that's not off the table." The California Democrats isn't getting into specifics but she does discuss changes to tax law that might involve deductions and other breaks.

The Internal Revenue Service typically distributes withholding tables to employers at the end of November that reflect changes to the federal income-tax rate, but no tables have been sent for the New Year, said Mark Betts, payroll director for ASAP Accounting & Payroll Services Inc. in Durango. **SNIP** Employees should be prepared to take home 2 percent less pay in their checks this year as the Social Security payroll tax cut expires. President Barack Obama initially included the tax cut extension in his fiscal cliff negotiations, but it has not been included in recent proposals. The tax cut was intended...

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...

Here they vote. They're a joke. They all want to mooch, mooch, mooch. Precious rights, losing fights. We're paying for you, you, you. Feeling freedom's gone, can tax our minds. When we can't go on, to survive the tide, their debt provides. Someday debt will find them; latch those chains of Biden. One right will remind you, how he taxed and spent our take-home pays. If tyrants usurp you, true debt won't desert you. You'll know he'll still tax you, though he taxed and spent our take-home pays. Double-time, caught between delusion and change, change, change. Campaign lies, promises he...

The gap between rich and poor is well illustrated by the large multi-billion dollar corporations employing thousands of low-wage workers. With the Great Recession over, not only are many of these companies now hitting record profits, but their executive pay remains spectacularly high. Meanwhile, according to a report released by the National Employment Law Project, the current federal minimum wage the workers are often paid, is worth 30% less than it was in 1968 in terms of purchasing power. Two-thirds of low-wage workers — those that are paid less than $10 an hour — are employed by large corporations with...

NO longer can Congress, the Senate and POTUS, continue to kick the can down the road, last month "October" the deficit increased another $120B a whopping 22%. An essential duty of Congress/Senate/POTUS is to establish and pass an annual Fed budget, they have failed to perform this primary duty for the past four years. NO MORE! A law needs to be passed NOW, requiring Federal legislators and POTUS to pass a federal budget per the guidelines of "Budget and Accounting Act". If POTUS and the legislature fail to accomplish this task by the due date, ALL three, Congress, Senators, and...

The intersex wage-gap question asked at the last presidential debate once again thrust the issue of equal pay for women into the headlines. And since Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are both vying for women — who vote in greater numbers than men do — both campaigns have been saying all the “right” things. Obama has touted his signing of the Lily Ledbetter Act, while the Republicans have pointed out that not only does the liberal network MSNBC pay its female employees less, so does, ironically, the Obama administration (by the way, Obama did the same in his office when...

I have become increasingly disturbed by the so-called "feminist" arguments made by some regarding the "War on Women." It seems we've reached an age of political discourse where women are receiving the deference of yester-year, but not the respect of a rigorous examination of their argument — which, if true, would be grievous. In this piece, I examine the feminist claim that women are not paid as much as men for equal work. Let's take a contentious talking-point: The Lilly Ledbetter Act. Proponents argue that it addresses the alleged 77 cents to a dollar discrepancy between male and female pay...

The recently retired chancellor of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system was the state's highest-paid employee in fiscal year 2012. The St. Cloud Times reported Saturday, Sept. 15, that Chancellor James McCormick's earnings totaled $429,172 for the fiscal year that ran from July 1, 2011, to June 30, 2012. His successor, Steven Rosenstone, was also in the top 10 highest-paid state employees after earning $320,000. The rest of the top 10 includes two college presidents: Minnesota State University, Mankato president Richard Davenport earned $304,514, and St. Cloud State University President Earl Potter made $303,263. The rest were all medical...

Michigan public school teachers who are facing pay freezes and pay cuts might be surprised to know that the dues they pay that go to their national unions helped give the national presidents raises of 19 percent and 22 percent in 2011. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten had her base salary increase from $342,552 in 2010 to $407,323 in 2011 while National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel's base salary jumped from $298,387 in 2010 to $362,644. The salary information was taken from the unions most recent LM-2 reports. Van Roekel's total compensation went from $397,721 to $460,060...

U.S. Firms Brace For U.K.-Style Shareholder Revolt By Sara Sjolin, MarketWatchJune 8, 2012, 4:24 a.m. EDT LONDON (MarketWatch) — Corporate boards in the U.S. should brace themselves for mounting dissatisfaction with executive pay in coming years, as the current “shareholder spring” in Europe likely will spill across the pond for next year’s proxy season. Prominent U.S. companies like Citigroup Inc. /quotes/zigman/5065548/quotes/nls/c C +3.20% and NYSE Euronext /quotes/zigman/421745/quotes/nls/nyx NYX -0.69% have already felt the echo from the European revolts, although the scope for shareholders’ anger remains to be seen in the U.S. “The fact that there have been large pay outs...

Members of the Montgomery County Council on Wednesday criticized the county school board's decision to spend a budget surplus on employee compensation rather than shrinking classroom size. "The decision last year to use the surplus in their health insurance account to avoid ... an increase in the employee share of health insurance premiums ... that's a choice that I would highlight as an example where they could have reduced class size but instead they chose to keep their employee benefits better than other employees'," said Councilman George Leventhal, D-at large. Montgomery County Public Schools expects to have $32.3 million in...

A representative teacher in a typical Michigan school district can retire at age 56 and immediately begin collecting state benefits worth $48,161 annually, including $35,640 in pension and $12,521 in health insurance benefits. The insurance benefit cost assumes the person has a dependent spouse but no dependent children. At age 65, this couple’s cash income would increase to $65,160 as they begin collecting Social Security, plus the value of health benefits. From that point, the cost of their health benefits are divided between federal Medicare and the state retirement system for school employees. Returns on any savings accumulated by the...