Free Republic

Nick Schulz at the American Enterprise Institute’s blog presents this graph: I don’t think it will shock anyone that the top people in Democratic administrations tend to have less private-sector experience than their GOP counterparts. Yet the previous low-water mark for private-sector experience since 1900, the JFK administration, was still three times higher than the Obama Cabinet’s level. Here’s what makes this background information about the Obama team even more interesting: As Schulz notes, “public sector employment has ranged since the 1950s at between 15 percent and 19 percent of the population,” yet the Obama Cabinet got more than...

Retired Capistrano Unified School District Superintendent James A. Fleming could face jail if convicted on a felony indictment charging him with using school resources to track his political enemies. But that won't stop his public pensions from rolling in. Fleming collects $141,331 a year in California state teacher retirement funds, on top of the $64,068 pension he collects from working 27 years in Florida. Even if convicted on the 2007 charges, both his pensions will remain untouched. Fleming is one of 3,090 educators in the California State Teachers' Retirement System who make at least $100,000 a year in taxpayer-guaranteed public...

(snip) Before the Republican Party can make a comeback consistent with its principles, it needs help from the private sector. Specifically, it needs a private sector the public can believe in. The core selling point of a conservative political party is that the private sector is inherently more efficient, dynamic and ethical than the public sector. That’s a hard sell these days. There are too many examples of public-sector excess for the public to swallow free-market fundamentalism. It was the private sector, not the government, that got the bright idea to insure bundled mortgages. It’s a private-sector bureaucrat, not a...

Even a casual observer of the Obama administration cannot help but notice the lack of concern about the unemployment rate from the president on down. Obama himself has casually talked about unemployment hitting 10%, his economic advisors have spoken with uncharacteristic candor about a "jobless recovery' and there is no urgency anywhere within the administration to treat the problem. Further, the Stimulus package has been anything but a long-term job creator. In fact, much of the stimulus is merely a hodge-podge of short-term projects, heavy on pork, but short on lasting economic impact. Conversely, the administration seems to be pursuing...

To a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. To a community organizer, every citizen looks like a victim entitled to someone else’s money. The Obama campaign and administration has proved that again and again. But both the president and his wife put a fine point on it with commencement addresses this month. (Joe Biden also gave one, but it’s a safe bet that nobody – Joe least of all – knew what he was talking about.) To the Obamas, grads should opt for the virtue of what Michelle has called “helping” careers, and eschew the vice...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/AdvisorsToConductImmediateCyberSecurityReview/ Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 12:00 am President Obama Directs the National Security and Homeland Security Advisors to Conduct Immediate Cyber Security Review THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary _______________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release February 9, 2009 President Obama Directs the National Security and Homeland Security Advisors to Conduct Immediate Cyber Security Review Melissa Hathaway Selected to Lead the Review President Obama has directed the National Security and Homeland Security Advisors to conduct an immediate review of the plan, programs, and activities underway throughout the government dedicated to cyber security. This...

Don't let anyone tell you the American dream has faded. the truth is the U.S. is still minting lots of millionaires. Glenn Goss is one of them. Goss retired four years ago, at 42, from a $90,000 job as a police commander in Delray Beach, Fla. He immediately began drawing a $65,000 annual pension that is guaranteed for life, is indexed to keep up with inflation and comes with full health benefits. Goss promptly took a new job as police chief in nearby Highland Beach. One big lure: the benefits. Given that the average man his age will live to...

Norway's state treasury is set to overflow, local analysts claim. Some think the price of North Sea crude oil will hit USD 130 a barrel, pumping even more "petrokroner" into the state budget and giving politicians few excuses to limit its use. Norway's oil and gas industry is hotter than ever, but many Norwegians complain that government services are nonetheless declining. Some grades of crude oil hit USD 111 a barrel this week, before easing on Friday. The North Sea Brent crude that's been pumping up Norway's economy for years was being traded at just over USD 107 a barrel...

<p>PARIS -- French libraries are said to file their nation's constitutions -- there have been more than a dozen since 1789; the current one is a relatively ancient 49 years old -- under periodicals. Now Nicolas Sarkozy, France's peripatetic new president, has created a commission on constitutional reform. The commission includes Jack Lang who, as minister of culture in 1983 under President Francois Mitterrand, staged a sublimely unserious conference on the (supposed) world economic crisis, featuring the likes of Sophia Loren, Susan Sontag and Norman Mailer.</p>

JEFFERSON CITY — Overturning a 60-year legal precedent, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that teachers and other public employees have a constitutional right to engage in collective bargaining with their government employers.

HARARE (AFP) - Doctors have been on strike for weeks, teachers are boycotting classes and now civil servants are threatening to stay away from their offices in another sign of the general collapse of the Zimbabwean state. President Robert Mugabe, in power since independence in 1980, has found his position largely unchallenged in recent times given splits in opposition ranks. But analysts believe the recent wave of industrial unrest, with workers desperate for pay hikes to keep up pace with the skyrocketing cost of living, could soon boil over and culminate in spontaneous anti-government protests. Mugabe may have dismissed his...

FOR years it has been a workplace truism: jobs with fat paychecks are found in the private sector, while jobs with ho-hum pay but rock-solid benefits are found with the government. But research by the Employee Benefit Research Institute suggests that the truism has not been true for some time.As of June 2005, overall compensation costs were 46 percent higher for state and local governments than for private-sector employers, according to the institute’s research analyst, Ken McDonnell. And when Mr. McDonnell separated the cost of providing current pay from the cost of providing benefits, he found that government employees were...

In my article in Frontpagemag the other day concerning slush money for Islamo-fascism from the faculty union at CUNY I raise the question of the need to reform New York's badly designed and poorly administered Taylor Law. The New York State agency in charge of administering the Taylor Law is the Public Employment Relations Board whose Chair is Michael Cuevas and whose Executive Director is James Edgar. Appointed by Governor Pataki, these guys are union stooges. I have repeatedly inquired with Messrs. Cuevas and Edgar, and with the PERB staff, about (a) Taylor Law's prohibition on management-dominated unions and (b)...

Other than a three-day weekend, most Americans don't give much thought to what they're supposed to be observing on Labor Day. In practice, it's become little more than the unofficial celebration of the end of summer. Back in 1882, when New York City's Central Labor Union inaugurated the holiday, the labor movement was quite a different thing than it is today. Once upon a time, workers had valid grievances regarding pay, hours, conditions and safety. Unions served a positive role in leveraging the collective influence of their members to pressure management to redress those grievances. But labor unions are political...

Public sector gets high marksNorwegians are known for complaining, but a new survey indicates they're generally satisifed with the social services they get for their tax money. Subsidized day care centers get the highest marks, while everything from school dentists to centers for the elderly are clearly popular.Public sector services provided through local townships routinely get plenty of bashing, both directly and through the media. A survey of 15,000 Norwegians nationwide by research firm TNS Gallup, however, found that 77 percent of the services offered got positive evaluations.The survey, which asked Norwegians to rank 43 different services from libraries to...

In American novels, well into the 1950's, one finds protagonists using the future stream of dividends emanating from their share holdings to send their kids to college or as collateral.  Yet, dividends seemed to have gone the way of the hoolah hoop. Few companies distribute erratic and ever-declining dividends. The vast majority don't bother. The unfavorable tax treatment of distributed profits may have been the cause.The dwindling of dividends has implications which are nothing short of revolutionary. Most of the financial theories we use to determine the value of shares were developed in the 1950's and 1960's, when dividends were...

German unions and government negotiators reached a pay deal yesterday for the country's three million public service workers, heading off a strike that could have damaged the weak economy. Under the deal, hammered out in talks that included a 31-hour negotiating session, both sides agreed on a gradual pay rise of 4.4 per cent over a 27-month period, Otto Schily, the Interior Minister, said. "I think this is an acceptable compromise for the employers, [but] a compromise that as far as the financial capacity of the public purse is concerned goes to the limit of what is acceptable," Mr Schily...

More than a century ago, American Federation of Labor president Samuel Gompers declared Labor Day "the day for which the toilers in past centuries looked forward, when their rights and their wrongs would be discussed...that the workers of our day may not only lay down their tools of labor for a holiday, but upon which they may touch shoulders in marching phalanx and feel the stronger for it." Unions were an emergent force back then. As recently as 1953, more than a third of American workers belonged to a union. Within 30 years, that figure had dropped to a fifth....

Government's budget is in shambles WASHINGTON - Lost in all the outrage over the corporate accounting scandals is one fact politicians do not like to acknowledge: The auditing problems at American companies cannot rival the bookkeeping shambles of the world's largest enterprise - the U.S. government. Exaggerated earnings, disguised liabilities, off-budget shenanigans - they are all there in the government's ledgers on a scale even the biggest companies could not dream of matching. WorldCom executives brought America's second-largest long-distance phone company to the brink of bankruptcy after using improper accounting to pad earnings by $3.8 billion. Last year, when Congress...

The New Republic on Public / Private WHO SERVES AMERICA BETTER? PLEASE JOIN The New Republic for a panel discussion. Thursday, June 13, 2002 6:30 p.m The Cannon Caucus Room 345 Cannon House Office Building (at Independence and New Jersey Avenues, SE) Washington, D.C. Moderated by New Republic Editor Peter Beinart Panelists include: Jeff Faux President, Economic Policy Institute Grover Norquist President, Americans for Tax Reform Leslie Page Vice President,Citizens Against Government Waste Representative Henry A. Waxman (D-CA) Refreshments will be served. To R.S.V.P. email: rsvp@tnr.com or call: (202) 508-4488 Ext. 5406