Free Republic

Another study was released this month showing that teacher professional development programs are no guarantor of higher student achievement. The research compared middle school math teachers who were enrolled in an intensive professional development program with teachers who were not and found that students of teachers receiving the extra training failed to perform any better than students of teachers in the control group. This same method was employed by a study a few years ago that found professional development to be just as inept at raising student reading scores. This research calls into question a Michigan law requiring all teachers...

Ugh. Sometimes you have to absolutely hate the mainstream media. If you’re a New Jersey resident, you might have been subjected to a recent report from the Associated Press that stated Governor Chris Christie’s staff was making a ton more money than former Governor Money Bags – I mean Jon Corzine’s – staff was making. Well, once again we have a situation where the Associated Press did almost no fact checking once the information was put in front of their biased little faces. Either that or they blatantly wanted to produce a story that was heavily negative against Governor Christie....

WASHINGTON -- A group of Republican senators is questioning high salaries and expensive travel bills for executives at the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, raising issues that could jeopardize millions in federal funding for the national charity. The four senators said they were concerned that the chief executive of a charity that has been closing local clubs for lack of funding was compensated nearly $1 million in 2008. They also questioned why in the same year officials spent $4.3 million on travel, $1.6 million on conferences, conventions and meetings, and $544,000 in lobbying fees. More at source

The old saying that the best job to have during a recession is in government turns out to be the truth -- as long it's the federal government. The number of federal employees earning $100,000 or more a year jumped from 14 to 19 percent of the federal payroll during the recession, according to a report in USA Today. During that same period, the private sector was shedding 7.3 million jobs. Defense Department civilian employees earning $150,000 or more shot up from 1,868 in December 2007 to 10,100 in June 2009. Before the recession, the Transportation Department reported only a...

The Obama administration's pay czar is limiting the cash compensation for executives at companies that received the largest taxpayer bailouts to $500,000. The 25th through the 100th top earners at Citigroup, GMAC, American International Group and General Motors also must take more than half their compensation in stock, and at least half must be delayed for three or more years, said Kenneth Feinberg, the Treasury Department's Special Master for Executive Compensation.

Eight months on the shelf after knee surgery put a severe dent in his prize money, and killed his overseas appearance fees. One of his main sponsors walked away a year before their agreement was set to expire. Yet Tiger Woods remains sports’ highest earner with an annual income two and a half times larger than his closest competitor. The world’s top golfer made $110 million during the past 12 months and is the best-paid sportsman for the eighth straight year. Woods’ knee injury caused his prize money to drop to $5 million from $25 million, but his overall earnings...

Recent articles have raised questions about whether or not it is ethical for David Chicoine to continue in his position as South Dakota State University president while at the same time receiving $400,000 per year as a member of the Monsanto board of directors. First of all, it should be noted that Chicoine's $300,000 yearly salary as SDSU president is quite modest by the standards prevailing in academia today. Salaries for university administrators are shooting up at an unprecedented rate. During the 2007-2008 school year, compensation packages for public university presidents averaged $427,000 per year. Topping the list: Ohio State...

A Question of Funding by: Bethany Stotts, April 23, 2009 Staff members at America’s colleges and universities often have often been unabashed about their admiration for President Barack Obama, a recovering academic himself. According to The Chronicle Review, a publication of The Chronicle of Higher Education, academics are considering taking Obamamania to a new level for their fundraising enterprises. Marc Parry describes in the April 24 issue of The Chronicle Review that some colleges have hired Blue State Digital, the consulting firm which designed mybarackobama.com, for fundraising solutions. “Now the strategic-consulting and technology firm, Blue State Digital, is courting colleges,”...

The statewide debate over teacher salaries is escalating, as an Albany-based think tank has publicly posted names and total wages of nearly 2,500 employees in two of Long Island's highest-paying school systems. One surprise for think-tank analysts was that two Central Islip teachers last school year earned more than $200,000 each in base salaries and other compensation. Many teachers get extra pay for coaching and advising student clubs, and those who retire usually get payouts for unused sick days as well. "You're talking big money beyond the base rate, and that's sort of surprising for a teacher," said Tim Hoefer,...

Julia Roberts is getting $15 million to make Eat, Pray, Love, but Scarlett Johansson was only offered $250,000 for Iron Man 2. Kim Masters on the tactics Hollywood is using to slash salaries. You’re Scarlett Johansson. You’re pretty and you’re pretty famous, too. And you’ve just been offered the part of the Black Widow in Iron Man 2! That’s got to be some payday, right? How about $250,000, which is what Marvel Studios offered Johansson and Mickey Rourke to be in the film? The stars negotiated the number up to something over $400,000. Still, it’s not hard to imagine that...

Houston TX – 1959 Fidel Castro arrived in Houston… a “hero”. He was met with open arms by the stronghold of American capitalism hoping that change had finally come to Cuba. Business leaders were exited and Texas ranchers gave him a prized quarter horse as a gift. Less than 6 months later letters were sent out to over 500 business executives in Cuba explaining the details of the “Agrarian Reform Law” of May 1959. It seems the agrarian law had been modified to not only redistribute land. Under the disguise of this bill, upper and middle income executives were being...

With "no end in sight" for U.S. job losses amid a recession that could stretch into 2010, American workers will soon have to contend with another blow to their confidence: stagnant, or even falling wages. Job seekers -- already coping with the highest unemployment rate in a quarter century, their savings mugged by a plunging stock market -- can also expect lower pay once they land a new job, labor market experts say, because the current downturn shows no signs of turning around anytime soon. "There's no end in sight," said Tig Gilliam, chief executive of Adecco Group North America,...

Cap Exorbitant NBC News Salaries!February 16, 2009 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Here's Mark in Norfolk, Virginia, as we go back to the phones. Well, not "go back." We're just starting. Mark, it's great to have you here. It's nice to have on you at EIB Network, sir. Hello. CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Thanks for manning the EIB chair on this holiday. RUSH: Thank you, sir. CALLER: Question. You know in general, Rush, looking at NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, do you know roughly how much the talking heads make in income a year? RUSH: Well, yeah. I can guesstimate it, based on the...

During the first week of February, the official homepages of Michigan State Reps. Tom McMillin, R-Rochester, and Justin Amash, R-Grand Rapids, acquired a prominently displayed "Government Transparency" hyperlink that allowed everyone with a Web browser to learn the names and salaries of these legislators' staff. In office for just over a month, this simple decision likely meant that the new lawmakers had become the only state officials to be so open with Michigan taxpayers regarding who is working for them and how much they are paid.

Lawmakers want educator benefits exposed 'THESE ARE TAX DOLLARS' | Push for itemized breakdown of school administrators' earnings February 7, 2009 BY ROSALIND ROSSI Education Reporter/rrossi@suntimes.com Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle want to blow the lid off "hidden benefits'' in educator salaries following Chicago Sun-Times' disclosures that some superintendent salaries in the state have climbed past $400,000. Several legislators said they would like to see itemized breakdowns of administrators' salaries. Currently, the state Board of Education only releases an overall annual salary figure. State lawmakers say taxpayers would be reluctant to give more money to schools when administrators...

Since Barack “Giant Killer” Obama thinks it’s his business how much CEOs and captains of business should be paid predicated on receiving federal money one has to wonder why this principle is not being applied fairly across the board? If receipt of federal money is enough to constitute total government control over salaries, let’s apply it everywhere. We can start with the salaries of university presidents. Back in 2005, Senator Charles Grassley (R, Iowa) wanted to launch an investigation of the president and board of trustees of American University in Washington because of a giant severance package of $1.3 million...

President Barack Obama’s decision to freeze top White House staff salaries may force members of Congress to do something they never want to do — block their own automatic pay increase. But what Obama could do by executive order, Congress would have to accomplish by a vote. With the country in economic turmoil, 80 House members have already signed on as co-sponsors for a variety of bills that would prevent automatic congressional pay hikes or at least require a roll-call vote before they take effect. In the Senate, Louisiana Republican David Vitter has introduced his own legislation. He doesn’t have...

Motorola Inc.(MOT) said most employees won't get pay raises next year and announced cuts to retirement plans in the latest sign of the company's struggles to remain competitive without a product ready to compete with other high-end handsets. The moves follow $800 million in cuts announced two months ago that include 3,000 job cuts and putting on hold Motorola's plans to break up the company. "These are all marginal efforts, particularly compared to the $800M already announced,"Avian Securities analyst Matthew Thornton said. "The only thing that is going to return them to sustainable profitability is a successful restructuring of the...

John McCain says he’d impose a little fiscal discipline on his Cabinet — by asking the best-off to work for one dollar per year. The vow, made in an interview taped with Bob Schieffer for CBS’s “Face the Nation,” fits with McCain’s new push to run as a reformer who would shake up Washington, where he has worked for the past 26 years.

Popular real-estate Web site Zillow.com offers a glimpse of what your friends' and neighbors' homes may be worth. Now, Zillow founder Rich Barton plans to pull back the curtain on another cache of data that many people like to keep quiet: employee salaries. He is launching a job-and-career site, Glassdoor.com, that includes compensation figures for jobs at specific companies, as well as reviews provided anonymously by employees. So far, the site has gathered about 2,000 salary reports and 1,300 employee-written reviews for more than 250 companies, many of them in the high-tech and financial industries ...Mr. Klein said two job...