Free Republic

A private industry IT security firm tells Fox News that personal data stolen over the span of several high-profile U.S. cyber breaches is being indexed by China's intelligence service into a massive Facebook-like network. According to CrowdStrike founder Dmitri Alperovitch, Chinese hackers are using information gained from the breaches of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, as well as intrusions into the Anthem and CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield health insurance networks, to build a complete profile of federal employees in what the company calls a "Facebook of Everything." "That can now be used to embarrass you publicly and force you to...

At the start of the Labor Day weekend, President Obama proposed Friday to raise the pay of civilian federal employees by 1 percent, which would end a three-year freeze on their wages. The president also proposed to raise the monthly basic pay for military service members by 1 percent. In a letter to congressional leaders, Mr. Obama said civilian federal employees “have already made significant sacrifices” due to the pay freeze. He said he is balancing that consideration with the reality that “we must maintain efforts to keep our nation on a sustainable fiscal course.”

Amid the recent hubbub over municipal bankruptcies and rising public-employee pension costs, pay for state and local government employees has gotten a great deal of publicity. Lost in the press attention, however, is that federal-employee compensation remains a problem, too, and new data again indicate that Washington, D.C., may be overpaying for the two million workers it employs. In a 2011 AEI paper with Jason Richwine, I concluded that federal workers receive salaries and benefits around 37 percent higher than do private-sector workers with similar levels of education and experience. This prompted congressional requests for the Congressional Budget Office to...

As federal departments and agencies deal with automatic budget cuts and the possibility of furloughs for federal workers, those forced pay cuts have now arrived on Capitol Hill, as Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK) became the first lawmaker to officially announce staff furloughs due to the $85 billion sequester. "Begich’s staff began mandatory furloughs in mid-March and more than half of his staff will experience a cut in their salary this year," said a press release issued by Begich's office on Wednesday. The same release also said that Begich would be returning some of his salary to the Treasury to match...

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...

You pay your income taxes, don't you? Well, take a look at all the golden darlings out in Hollywoodland who think they are so special that they are above the law when it comes to paying their taxes: http://www.webcpa.com/channels/celebrity_tax.html Members of this list may surprise you. I will admit that paying all those maids and gardeners and pool boys, not to mention the pilots of their special jets and the maintenance and hangar fees, may be just too taxing. All these things are necessary, after all, because they advertise their Most Ridiculous Specialness. But refusing to pay legitimate income taxes...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In a move designed to draw support from Democrats, a Republican senator said he will propose a Social Security plan that does not include the creation of private investment accounts for younger workers but calls for benefit cuts for most workers. Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah, chief deputy majority whip, said Tuesday that his bill, absent personal accounts, is designed to "break the logjam and move forward on Social Security." Bennett said his plan will call for a change in the way promised benefits are calculated for higher- and middle-income workers, who would get smaller retirement checks....