Free Republic

AUSTIN – A property rights bill that went awry and a mandate for the Trans-Texas Corridor to follow the state's existing highway system were among the 49 bills that fell victim to Gov. Rick Perry's veto pen on Friday. Mr. Perry targeted at least two bills that he believed would open the courthouse doors to more litigation, including a bill that would have provided a greater balance in eminent domain proceedings. The bill spelled out what public land uses were acceptable in order to take private land and provided more recourse for land owners. But a provision tacked onto the...

The Colorado Division of Human Resources (DHR) conducts an annual compensation survey to support a state policy that provides competitive total compensation to ensure a qualified and competent workforce. Because this survey is significantly flawed in its estimation of retirement compensation, the comparison between private and public sector compensation is distorted.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon poured more than $1 billion into bonuses last year to keep soldiers and Marines in the military in the face of an unpopular war and battlefield deployments that are getting longer and more frequent. The incentives — including tax-free payments for those who re-enlist while in the war zone — have jumped nearly sixfold since 2003, the year the war in Iraq began. "It helps a lot of guys out," said Sgt. 1st Class Richard Doran, who re-enlisted late last year during his tour in Iraq. "And I think it does sway some of the decisions...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - American chief executive officers saw their total direct compensation -- an executive pay measure including salary, bonus and incentive shares -- rise 8.9 percent in 2006, a private study showed on Monday. The study by consulting company Mercer found that CEOs' pay was linked more to performance than in recent years, driven in part by strong corporate results and shareholders returns. The median total direct compensation for executives at the 350 companies surveyed -- total direct compensation plus benefits and perquisites -- rose to $6.5 million, according to Mercer's study. Net income at the companies surveyed...

Occidental Petroleum Corp.'s chairman and chief executive took in more than $400 million in compensation last year, the company said in a filing, one of the biggest single-year payouts in US corporate history. The largest part of Ray Irani's 2006 payout was $270.2 million from the exercise of options awarded from 1997 to 2006, representing more than 7.1 million shares, according to the company's annual proxy statement, which was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in March. Irani also received $93.3 million in stock and dividends from a deferred stock program when the company closed the plan in October...

Terror suspect claimed compensation payout for daughter's bomb death By Graham Keeley in Madrid Last Updated: 12:25am GMT 18/02/2007 According to the heart-rending account set out in his compensation claim, Abdennari Essebar was just another victim of the indiscriminate brutality of Islamic terrorism. A Moroccan-born resident of Spain, his stepdaughter Sanae, 13, was one of dozens of Muslims killed in the al-Qaeda train bombings in Madrid on March 11, 2004, which claimed 191 lives and left nearly 2,000 injured in Europe's worst terrorist atrocity. Awaiting trial: Abdennari Essebar is accused of terrorist activity In his official statement to the authorities,...

KEDO demands $1.9 billion from N. Korea for defunct reactor project SEOUL, Jan. 16 (Yonhap) -- An international energy consortium has asked impoverished North Korea for nearly US$1.9 billion in compensation for its defunct project to build two nuclear power plants in the North under the 1994 nuclear agreement on the North's freezing of its nuclear activities, diplomatic sources here said Tuesday. North Korea, however, has yet to respond to the claim, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Analysts also said the North is unlikely to respond favorably, given its past record and current claims. The North claims...

The most dangerous job in America? Underground coal miner? Foundry worker? City workers with political clout claim to be injured at a rate that far exceeds any occupation tracked by the U.S. Department of Labor, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by the Chicago Sun-Times that raises questions about whether all those city workers really were injured, and whether the city adequately investigates workplace accidents. Could so many patronage workers really be getting hurt on the job? Greg Krohm doesn't think so. "This is buffoonery," said Krohm, executive director of the International Association of Industrial Accident Boards and Commissions, in Madison,...

new delhi • European manufacturer Airbus has agreed to pay India’s Kingfisher Airlines more than Rs1bn ($22m) for a delay in delivering five A380 superjumbo aircraft, a report said. The airline owned by the UB group, the world’s third largest spirits producer by volume, ordered the aircraft last year. Airbus on Tuesday announced a one-year delay in the project, its third such announcement. “Airbus has communicated that they are postponing deliveries of the aircraft and the first aircraft will now be delivered only by 2011,” UB group Chairman Vijay Mallya told the Economic Times. He added that the aircraft manufacturer...

the only way you can keep corporate America purring is to give CEOs compensation packages that are 187 times higher than what's earned by the average worker in their companies, then go ahead. Do it. Let market forces reign. But if the ever-increasing levels of extremely high executive pay are largely a case of the CEOs having their way with timid boards of directors paying little or no attention to performance criteria, stop it immediately. Few things could be more damaging to the free-market system. There are three reasons: One is that dishing out millions upon millions of dollars to...

CUPERTINO, Calif., Aug. 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- As Apple® previously announced, an internal investigation discovered irregularities related to the issuance of certain stock option grants made between 1997 and 2001. A special committee of Apple's outside directors has hired independent counsel to perform an investigation, and the Company has informed the SEC. As a result of the ongoing investigation, the Company will delay the filing of its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended July 1, 2006. Although the investigation is ongoing, the Company has discovered additional evidence of irregularities. In light of this, management has concluded, and the audit committee...

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez on Tuesday called for a legislative audit of California State University after revelations that the nation's largest public university system had secretly paid millions of dollars to outgoing campus presidents and top executives. "I'm deeply troubled by allegations that former high-level CSU officials have been given dubious positions after their tenures, collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars to do no discernible work while students have seen their tuition rise almost 30 percent in the past three years," Nunez, D-Los Angeles, said in a statement. An investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle showed that at least seven...

Short-staffed companies want workers who quit to pay compensation Short-staffed companies are requesting that employees who quit pay damages as the resurgence of Japan's economy is placing a strain on labor levels, Tokyo's Labor Consultation Center said. Officials of the non-profit organization in Katsushika-ku said that the number of consultations over "dismissals" and "wages" peaked in 2001. Recently, workers have complained of trouble when trying to leave their companies. The center handled 559 disputes over resigning from work in 2005, about 5.5 times the number of 1998. Many of those were professionals such as computer programmers and nurses in their...

/begin my translationN. Korea: Report of 1,000 Deaths in Train CrashWill take months to notify victims' family. [2006-06-02 10:46]  Buraesan Station along Pyongyang-Pyonggang Line (from "Good Friends")(note: the station is a spot marked with short solid line in the middle of winding dotted line going from right to left, after branching off from vertical line at the right side of the picture. A report came out, alleging that large-scale train crash occurred near Gowon County, S. Hamkyong Province, killing over 1,000 passengers. It remains to be seen if this can be confirmed. A N. Korea aid organization, Good Friends (Co,) reported in...

When it comes to salaries among some church leaders, the policy seems to be "don't ask, don't tell," even though tithes from parishioners pay those salaries. While Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches have no qualms about revealing pastors' salaries, many local Protestant churches do not reveal salaries to nonmembers. Salaries of pastors at Protestant churches tend to be set by overarching religious associations or by a church board or both. The figure is often based on the church's location and parish size. Salaries tend to fall within the lower to upper middle-class range. A general rule among Protestant churches may...

Women deserve a raise. According to salary.com, a full-time stay-at-home mom would earn $134,121 if only she were paid for her work. These experts in compensation surveyed 400 mothers and found that the stay-at-home mom is part daycare worker, housekeeper, cook, computer operator, laundry machine operator, janitor, facilities manager, van driver, chief executive and psychologist. In the spirit of Mother’s Day, it’s appropriate to contemplate the undervalued contribution of stay-at-home moms. Even salary.com’s list of job responsibilities overlooks several roles they assume: They are first-line-of-defense law enforcement officers, protecting children with their presence in our neighborhoods. They are teaching assistants,...

A state audit found University of California administrators skirted their own pay rules, giving senior managers millions more in bonuses, relocation packages and other perks than their publicly reported salaries. The report, released Tuesday, is the latest in a series of probes highlighting irregularities in how the 10-campus system rewards its leaders. The revelations, first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, have been an embarrassment for the prestigious system, particularly since they cover a period when UC officials raised student fees substantially in response to state funding cuts. The audit drew sharp responses from legislators, with state Sen. Jackie Speier,...

NEW YORK - Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. reported Tuesday that its first quarter loss more than doubled, due largely to expenses of $225 million in stock-based compensation to its star shock jock Howard Stern. Revenue nearly tripled as the company expanded its subscriber base. Sirius reported a net loss of $458.5 million, or 33 cents a share, for the January-March period compared with a loss of $193.6 million, or 15 cents a share, a year ago. By far the largest factor affecting the results was costs for stock-based compensation, which all companies had to begin recording this year under new...

In the first known case of its kind, the Chinese authorities have paid compensation to the mother of a teenager who was killed in the crackdown following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Tang Deying, a resident of the south-western city of Chengdu, has received $11,500 for the loss of her son Zhou Guocong. Fifteen-year-old Zhou was brought in by Chengdu police, two days after the crackdown on the pro-democracy movement started, and apparently died after severe beatings. Although he was cremated by the authorities, photos of his body later emerged and have been shown on the Internet.

Information technology is still a good way to make a buck, with the average manager making $99,000 and the average staffer $73,000, according to InformationWeek Research's National IT Salary Survey. IT pros are relying on bonuses rather than base pay, however, to keep up with inflation. Median base salaries grew slightly more than 1% year over year for staff and managers. That's tight, but with bonuses, total compensation grew 3% for staff and 4% for managers. That brings total compensation back above 2001 levels, a high-water mark that pay has stayed below in recent years. The six-figure mark was more...