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"Do not betray the public servants who gave decades of their lives to this country," she wrote in the petition.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was paid nearly $128 million over the past two years through his salary, bonuses and other benefits, according to The New York Times. That figure, per the report, was discussed at the league-wide owners meeting in New York earlier this week. About 90% of Goodell’s pay over the past two years came from bonuses alone, four sources told The New York Times — which was so large “because he had helped secure such favorable labor and media deals.” Specifically, Goodell was paid $63,900,050 each year — which totals up to $127.8 million. That, per The New...

A former high-level Obama administration intelligence official has guaranteed the $250,000 bail for the New York City lawyer who allegedly firebombed an unoccupied NYPD police cruiser early Saturday, calling the suspect her "best friend," Fox News has confirmed. The Washington Free Beacon first reported that Salmah Rizvi, who served in the Defense Department and State Department during the Obama administration, went to bat for Urooj Rahman, who was arrested this weekend alongside Pryor Cashman associate Colinford Mattis. Rizvi, an associate at the law firm Ropes & Gray, told the court: "Urooj Rahman is my best friend and I am an...

National Public Radio is planning significant cost cuts as the coronavirus pandemic hits sponsorship and donation revenue, the public broadcaster's chief executive, John Lansing, said in a memo to staff. NPR is facing a budget deficit of between $30 million and $45 million through its 2021 fiscal year, Mr. Lansing said in the Wednesday memo. Sponsorship money is drying up amid "a very tough marketplace," he wrote, and donations could also take a hit as foundations and individuals "will be thinking hard about gifts as they watch the swings in the values of their own portfolios." NPR will need to...

Britain and the U.S. are facing mounting concerns over alleged political biases at their respective public broadcasters BBC and PBS. One America’s Kristian Rouz has the details.

A rapper’s lunch at a Cracker Barrel in sleepy Fairburn on Thursday ended with a broken SUV window and nearly half-a-million-dollars worth of belongings stolen, police say. Fairburn police’s Deputy Chief Anthony Bazydlo confirmed to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Young Dolph, a 33-year-old Memphis rapper, had two chains valued at $84,000 and a $230,000 watch along with a gun stolen out of a vehicle.

Oklahoma teachers walked off the job on Monday, closing schools statewide as they demanded salary rises for some of the lowest-paid educators in the United States and more funds for a school system reeling from a decade of budget cuts. “We’re walking because our students deserve more,” the Oklahoma Education Association, the state’s largest union for educators with about 40,000 members, said over the weekend. Oklahoma’s Republican-controlled legislature last week approved the state’s first major tax increase in a quarter century to help fund pay raises for teachers, hoping to avert a strike with a $450 million revenue package. The...

The U.S. spent significantly more on defense compared to the rest of NATO in 2016, despite efforts from the U.S. and Europe to encourage higher spending among the allies, according to a report released Monday. The report’s estimates found that European NATO members spent 1.47 percent of GDP on defense, while the U.S. spent 3.61. In total, the alliance spent a total of 2.43 percent on GDP in 2016. NATO requires members to spend at least two percent of GDP on defense per year, however, only five states are expected to meet that goal. “All allies should reach this goal,”...

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned a lower-court decision that would have struck down a 10-day waiting period for certain firearm purchases. The lower-court decision would have allowed existing gun owners and people with concealed-weapons permits to immediately take possession of a lawfully purchased firearm. [Snip] 9th Circuit Judge Mary Schroeder ... said someone who already owns a hunting rifle may want to buy a larger-capacity weapon that will do more damage when fired into a crowd. "A 10-day cooling-off period would serve to discourage such conduct and would impose no serious burden on the core...

Serial Number 17261081 Status Valid Manufacturer Name CESSNA Certificate Issue Date 07/09/1980 Model 172M Expiration Date 11/30/2017 Type Aircraft Fixed Wing Single-Engine Type Engine 4 Cycle

The American public is frustrated with Congress. There is a constant stream of bickering between the two parties and two chambers, while the country falls deeper into debt to the tune of $1.3 billion per day. Congressional approval ratings are an abysmal 13 percent. To top it all off, Congress is in the middle of a five-week recess. Followed by their return on September 8, where they are only expected to be in session for 15 days before they adjourn and head home to try and get re-elected. With such little action from our lawmakers and so much of their...

Chelsea Clinton, the former and potential future first daughter, has stiff competition for the title of Most Tactless Human. Greedy reality-TV creature Kim Kardashian is a contender. Chelsea’s mom, the once “dead broke” Hillary Rodham Clinton, might rank even higher on the scale of bad taste. Chelsea, 34, has jabbered like an overeducated trailer-park habitué about her family’s No. 1 obsession — money. The millionairess, pregnant with her and millionaire hedge-funder hubby Marc Mezvinsky’s first child, told Britain’s Telegraph newspaper this month that she’s made a strenuous effort to care about cash. But she just couldn’t bother with the green...

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...

Labor Dept. Estimates $7.1 Billion in Overpayments to UnemployedBy ALICE GOMSTYN ABC NEWS Business Unit July 9, 2010 While many Americans are feeling the pain of expired unemployment benefits, some have gotten a good chunk more than they were legally eligible for. Preliminary estimates released by the U.S. Department of Labor find that, in 2009, states made more than $7.1 billion in overpayments in unemployment insurance, up from $4.2 billion the year before. The total amount of unemployment benefits paid in 2009 was $76.8 billion, compared to $41.6 billion in 2008. Fraud accounted for $1.55 billion in estimated overpayments last...

Rockford Public School high school teacher Craig Beach wrote a column for MLive in which he alleged that Republican lawmakers are ruining the teaching profession and talked about a colleague’s daughter’s views on teacher pay. Beach quoted the young woman criticizing the teaching profession’s “extremely low pay” with “I want to eat and have a life.” The article quotes the young woman as saying: “Mom, I know what goes into the profession. You demonstrate the many hours put in after leaving school, the stress, the lack of respect and now extremely low pay. I want to eat and have a...

Education Secretary Arne Duncan thinks public-school teachers are “desperately underpaid” and has called for doubling teacher salaries. In a new paper co-authored with Jason Richwine of the Heritage Foundation, I look into whether teachers really are desperately underpaid, or underpaid at all. Jason and I find that the conventional wisdom is far off the truth.At first glance, public-school teachers definitely look underpaid. According to Census data, teachers receive salaries around 20 percent lower than similarly educated private-sector workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says teachers’ benefits are about the same as benefits in the private sector. But both the salary...

Education Secretary Arne Duncan thinks public-school teachers are “desperately underpaid” and has called for doubling teacher salaries. In a new paper co-authored with Jason Richwine of the Heritage Foundation, I look into whether teachers really are desperately underpaid, or underpaid at all. Jason and I find that the conventional wisdom is far off the truth. At first glance, public-school teachers definitely look underpaid. According to Census data, teachers receive salaries around 20 percent lower than similarly educated private-sector workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says teachers’ benefits are about the same as benefits in the private sector. But both the...

The same study used to justify $270,000 in retroactive raises to Minneapolis Public Schools administrators could be used by the district to cut the compensation of its unionized staff. District leaders say the report, which found that hundreds of employees are paid above-market rates, will be used in contract talks as the district seeks pay and benefit freezes and other concessions from union-represented staffers. The study, compiled by Public Sector Personnel Consultants, found that 30 percent of union-represented employees, excluding teachers, are paid above a maximum proposed salary plan, costing the district more than $6 million per year. "Unions just...

Soon after his boss introduced the American Jobs Act, Vice President Joe Biden held a conference call to get teachers' unions behind it. It was an easy task, with American Federation of Teachers honcho Randi Weingarten promising to "do whatever we can" to get the legislation passed. And why not? It's teachers and other politically potent interests, not kids or the economy, that the Act is really about. That teachers' unions are gung-ho about the proposal — which would furnish $30 billion for education jobs and another $25 billion for school buildings — doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing....

In March, the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, sent a “Message to Congress” outlining its desired goals for K-12 public education policy and spending. Higher pay is a general theme, which fits in with the union’s ongoing “Be Proud to Say, I’m Worth Professional Pay” initiative. It quotes a study that praises the success of schools in other nations: “In South Korea, the average teacher earns more than a lawyer or an engineer.” Yet the union’s core agenda protects a system that virtually assures that “professional pay” cannot happen. Engineers, lawyers, doctors, and so forth – even...