Free Republic

The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, which recently passed the House, contains $1400 stimulus checks. But some federal workers will have more than one check. They can get paid time off with up to 15 checks of $1400 each. Emergency Federal Employee Leave Fund Neatly tucked within the $1.9 trillion emergency aid package is the $570 million Emergency Federal Employee Leave Fund. This budget is exclusive for federal workers who need to stay home to tend to their kids. Thus, this will fund the paid time off for federal workers with children enrolled in schools yet to return to...

High quality global journalism requires investment. McKinsey, one of the world’s most influential consulting firms, has built up a secretive $5bn internal investment arm that manages the fortunes of its past and present partners, raising questions over possible conflicts of interest. Known as McKinsey Investment Office Partners, it is overseen by a 12-strong board of the consultant’s most senior partners and advisers, according to documents seen by the Financial Times.

SUFFOLK City Manager Selena Cuffee-Glenn would get a 21 percent raise next January, bringing her salary to $183,492, under the budget she sent to City Council this week. Most department heads also would get hefty raises in a proposed overhaul of the city’s compensation system that is aimed at making salaries competitive with other localities in the region. Teachers, meanwhile, would stand to lose a proposed 2 percent raise if the city goes ahead with plans to cut $4 million from the schools’ budget request. The school division also sent layoff notices to 89 school employees this week in response...

(CNN) - Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will not release more Freddie Mac-related documents, according to campaign spokesman R.C. Hammond. Though the contender for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination said Wednesday that his campaign would "do what they can" to release more information about payments he received as a consultant from the government-backed mortgage group, Hammond backtracked later in the evening. When asked via email whether the campaign would release more Freddie Mac-related documents or if a fact sheet it released in the afternoon was the last word on the issue, Hammond responded to CNN, "last word."

(snip) ...but federal staffers, along with millions of state and local public employees, won't get the tax holiday included in legislation that jumped a procedural hurdle in the Senate on Monday. At the same time, those federal workers, the ones covered by the Civil Service Retirement System, are facing a two-year pay freeze, as are most government employees. (snip) The result: About 426,000 federal workers covered by CSRS would pay more in taxes next year, while most Americans pay less. That doesn't sound fair to Joseph A. Beaudoin, president of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association. "Offering relief...

I may surprise some people by saying what few presidential candidates would ever be willing to say out loud in farm country: I'd veto the farm bill—a bloated expansion in federal spending that will do more harm than good. When agricultural commodity prices and exports have reached record highs, we no longer need government-grown farms and mammoth government bureaucracies. As grocery bills soar, food banks go bare and food rationing occurs on a global scale, we must challenge the wisdom of this bill. We must question policies that divert more than 25 percent of corn out of the food supply...

The documents seized in the FBI raid on the offices of Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) remain unread by Justice Department investigators, pending a federal Appeals Court ruling scheduled for August 27. [snip] But we already know a bit about the charges and some of the alleged partners of Congressman Jefferson. Two people have pleaded guilty to bribing him.

Perhaps you're wondering what the Appalachian Fruit Laboratory in Kearneysville WV wants to do with $3,638,000 of your hard-earned tax dollars. Maybe you want to know why animal waste management in Bowling Green KY costs the federal government $2,300,000. (What are those animals eating -- too much of that Appalachian Fruit?) Possibly you just want to know why $100,000 of the money you send to the IRS is going to teach Iowans who want to plant trees in the Trees Forever Program about the injuries snow can do to those trees. I'm more concerned with the damage pork-barrel projects like...

<p>Perhaps the most significant trend as the current congressional session lumbers toward an end - a December session to pass an omnibus $820-billion spending bill is still in the offing - is the extent to which the Republican Party under President Bush and the current congressional leadership has become the party of big spending.</p>

John Grogan | Dining in style, thanks to you allBy John GroganInquirer Columnist "Table for two, please," I said.The tuxedoed maitre d' led us past the wood-fired grill, the slabs of aged beef, and the iced tubs of imported Mediterranean fish to a linen-draped seating overlooking the Delaware River.We opened our menus."Wow!" my wife said."Pay no attention to the prices," I told her. "This meal is on the taxpayers of Pennsylvania."Or at least we could pretend. We were at La Veranda Ristorante, the unapologetically high-end eatery near Penn's Landing. It's where State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo (D., Phila.) managed to...

The wretched and the capitalists get together William Watson, National Post For my sins, which must have been considerable, I have just finished reading the final political declaration and the official implementation plan, all 54 single-spaced pages of it, of the World Summit on Sustainable Development. Actually, they're not the final, final documents but the unedited final drafts, which are all that the United Nations has managed to get onto the official summit Web site in the two weeks now since the summiteers left Johannesburg.The political document, which is only four pages, is bad enough. "We the representatives of the...