Free Republic

Public-Worker Pay: Nowhere has liberalism gone further than in San Francisco. And few, if any, other cities can boast such a well-heeled work force. Is this what "spreading the wealth" is all about? We have seen the future and it works — for certain people. Take San Francisco municipal workers. The San Francisco Chronicle recently detailed just how overpaid the city's employees are. Their average yearly salary is $93,000 before benefits. A third of them made more than $100,000 in 2009. A newly retired deputy police chief (not even the city's top cop) made $516,118. Now San Francisco is not...

Shaye Carter and Janie Lewis each risked a $300 fine yesterday because they had refused to withdraw their children from Career Connections Charter Middle School and enroll them in Pittsburgh Public Schools. They couldn't have cared less. "I'm more concerned about my child's education," Ms. Carter said of daughter, Ria, a seventh-grader. District Judge Randy Martini continued the truancy cases for 90 days, hoping that would be enough time to resolve a dispute between the charter school and school district that has students and parents caught in the middle. Ms. Carter and Ms. Lewis, whose son, Quinn, is a sixth-grader,...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- General Motors Corp. said late Wednesday it received subpoenas from the Securities Exchange Commission as part of an agency investigation of the carmaker's pension obligations and business dealings with bankrupt Delphi Corp. "These matters include GM's financial reporting concerning pension and OPEB (Other Post-Employment Benefits), certain transactions between General Motors and Delphi, GM's recovery of recall costs from suppliers and supplier price reductions or credits," General Motors Corporation said in a statement. The company said the SEC is also looking into possible GM obligations to fund retiree pension plans at Delphi after the car parts supplier...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Gone are the days when U.S. manufacturers united to compete against the likes of Germany and Japan, pumping out high-quality goods under the protective shelter of the world's most vibrant economy. Today, amid liberalized trade and widely available cheap labor, manufacturers have turned against one another, threatening to topple a house built upon the pillars of ingenuity, productivity and competitiveness. It's no secret there's a civil war going on out there. The U.S. manufacturing landscape is being ripped apart by a series of attacks on its traditional strongholds that has left...