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Insider Report from Newsmax.com
Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories):
1. Public School Teachers Paid More Than Most Households
2. Pakistani Dr. Afridi's Prison Sentence Is Overturned
3. Washington, D.C., Drivers Are Worst in Nation — Again
4. 50,000 Stray Dogs Roaming Detroit Streets
5. Bombshell: Venice, Italy, Bans Gondolas
6. We Heard: Rachel Maddow, Eliot Spitzer, Judicial Junkets
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1. Public School Teachers Paid More Than Most Households
Despite the clamor about low teacher pay in America, the average teacher in a taxpayer-supported public school earns more in base salary alone — with summers off — than the median U.S. household earns in an entire year.
According to a new report from the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the average base salary for a full-time public school teacher in the 2011-2012 school year was $53,100.
The Census Bureau estimated that the median household income in the United States was $50,054 in 2011, the latest year for which figures are available.
The income earned by public school teachers is also significantly higher than the base salary of the average private school teacher, $40,200 a year, according to the NCES.
Many public school teachers earn more than their base salary. For example, 41.8 percent of teachers receive additional income to work in extracurricular activities in the same school system; 4 percent earn additional compensation based on students' performance; and 7.3 percent receive income from other school-system sources, such as state supplements.
On top of that, 16.5 percent of public school teachers have another job outside the school system.
When all sources of income are included, the average public school teacher earned $55,100 in the school year studied.
Teachers at public high schools earned even more: $57,700 in 2011-2012, and teachers at schools with at least 1,000 students made $59,100.
In contrast, teachers at private elementary schools earned just $38,400 that year, and those who work in a community classified as a "town" earned only $31,200.
Footnote: The NCES figures for public school teachers do not include their often generous retirement pensions.
Editor's Note:
2. Pakistani Dr. Afridi's Prison Sentence Is Overturned
Readers of the Insider Report are familiar with the plight of Dr. Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani physician who helped America track down Osama bin Laden and was sentenced to 33 years in prison by Pakistan.
Now the good news out of Pakistan is that his sentence has been overturned on appeal and he has been granted a new trial.
A judge on Thursday ruled that the previous judge had exceeded his authority in handing down the sentence, and the new trial must be heard by a more senior official, according to the BBC.
Afridi's cousin Qamar Nadeem Afridi told the BBC that the ruling is a "great development," although Afridi will remain in prison until the retrial is concluded.
As the Insider Report disclosed most recently in mid-July, Afridi was arrested weeks after the U.S. raid on Abbottabad, Pakistan, where al-Qaida leader bin Laden was living in a compound. American officials later said Afridi had helped in the hunt for the terrorist chief by conducting a vaccination campaign in Abbottabad to obtain DNA evidence from the compound confirming that bin Laden was hiding there.
The raid created an uproar in Pakistan, which felt the operation was a violation of its sovereignty.
In May 2012, a court in the tribal area near the Afghan border sentenced Afridi to 33 years in prison after convicting him of providing assistance to an obscure military group in the area.
A Pakistani commission ruled in July that Afridi should be put on trial for his role in the bin Laden affair, even though it conceded that he had already been jailed on "trumped-up charges" that had "completely undermined the credibility of the country and its judicial process."
Afridi has consistently said he was unaware that the target of the vaccination operation was bin Laden.
A few months after his conviction, he spoke to Fox News from prison using a smuggled phone, and claimed he had been tortured with cigarette burns and electric shocks during his interrogation. He also said he was blindfolded for eight months and handcuffed for a year, and had to "bend down on my knees to eat with only my mouth, like a dog."
The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Congress has withheld $33 million of financial aid for Pakistan, $1 million for each year of his prison sentence.
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