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
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.