Paycheck

Eight top Baltimore hospital executives pulled in more than $1 million each in fiscal 2009, according to newly detailed disclosures from the Internal Revenue Service. Close to a dozen had personal dues for "social clubs" financed by your charitable donations, tax dollars and health insurance premiums. Many enjoy lavish and opaque executive retirement plans that also put upward pressure on the medical costs that threaten government budgets and the economy. Don't say they're worth it. Don't say that there's a "market" in hospital-management talent and that organizations must pay top dollar.

As thousands of federal workers prepare to be furloughed, many are concerned about how to deal with a pay cut. Keith Everett, a chief steward with the American Federation of Government Employees, said his union held two meetings in recent weeks at Fort Meade for workers, many of whom had the same financial questions: Can I apply for unemployment benefits? Will I receive back pay if lawmakers eventually reach some agreement on budget cuts? The answers: No and no. "Everyone is hoping [lawmakers]

As expected, there has been chatter on the message boards and talk radio about the possibility that the Ravens will sign former Giants running back Tiki Barber now that he is coming out of retirement . You can be sure the guys over at The Castle will talk about it for a few minutes, too, because they have discussions about pretty much every available player. I doubt that conversation will last long, though, despite the expectation that the Ravens will be in the market for a running back or two this offseason.

Coppin State University is unable to pay its adjunct professors on time this month, the latest in a string of problems for the embattled college. In an email obtained by The Baltimore Sun, Habtu Braha, the interim associate vice president for academic affairs, wrote to adjunct faculty members on Monday that their first paychecks of the semester would be late. "This delay in the processing of contracts was caused by a confluence of many issues ... due to budgetary constraints, extended registration processes, low course enrollments and subsequent cancellation of classes," he wrote.

The White House wants you to tweet about how you would use an extra $40 in your paycheck as part of a second Twitter campaign to extend the payroll tax cut Workers last year and the first two months of this year have had the amount taken out of the paychecks for the payroll tax cut by 2 percentage points. They still pay a payroll tax of 4.2 percent of earnings that goes toward Social Security. According to the Washington Post , the White House used the same Twitter campaign in December to prod reluctant Republicans in Congress to extend this tax cut. The Post says back then more than 30,000 people weighed in about the $40. (Republicans already appear to be going along with extending the tax break through the end of this year.)

One can be the loneliest number -- especially if it signifies one paycheck for a family accustomed to two paychecks.The growth in families with two incomes has fallen off a bit in the 1990s, as more couples downsize to just one salary. Mothers opting to stay home with children and job cuts at U. S. corporations are among the reasons.This transition, whether voluntary or forced, requires belt-tightening and planning."We'd probably save more if we had two incomes, though we try to put as much aside for things such as retirement as we can," said Charles Bachi, a systems consultant in Scotch Plains, N.J., and sole wage earner for a family that includes his wife, Donna, and two young sons.

Layoffs by the hundreds and thousands these days show that a regular paycheck can't be taken for granted. But many workers don't need such reminders. They are the sales people, artists, seasonal workers and self-employed individuals who routinely have irregular incomes. They may have weeks or months when they're flooded with cash, then find their income reduced to a trickle. While this complicates their personal finances, the solution isn't complex, experts said. Often, an irregular income means that a worker must adhere to the financial basics of budgeting and saving.

Baltimore City schools chief Robert Booker promised yesterday to make up for a payroll error by cutting checks within a day for teachers who were underpaid Friday and by offering to reimburse employees for overdrafts.School employees hand-wrote emergency paychecks Friday to 407 summer school teachers and staff who were not issued their pay automatically. Another 50 staff members were paid yesterday.Many of the teachers were given partial payments, in some cases only a third or half of what they expected.

WASHINGTON -- Last week, after California voters rejected an initiative that would have required unions to get permission annually from their members to take money from their paychecks to spend on political activity, AFL-CIO President John. J. Sweeney claimed that the clear message was that "pounding working families is a losing proposition." Maybe so, but the proponents say they will keep trying.The initiative, called "paycheck protection" by its advocates but derided as "paycheck deception" by organized labor, had led in early polls by as much as 72 percent to 21. But a television advertising and direct-mail blitz by labor costing $17 million or more eventually turned voter sentiment around, and the initiative was rejected by 54 percent to 46 percent.

Paycheck is one of those movies in which all the ingenuity went into the original idea and none into its execution. Based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, one of sci-fi's most hallucinogenic geniuses, it details an old-fashioned double-cross set in a world where minds can be selectively erased. Ben Affleck plays Michael Jennings, a computer genius whose specialty is being hired by companies for top-secret (often illegal, even more often immoral) projects, then having his memory partially scrubbed clean so he remembers nothing about what he's just done.

American workers got an unpleasant surprise this month when they received their first paychecks of 2013. The typical full-time worker, who earns about $40,145 a year, found that his two-week paycheck was $30 lighter than his last check of 2012. The lost money is the result of tax increases contained in the Jan. 1 agreement between Congress and the White House to avoid the "fiscal cliff," a package of spending cuts and tax increases intended to reduce the federal budget deficit. Though $30 doesn't sound like much, it's unwelcome for households that continue to struggle in this long-stagnant economy.

Looming federal budget cuts make a whole lot of Marylanders nervous because a whole lot of Maryland depends on Uncle Sam for a paycheck - directly or indirectly. More than 300,000 Maryland residents work for the federal government, according to the state Department of Business and Economic Development. That's one in every 10 employed adults in the state. And that's just the start. Maryland is one of the nation's top recipients of federal spending on goods and services. Those billions of dollars supported about 230,000 jobs here at federal contractors and subcontractors in 2010, the state economic development agency estimated.

If Maryland's resident pit bull, Sen. Barbara Mikulski, has demonstrated anything in her several decades in Congress and as dean of Senate women, it's a willingness to stand up for the less powerful in society, and she was at it again this week advocating for the Paycheck Fairness Act and the rights of women to secure equal pay for equal work. To the surprise of no one, Senate Republicans were unmoved by the cause and blocked the much-needed legislation from floor debate as it fell eight votes short of the 60 required.

Many of you know I was fortunate to play high school football at Gilman and college football at Princeton. What most of you do not know is that I worked as a graduate assistant on the Wake Forest football staff to pay for my room and board during law school. These experiences instilled in me a strong sense of the appropriate role of academics and athletics in our secondary schools and colleges. So it should come as no surprise that I have a strong opinion as to the increasingly aggressive calls to pay college athletes in revenue-producing sports.

The White House wants you to tweet about how you would use an extra $40 in your paycheck as part of a second Twitter campaign to extend the payroll tax cut Workers last year and the first two months of this year have had the amount taken out of the paychecks for the payroll tax cut by 2 percentage points. They still pay a payroll tax of 4.2 percent of earnings that goes toward Social Security. According to the Washington Post , the White House used the same Twitter campaign in December to prod reluctant Republicans in Congress to extend this tax cut. The Post says back then more than 30,000 people weighed in about the $40. (Republicans already appear to be going along with extending the tax break through the end of this year.)

Are the editors of The Sun unfamiliar with the word, "condone?" Clearly, providing health insurance that covers the cost of contraceptives condones the use of contraceptives ("O'Brien's quixotic fight," Feb. 9). Paying a salary to an employee for work done condones nothing. The two situations are entirely different. The Sun's argument is akin to suggesting that there is no difference between giving a paycheck to alcoholic employee and giving him a discount coupon from the local liquor store along with his paycheck.

It is time for Robert J. Antonetti Sr. to pay up -- again. State Administrative Law Judge Laurie I. Pritchard found Tuesday that the $1,170 the Howard County's elections board administrator owes may be withheld from his state paycheck by the Maryland Central Collection Unit. He has been assessed a $1,000 late fee plus 17 percent interest for tardy disclosure of records that he had hired his family for temporary Prince George's County elections board jobs from 1988 to 1994. It is the latest move in a five-year legal saga in which Antonetti -- then-Prince George's County elections board administrator -- was fined $7,500 and ordered to pay the late fees in May 1997 by the State Ethics Commission.

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. -- On his first day without a government job in 44 years, Bob Dole confessed yesterday that he felt kind of empty -- and then set out to get back on the payroll.He did it by leaving Washington and the Congress behind, kicking off an eight-city "Heartland" tour of the Midwest and South, in which he mixed jokes about his new status among the unemployed with attacks on President Clinton.After starting in Ohio, a critical electoral battleground, Dole made a symbolic return to Kansas, then headed to country-and-western music hot spot Branson, Mo., for concerts at the Glen Campbell Good Time Theater and the Mel Tillis Theater.

A Baltimore mayor and a Prince George's County councilwoman lingered in office for weeks after being found guilty of serious charges. A former Prince George's County executive is heading to prison but gets to keep a pension worth more than $50,000 a year. Recent Maryland political scandals have inspired a flurry of legislation in the General Assembly seeking to clamp down on corrupt public officials. And a special Senate committee is recommending changes to the legislature's ethics rules.

As it turns out, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie meant it all those many times he said he wasn't going to run for president. After saying a final no despite pleas from Republicans desperate to avoid being stuck with the current crop of White House aspirants, we have a strange situation: a president who loses in the polls to a generic GOP candidate but beats any specific candidate except Mitt Romney. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that opposition to President Barack Obama is growing rapidly, with 40 percent of Americans "strongly" disapproving of the job he's doing.