NFL teams big right-wing donors
National Football League teams don’t just deliver big bucks to their players. They also drop substantial sums into the pockets of politicians.
The top team for donations is the Houston Texans, whose players, executives and coaches have contributed more than $293,000 to assorted candidates since 2009, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics. No. 2 is the San Diego Chargers, who shelled out $171,500 over the same period. No. 3 is the New York Jets, with almost $148,000.
All three teams favored Republicans over Democrats, giving at least 70 percent of their contributions to GOP candidates.
In fact, the NFL teams tilt most toward Republicans. Aside from those three, the other eight teams that gave at least 70 percent to the GOP were the Arizona Cardinals, Dallas Cowboys, Denver Broncos, Carolina Panthers, Kansas City Chiefs, Washington Redskins, Detroit Lions and the Baltimore Ravens, according to the analysis of campaign finance disclosures.
Just eight teams favored the Democrats with at least 70 percent of their donations: Seattle Seahawks, St. Louis Rams, San Francisco 49ers, Oakland Raiders, Philadelphia Eagles, New York Giants, New England Patriots and New Orleans Saints.
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By and large, salaries for most of the nation’s 1.2 million federal employees are less than they could command for similar private-sector positions. But the U.S. government rolls do have their own equivalent of the “1 percent,” in the parlance of the Occupy movement.
WikiOrgCharts.com, a website that calls itself the Wikipedia of organizational charts, compiled a list of the 1,000 highest paid federal workers, with their salaries and job title.
The highest paid is Dr. Electron Kebebew, a National Institutes of Health medical officer, who gets a $350,000 paycheck. Another 23 in the top 100 have salaries of $300,000 or above, according to the site’s list.
In fact, of the top earners, 68 are medical officers who, presumably, could bring home far more in private or commercial practice. The agency with the most highly paid workers is NIH, with 49. The Food and Drug Administration employs 20 of the top paid, the Indian Health Service, 11, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, eight, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., five.
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It’s been a tough year for global dictators and major-league bad guys.
Those who died, were arrested or otherwise forced from power in 2011 after years of repressive rule include: North Korea’s Kim Jong Il; Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi; Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak; Tunisia’s Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali; Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh; and Ivory Coast’s Laurent Gbagbo.
Terror chief Osama bin Laden met his maker and alleged Bosnian Serb “ethnic cleanser” Ratko Mladic was captured after more than a decade on the lam.
But not to worry, plenty of others that America considers evil doers remain in power, or close to it: Syria’s Bashar al Assad; Sudan’s Omar al Bashir; Burma’s Thein Sein; Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe; Uzbekistan’s Islam Karimov; Turkmenistan’s Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov; Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez; Cuba’s Raul and Fidel Castro; Eritrea’s Isaias Afewerki; and Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.
Reach Lisa Hoffman at hoffmanl@shns.com. For other columns, visit scrippsnews.com.