From Pine View Farm

North Carolina: Life in the Streets 2

The streets are about to get more populated, thanks to the rampant wingnuttery in Raleigh.

The state unemployment compensation has been “overhauled,” hauled right over the backs of the unemployed:

The state legislature’s unemployment system overhaul, which both raised taxes on employers and cut the length and amount of benefits, makes the state ineligible to receive federal unemployment funds intended for those unemployed longer than 26 weeks. Federal law cuts off aid to states that don’t maintain their current benefit system.

The U.S. Department of Labor estimates 170,000 people in North Carolina could ultimately lose extended federal benefits for which they otherwise would have qualified.

North Carolina’s unemployment rate in April was 8.9 percent, the fifth-highest in the U.S. In Mecklenburg County, with an 8.5 percent unemployment rate, the state said 42,575 people were unemployed in April. That figure doesn’t include people who’ve stopped looking for work.

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2 comments

  1. George Smith

    June 1, 2013 at 3:41 pm

    Used to like North Carolina, now it’s a Tea Party state. He said the state is prepared to help unemployed people with free services at local workforce offices, including Internet access, career counseling and job training; Sounds about as good as making license plates or getting to be the trusty who pushes the book caddy. 

     
  2. Frank

    June 1, 2013 at 3:58 pm

    NC I think will regret putting the teabaggers in charge, but, by then, great damage will have been done to the polity.  How quickly it’s gone from (relatively) enlightened to benighted.

     

    My mother grew up in SC about 30 miles from Charlotte, NC.  A trip to Charlotte was a trip to he Big City.

     

    That’s one reason I follow the news from there