I am losing my job at the end of January. It is being deployed to India. I am lucky though as i will be given a generous severance package and I have a husband will provide for us solely until I find other employment. There are some on unemployment not because of choice but because they were forced. I feel for those who truly need the extra money until they find a job, which by the way is not that easy.

Being from Michigan, guess what happens when benefit deadlines are imposed? People will either do everthing in their power to find work here, or move out of State to find employment."Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or nation."

BeenHere, I agree both parties are to blame for the illegals. But only one party is affiliated with the NAACP and ACLU, and those rabble-rousers are fighting like mad to keep all illegals here and hand the country to them. Surely you saw the one demanding her drivers license, and the wave of stories all summer with illegals getting in front of cameras, identifying themselves, and making demands of us...then walking away undeported. Blame the racemongers. I don't see them protecting the illegal Poles and Lithuanians who are ruining the construction market up North.

This plan gives people 5 months' notice that their benes are stopping. That's a lot more notice than workers get when they're about to lose their income.

I wish the article had also mentioned how short NC is of UE funds because the diversity in charge of ESC gave away half a billion, and she and Bev chose not to attempt to recoup it. No one lost their job over that. The PC appointee was allowed to "step down" two years later and the agency was put under Dept of Commerce. It may have been shortsighted to reduce business taxes, but that was twenty years ago. Let's be fair. Tell the WHOLE story.

The unemployment $ helps people not have to foreclose on their homes/default on their car payment etc.while looking for new work. Without a place to live (address) and a mode of transportation it is much more difficult succeed in a job search.

Cut taxes for the business community, and when the chickens come home to roost, take it out of those unemployed through no fault of their own, not the job destroyer who benefitted from the tax cut to begin with. Sounds fair, by republican standards.

"This chops it off cold at the start of July," Payne said. "It's horrendous."

Howard, however, said that it was critical to move ahead.

No doubt, Ms Howard and her rich right-wing buddies in the Legislature will be able to move ahead. They're Rich. What the Repubs don't seem to get is that these poor people who are barely getting by on assistance aren't simply going to go curl up and quietly died somewhere when they run out of everything they need. Both Dems and Repubs in NC have contributed to the unemployment problem by NOT dealing with the Illegal Alien problem. Our Blue collar workers are hardest hit by this crime which is committed by those same Small Business Owners that the Repubs worship so much! The Right is fomenting an actual class war in America. You can only show off the arrogant, "Let them eat cake" attitude for so long before something bad will happen.

NC has one of the 5 highest unemployment rates in the US.

Manufacturing, textiles, furnitures making - the pain of NAFTA, WTO treaties, and other Free Trade agreements has decimated NC employment.

Howard's version of unemployment reform should be renamed as "The race to be poorer than Mississippi".

When my fellow North Carolinians are slammed to the wayside, through no wrong choice of their own, other than being born in NC, while elitists like Howard blame them for the effects of globalization, it makes me angry.

Move to Mississippi Julia, and take Art Pope with you!!! NC does not need your "business cures", your meanness, nor your kick them when they are down mean spiritedness.

If Republicans only want to rule NC once every 100 years, you are on the right track, Julia.

page 1

sort order: oldest first | newest first