Tag Archives: boston

Footing the bill for unemployment

As jobless rates continue to rise, states are struggling to keep up with unemployment insurance claims. ProPublica reported that 25 states have already run out of funds or borrowed to keep up with the demand for unemployment insurance. Are there any creative solutions? Which states are hurting the most?

Minnesota’s Dislocated Worker Program has given some people an alternative to staying on unemployment benefits, but has it provided real opportunities? Minnesota Public Radio’s Public Insight Network followed Tom Koller, who’s gone from laid off machinist to Sun Microsystems credentialed network administrator.

It’s not clear the credential will deliver a job. The market, he [Koller] says, is looking worse than when he began training last year. He says he initially saw about 12 to 14 postings a week for computer system administrators…Koller, 50, is one of the tens of thousands of Minnesotans thrown out of work in this recession and among an unknown number retraining for a new industry because their old jobs will not be coming back.

Should the federal government step in with similar job training programs? A quiz from KQED’s You Decide provides the pros and cons.

Across the country, unemployment funds are drying up. Last summer, WBEZ reporter Adriene Hill told the stories of people in Chicago learning to live with less when unemployment benefits ran out.

The social safety net, set up to help people get through rough stretches, is showing its limits. A spokesman with the Illinois Department of Employment Security says thousands of people could exhaust their unemployment benefits in the next two or three weeks. And, by the end of the year, there could be 40,000 people no longer getting unemployment checks.

In Massachusetts, Boston blogger JiKamins was trying to file for unemployment just this week, when he found that he couldn’t get into the state’s new unemployment insurance web site, which was swapped to an electronic system recently.

“The two DUA employees with whom I spoke today both said that the new system is having innumerable problems across the board, ” he complained in a post.

ProPublica’s unemployment tracker lets you check the current status of unemployment funds in your state. If you have a story to share about how unemployment insurance is affecting you, share it with ProPublica here.

After Mass

Special Election in Mass./Credit: Flickr user Rob Weir

Special Election in Mass./Credit: Flickr user Rob Weir

The special election victory by Republican Scott Brown over Democrat Martha Coakley to fill late Senator Ted Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts yesterday left a torrent of speculation and accusation in its wake.

Will the healthcare bill be put in jeopardy? What does this mean for the Democrats in 2010 and even 2012? Does the public trust the president to lead the country out of recession?

Patchwork Nation looks at what fueled Brown’s win, in economic terms:

Compared with candidate Obama, Coakley did worst in the six counties where unemployment rose by more than 3 percentage points in the last year. In each of those counties, she got 16 percentage points less than Obama did in 2008.

That suggests that Tuesday’s vote was a “change” vote motivated perhaps by disgruntlement. Voters may be punishing Coakley for what they perceive as a lack of focus on jobs and the economy on Obama and the Democrats’ part and overemphasis on healthcare reform.

Coakley lost votes in every county in the state compared with Obama in 2008. Unemployment is up in every county as well. That can’t be a comfort to the Democrats.

For 2010, some signs of recovery need to be apparent before voters retain their support for or swing towards the Democrats. Patchwork Nation’s Dante Chinni writes “Right now the state of the national economy is fragile. What we hear repeatedly from people we talk to in different Patchwork Nation communities around the country is: ‘We have not seen a recovery here, yet.’”

WBUR in Boston took an in-depth analysis of the election results from Tuesday night and took into account who was voting, compared with previous races.

Even in many communities where Obama had a narrow victory over McCain, Brown blew Coakley away. In Weymouth, for example, Obama got 53 percent of the vote in 2008. On Tuesday, Weymouth went red, giving Brown 61 percent to Coakley’s 38 percent.

EconomyBeat pulls from blogs around the web, on both the left and right, to assess response to the special election. Reader comments from beyond Massachusetts on sites including The New York Times and FiveThirtyEight brought out opinions on the democratic party, health care, and spending.

The lion sleeps tonight

With the passing of Senator Ted Kennedy, who will pick up for the Democrats where Kennedy left off in terms of the health care debate and other key economic issues?

Conventional wisdom (and the stock market) finds that Kennedy’s absence from the Senate floor will be a blow to the health care debate, but this NPR story suggests his passing could breathe new life into the battle.

The American Prospect opinion piece Ted Kennedy: Keeper of the Liberal Flame looks at the “liberal lion’s” contributions to policies like minimum wage and health care.

“This was a litany of causes soon to be lost, if they were not lost already. Industrial policy, jobs for the inner-city poor, universal health care — these were causes that the Democrats discarded in the years that followed. Kennedy maintained his hold on the party’s heart, but its head moved off to neo-land, to the more modest ambitions of a Gary Hart and Michael Dukakis and Bill Clinton. No one could stir the Democrats like Kennedy, but his speeches to conventions increasingly became affirmations of tribal allegiance, not outlines of the policy directions that the party would take.”

Kennedy discusses drug benefit changes to Medicare in this video from a 2003 interview with the NewsHour’s Ray Suarez.

And the WGBH program Greater Boston features contributions from Sen. Kennedy made to Massachusetts.

How do you think Kennedy’s death will change the debate over causes like minimum wage and health care?

A bailout for African American media?

The arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. sparked a media storm a few weeks ago, but one prominent Boston African American paper couldn’t cover the story — they were shut down that week due to a lack in funding, PRI reports.

With larger African American magazines like Jet and Ebony struggling to survive in the current economic climate, how will a diversity of opinions on news topics that affect minorities continue if minority-oriented publications go under?

PRI’s Here and Now discusses a group of minority broadcasters who are seeking a temporary bailout, and the risk of missing big stories that affect the community if they aren’t funded.

Are minority-oriented publications necessary for the larger conversation, or are they to face the same fate as so many other newspapers and magazines until they figure out a way to stay relevant in the new economy?