We start this week with unemployment woes. The nation has been hit with millions of layoffs — at least a half-million in North Carolina — as the result of government-ordered shutdowns and restrictions.
States were caught unprepared for the fallout from their own efforts to stem the spread of Covid-19 and, in North Carolina, there appeared to have been no efforts to increase the online server capacity or manpower of the state’s unemployment office. The Department of Commerce is now contracting with Cicso’s Rapid Response Team, and adding hundreds of employees to handle the backlog — but for many, it’s too little, too late.
We read some of the emails we’ve received, looking at the real-life issues that have come out of such a massive issue.
Then, it’s time to talk about ‘essential’ businesses. We got a lot of hate mail for asking why golf courses were still open, and many implied we simply dislike — even though the journalist who wrote the article actually enjoys golfing. The truth is, we’re more concerned with how the decisions on what to keep open and what to close are made — questions that local officials haven’t really answered yet.
