(For those who missed it this morning on Legislative Watch, check out this powerful article by N.C. Policy Watch crack reporter, Sarah Ovaska):

Greg and Elizabeth Rain Georgaras, two of the 37,000 North Carolinians cut off from their employment benefits four weeks ago, can no longer afford to keep their two young children with them.

It recently fell to family to take in Roger, 3, and Victoria, 2, while the Concord couple keeps looking for work and hope that their unemployment benefits are restored soon.

“They’re no longer with me,” Greg said. “I just couldn’t keep them in these types of surroundings, not having food and the electricity about to be cut off.” Read More…

The excellent website SourceWatch provides a very helpful etymology of the term “doublespeak.” The site explains how the word has been inaccurately (if understandably) attributed to the great George Orwell and provides several helpful examples – terms like “negative patient care outcomes” (i.e. death) and “non-core promise” (i.e. a lie). Today the leader of the North Carolina House, Double-Speaker Thom Tillis provided some new grist for the SourceWatch mill.

Tillis’ entry: “compromise.” Read More…

(Cross-posted from Legislative Watch).

Things have now sped past the point of absurdity in the GOP’s vengeful effort to block the renewal of unemployment benefits for 37,000 workers and their families.

Today, in an act of amazing irony, the House Judiciary A Subcommittee took up a bill that purports to be about improving the review process for people who are denied their unemployment insurance benefits.

Got that? These people are too busy to take up an unemployment bill that would actually do something useful, but do have time to take up an unemployment bill that’s mostly about getting in partisan jabs at the Employment Security Commission.

But wait, it gets worse. Read More…

Senate GOP Leader Phil Berger said at his weekly press conference this morning that he has no immediate plan for dealing with the 37,000 unemployed workers whose benefits were cut off on April 16.

“No movement on that, for now,” Berger said, in response to a reporter’s question.

Read More…

(Cross-posted from Legislative Watch.)

It’s bad enough that legislative Republicans have been holding 37,000 families hostage for three weeks by refusing to authorize the continuance of federally-funded unemployment benefits to which they are entitled; now the GOP has the gall to schedule debate on another bill that purports to deal with the problem of unemployed workers who are ”aggrieved” because the state Employment Security Commission has failed to pay them unemployment benefits to which they are entitled! Read More…