Tax-cut bill includes updates to jobless benefits system, By Annie Lowrey, February 21, 2012, New York Times: “Tucked into a $140 billion bill extending emergency jobless benefits and a temporary cut to payroll taxes are several provisions intended to modernize the country’s outdated unemployment insurance system. Experts described the little-noticed changes as marginal improvements, but important ones, and said they promised to aid the long-term jobless and help hold down the unemployment rate in future recessions…”
Day: February 22, 2012
Post Office Closings in Rural Areas
Post office closings may increase rural isolation, economic disparity, By Cezary Podkul and Emily Stephenson, February 18, 2012, Washington Post: “Postal officials were blunt in December when they stood before 120 residents in Dedham, Iowa, to tell them why their town’s post office has to close. The Internet, officials said, was killing the U.S. Postal Service. ‘Well, I have no Internet,’ resident Judy Ankenbauer said at the meeting. Like many of Dedham’s 280 residents, Ankenbauer said she still relies on the post office to buy stamps and send letters and packages. Dedham is hardly alone in its dependence on the Postal Service. Some of the nation’s poorest communities, many of them with spotty broadband Internet coverage, stand to suffer most if the struggling agency moves ahead with plans to shutter thousands of post offices this year, a Reuters analysis found. Nearly 80 percent of the 3,830 post offices under consideration are in sparsely populated rural areas where poverty rates are higher than the national average. Moreover, about one-third of the offices slated for closure fall in areas with limited or no wired broadband Internet…”
Community Colleges and Student Achievement
A very rough road for community college students, By Carla Rivera, February 21, 2012, Los Angeles Times: “Foster Washington knows the odds are against him. The Los Angeles Southwest College student is a 20-year-old from a tough neighborhood in Watts where, he says, there was little encouragement or preparation for college. Recent studies suggest that students such as Washington are the least likely to stay in school, get a degree or transfer to a four-year university, hampering their future job prospects. But Washington is determined to be the first college graduate in his family of 12 siblings. Southwest, part of the nine-campus Los Angeles Community College District, is trying to fulfill his goal through new programs focused on intensive tutoring, faculty training and helping students adjust to college life…”