Tuesday News: Get with the programming

bluenccup-1[1]_0.jpg

NC'S UNEMPLOYED WILL SEE DELAY IN NEWLY EXTENDED BENEFITS: State and federal officials started that conversation Monday as the federal government worked up the fine print on a $900 billion coronavirus stimulus bill that President Donald Trump signed into law Sunday. His signature, delayed several days as the president threatened a veto, came a day after previous federal unemployment extensions expired. Now comes a rollout for the new program, then people get their 11-week extensions and the $300-a-week boost included in the bill. "The N.C. Division of Employment Security is reviewing the new unemployment provisions of the federal COVID-19 relief bill and preparing to reprogram its system to process claims for the additional benefits," agency spokeswoman Kerry McComber said via email. "These benefits cannot be paid until official guidance is received and the benefits system is reprogrammed." The division told claimants earlier on Monday that it didn't expect all of that guidance to come until next month.
https://www.wral.com/extended-benefits-passed-but-some-waiting-still-to-go-for-unemployed/19448065/

Tuesday Twitter roundup

Marc embodied North Carolina’s spirit, and he served his state with courage and compassion. His leadership in the #ncga is unparalleled. My prayers go out to his family, particularly his daughters. #ncpol https://t.co/AKjOFl3QXq

— Dan Blue (@DanBlueNC) December 29, 2020

He was also a consensus-builder, something Phil Berger has never even tried to be. I would say, "he will be missed," but we've been missing him for some time now already.

No safe space: Girls in NC schools face sexual exploitation

From people who are supposed to help them, no less:

Court files unsealed last week allege that the student had been meeting with Evans on a weekly basis since her ninth-grade year. The school assigned her to Evans, with her parents’ knowledge, after she experienced bullying.

Those meetings gradually increased in frequency throughout the student’s sophomore and junior years to the point that the student says she was in Evans’ office almost daily. Sexual encounters allegedly began to take place in Evans’ office at Pinecrest at the end of the plaintiff’s sophomore year. The plaintiff also places several of the alleged sexual encounters at Evans’ Aberdeen home.

And once again our court system has let down a young girl who was violated by an authority figure, in this case a school resource officer (cop). The jury refused to convict him, and the DA refused to pursue further investigations of other encounters. And it's not just underfunded public schools where girls are unsafe, as these Asheville women will attest:

Monday News: Six thousand, five hundred forty nine

OVER 516,000 NC CITIZENS HAVE TESTED POSITIVE FOR CORONAVIRUS: At least 516,828 people in North Carolina have tested positive for the coronavirus and 6,549 have died, according to state health officials. On Saturday, the department reported 19,419 new COVID-19 cases over a three-day period. The department did not provide coronavirus data Thursday or Friday because of the Christmas holiday. About 11.9% of tests were reported positive as of Friday, the latest day for which data are available. On Sunday, 3,123 patients were hospitalized with COVID-19 in North Carolina. That’s 25 patients higher than the previous hospitalizations record of 3,098, which was reported three days earlier.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/coronavirus/article248117925.html

Sunday News: From the Editorial pages

NC'S REGAN IS A GOOD PICK TO RESTORE AND REVIVE THE EPA: Four years ago when Regan took over the state Department of Environmental Quality, he inherited an agency diminished by harsh budget cuts. Ineffective leadership left the dedicated rank-and-file agency workers unsupported and uncertain about their mission. But, as Regan demonstrated over the last four years, he was far more than a cheerleader. He was effective at resolving responsibilities for the thorny Duke Energy coal ash spill disaster the previous administration failed to resolve. His agency was also able to get Chemours Co. to end the polluting practices that had the chemical GenX contaminating drinking water sources in the lower Cape Fear River region. Following Gov. Roy Cooper’s October 2018 executive order on climate change and development of a clean energy economy, Regan developed a Clean Energy Plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions from the state’s electric power producers by 70% and accelerate clean energy economy expansion opportunities in both the rural and urban areas of the state.
https://www.wral.com/editorial/19443149/

Saturday News: Folwell's Folly, part six

STATE TREASURER SIDES WITH SHERIFFS AGAINST COCKTAILS TO GO: Cooper issued the executive order later Monday, noting that he’d gotten concurrence from the Council of State. But State Treasurer Dale Folwell said he chose not to respond to the Cooper administration’s email. He’s critical of how Cooper has handled the Council of State’s involvement this year, and he wants to discuss proposed executive orders in a meeting — not over email with only a few hours to reply. “These executive orders need to be developed more comprehensively, more transparently, and we have to be able to do that in a forum where we can challenge assumptions,” Folwell said. He argues that the state needs to do more to help restaurants and bars, many of which are likely to go out of business. “It seems that the governor thinks that the ability to order a cocktail to go is going to fix these problems, and the sad fact is that he’s wrong,” Folwell said. Tell that your GOP buddies in the General Assembly, who are sitting on a $4+Billion surplus.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/coronavirus/article248079035.html

A desperate Trump is relying on fringe fraudsters to make his (non) case

Scraping a hole in the bottom of the barrel:

Powell told courts that the witness is an expert who could show that overseas corporations helped shift votes to President-elect Joe Biden. The witness’s identity must be concealed from the public, Powell has said, to protect her “reputation, professional career and personal safety.”

The Washington Post identified the witness by determining that portions of her affidavit match, sometimes verbatim, a blog post that the pro-Trump podcaster Terpsichore Maras-Lindeman published in November 2019. In an interview, Maras-Lindeman confirmed that she wrote the affidavit and said she viewed it as her contribution to a fight against the theft of the election.

This "expert" is a real piece of work. Not only has she (continuously) vastly inflated whatever academic credentials she may actually have, she has taken Stolen Valor to a whole new level:

BlueNC