THURSDAY | FEBRUARY 23, 2012
Picking Up the Pieces: Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Still Making it in America
Beth Macy, The Roanoke Times | Photo by Jared Soares, Equal Voice News
GALAX, Va. — John D. Bassett III was winding along the dusty roads of northern China on a three-day fact-finding mission. It was 2001, and the third-generation furniture-maker was gathering ammo for an epic battle to keep his factory churning. If he [...]
From Relief to Despair: Varying Views of Jobs Data
Paul Wiseman | AP Economics Writer
February 8, 2012
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Month by month, the U.S. job market is regaining its health. So many jobs are being added that the unemployment rate has dropped for five straight months. At 8.3 percent, it’s at a three-year low. Whether the job market actually feels stronger, though, depends on your [...]
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Millions of Families Three Months Away from Poverty
Susannah Nesmith | Special to Equal Voice News
February 1, 2012
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MIAMI ‒ When it’s time for bed, 10-year-old Miguel Abreu retrieves a deflated air mattress wedged between a bookcase and the wall in his aunt’s tiny apartment in Florida City, south of Miami. He quietly unfolds it in the middle of the dining/living room and hooks up [...]
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Emboldened GOP Wants to Abolish State Income Taxes
Sean Murphy | Associated Press
January 31, 2012
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OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A year after Republicans swept into office across the country, many have trained their sights on what has long been a fiscal conservative’s dream: the steep reduction or even outright elimination of state income taxes. The idea has circulated among academics and think-tank researchers for years. [...]
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Food stamp families to critics: Walk in our shoes
Jesse Washington | AP National Writer
January 26, 2012
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Some have advanced degrees and remember middle-class lives. Some work selling lingerie or building websites. They are white, black and Hispanic, young and old, homeowners and homeless. What they have in common: They’re all on food stamps. As the food stamp program has become an issue in the Republican [...]
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2011 Job Hopes Improved Most for Worst-Hit Groups
Derek Kravitz | Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP)
January 6, 2012
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NGTON (AP) — For many people whose job prospects faded most during the recession, 2011 brought a small dose of relief. When unemployment was surging, the youngest U.S. workers, the oldest, those without college degrees and men as a whole all suffered disproportionately. Last year, those groups — whose unemployment [...]
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SF Becomes First US City to Top $10 Minimum Wage
Beth Duff-Brown | Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — David Frias works two
December 13, 2011
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ias works two minimum-wage jobs to squeak by in one of the most expensive cities in America. Come New Year’s Day, he’ll have a few more coins in his pocket as San Francisco makes history by becoming the first city in the nation to scale [...]
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Income Gap Widens within the Black Community
Jesse Washington | AP National Writer
December 12, 2011
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WASHINGTON (AP) — What happens within the black community when the gap widens between the poor and the affluent? That’s one question raised by new census data showing well-off African-Americans leaving cities for the suburbs and the South while the ranks of the black poor grow larger. Over the [...]
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Alabama GOP Leaders have 2nd Thoughts on Immigration
Phillip Rawls | Associated Press
December 8, 2011
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MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama Republicans who pushed through the nation’s toughest law against illegal immigrants are having second thoughts amid a backlash from big business, fueled by the embarrassing traffic stops of two foreign employees tied to the state’s prized Honda and Mercedes plants. The Republican attorney general is [...]
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Rural Residents Fight Back to Save Local Post Offices
Kathy Mulady | Equal Voice News
December 7, 2011
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FOX, Ark. – If the U.S. Postal Service ever thought it could simply slip into hundreds of rural communities across the country and quietly close their post offices without a fight, it now knows differently. In any town, having almost 200 people show up for a community meeting would [...]
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