Politics

Two out of five people in Georgia — 40.3 percent of its workforce — have filed for unemployment since the state reopened its economy on April 30, the first to do so. But people are still staying close to home, making it harder for jobs to come back, according to a report in Politico on Thursday (May 21).

Georgia had more filings by percentage of its workforce than any other state, Politico’s review of data indicated. New jobless claims for loans in Georgia have varied since the state reopened, going up 243,000 two weeks ago and dropping to 177,000 last week. The state had commented that the increases in claims were due to jobs lost in retail, social services and health care.

“It’s nothing significant enough to say, ‘Oh, there’s a huge surge,’ — but certainly nothing to signal there’s any return to economic stability or recovery happening right now,” Alex Camardelle, a senior policy analyst with the nonprofit Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, told Politico.

Aside from being the first state to re-open, Georgia was also one of the last states to close its economy and impose stay-home mandates.

More layoffs are coming down the pike in Georgia as the state makes plans to eliminate over 1,000 jobs — educators, counselors, social services, administrators, clerks —  in a move to cut state budgets by 14 percent, according to an AJC report on Sunday (May 24). Revenue decline brought about by the pandemic was cited as the reason.

Further, some state employees not laid off will see their paychecks slashed.

Among the departments laying off or furloughing employees are the Georgia State Patrol and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Welcome to Good Day, UGA, your one-stop shop for Georgia football news and takes. Check us out every weekday morning for everything you need to know about Georgia football, recruiting, basketball and more.
A deeper dive into Georgia football recruiting efforts in the metro Atlanta area
Since Kirby Smart took over as Georgia’s head coach in December of 2015 and including the 2021 class, the state of Georgia has produced 202 blue-chip recruits, which are defined as 4 or 5-star prospects using the 247Sports Composite database.
Of those recruits, 118 —58 percent — of them have come from nine counties that make up the metro Atlanta area, defined as the counties of Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, DeKalb, Clayton, Coweta, Douglas, Fayette and Henry per the Georgia State of Tourism website. 
On average the metro Atlanta area produces more blue-chip recruits than the likes of Alabama, Louisiana and Ohio. Alvin Kamara, Derrick Brown and the Atlanta Falcons’ 2020 first-round pick AJ Terrell all came from the area. It is one of the best recruiting areas in the country from both a high-end and volume standpoint.
But in recent seasons Georgia is relying less and less on the Atlanta area to add to its recruiting haul, even as it continues to sign elite recruiting classes. In the 2019 and 2020 cycles, Georgia signed just five prospects from the area and just one of the 10 5-star prospects. Over that same time span, Clemson and Tennessee have also signed five prospects with Alabama landing six.
So should Georgia be doing a better job recruiting the metro Atlanta area, or is it just too unrealistic to expect one school to dominate the area? Does Georgia need to re-prioritize how it recruits the area?

President Akufo-Addo set up the “National Covid-19 Trust Fund” to mobilise res towards the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Researchers on the Harvard World Well being Institute say the US must conduct 900,000 assessments a day by Might 15 to even take into consideration slowly reopening the economic system.
• The US is at the moment conducting round 250,000 COVID-19 assessments a day, up from 150,000 in mid-April.
• 4 states which can be already reopening — Florida, Georgia, Texas, and Colorado — are usually not conducting the naked minimal variety of assessments needed to soundly achieve this, researchers say.
• “Finally, I’m deeply apprehensive that 4, six, eight weeks down the street we will discover ourselves in the very same place we have been in in early March, and we should shut the economic system down once more,” Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard World Well being Institute, mentioned in a press release.

The US has simply over per week to extend its each day coronavirus testing capability by almost 400%, at a minimal, if states want to proceed with a leisure of bodily distancing necessities, in line with new information from researchers at Harvard College.

“As of this week, nationwide testing continues to be stalled at round 250,000 each day assessments,” the Harvard World Well being Institute reported Thursday. That is up from 150,000 COVID-19 assessments a day in mid-April — however nonetheless half of what the institute deemed needed two weeks in the past. 

The nation is falling behind, the institute declared, whilst some states are starting to reopen. “In accordance with our up to date calculations,” it mentioned in a new report, “we are going to want upwards of 900,000 each day assessments nationally by Might 15.”

On this broadcast of The National Conversation, three essential workers share their experiences working through the pandemic. We’ll also answer your questions about graduations and new treatments.

The authorization, announced by President Trump, comes days after preliminary results from a study of the drug showed it can help patients recover faster.

Of more than 3.2 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 globally, more than a million people have recovered — including some 154,000 in the U.S.

Dr. Fauci’s testimony had been requested by the House Appropriations Committee as part of an investigation into the the COVID-19 response. The White House called the request “counter-productive.”

North Korean media, cited by South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, said he attended a ceremony marking the completion of a fertilizer plant in a town just north of the capital, Pyongyang.

Emerging data suggest that though people altered their habits during the first month of America’s response to the pandemic, that cooperation has since leveled off and — eventually — decreased.

State leaders implemented sweeping measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Many are now deciding when and how to lift various restrictions.

‘We can live in fear for a long time or we can trust that everything is going to be OK…’

(Liberty Headlines) Georgia, Oklahoma and Alaska began loosening lockdown orders Friday on their pandemic-wounded businesses.
Republican governors in Georgia and Oklahoma allowed salons, spas and barbershops to reopen, while Alaska opened the way for restaurants to resume dine-in service and retail shops and other businesses to open their doors, all with limitations. Some Alaska municipalities chose to maintain stricter rules.
Though limited in scope, and subject to social-distancing restrictions, the reopenings marked a symbolic milestone in the debate raging in the United States — and the world — as to how quickly political leaders should lift economically damaging lockdown orders.
Similar scenarios have been playing out worldwide and will soon proliferate in the U.S. as other governors wrestle with conflicting priorities.

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Georgia has become one of the first states to ease coronavirus lockdown restrictions, as Governor Brian Kemp cast CDC cautions and even President Trump’s criticism aside today, to allow some non-essential businesses to re-open.
But while anti-lockdown protests have gathered momentum nationwide, the scenes in Georgia today were far from the enthusiastic uptake for which Kemp must have hoped.
Instead many stores remained shuttered and business owners and employees who spoke with DailyMail.com today told of their confusion, conflict and fear that this was a move made too soon.

Gov. Brian Kemp is defending his partial shelter-in-place order, applicable statewide to those with “increased risk of complications” from the coronavirus, including the elderly and those undergoing cancer treatment.
In an interview with WABE, he outlined where he thinks Georgia is and why he doesn’t think a broader restrictive order — as many other states, countries and cities including Atlanta and Savannah have instituted — is necessary right now.
Why limit the shelter-in-place order?
Well, I felt like we had the right response from a state perspective. I mean, look, I understand that cities are dealing with a little bit different situation than a whole state. Certainly, the city of Atlanta has been much different from a lot of the other 600-plus cities around Georgia. And, you know, I’ve been supportive of what the local communities are doing, but also felt like we had a lot of Georgians that were not paying attention and not doing the things that the president and the vice president’s task force and myself and the nation’s governors had been asking.
But we’re also continuing to follow the data on this and looking at a lot of different ramifications, not only from the virus, but economically and other things. And that all factored into my decision-making process.

The 2018 midterm elections in Georgia were a stain on the fabric of democracy. Republican candidate for governor Brian Kemp oversaw his own election and engaged in systematic voter suppression as Georgia’s secretary of state. Voting machines in various parts of the state malfunctioned en masse, and many voters in metropolitan Atlanta waited up to three hours to cast their ballots. Georgia’s election officials, haunted by this recent history, are currently pursuing a historic rollout of new voting machines in what may be a swing state come November.
However, in the midst of that massive deployment, the state postponed its presidential primary due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Now, voters who have not yet cast their ballot will need to wait until May 19 if they wish to do so in person. 
But the pandemic and its consequent upending of Georgia’s primary may actually have a silver lining: it could very well be the catalyst of a long process that solves the state’s preventable election woes.  
I early voted in person for the presidential primary, but for those who must still vote, I encourage you to vote by mail to ensure both the integrity of your vote and your fellow Georgians’ safety during the current public health crisis. 

With questions remaining over how safe in-person voting will be this spring, the Georgia secretary of state’s office has announced a step that will make it easier for voters to cast mail-in ballots for the May primary election.
All 6.9 million registered voters in Georgia are already eligible to vote by absentee mail-in ballot. Ordinarily, a voter would be responsible for going online to fill out an application in order to receive a ballot in the mail.
But because of concerns over the spread of the coronavirus, the secretary of state’s office is taking the preemptive step of mailing each registered voter an application. Voters would then simply have to fill out that application and return it in order to receive their ballot for the May primary.
“Times of turbulence and upheaval like the one we Georgians face require decisive action if the liberties we hold so dear are to be preserved,” said Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
Georgia’s presidential primary was originally scheduled to take place March 24. But it was postponed to May 19 because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Thousands of ballots that were cast before voting was halted will still be counted. The May 19 election will feature the presidential contest (for those who’ve not already cast a vote) along with local and legislative primary races.
State Sen. Nikema Williams, chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia, applauded the move to mail all voters absentee ballot applications.