Unemployed factory worker sues as Virginia tries to claw back his jobless benefits
CBSN
For 26 years, Ernest Ray worked at a company in southwest Virginia that made compressors, in a physically demanding job that involved night shifts on a factory floor. When the plant closed in 2018, Ray applied for and received about $9,000 in unemployment benefits.
Three years later, Ray is fighting the Virginia Employment Commission in court as the agency tries to take the money back. It's a case that, as Ray's pro bono attorney sees it, illustrates the ethos of a radically dysfunctional agency.
"Like the teacher who doesn't like children and the librarian who doesn't like books, this is an agency that doesn't like the people that it's supposed to serve," said Hugh O'Donnell, who has done decades of unemployment compensation work.
Washington — The Supreme Court on Friday said it will consider the constitutionality of the Federal Communications Commission's Universal Service Fund, agreeing to review a lower court decision that upended the mechanism for funding programs that provide communications services to rural areas, low-income communities and schools, libraries and hospitals.
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin launched six space tourists on a high-speed dash to the edge of space and back Friday, giving the passengers — including a husband and wife making their second flight — about three minutes of weightlessness and an out-of-this world view before the capsule made a parachute descent to touchdown at the company's west Texas flight facility.