Essential Workers’ Covid Bonus Pay Varied Widely Across US
Among states that offered federal covid relief to workers, decisions over how much money and who got it were very different place to place, the AP reports. Eviction protections, West Virginia surgical residencies and illegal pot farms in California are also in the news.
AP:
Bonus Pay For Essential Workers Varied Widely Across States
Over the past year, about one-third of U.S. states have used federal COVID-19 relief aid to reward workers considered essential who dutifully reported to jobs during the pandemic. But who qualified for those bonuses -- and how much they received — varied widely, according to an Associated Press review. While some were paid thousands of dollars, others with similar jobs elsewhere received nothing. (Lieb, 7/10)
NBC News:
With Federal Eviction Moratorium Set To Expire, States Offer Patchwork Protections
Beyond the everyday poverty fight, and looming eviction crisis, is a complex problem of government money aimed at preventing evictions from getting into the hands of people who most need it. The digital divide, a thicket of paperwork required to qualify for aid and a hodgepodge of state programs have translated into too little money in too few pockets of people facing eviction, experts told NBC News. (Clark, 7/12)
AP:
WVa Rural Surgery Residency Program Gets Planning Grant
The planning and development of West Virginia’s first rural surgery residency program now has the help of a $750,000 federal grant. Marshall University’s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine received the three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the university said in a news release. (7/12)
Los Angeles Times:
Illegal Pot Farms Have Invaded The California Desert
Before his corpse was dumped in a shallow grave 50 miles north of Los Angeles, Mauricio Ismael Gonzalez-Ramirez was held prisoner at one of the hundreds of black-market pot farms that have exploded across California’s high desert in the last several years, authorities say. He worked in what has become California’s newest illegal marijuana haven: the Mojave Desert. A world away from the lush forest groves of the “Emerald Triangle” of Northern California, this hot, dry, unforgiving climate has attracted more than a thousand marijuana plantations that fill the arid expanse between the Antelope Valley and the Colorado River. (Cosgrove and Shagun, 7/11)
