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Wednesday, Nov.
30, 2005
Out of reach: Location,
loan requirements keep rural residents off Internet
Rural residents in Iowa and Illinois want high-speed
Internet access, and their location is only one reason
they cannot get the service.
After getting turned down by a federal loan program
meant to bring high-speed access to rural areas in 2004,
Prairie iNet could only use limited
private funds to expand service to small businesses
in the Des Moines suburbs. That left farmers and other
rural dwellers out in the cold, where they may remain
indefinitely, reports Vikas Bajaj of The New
York Times.
"Across rural America, entrepreneurs, lawmakers
and Internet company executives say they are frustrated
with a loan program created by Congress in 2002 to help
extend high-speed Internet service to rural areas. Run
by the Rural Utilities Service, an
arm of the Department of Agriculture, the program has
been allocated nearly $3 billion but the agency has
lent less than half that. As of Sept. 30, the end of
the 2005 fiscal year, the utilities service had rejected
87 loan applications totaling $1.1 billion and approved
48 loans totaling $770 million," writes Bajaj.
Critics say the federal loan program's standards are
so tough that some applicants are rejected if they do
not have enough cash to cover a full year's operating
expenses. "Department officials acknowledge that
the program has had a slow start and agree that some
of the financial restrictions may need to be revised.
But the rules, those officials say, were meant to ensure
that borrowers were financially stable and that the
loans would be repaid in full." (Read
more)
Do the math: Hydropower-backed
senator kills center that saves salmon
A U.S. senator from Idaho, who is supported
by the hydroelectric industry, has killed funding for
a center that wanted to send less water through power
turbines in order to save salmon in the Columbia River.
"Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho) has
eliminated a little-known agency that counts endangered
fish in the Columbia River. The Fish Passage
Center, with just 12 employees and a budget
of $1.3 million, has been killed because it did not
count fish in a way that suited Craig," writes
Blaine Harden of The Washington Post.
The Fish Passage Center has documented how the Columbia-Snake
hydroelectric system kills salmon, and its analyses
suggest one way to increase salmon survival is to spill
more water over dams, rather than feed it through electrical
turbines, writes Harden.
Harden notes, "The mathematics of protecting salmon
swimming in the nation's largest hydroelectric system
can hurt your pocketbook -- particularly in the Northwest,
where dams supply power to four out of five homes."
Craig received more money from electric utilities than
from any other industry and was named "legislator
of the year" by the National Hydropower
Association. (Read
more)
Growing pains: Virginia county
seeks development czar to tackle challenges
"Bedford
County is looking for a director of community development
to help manage the large locality's range of growth
issues. The county has a population of about 60,000
residents and 754 square miles of land, and it has been
one of the largest and fastest growing localities outside
of Northern Virginia for years," writes Jay Conley
of The Roanoke Times. According to
U.S. Census Bureau statistics, the
county, where the population rose 5.7 percent between
2000 and 2004, was the only area in western Virginia
whose population increased more than the state average
of 5.4 percent.
Located between the region's two largest cities --
Roanoke and Lynchburg -- Bedford County faces two key
challenges. One is balancing the increasing demand homes
in the suburbs and preserving the county's rural scenery.
The other challenge is attracting economic development
to help pay the increasing costs for public services,
notes Conley. (Read
more)
According to the job description, the director of community
development will oversee work in the county's planning,
zoning, natural resources and Geographic Information
Systems departments. "What we're hoping to accomplish
with this position is systematic coordination of the
various departments that affect or play a role in community
development," Frank Rogers, the county's assistant
county administrator, told Conley.
Kentucky wants to rid self of
No Child Left Behind standards, avoid penalties
Kentucky public schools are asking for help in meeting
No Child Left Behind's reading and math standards and
avoiding penalties.
"The request would effectively replace a strict
federal standard that requires all schools to hit the
same annual testing goals with the state's more generous
Commonwealth Accountability Testing System, or CATS,
which rewards schools that show improvement. If approved,
the changes could lead to a major reduction in the number
of Kentucky schools deemed failing under No Child Left
Behind. Last year, more than 800 of the state's 1,249
public schools failed to meet the federal standard --
but only 48 missed the state's goals," writes Nancy
C. Rodriguez of The Courier-Journal.
(Read
more)
Some parents have applauded the request, but critics
say schools just want the easy way out. It's unknown
when the U.S. Department of Education
will rule on Kentucky's request, reports the Louisville
paper.
Desire for home heating energy
leads consumers to seek out corn stoves
Biofuels are seen by experts as a means of lessening
dependency on oil nationwide, from powering cars to
heating homes in the dead of winter. Now, consumers
are viewing corn as a heating source.
"Fearing that budget-busting heating bills are
ahead, area residents are scrambling to find cheaper
ways to keep warm this winter. Fearing that budget-busting
heating bills are ahead, area residents are scrambling
to find cheaper ways to keep warm this winter. With
natural gas prices predicted to soar more, they’re
turning to wood, and even corn, to keep cozy. But demand
also is straining supplies of some alternative heating
systems," writes Charles Slat of Michigan's Monroe
News.
Keith LaLonde, who sells corn burners, told Slat, "I
was doing fantastic for a couple of weeks, then the
manufacturer got swamped with orders." The systems
are now back-ordered by a couple of months. "I
get calls from all over Michigan and Ohio from people
trying to find a dealer that’s got a stash of
the stoves," said LaLonde. (Read
more)
School
soda machines compared to cigarette dispensers by anti-tobacco
group
Fresh from doing battle with big tobacco, some of the
same attorneys are planning lawsuits against the soft-drink
industry with claims that it hooks and hurts the health
of school children.
Massachusetts law professor Richard Daynard, who worked
as a consultant on class actions against tobacco companies,
is working with private attorneys and non-profit groups
to sue soft-drink companies for selling high-calorie
drinks in schools, writes Caroline Wilbert of the Cox
News Service. Attorneys expect to file their
first suit as soon as next month.
Daynard likened the presence of soft drinks in school
to "having a cigarette machine in a school,"
reports Wilbert. The plan is to file first in Massachusetts
and then to use that case as a model in other states.
Daynard is associate dean at Northeastern University
School of Law, and has been president of the
Tobacco Control Resource Center and
chairman of the Tobacco Products Liability Project.
He is also chairman of the Obesity and Law Project at
the Public Health Advocacy Institute.
Susan Neely, president of the American Beverage
Association, told Wilbert the plaintiffs' attorneys
are "trying to paint a bull's-eye on a particular
product and pass it off as a meaningful solution to
a complicated problem." (Read
more)
Big demand for fresh farm produce
fuels boost for farmers markets
Farmers markets are popping up like mushrooms after
a spring rain thanks to urban dwellers who want fresh
produce, reports the Cincinnati Post.
This year's 98 markets in Kentucky mark an 8 percent
jump for that state compared to last year. Janet Eaton,
marketing specialist for the Kentucky Department
of Agriculture, told reporter Stephenie Steitzer
about 60 percent of tobacco growers are finding ways
to replace their income through avenues such as the
markets. Eaton called the increased popularity of farmers'
markets "a customer-driven phenomenon." One
farmers' market couple said on a good day, they could
make $100 to $200, depending on what produce they were
selling.
The Boone County Agricultural Extension District
is building a $1.1 million, environmentally friendly
lot and indoor facility for demonstrations at its farmers'
market. Covington officials are looking for money to
develop a $32.5 million regional public market that
will be open year around and include retail shops, restaurants,
loft apartments, an outdoor amphitheater and a park.
(Read
more)
Kentucky hunters bag 100,000
deer in big-bucks industry for the state
Foul weather may have reduced the number of deer killed
in Kentucky this fall, a blow to the state's multi-million
dollar hunting industry.
"The official count from the Kentucky
Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources shows
100,359 deer had been killed as of Tuesday morning.
That's despite a series of severe storms that brought
high winds and tornados to parts of the state over the
past month, the height of the fall hunting season,"
writes Roger Alford of The Associated Press.
Tina Brunjes, big game coordinator for the state wildlife
agency, told Alford that Bow hunters and muzzleloaders
still have opportunities to get deer, but the total
harvest is expected to fall short of last year's 124,752.
A total of 258,379 licensed hunters killed more than
10 percent of the state's total deer population, which
is estimated at 900,000. Wildlife biologists say thinning
the herds is necessary to keep the animals from becoming
overly abundant.
State records show hunters have killed more than 100,000
deer during each of the past five years in Kentucky,
where hunting of all types netted more than $21 million
in sales of licenses this year.
Lynn Garrison, public policy director for the state
wildlife agency, said biologists take their job of managing
deer herds seriously because of the economic benefits
to Kentucky. He said direct sales of hunting equipment,
lodging, clothing, ammunition and other items associated
with deer hunting total more than $202 million a year
in Kentucky. (Read
more)
The bread run:
Students give back to humanity at one West Virginia
college
At Wheeling Jesuit University,
membership in one national honor society entails feeding
the hungry every day. Alpha Sigma Nu members gather
leftover bread and deli items from two area grocery
stores for delivery through Catholic Charities
to area needy.
"Membership in the National Jesuit Honor
Society, Alpha Sigma Nu, differs slightly at
each of the 28 Jesuit colleges and universities in the
nation. At Wheeling Jesuit University, it entails feeding
the hungry--every day," reports Newswise,
which reports on research and other work at universities.
Rev. Michael F. Steltenkamp launched the project in
2001. “Father Mike” asked Richard Riesbeck,
a 2003 alum of the university and president and CEO
of Riesbeck Foods Inc., if Alpha Sigma
Nu students could pick up clearance items from his stores
and deliver them to Catholic Charities, now known as
the daily “bread run,” notes Newswise.
The honor society continues the project with campus
volunteers, and assistance has come from diverse niches
of the campus community. University President Rev. Joseph
R. Hacala does the bread run. A number of Jesuit Fathers
were joined this year by the Physics Club, members of
WJU's athletic teams, members of its sponsored programs
and its librarian, reports Newswise. (Read
more)
Is traditional
journalism succumbing to the blogger generation?
"Chattering oracles are telling us that newspapers
will die soon, as the Internet takes over. That may
well be and the Internet does carry wondrous potential
for improving life (as well as voluminous drivel that
used to be written on the walls of public toilets).
But the puzzlement is, where will the new digital providers
of information get their fresh news?" asks Sydney
H. Schanberg of the Village Voice.
"It is fresh news daily, or at least weekly news,
that keeps citizens feeling connected to the decisions
and events that alter their lives. And it is newspapers,
and a handful of probing magazines, that provide most
of the in-depth journalism that uncovers and analyzes
those fast-moving decisions and events. Blogsters, please
don't jump out of your pajamas;lots of you are doing
valuable and admirable work keeping mainstream journalism
on its toes. But serious journalism is labor-intensive
and time-consuming and therefore requires large amounts
of money and health benefits and pensions. The blogosphere
has plenty of time, but as yet none of the other items,"
opines Schanberg.
"So if and when newspapers fade into darkness,
as the all-seeing oracles foretell, what will happen?
Perhaps, in a future time of airborne pigs, altruism
will suddenly infuse our culture, and money will descend,
like manna, on the Internet to pay for the reporters
to do the intensive journalism needed as a check on
abusive power. And if altruism or labor-friendly corporate
ideologies don't magically appear? The oracles are mostly
silent on that eventuality. Maybe they think samizdat
is the answer. Maybe many of them don't care,"
concludes Schanberg. (Read
more)
Tuesday, Nov.
29, 2005
USDA proposes to
OK China poultry exports to U.S. despite bird flu fears
First, the Bush administration announced
a $7.1 billion strategy to ward off an avian flu pandemic.
Now, the U.S. Department of Agriculture
has proposed
to add the People's Republic of China, considered the
principal source of bird flu, to the list of countries
eligible to export poultry to the United States.
The announcement by the USDA comes on
the heels of two new human deaths from bird flu in China.
For the Reuters report on those deaths,
click
here.
The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection
Service is inviting comments on the proposal.
Mail, including floppy disks or CD-ROM's, and hand-or
courier-delivered items should be sent to Docket Clerk,
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection
Service, 300 12th Street SW, Cotton Annex 102, Washington
DC 20250. Send e-mail comments to fsis.regulationscomments@fsis.usda.gov.
For the latest on bird flu in and around China: Study:
Poultry vaccine stops flu spread from CNN,
click
here, Poultry culling ends in Inner Mongolia
bird flu-hit city from China View.net,
click
here, Thailand says only one bird flu outbreak
left from AFP via Yahoo, click
here, and Singapore, US boost cooperation against
bird flu, other diseases from AFP via Yahoo,
click
here.
BellSouth to improve
online access for predominately rural, poor areas
The BellSouth Foundation, the charitable
arm of the Atlanta-based communications company, is
planning a $20 million effort to improve access to online
learning for underserved areas in the South.
The campaign will cover Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina,
South Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Florida
and Tennessee, and it will help fund state-led virtual
learning programs while seeking to expand computer access
to children in poor areas, reports The Associated
Press.
Foundation President Mary Boehm said, "We wanted
to be sure all kids, not just the privileged, could
be part of the virtual learning movement." In addition
to helping bankroll and coordinate state virtual schools,
the foundation will target low-income neighborhoods.
In Atlanta's Carver community, a pilot site for the
effort, volunteers will help create a school of technology
and work with middle and high school students on job
shadowing and an online algebra course, AP reports.
(Read
more)
Rural Pakistani
journalists need computers, other aid from U.S. counterparts
Pakistan journalists, who work in an atmosphere of
fear and intimidation, are starting a Web site for stories
on freedom of the press "as a basic human right."
"The Rural Media Network of Pakistan
is announcing the publication of the freedom-of-expression
newsletter Sadiq News. The newsletter
educates rural journalists about freedom of expression
as a fundamental human right, and helps to provide them
with the necessary skills to cope more effectively.
The Nawa-i-Ahmedpur Sharqia newspaper will publish and
distribute it freely to rural press clubs, journalists
and educational institutions," reports the International
Journalists' Network.
The Sadiq News monitors press freedom violations and
defends free expression in rural Pakistan. The publication
also plans to share this information with international
press freedom groups to help coordinate protests to
government leaders and the media. For that purpose,
the Rural Media Network wants to establish a Sadiq News
Web site in both Urdu and English.
The project lacks the necessary computer equipment.
American journalists can help by donating equipment.
For more information, contact Ehsan Ahmed Sehar at ehsan.sehar@gmail.com
or ehsanshr@hotmail.com,
or write to this postal address: Ehsan Ahmed Sehar,
Press Chambers, Opposite Canal Rest House, Katchery
Road, Ahmedpur East, District Bagalwalpur, Pakistan.
'Regional divide'
limits broadband access for small firms in rural Ireland
After its transformation from being an agriculturally
based economy into a tech-savvy country, Ireland is
encountering the same broadband access issues that exist
in rural U.S. communities.
"Three out of 10 small and medium sized companies
in Ireland have been unable to upgrade to broadband
mainly due to lack of availability in their areas, according
to a survey of 601 small and medium sized enterprises
published by the Chambers of Commerce of Ireland.
The e-business survey also showed 29 percent of companies
access the internet via broadband with 33 percent still
using dial up," writes Deirdre McArdle of ElectricNews.Net.
Broadband enables companies to access the Internet
at greater speeds. The survey results showed "a
regional divide," writes McArdle with 66 percent
of Dublin-based companies having broadband while 41
percent have high-speed internet access in the Midlands
and 44 percent in the Border region.
Researcher Sean Murphy said, "We must continue
to invest in the promotion of broadband and re-position
ourselves as a leader in the e-enabled and e-user league
tables." The survey also found a direct link between
broadband connections and increased usage of all e-business
applications. Murphy told McArdle broadband is the key
to the creation of a real digital marketplace. (Read
more)
Native Americans,
University of Washington to explore culturally based
healing
"For thousands of years, Native Americans have
believed that their culturally-based traditional methods
of healing have helped them live healthier lifestyles,"
writes Tiffany Royal of the weekly North Kitsap
Herald. In partnership with the University
of Washington, the Suquamish Tribe at the Port
Madison Reservation hopes to prove its ways
can help Native Americans.
For the next three years, the partners will sponsor
a project called "Healing of the Canoe," which
will involve gathering information about the culturally-based
traditions. Earlier this year, the National
Institutes of Health awarded the university
$1.4 million for the project, reports Royal.
The project's goals include implementing a community-based
intervention or prevention program rooted in tribal
values and traditions, and evaluating the program to
see if it actually promotes wellness while reducing
health problems. "The tribal canoe journey is the
metaphor for the project, as it is an event that some
Suquamish members have participated in and found to
be helpful in getting their lives back on track after
certain life struggles. It teaches members traditional
protocol and helps members learn about themselves physically
and spiritually and how to lead a clean and sober lifestyle,"
writes Royal.
"It's been very healing for our people,"
said Chuck Wagner, the tribe's lead administrator for
the behavioral health portion of the tribe's wellness
program. The canoe journey has "worked for tens
of thousands of years but no one ever wrote it down,"
Wagner told Royal. (Read
more)
North Carolina burley growers
continue auctions despite end of price supports
A long tradition of tobacco auctions is
continuing in western North Carolina despite the dominance
of direct contracting with cigarette companies and the
end of federal quotas and price supports.
"Asheville has been home to burley
tobacco auction warehouses for more than a century.
But with the upheaval in the industry caused by last
year’s $10.1 billion buyout of tobacco producers,
the tradition looked like it might end. For people like
Yancey County grower Wendell Wilson, that would’ve
truly been the end of an era," writes John Boyle
of the Asheville Citizen-Times.
Wilson told Boyle, "I’m 44 and I started
coming down here when I was 7 years old. I’m tickled
to death the Owen family kept it open." The auction
will run through Dec. 15. On the first day of sales,
four tobacco companies sold about 170,000 pounds of
leaf — about half of last year’s first-day
sales. The average price was $1.56 a pound, considerably
less than last year’s average, which hovered around
$2.
The 11 westernmost counties of North Carolina had about
3,500 tobacco growers in 2004. At the Asheville warehouses,
sales traditionally generate between $8 million and
$10 million annually, writes Boyle. (Read
more)
Virginia agriculture secretary
backs program to preserve farmland
Virginia's secretary of agriculture and forestry wants
the state to commit to agricultural preservation by
supporting programs that will make sure farmland stays
farmland. "Robert Bloxom spoke at the Virginia
Farm Bureau Federation's 80th annual convention
in Norfolk, where he received a task force's recommendations
to provide state funds for local programs that pay farmers
in exchange for giving up the right to develop their
property," writes Sonja Barisic of The
Associated Press.
Such "purchases of development rights" programs
guarantee the land will remain farmland, forest or open
space, instead of housing developments, malls, etc.,
notes Barisic. About a half dozen Virginia cities and
counties have PDR programs, but they are locally funded.
Bloxom told Barisic, "Now it's the state's turn
to join in ... to help the localities in this battle
to preserve our farmland and our forest land."
The Virginia Department of Agriculture
and Consumer Services' Farmland Preservation
Task Force report the state lost 23,360 acres
of farmland and more than 22,000 acres of forest to
development each year between 1992 and 1997. (Read
more)
Drug crimes triple
female inmate population in rural New Mexico county
One rural New Mexico county is seeing
more female inmates because of an increase in drug crimes,
according to an in-depth look at increased crime, illegal
drug traffic and the space crunch in area jails.
"There were 26 female inmates housed
in one pod of the Curry County Adult Detention
Center on a recent late-November afternoon.
Located about 20 miles away, the Roosevelt County
Detention Center housed 12 female inmates.
Those numbers fluctuate daily, but a larger trend remains.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics,
the number of women in jail nearly tripled from 1985
to 1996. Local jail officials also report a sharp incline
in women prisoners," writes Marlena Hartz for the
Clovis News-Journal.
A decade ago, the Curry County jail housed an average
of less than 10 women; Roosevelt County, less than eight,
according to jail officials. Now, women in bright, orange
jail uniforms are common jail residents, accounting
for about 10 percent of the population in Roosevelt
and Curry County jails. (Read
more)
Curry County assistant administrator Larry Sanders
told Hartz, "It all boils down to drugs."
Sanders said nearly 80 percent of the women are in on
drug-related charges; about 60 percent are repeat offenders.
Federal grant to help rural
Alaska deal with high criminal case load
A $2 million federal grant over three years will give
rural Alaska two new prosecutors.
"The new prosecutors will operate out of Anchorage
and assist 84 prosecutors in the state's 13 rural offices,
handling everything from murder to minors consuming
alcohol, said Susan Parkes of the state Department of
Law's criminal division. "It is going to have a
significant impact just to have that release valve,"
she said. Alaska's district attorneys are struggling
with high case loads. In Kotzebue, one prosecutor handled
166 felony cases in 2003 and 212 last year, Parkes told
The Associated Press.
Prosecutors have to rank cases and they lack the hours
to prepare and go to trial on every case. "We try
not to let caseload be a consideration when we look
at high-priority cases - sexual assaults and violent
crimes - but certainly when you look at property crimes
or misdemeanors, it is really the only control you have
as a prosecutor over your caseload," Parkes told
AP. "Sometimes caseloads influence dealing a case."
(Read
more)
Copies of high school newspaper
seized in Tennessee over birth-control story
"Administrators at Oak Ridge High School went
into teachers' classrooms, desks and mailboxes to retrieve
all 1,800 copies of the newspaper Tuesday, said teacher
Wanda Grooms, who advises the staff, and Brittany Thomas,
the student editor," reports The Associated
Press.
The Oak Leaf's birth-control article listed success
rates for different methods and said contraceptives
were available from doctors and the local health department.
Superintendent Tom Bailey said the article needed to
be edited so it would be acceptable for the entire school.
The edition also contained a photo of an
unidentified student's tattoo, and the student had not
told her parents about the tattoo. Bailey told reporters,
"I have a problem with the idea of putting something
in the paper that makes us a part of hiding something
from the parents."
Bailey said the paper can be reprinted if changes are
made. Thomas wasn't sure about making changes. "I'm
not completely OK with reprinting the paper," she
said. (Read
more)
Monday, Nov.
28, 2005
Rural youth still
flock to the military; database available for local
stories
The Detroit News is the
latest metropolitan newspaper to localize a continuing
national story, about disproportionate numbers of rural
Americans joining the military, often as a path out
of poverty. Now reporters anywhere can get access to
a database to do their own, localized stories.
"Military records show that Michigan's
military recruits come disproportionately from the state's
most rural areas, where young people enlist at a rate
double that in the most populous parts of the state.
Last year, the slab of land around North Branch sent
30 people into the U.S. Air Force, Army and Navy,"
write the newspaper's Brad Heath and Norman Sinclair.
In Michigan's 45 most rural counties about seven of
every 1,000 young people ages 18-24 enlisted last year,
compared to about four of every 1,000 young adults in
the state's most populous counties.
Anita Bancs, research director for the National
Priorities Project, told Heath and Sinclair,
"I think it tells us that young people with limited
opportunities are more likely to join the armed forces.
If we're going to engage in war, we ought to know who
the people are who volunteer, who are serving in the
armed forces and who put themselves at risk."
Heath and Sinclair profile 18-year-old Eagle Scout
Steven Letts who wants to join the Marines when he finishes
high school. He will take his first entrance test today.
Letts said his parents "are supportive, but they
don't like the thought of me going to war." School
counselor Carolyn Medford told Health and Sinclair,
"There aren't a lot of careers here. A lot of people
have relatives who've gone into the service already;
they see (the military) as a viable way to start a career."
(Read
more)
The American Friends Service Committee
sued the Department Of Defense to get
a listing of all recruits and their hometowns, a valuable
tool for newspapers to do sophisticated analysis for
their readers. Click
here for that resource. For a report on a Henryville,
Ind., Silver Star recipient, the nation's third highest
award for valor, by Larry Thomas of the CNHI
News Service, click
here.
Major discrepancies
reported between state, U.S. student-achievement tests
The New York Times has disclosed apparent
major discrepancies between the results of national
achievement tests and what many states are reporting
from their standardized tests, raising questions and
accusations about alleged attempts to skirt the No Child
Left Behind law.
"After Tennessee tested its eighth-grade students
in math this year, state officials at a jubilant news
conference called the results a 'cause for celebration.'
Eighty-seven percent of students performed at or above
the proficiency level. But when the federal government
made public the findings of its own tests last month,
the results were startlingly different: only 21 percent
of Tennessee's eighth graders were considered proficient
in math," writes the Times' Sam Dillon.
The national debate over testing and accountability
has been intensified by the apparent discrepancies,
notes Dillon. Some educators are charging states have
created easy exams to avoid sanctions imposed on consistently
low-scoring schools by No Child Left Behind.
In Mississippi, 89 percent of fourth graders performed
at or above proficiency on state reading tests, while
only 18 percent of fourth graders demonstrated proficiency
on the federal test. Oklahoma, North Carolina, Alabama,
Georgia, Alaska, Texas and more than a dozen other states
all showed students doing far better on their own reading
and math tests than on the National Assessment of Education
Progress test.
Michael J. Petrilli, a vice president of the Thomas
B. Fordham Foundation, which generally supports
the federal law, told Dillon, "Under No Child Left
Behind, the states get to set the proficiency bar wherever
they like, and unfortunately most are setting it quite
low. They're telling the public in their states that
huge numbers of students are proficient, but the NAEP
results show that's not the case." (Read
more)
Stories on oil-and-gas boom
offer lots of opportunities for local follow-ups
With oil prices high, the Kentucky
Division of Oil and Gas expects to issue as
many as 1,700 drilling permits this year, up almost
30 percent from last year. "It's the most activity
in Kentucky in 20 years — and while it's profitable
for the state, critics complain there's not enough oversight
to ensure that the land is protected or people kept
safe," The Courier-Journal reported
yesterday.
The three-story package by Jim Bruggers, the Louisville
paper's environmental writer, reported that state and
federal regulations may be "too lax . . . to adequately
address the environmental destruction caused by well
drilling and construction of roads to the wells, including
the pollution of waterways from erosion and contamination
of water wells." For the main story, click
here.
Well contamination is often caused by abandonment of
wells that are no longer commercial producers but continue
to leak oil, salt water and other contaminants into
water-bearing strata. The series included a map showing
the number of abandoned wells in each county with more
than 100 such wells, providing a good story idea for
local media in such counties. For that story, click
here. For the map, click
here.
For county information, go to www.dmm.ky.gov/oandg/Oil+and+Gas+Maps+and+Manuals.htm
and click on the link to "view
a list of Abandoned Wells as of October 2005"
in an Excel spreadhseet. The Kentucky Geological
Survey has much oil and gas data on its Web
site, including interactive maps of wells in specific
areas, which can be accessed at http://kgsmap.uky.edu/website/kgsog/viewer.htm.
Anti-depressant reduces meth
cravings, may provide first drug treatment
A common antidepressant, bupropion, can cut methamphetamine
cravings, which could mean there is finally a drug treatment
for the addiction spreading across America, according
to a new study.
"Dr. Thomas F. Newton, a psychiatrist at the University
of California-Los Angeles, who led the study,
found that subjects who were given bupropion reported
a lesser high after treatment, as well as a less-intense
craving after watching a video of actors favorably portraying
meth use," writes Alex Raksin of the Los
Angeles Times.
The four-week study involved only 20 patients, but
it could provide the first known drug treatment for
meth addiction. Bupropion, sold under the trade name
Wellbutrin, is used to help people stop smoking, notes
Raksin. (Read
more)
Farming's future: Tapping into
bio-diesel, hog production might spur success
"Drive less than 20 minutes from almost any crossroads
in Indiana and you'll come across a feature of the Midwest
landscape that we take for granted: namely, farm land.
The vast open space that still exists in abundance between
our state's urban areas remains dominated by the industry
that once employed more people than any other -- agriculture.
And while the sights of barns, crop land and animals
grazing in pastures are familiar to us all, we should
remember that looks can be deceiving," opines Pat
Barkey, director of economic and policy studies at Ball
State University, for the Marion Chronicle
Times.
"Many of us who are waking up to the realization
that durable goods manufacturing can't be depended on
to propel future growth in the state think that the
heyday of farming as an economic driver is long past.
In a narrow sense, that's right -- we're not an agriculture
based economy today, and we probably never will be again.
But there's a lot more to food production than farming.
And, besides, there's more uses for crops nowadays that
just food. With so much healthy and productive farm
land all around us, shouldn't we be thinking about ways
that we capitalize on that proximity and take a bigger
role in exploiting those opportunities?" asks Barkey.
"It's a question more Indiana communities are
beginning to ask. The potential for higher value-added
ag-related production processes - ranging from bio-diesel
plants to hog production facilities - adding to the
local economic base are nothing to sneeze at for the
smaller towns and rural regions who have been standing
on the sidelines watching larger cities grow,"
concludes Barkey. (Read
more)
Florida farmworkers still awaiting
aid more than a month after hurricane
"They are among thousands of Florida's uninsured
farmworkers still awaiting help since Wilma thrashed
South Florida on Oct. 24, in the nation's worst hurricane
season on record. Wilma killed 35 people in the state,
destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of homes, and
caused widespread power outages across South Florida,"
reports Laura Wides-Munoz of The Associated
Press.
Farmworker advocates say Wilma has underscored a larger
problem: the state's failure to respond to the needs
of the mostly Mexican and Central American workers who
have reshaped Florida's agricultural communities, replacing
many of the native black and Jamaican workers who once
dominated the sector. Communication is a key factor,
because in many parts of central and northern Florida,
few public officials or staff speak Spanish, reports
AP.
Palm Beach County has an estimated 190,000 Hispanics,
15 percent of the total county, up from about 140,000
in 2000, according to the U.S. Census
Bureau. "The language can cause
big problems for those most in need even if they are
here legally," said Francisco Garza, an organizer
with the Farmworker Association of Florida,
an advocacy group with 6,000-plus members, notes AP.
(Read
more)
Energy mogul claims stake in
West Virginia's future from a Kentucky office
Massey Energy Co. head Don Blankenship
says he possesses a perspective of "living in the
middle" of the Central Appalachian coalfields,
mining mainly in West Virginia for a Virginia-based
company, all while working from an office in Belfry,
Ky., near the state's eastern tip.
Blankenship is active in West Virginia's political
races, having spent $3.5 million to unseat a Democrat
on the state's Supreme Court and already targeting another
for ouster in 2008. Blankenship told reporter Erik Schelzig
of The Associated Press he just wants
to improve West Virginia, his home state:"I just
have my view of what it would take to make the economy
better and have more jobs and have a more normal place
to live. Whoever supports that view, I'm in favor of.
Anybody who doesn't have that view, I'm against."
His company is the nation's fourth-largest coal producer
and owns one-third of all coal reserves in Central Appalachia.
Massey expects to get half its production from surface
mining next year, much of it from removing mountaintops,
notes AP.
Blankenship's friends cite his often-quiet donations
to charity, but a longtime foe, United Mine
Workers of America President Cecil Roberts,
told Schelzig, "Don has decided that he needs to
be able to run the state like he runs his coal company
and have control over everybody. He's trying to become
the king of West Virginia." (Read
more)
Work on mountain-protection
rules continues in Georgia, creates controversy
White County soon may become the first in Georgia to
pass a mountain-protection ordinance, which bothers
some builders, real estate agents and landowners, who
say restrictions are too stiff.
"We want mountain protection. The problem is the
way the document is written up. It's going to kill construction
in this county," Sandy Hanes, a realtor with ReMax,
told Debbie Gilbert of The Gainesville Times.
The White County Commission is slated to meet Tuesday
night for a second reading of the ordinance.
Commissioners started work on the ordinance about two
years ago in order to comply with the 1989 Georgia Planning
Act's rules for environmental protection. Counties in
the Appalachian foothills are supposed to have a mountain
ordinance, but many counties have delayed adoption of
any such measure, reports Gilbert. (Read
more)
Ohioans in Appalachia struggle
with poverty, few dental-care options
"Few dentists in the impoverished southeastern
region of Ohio will accept new Medicaid patients. If
they do, they often have months-long waiting lists,"
reports The Associated Press.
There is a statewide Safety Nets network for low income
patients. The state budgeted $1.5 million this year
for the state and federally funded network of free clinics.
But the two-year budget reduced dental care funding
for adult Medicaid recipients. Such clinics are rare
in the state's Appalachian region, where medical care
is scarce and tobacco chewing occurs more often than
elsewhere in the state, according to the Ohio
Dental Association.
Three clinics serve 14 counties in the region. Such
clinics struggle with trying to balance care for new
patients and emergency walk-ins with education for children
and parents about dental hygiene, notes AP.
Also, dentists who treat Medicaid patients often take
a financial hit because the aid doesn't provide the
same payouts as regular insurance. Local health departments
and nonprofit groups that operate clinics kick in money.
"When Medicaid is your best payer, and a lot of
your other patients are on a sliding scale that is not
coming close to paying the bills, that's where we help,"
Dr. Mark Siegal, director of the state Health
Department's oral health services, told AP.
(Read
more)
Mountain mirror? One in four
children in British Columbia lives in poverty
An advocacy group reports that one in four British
Columbia children lives in poverty, the highest rate
in any Canadaian province.
"The report, by anti-poverty group Campaign 2000,
paints B.C. as the worst offender in a country where
the gap between rich and poor families is growing and
where children of aboriginals and recent immigrants
are hardest hit," writes Jonathan Woodward of the
Globe and Mail . Campaign 2000 coordinator
Laurel Rothman said the report was timed for the anniversary
of a 1989 unanimous vote by the House of Commons to
eliminate child poverty by 2000.
Michael Goldberg, a B.C. advocate who worked on the
report, told Woodward the government has to increase
the minimum wage, eliminate the controversial $6-an-hour
training wage, and end restrictions on welfare rolls
that he said have pushed people to low-paying jobs.
British Columbia's child-poverty rate is more than
double that of Prince Edward Island, which had the lowest
poverty rate, at 11.3 percent. And, the British Columbia
rate jumped from 20 percent in 2001 to about 24 percent
in 2002 and 2003. Rothman told Woodward that nearly
half of the children of recent immigrants are poor,
while 40 percent of aboriginal children and 33 percent
of children in visible minorities live in poverty. (Read
more)
U.S. Senate bill aims to increase
ATV safety with mandatory standards
Major manufacturers of all-terrain vehicles are looking
at safety legislation proposed by Minnesota's senators
as a boon to the industry and consumers. Republican
Norm Coleman and Democrat Mark Dayton introduced the
proposal, which would for the first time regulate all
ATVs sold in the U.S. by establishing mandatory standards,
reports Aaron Blake of McClatchy News Service.
Dayton says the idea is a "trifecta" of safety,
fairness and benefits for Minnesota's economy. Critics
counter that the proposal would push an emerging import
industry out of the market, notes Blake.
"As ATV sales have taken off in recent years,
so have the numbers of injuries and deaths associated
with the vehicles. The Consumer Product Safety
Commission reports that an average of about
500 people died using ATVs each of the past five years,
more than a quarter of them 15 or younger. The number
of riders requiring emergency room care has climbed
to more than 100,000 per year, about a third of them
under 16," writes Blake. (Read
more)
Does an East Tennessee cabin
date to the 1760s? Answer may lie in artifact
A newfound page in the storied past of Blountville's
Appalachian Caverns is creating a stir
in the area, reports Rain Smith of the Kingsport
Times News.
While excavating a cabin last week, researcher William
Milhorn and site curator Roger Hartley may have found
evidence that will show a colonial presence on the land
as far back as the 1760s. "Everybody's been saying
(the cabin) dates to about 1830," Milhorn told
Smith. "Well, everybody's full of baloney. That
cabin is a lot older."
The key artifact is a small metal button shank engraved
with a crown and featuring the initials V and R. "If
it's Virginia Regiment then it's a very, very, very
important piece because there's not another one known
of in the world," Milhorn told Smith. "I'm
not saying that's what it is, but if it is, how did
it get here?"
Milhorn said, "This place is the most historic
caverns in East Tennessee, with more documented history
and a documented presence than any hole in the ground
between here and Memphis." (Read
more)
Rural Calendar
Museum of Appalachia, Norris,
Tenn., offers 'Christmas in Old Appalachia'
"Christmas in Old Appalachia" at the Museum
of Appalachia, just a mile off Interstate 75 at exit
122, near Norris, Tenn., opened Sunday.
"Seasonal decorations will brighten the old-time
cabins and other structures lovingly transplanted by
museum founder John Rice Irwin to a 65-acre Tennessee
hillside. Music will greet Old Appalachia visitors daily
throughout December, except on Christmas Day, the only
day of the year the museum is closed, " writes
Jane Durrell, a contributing writer for the Cincinnati
Enquirer.
Durrell notes that the museum's collections are Irwin's
life work. There are more than 35 structures -- cabins,
blacksmith shop, sawmill, schoolhouse, loom house, and
and other artifacts -- on view in the Display Barn.
Memorabilia of "notable, historic, famous, interesting,
colorful and unusual folk from the surrounding region"
are housed in the Appalachian Hall of Fame, writes Durrell.
(Read
more)
Nov. 30: Community Involved
in Sustaining Agriculture, Amherst, Mass.
Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture's (CISA)
12th Annual Meeting will be held from 6 to 9 p.m. Nov.
30 at The Red Barn at Hampshire College in Amherst,
Mass. There will be a potluck supper and a keynote address.
For more information visit www.buylocalfood.com/events.html.
Sunday special,
Nov. 27, 2005
Cash, son of rural
Arkansas, journeyed through the other side of virtue
Johnny Cash was a lot more
than the character in the new movie "Walk the Line,"
and Nicholas Kulish reminds us of that today in an op-ed
piece in The New York Times.
Cash wasn't all that handsome, sometimes
sang off-key and knew few chords, Kulish writes, but
"If performers could be weighed and measured like
prizefighters, Cash might have left the oddsmakers in
stitches. Yet there is a power and honesty to his music
that few recording artists can match. In his most affecting
songs, the gravelly, toxic rumble you hear is Johnny
Cash locking horns with his dark side. It's one man's
fight for his own soul, a timeless struggle to a rockabilly
beat."
Kulish adds later, "If all Johnny Cash brought
to the stage were his demons, we wouldn't need to remember
him. . . . It is the angel on Johnny Cash's other shoulder
that gives his music its depth and profundity. . . .
Johnny Cash merges our seemingly contradictory American
traditions of outlaws prone to wild gunplay and pious
Christians singing hymns, without stopping to explain
how you can be both at once.
" . . . In a world increasingly reduced to good
and evil, to us versus them, Johnny Cash was a man unafraid
to admit that he was both. We've somehow lost sight
of the truth that there can be no redemption without
sin. It's this kind of reductive thinking that makes
it easy to reduce swaths of the country to color codes
and political parties; to lock millions away in jails
and prisons, then toss the keys without guilt.
"Johnny Cash sang that he wore black "for
the poor and beaten down, livin' on the hopeless, hungry
side of town." With hundreds of thousands displaced
by Hurricane Katrina, layoff announcements dangling
over the heads of 98,000 American auto workers, and
2.1 million men and women in prisons and jails across
the country, we still need him.
"Cash's life was an American story that can never
be repeated, one that began in the Depression-era cotton
fields of Arkansas and continued through an auto assembly
line in Michigan to occupied Germany with the United
States Air Force. He then joined legends of rock 'n'
roll like Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis at Sun and
on the road. He stayed with us until the end, touring
as long as he could and recording almost until his death.
'The way we did it was honest,' he wrote. 'We played
it and sang it the way we felt it, and there's a whole
lot to be said for that.'" (Click
here to read more)
Friday, Nov.
25, 2005
Southern identity
strongest in rural areas, AP reports in start of an
opus
"Things are indeed changing in the
South. So is the notion of what it means to be Southern,"
writes Allen Breed, southeastern regional reporter for
The Associated Press, in a series on
the South and Southern identity, beginning today in
many newspapers and tomorrow or Sunday in others.
"We've had the Solid South, the Old South and
the New South. But are we heading toward a "No
South"? Breed asks. "In this most maligned
and mused-upon of American regions, the term conjures
a variety of images. Magnolias, front porch swings and
sweet tea for some; football, stock cars and fried chicken
for others; lynchings, burning crosses and civil rights
marches for still others."
Projected to comprise 40 percent of the nation's population
by 2030, the South has become more like the rest of
America, Breed notes: "The South is now the nation's
most industrialized region; though traditional textile
employment and the like has largely moved offshore,
the region has attracted high-profile employers such
as automakers. About three-quarters of Southerners now
live in metropolitan areas."
But that's still less than in the rest of the country,
and a poll conducted for the series "found that
people who live in rural areas are much more likely
than their urban and suburban counterparts to consider
themselves Southern," Breed reports.
Cassandra King, a novelist who grew up on a peanut
farm in southern Alabama, told Breed that the South
will always be "the agrarian South of the hardworking,
reddened-neck farm family. . . . Southern identity comes
from the red clay or white sand or black dirt which
produces our peanuts and corn and okra and field peas
and sweet potatoes."
Rural areas are more likely to be poor, and Breed points
out that the South "is still set apart by its poverty,
and some old stereotypes hold water. Eight of the top
10 states with the highest percentages of mobile homes
are in the South, as are nine of the states with the
highest rates of adult toothlessness."
In urban areas, Southern identity is less, and the
poll founnd that in the region as a whole, "the
percentage of people in the region identifying themselves
as Southerners is shrinking." Conducted in October
by Ipsos-Reid Public Affairs, the poll
"found 63 percent of people living in the region
identified themselves as Southerners," Breed reports.
"That mirrors a trend from a University
of North Carolina analysis of polling data
that found a decline of 7 percentage points on the same
Southern identity question between 1991 to 2001, to
70 percent."
The South has become "sort of like a lifestyle,
rather than an identity anymore," James Cobb, author
of the newly published Away Down South: A History
of Southern Identity, told Breed. "The things
now we would base Southern distinctiveness on are so
ethereal." (Read
more)
Mississippi victims
see displacement and redevelopment, not recovery
In a long, sad story in today's Washington
Post, Michael Powell reports that recovery
is a distant dream for many victims of Hurricane Katrina
-- many of whom may be permanently displaced, or worse.
"The personal shock of it all hasn't subsided,"
Powell writes. "Locals say it's not uncommon to
hear perfectly rational people talk of suicide."
This is an important story, worth more space here than
usual.
Powell's story deals mainly with the Mississippi
coast, but he also reports from the rural, inland town
of Pearlington: "There are twin devastations in
Mississippi, and it would take Solomon to pick the worse
of the two. There are the coastal cities and there are
such places as tiny Pearlington, deep in the woods and
marshlands along the Louisiana border. Here a 35-foot-high
storm surge roared up the Pearl River."
"The local school remains shredded,
its roof a spaghetti of metal beams. Everyone lost cars
and trucks, and there's no money for replacements. Many
people sleep in tents or shacks that have been roughly
thrown together. The county's only supermarket is gone.
Six shrimp boats still sit on the river bottom. There's
a good bit of drug smuggling, but that isn't really
a sustaining industry."
Powell's Pearlington narrative focuses
on the Rev. James O'Bryan, a Catholic priest whose church
the Diocese of Biloxi will
not rebuild. He told Powell, ""The bishop
tells me we were insured for [Hurricane] Camille but
not for Katrina. I remember going for a walk just before
the storm and saying to myself, 'Lord, you aren't going
to take my little kingdom from me, are you?' I realized
now that he was."
"Many people here harbor anger that
the federal government has fallen short and that the
nation's attention has turned away. At least 200,000
Mississippians remain displaced, and the Federal
Emergency Management Agency is short at least
13,000 trailers to house them. 50,000 homeowners lack
federal flood insurance and cannot rebuild," Powell
writes. "Some officials are talking about surrendering
[town] charters and becoming wards of the state."
"The response of the federal government is bewildering
and deplorable," Bruce Katz, director of metropolitan
policy at the Brookings Institution
and author of two studies of the Katrina response, told
Powell. Roy Necaise, a regional housing official, told
the reporter, "Washington has totally let us down,
and it's a disgrace." The story includes no comment
from FEMA.
"The hurricane pushed tens of thousands
of coastal residents north and west, spreading over
four states. The longer it takes to rebuild houses and
businesses, the more officials worry that the dispossessed,
particularly the working class, may never return,"
Powell reports, and notes they they sometimes are chased
away by local officials.
"This politically conservative state
has a threadbare safety net," Powell writes. "Two
weeks ago, county officials lifted an informal moratorium
on evictions. Tenants cannot claim rent breaks for water-damaged
apartments. One can sit now in housing courts in Gulfport
and Biloxi and watch judges order the evictions of hundreds
of tenants, often with a speed that startles the tenants."
(Read
more)
At the same time, developers are offering
big money for devasated property and forecasting a boom
in upscale development. "If that kind of rebirth
happens, it will be on the backs of the lives of a lot
of Biloxians. It's like talking bad about somebody at
their funeral," Keith Burton, editor of the online
Gulf
Coast News, told Powell. This morning,
Gulf Coast News sums it up: "The Coast is still
in relief mode, not recovery, nearly three months after
Hurricane Katrina."
Kentucky high court
says rural electric cooperatives are limited to electricity
The Kentucky Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that rural
electric cooperatives, "which were created to bring
power to secluded areas during the Depression, are still
restricted to generating, distributing and selling that
electricity," reports The Associated Press.
"The divided court ruling overturns an earlier
victory for the Jackson Energy Cooperative Corp."
of McKee, formerly the Jackson County Rural Electric
Cooperative Corp., "which wanted to sell propane
gas and offer an array of other services, including
such things as tree-trimming," AP reports, noting
that the years-old case "has been closely watched
in the utility industry."
"The statute authorizes only activities that are
consistent with the operation of an electric cooperative,"
Justice Donald Wintersheimer of Covington wrote for
the 4-2 majority. "The language which describes
the purpose of the cooperative is abundantly clear,
there is no ambiguity."
The court's newest justices dissented. Justice John
Roach of Lexington (who is running to keep his seat
and attended the recent annual banquet of the Kentucky
Association of Electric Cooperatives) said
a 1974 change in co-op laws "opened the door for
other services that could include the sale of propane,"
AP wrote. Justice Will T. Scott of Pikeville said the
majority ignored the wishes of the utility's 46,000
customers, as determined by a 1998 survey and limited
competition with "a cold winter comin'."
In state where tobacco industry
began, tobacco is no longer the No. 1 crop
Soybeans generated $124.3 million in cash receipts
for Virgina farmers in 2004, ranking the crop first
in the state. "The Virginia Agricultural
Statistics Service says tobacco dropped to
No. 2, with $112.9 million," The Associated
Press reports.
"The toppling of tobacco," which was planted
by settlers as early as 1619, was not a surprise,"
because Virginia acreage used for tobacco acreage has
declined for decades, AP writes. "Production has
spiraled downward in recent years for several reasons,
including lower U.S. smoking rates, the federal tobacco-quota
buyout and cheaper leaf from countries like Brazil and
Africa." Note to AP: Africa's a continent,
not a country.
Wednesday, Nov.
23, 2005
Texas town that
took a promotional name dishes out news; others do too
"A small-town effort to avoid annexation
by a voracious neighbor exploded into a row over dumpsters,
a water hose and vote rigging. When the dust cleared,
the mayor was bounced, the town changed its name, and
media from around the world were calling to ask about
a satellite-TV company that had agreed to provide the
whole city with free service." That's the lede
of Steve LeVine's story in today's Wall Street
Journal about Dish, Tex.
The Denton County municipality -- "town"
doesn't fit a place with no gas station or convenience
store -- was created to block annexation by Fort Worth
and was originally named Clark, after its main founder
and first mayor. When Clark made Mitch Merritt, owner
of a trailer park with most of Clark's population, "shut
down an unsightly dumpster site [and] bury a water line,"
Levine writes, Merritt got citizens to call a referendum
to take his property out of Clark, and his proposal
passed. Then his son ran a write-in campaign for mayor
and beat Clark, 40-39. Clark alleged vote fraud in both
elections.
New Mayor Bill Merritt heard that Echostar
Communications Corp., of Denver "was running
a contest in which the winning city would receive free
satellite-TV service for a decade for changing its name
to Dish, the company's brand," Levine writes. "Mr.
Merritt entered the contest, seeing it as a creative
way to realize his immediate goal of discarding the
detested Mr. Clark's name. Earlier this month, Echostar
announced that Clark was the winner, and the switch
was made last week. Mr. Merritt decided to make it all
capitals to differentiate the town a bit."
The Journal followed the all-caps style
for the town's name, but The Associated Press
did not, and The Rural Blog abhors such typographical
tyaranny. We also note -- or should we say "we
also dish"? -- that there was already a Clark,
Tex., a wide place in TX 146 in Liberty County, between
Houston and Lufkin.
AP's Matt Slagle notes other name promotions:
"Back in the 1950s, Hot Springs, N.M., was renamed
Truth or Consequences, N.M., after a popular quiz show.
During the dot-com boom of 2000, Halfway, Ore., agreed
to become Half.com for a year. In September,
the tiny [Western Kentucky] town of Sharer ... was offered
$100,000 to change its name to PokerShare.com.
. . . And in 2003, residents of Biggs, Calif.,
overwhelmingly rejected a California Milk Processor
Board proposal to rename the city of 1,800
Got Milk? in exchange for a milk museum
and money for the school." (Read
more)
AP also reports that the water commisisoners
of Santa, Idaho, "have voted to change the town's
name for a year to SecretSanta.com at the request of
a Philadelphia marketer. In return, the cash-starved
water and sewer district — Santa's only official
entity — will get at least $20,000 between now
and next December. The town has to erect two signs,
one at each end of town, bearing its new name. . . .
The change is mostly symbolic; the post office will
keep the name Santa." The town has about 100 people.
(Read
more)
Federal policies
deplete the wealth of rural America, says scholar
"The phrase 'rural wealth' sounds like an oxymoron.
Rural incomes are lower than urban. Rural poverty rates
are higher — by 25 percent. And 450 of the nation’s
500 poorest counties are rural. Adding insult to injury,
federal policies make things worse. According to the
2001 Consolidated Federal Funds Report (the latest available),
$6,131 in per capita federal spending goes to urban
areas; $6,020 goes to rural. That totals nearly $6 billion
a year of rural disadvantage," opines Thomas D.
Rowley of the Rural Research Policy Institute.
Of federal funds going to rural areas, 71 percent are
transfer payments, such as Medicare, Social Security
and farm subsidies, "rather than money that builds
infrastructure, improves capacity and helps communities
grow stronger. By contrast, only 48 percent of funds
to urban areas are transfer payments," Rowley writes.
The federal government spent two to five times more
per capita on community development in urban areas than
in rural from 1994 to 2001. Rowley also points an accusatory
finger at philanthropists. A May 2004 report by the
National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy
reports U.S. foundations gave out some $30 billion a
year, with $100.5 million of that committed to rural
development.
Rowley notes that 184 out of 65,000 active grant-making
foundations in the U.S. gave to rural development. Two
of those from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation
and the Ford Foundation were responsible
for 42 percent of the money to rural. (Read
more)
Ky. extension offices
helping seniors through Medicare Part D confusion
The University of Kentucky Cooperative
Extension Service is coordinating a statewide effort
to help
senior citizens clear up confusion about Medicare's
new prescription drug coverage plan.
"The effort ... centers on helping county extension
agents answer questions about the plan, known as Part
D, and to help eligible Medicare participants locate
local resources, including offices of the Kentucky
State Health Insurance Assistance Program, which
provides information, counseling and assistance to seniors
and other Medicare participants," writes Terri
McLean of the UK College of Agriculture communications
office.
Deborah Murray, associate director of the Health
Education through Extension Leadership extension
program, told McLean that a look at the number of eligible
Kentuckians and the size of the task at hand made extension
leaders conclude that the service, with its offices
in every county, "had a responsibility to help
get the information out there." (Read
more)
Enrollment in the new plan opened Nov. 15, coverage
begins Jan. 1 and enrollment ends May 15, 2006.
Our daily bread: NPR takes a
Thanksgiving look at hunger in America
As thousands of Americans rush to celebrate
with family and feast in commemoration of this nation's
founding, millions of others will have little or nothing
to eat.
National Public Radio,
in a special multi-part program, reports that 38 million
Americans are "food insecure" -- they have
trouble finding the money to keep food on the table.
(Stories
page) NPR profiles families who have faced hunger
in three different settings: rural, suburban and urban
America.
Yesterday, The Rural Blog reported on
the first part, Rural Struggle to Keep the Family
Fed, by Howard Berkes. (Click
here to listen) The next part, The Causes Behind
Hunger in America, is by economic geographer Amy
Glasmeier of Penn State. (Click
to listen) Rachel Jones reports on Hunger Hidden
but Real in America's Suburbs. (Click
to listen) Elaine Korry reports on Housing Costs
Play Role in Urban Hunger. (Click
to listen)
Midsize farms can
survive with whole foods, seed money, opines writer
A column in The New York Times by
Dan Barber, creative director of the Stone Barns
Center for Food and Agriculture in Westchester
County, N.Y., explores the idea that shopping at farmers'
markets can preserve farmland. Are people who buy into
that idea truly out of touch with agriculture today?
"These people are right. And they're also wrong.
The bitter truth is that American agriculture -- its
land and its immensely complex distribution system --
is no longer in the hands of the small farmer. Small
farmers and farmers' markets, as much as we want them
to, are simply not in the position right now to save
American agriculture. Giant farms won't either, of course.
For the most part, these are the farms that grow a single
crop or raise large numbers of animals in close confinement.
To sustain their unnatural existence, these megafarms,
whether they're raising crops or animals, require enormous
quantities of pesticides, fertilizers and antibiotics
simply to survive," opines Barber, who is also
a chef.
Barber considers the idea that a farm needs to get
ever larger and more specialized to survive. The number
of farms with annual sales of $500,000-plus has increased
23 percent from 1997 to 2002. Midsize farms, with sales
of $50,000 to $500,000, have declined in number by 14
percent from 1997 to 2002, or about 65,000 farms. Now,
the country's 350,000 midsize farmers, who are too big
to sell greenmarkets but too small to compete with the
giants, comprise two-fifths of our farmland, notes Barber.
Thomas Dorr, an Iowan who is undersecretary of agriculture
for rural affairs, predicts 250,000-acre giants will
rule the future, but Barber says midsize farms can thrive
too. "After all, there's a large, existing market
-- school systems, hospitals, local grocery chains,
food service distributors -- for varied, healthier foods.
These institutions, because of their size, cannot shop
at the farmers' market. Even if they could, there would
never be enough volume or consistency to meet their
needs. Midsize farms can meet those needs."
"How do we do this?" Barber asks. "By
shifting the money. Our government now subsidizes the
commodity production of grain - mostly corn and soybeans.
We need to pull farmers out of the commodity trap and
help them make the transition to growing the kinds of
whole foods - fruits and vegetables - that would benefit
us all. This is not another subsidy, and it's not welfare.
It's seed money for a new frontier (actually, an old
frontier) in agriculture." (Read
more)
California says
no to 'traditional' coal power from Wyoming, wants it
cleaner
Energy officials eager to connect California consumers
with cheap coal power from Wyoming may need to rethink
their approach, reports Dustin Bleizeffer of the Jackson
Hole Star-Tribune.
"The California Energy Commission
[has] unanimously approved [a report] which includes
... new greenhouse gas performance standards beyond
the reach of traditional coal-fired power plants. Top
energy officials in Wyoming regard it as a major setback
to an effort to add several thousand traditional coal-fired
megawatts here and a major new transmission line to
power California," writes Bleizeffer.
Steve Waddington, executive director of the Wyoming
Infrastructure Authority, told Bleizeffer,
"The policy could preclude coal-fired generation
from Wyoming, in a timely way, to meet the power supply
needs of California." The authority told the California
commission it may consider a legal challenge.
The Wyoming Conservation Voters Education
Fund said investors may be compelled to finance zero-emission
coal technologies, which could catapult Wyoming into
a "next generation" coal economy with a longer
and perhaps more profitable future, writes Bleizeffer.
Jason Marsden, executive director of Wyoming Conservation
Voters, said "Investors should think twice before
risking their money on new coal-combustion power plants
that can't capture global warming pollutants, since
California, the biggest potential electricity customer,
is no longer interested in buying dirty, coal-fired
power."
California's new policy restricts purchases of out-of-state
coal-based power to facilities working to reduce global
warming pollution. "Any new coal plant that wishes
to sell electricity to California must be as clean as
the most efficient natural-gas fired power plant,"
Bleizeffer writes. (Read
more)
Tomato fight: Florida
farm workers pitching for more from McDonald's
"The Coalition of Immokalee Workers
[has] urged consumers to pressure McDonald's Corp. to
support a campaign to boost wages for more than 3,000
Florida pickers, who growers say provide about 90 percent
of the nation's domestic fresh winter tomatoes,"
writes Laura Wides-Munoz of The Associated Press.
The campaign comes less than a year after the workers
reached an agreement with Taco Bell's parent company,
Louisville-based Yum Brands Inc., which
said it would pay a penny more per pound of tomatoes.
(Read
more)
Gerardo Reyes, an Immokalee farm worker, told Wides-Munoz,
"We are hoping McDonald's takes responsibility,
the same way Taco Bell and Yum Brands did, and that
it uses its power to demand a just treatment and decent
pay for farm workers." Coalition organizer Julia
Perkins said most tomato pickers receive roughly the
same wage they did in 1978 -- 40 to 45 cents for every
32-pound bucket of tomatoes.
British man diagnosed with mad-cow
disease marks second case in U.S.
The federal Centers for Disease Control has
announced a British man has been diagnosed with the
human form of mad-cow disease -- the second such case
documented in the U.S.
"Health officials say the man most likely contracted
variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the United Kingdom.
However, he began to show symptoms while living in Houston,
so he will be listed as a U.S. case," writes Yvonne
Lee of All Headline News based on a
report from The Associated Press.
CDC medical epidemiologist Lawrence B. Schonberger
told reporters, "This case represents a continuation
of the outbreak that is going on in the United Kingdom."
After living in Houston for four years, the man returned
to the UK earlier this year, and is receiving medical
treatment there, notes Lee.
The disease is contracted by eating the brain or other
nervous system tissue of an infected animal. The first
documented U.S. case was a British woman living in Florida
who was also believed to have contracted the disease
in Britain. She died last year, writes Lee. (Read
more)
County ministers
association takes devil by the horns in anti-drug rally
Ministers in Powell County, Ky., are campaigning against
drugs with revival-style fervor. "The crowd of
about 700 passed up a University of Kentucky
basketball game to pack [a] middle school's gymnasium.
They were joined by U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler, dozens of
other elected officials and law officers, and Powell's
district and circuit judges," writes Peter Matthews
of the Lexington Herald-Leader.
Rev. Bill Boldt of Stanton Baptist Church,
backed by 30 other ministers, outlined a plan to create
five 12-person task forces to deal with drugs in the
hilly county, which is flanked by the Bluegrass Region
and the Cumberland Plateau.
The ministers want to bring the federally funded anti-drug
law enforcement organization, Operation UNITE,
or something similar to Powell County. Two of the organization's
leaders told the crowd how it had helped turn around
the drug problem in Manchester, notes Matthews. UNITE
operates only in the 5th Congressional District, which
includes most of the Kentucky section of the plateau
but not Powell County.
Joe Farmer of UNITE told Matthews, "We need some
people with some backbone" to tell drug dealers
"it is no longer acceptable to sell drugs to our
children." Local law enforcement officials say
nearly every c |