Small-town foundation chief says we need a real rural policy, and offers some ideas for it

As America becomes less rural, it needs a real, effective rural policy, for the good of the nation, not just for rural people, Karl Stauber writes in a two-part series concluding today in the Daily Yonder. (Yonder photo from Howard, S.D., pop. 1,156)

Stauber, president of the Danville Regional Foundation in southern Virginia, says rural America has three basic challenges besides population loss: "It is highly diverse, so 'big, top-down' solutions rarely work. ... Much of Rural America is defined by what it used to be, rather than what it hopes to be," and "Rural areas often see themselves as separate from each other and urban centers rather than being parts of regional economic and ecological systems."

He lays out some core principles for a rural policy: equal access to government services, universal high-speed Internet accessm and the ability to create competitive advantage as sitiutations change, which often requires the help of universities. (Read more)

In the first part of his series, Stauber asks a question that will need good answers if we are to have good rural policy: "Why should urban people should want rural people and areas to succeed?" He answers:
• "Almost all of America’s water and much of its food and fiber come from rural regions of the U.S. For rural regions to produce what America needs, America must support rural opportunities. But in the future, those opportunities must be different, focused on constantly creating competitive advantage, rather than simply protecting old advantages. [See below.]
• "America’s exceptionalism is based, in part, on the concept of equal access to opportunity.
• "There is an old rural saying, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”
• "Do we wish to curse rural people with poverty and poor education? That is starting to happen in some rural (and urban) parts of America.
• "Do you want to live with the population concentration or sprawl" suggested by experts who love megacities and say that's where public investment should go?
 
Regarding the first bullet, Stauber calls for investment in "New Ag" as opposed to "Old Ag," which he says "is largely about protecting the status quo supported by many of the major farm groups and commodity organizations.  New Ag is a combination of grassroots farmer and food organizations and environmental groups that challenge the status quo with a vision of agriculture as producing positive environmental benefits and healthier diets."
 
And Stauber reminds us that farming provides only about 5 percent of the jobs in rural America, and that 82 percent of farm-family farm income comes from off the farm. "There are parts of the U.S. where agriculture is dominant, but much less than 50 years ago.  Focusing on agriculture, especially Old Ag, ignores the vast majority of rural people and communities."
 
Given that, Stauber says, we should realize the differences in "Old Rural and "New Rural," as he calls them: "Old Rural is largely about protecting regionally dominant enterprises that produce single commodities, often with federal and state government support and protection (coal, timber, commodity crops, low-skill, low-wage manufacturing, etc.), while increasing the amount, but often not the distribution of wealth. . . . New Rural is about helping regional efforts to build diverse, evolving competitive advantage that grows the amount and distribution of wealth. ... Recruit entrepreneurs and immigrants, not low-wage manufacturing. Quality of life is critical. Environmental quality an asset to be protected, not expended." (Read more)

Park Service may survive cuts, thanks to GOP

"Budget-strapped state parks" are charging fees and relying more on volunteers, The New York Times reports, but the National Park Service may be positioned to avoid large budget cuts, with support from several Republicans. "Some fiscal conservatives" such as Rep. Cynthia Lummins of Wyoming, "are even making the agency a top funding priority," Phil Taylor of Environment & Energy News reports.

As a member of the House Interior, Forest Service and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, Lummis "said her first concern for fiscal 2012 is maintaining level funding for the agency's operations budget, which ensures adequate staffing, visitors services and routine maintenance across nearly 400 unites," Taylor reports.

Another Republican, Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho, has concerns about the proposed drop in park construction funding, since President Obama's "Great Outdoors" initiative requires significant increases in land acquisitions, Taylor reports. (Read more, subscription required)

Voluntary ban on stream disposal of drilling wastewater in Pennsylvania seems to be working

Last Thursday, Pennsylvania Environmental Protection Secretary Michael Krancer announced to officials in Washington D.C., "that drilling wastewater is no longer being discharged to rivers or streams in Pennsylvania without full treatment," Donald Gilliland of The Patriot-News in Harrisburg reports. The announcement came after Krancer asked drillers to voluntarily stop the practice.

"We've gone from millions and millions of gallons being discharged to virtually none," DEP spokeswoman Katy Gresh told Gilliland, but said the agency could not confirm complete compliance with the request. "The agency has reports of a few trucks delivering what may or may not be drilling waste," she said. "We're tracking down those leads to ensure we have complete compliance all of the time."

Can the DEP enforce compliance of a voluntary ban? Gresh said the DEP will "take whatever next step is necessary" when violators are discovered. Four environmental groups on the governor's Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission suggest making the voluntary ban "a legally enforceable requirement," Gilliland reports.

Coal strippers' compliance down in Ky., up in W.Va.

The U.S. Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement reported a drop in coal strip miners' compliance with federal laws and regulations in Kentucky in the last three years. The compliance rate in the state "dropped from 87 percent of surveyed mining sites in 2007 and 2008 to 65 percent in 2010," James Bruggers of The Courier-Journal writes.

The report identified water quality, permit administration, and backfilling and grading as the most common violations at 325 randomly selected sites, including former mines being reclaimed. "These are not minor violations," Joseph Blackburn, the top OSM official in Kentucky, told Bruggers. "I think there is a degree of seriousness we cannot ignore, and we aren't."

Bill Bissett, president of the Kentucky Coal Association, defended the industry's record: "We need to continue to work toward a goal of 100 percent compliance, but this information released by OSM needs to be reviewed in the context of a changing regulatory climate." Bissett did not specify which rules he believed were responsible, but said there had been "change in the way the rules have been interpreted."

State officials suggested that their inspections have been more rigorous than they were under Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher, who left office in December 2007. “We are seeing a compliance issue because we are doing a much more rigorous job of enforcement,” Jim Dickinson, director of the Division of Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, told Bruggers. He said all inspectors have been told: “If you see a violation, you write it.”

"At the same time the state has stepped up its enforcement, state officials see mines doing less," Bruggers writes, citing Department for Natural Resources Commissioner Carl Campbell, a former head of the strip-mine agency he now oversees. (Read more) Appendix E of the OSM report includes a list of all companies cited, by number of violations.

Kentucky lies in two coalfields, the Central Appalachian and the Illinois Basin, In the other big Eastern strip-mine state, West Virgina's OSM field office reports "that violations of the state program were observed on 24 percent of the inspections" by federal inspectors, compared to 31 percent last year. Thus, the West Virginia compliance rates rose from 69 percent to 75 percent.

Solar projects divide environmentalists

Proposed solar-energy projects on undeveloped public land in the southwestern deserts have environmentalists at odds, Keith Matheny of USA Today reports.

"The projects are supposed to generate about 4,200 megawatts of power, enough electricity to power nearly 2.8 million homes, and nearly 7,000 jobs, according to federal estimates. Does that outweight the impact on rare animals and plants on public lands?

No, says Janine Blaeloch, supporter of renewable resources and executive director of Western Lands, a non-profit group that examines the impacts of government-land privatization. "These plants will introduce a huge amount of damage to our public land and habitat," she told Matheny.

Other environmentalists like Johanna Wald, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, support the solar projects and their potential to slow or halt climate change. "There's no free lunch when it comes to meeting our energy needs," she told Matheny. "To get energy, we need to do things that will have impacts."

With 11 major solar projects approved in California and Nevada last year and a dozen utility-scale solar projects already in the permitting pipeline in California, Nevada and Arizona, federal agencies could "open up 21.5 million more public acres to solar development in six Western states," Matheny reports, threatening wildlife, like the endangered desert tortoise, in the open deserts. The solution, some critics say, is to use "already-disturbed lands such as brownfield sites or former agricultural fields or even residential and commercial rooftops. (Read more)

GOP hopefuls 'all over the map' on ethanol

National Public Radio reported several days ago that former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty's support for phasing out federal energy subsidies suggested a sea change in attiudes toward the tax break for ethanol, a big topic in Iowa, where Pawlenty and other Republicans seek the first presidential votes. But now Politico reports, "The declared and potential presidential candidates are all over the map — and by no means fleeing en masse from their traditional support for subsidies."

Ethanol is “kind of a marker for a broader assessment of somebody’s view of the type of role governments should play,” Michael Franc, vice president for government studies at the Heritage Foundation, told reporter Darren Goode. “Every state has its version of ethanol.” Several GOP candidates, incuding supposed front-runner Mitt Romney, say they still support the ethanol tax credit; former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who plans to enter the race soon, says he won't compete for Iowa caucus votes because "he doesn't believe in 'subsidies that prop up corn, soybeans and ethanol'," Goode reports.

Retired Kentucky publisher, still a public servant, gets first journalism award named for him

The first Al Smith Award for public service through rural or community journalism by a Kentuckian was presented Thursday night to its namesake, Albert P. Smith Jr. Making the presentation was Al Cross, right, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism & Community Issues, which co-sponsors the award with the Bluegrass Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Smith owned weekly newspapers in Kentucky and Tennessee, was founding host of Kentucky Educational Television’s “Comment on Kentucky” and main founder of the Institute, whose advisory board he chairs.

"Paul Harvey said, ‘I’ve never seen a monument erected to a pessimist,’ and can assure you I’ve never met a person like Al Smith, the eternal optimist," Lexington entrepreneur Jim Host told the crowd of nearly 200. "No one in my lifetime has meant more to Kentucky, in terms of how he's communicated, than Al Smith."

"Comment" host Ferrell Wellman said, "No one has demonstrated how a rural journalist can influence a state more than Al. ... When I think of Al, the first thought that comes to me isn’t of a journalist, it’s of someone who loves life -- and that love is contagious." For Wellman's remarks as prepared for delivery, click here.

Smith's last "Comment" producer, Renee Shaw, reflected on a last visit with Smith to the town where he began his Kentucky career: "When Al walked the streets of Russellville that overcast October day, he was a rock star, but his swagger was humble and introspective. You could see the years of reflection flashing before his eyes. It was moving for me, and I realized in a new way, a more appreciative way – of the treasure Al is to Kentucky. A man dedicated to his craft in all its incarnations; to telling the truth and putting up a fight for it; and guiding generations of Kentucky journalists and public servants." For the rest of Shaw's speech, click here.

David Holwerk, a frequent "Comment" panelist as editorial-page editor of the Lexington Herald-Leader, and now communications director for the Kettering Foundation, said Smith is known for talking a lot, but "Talking and listening, the gift of conversation, is always at the heart of Al’s work as a journalist. ... Inspiring, provoking and providing occasions for conversations like that is the job that Al Smith has assigned himself in this state. For more than 40 years, Al has been finding ways to get Kentuckians to talk and to listen to each other – to engage in the kind of conversations that will inform them before they act to deal with shared problems. He has done this while working as a journalist, but it sells Al short, I think, to call him just a journalist, or even a community journalist. That is not his true calling, nor really why we honor him tonight as the first recipient of the award that bears his name. We honor him for his dedication to a higher and more important role in the public life of this state and its communities." For Holwerk's remarks, click here.

In accepting the award, Smith said community journalism is "the canary in the mineshaft, the signal that things are wrong at the roots of our society, that air has gone stale and democracy is smothered." He said the Institute "turned on as the big city papers were turning off – closing their rural bureaus, firing reporters, and killing their state pages, all while claiming nothing was lost. Yeah, yeah, nothing lost but the news, the signals between city and countryside. If the canary dies, who would know it? Sixty million rural Americans, only 2 percent of whom are farmers, are really too important to be blacked out by modern media from the real world of the 21st Century." For his prepared remarks, which were about the last third of his speech, click here.

Smith is the first recipient of the award because he is a great example of public service through community journalism. His six weekly newspapers helped bring about school consolidation, new public libraries and community arts programs; create thousands of jobs; and keep rural hospitals open and independent. But unlike most weekly editors and publishers, he went beyond the county lines to play a major role in the public life of his state and region. For more on the award and Smith, click here. To download an 18 MB PowerPoint presentation on his career in journalism and public service go here. 

New power line to D.C. area illustrates issues in play as electric companies improve the grid

A major new power line is humming across the Appalachians "in a suprisingly quick five years," Environment & Energy News reports: "More elaborate variations of the saga of this power line are likely to be repeated throughout the United States as the nation's power grid struggles to serve the rising transmission needs of renewable power generation. But the variations may not be as quick, or as relatively inexpensive or as easy to justify."

The Trans-Allegheny Interstate Line (TrAIL) of regional grid manager PJM Interconnection runs from southern Pennsylvania to the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.  E & E reporter Beter Behr notes, "It won its approval before the recession changed electricity's growth forecasts," and PJM is re-evaluating the need for other lines.

After opposition from owners of horse farms and major estates worried about views, the line's path was moved to parallel a Dominion Power line. That put it through the cattle farm of Virginia Dorkey, left, in southern Fauquier County, Virginia. "There's a hell of a lot more money in north Fauquier County than there is here," she told Behr, noting the 40-foot Dominion towers were "not an eyesore," like the new 140-footers, Behr writes.

The fight against the line in Virginia was led by the Piedmont Environmental Council. Its questions about expected electricity demand did prompt PJM to suspend plans for the Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline (PATH), which we reported on here.

The battle "also led, indirectly, to a stunning policy reversal on siting transmission lines," Behr reports. In a Piedmont Council lawsuit, a federal appeals court nullified a 2005 law giving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission "siting authority for siting major transmission lines in the mid-Atlantic, one of the 'national interest' corridors where congestion threatens grid reliability. The court ruled that under the law's plain language, FERC could intervene if state commissions failed to act on a transmission proposal lying in a national corridor, but not if a state rejected the project outright. That court decision strengthens the hand of mid-Atlantic state governors who want to build offshore wind power farms on their coasts rather than see Midwestern wind power imported into their urban areas." (Read more, subscription required)

Ky. appeals court upholds convictions of strict Amish who won't put SMV signs on buggies

A strict Amish sect's religious beliefs about symbols and colors do not deserve more protection than motorists who might smash into horse-drawn buggies lacking orange-red triangle signs that states require for slow-moving vehicles, the Kentucky Court of Appeals ruled yesterday. (Photo by Matt Schorr, Mayfield Messenger)

"The freedom to express and exercise one’s religious beliefs is held in high esteem. However, such practices cannot infringe on the rights and safety of the public at large," said the unanimous decision by a three-judge panel, upholding the 2008 misdemeanor convictions of nine Amish men in Graves County, in far Western Kentucky. Their American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky lawyer said they would discuss an appeal to the state Supreme Court.

The men are Old Order Swartzentruber Amish. "They sought alternative solutions, such as using lanterns or gray tape that is reflected in headlights, although neither approach would be effective in daylight and would be even less effective at twilight, when statistics show such accidents are more likely to occur, the court ruled," Peter Smith of The Courier-Journal reports. For his and our initial reports on the case and the Amish in the area, click here.

Horses deliver broadband to remote Vermont

An "anachronistic vehicle," the draft horse, is being used to deliver high-speed Internet to remote areas of Vermont, Erik Blokland writes for VTDigger.org, an online service "led by journalists, powered by the public." He focuses on Claude Desmarais, right, who has been laying lines in the Green Mountains with "telephone horses" like Fred for 31 years.

"Without Fred pulling his weight in fiber-optic cable," Blokland reports, FairPoint Communications "would be hard-pressed to meet its 2013 goal, set by Gov. Peter Shumlin, to bring Internet to every home in the state." (Read more)

Daily Yonder editor disputes urbanites' assertions that rural America gets too much federal money

Two pillars of the Eastern liberal establishment keep propounding the false assertion that rural America gets too much federal money, Bill Bishop reports in the Daily Yonder. "The Brookings Institution and The New York Times are convinced the federal government spends 'vastly more' per person in rural areas than in the cities," Bishop writes. "Why do they continue to get this story wrong?"

Bishop, co-editor of the Yonder, generated some data and graphics to rebut the assertions:

Bishop cites data from the Ecomomic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. ERS also provided data for this chart:

"The nation doesn’t have a plan for rural communities either and several advocates have concluded that rural America will never get much notice from what they consider the most urban-centric administration in memory," Bishop writes. "Nobody is happy. And blaming Iowa or Obama for the general disinterest in both rural and urban America hasn’t done much good. Better if we all complained less and worked more. To that end, the Daily Yonder will publish a two-part series, beginning Monday, on what a national rural policy should look like." (Read more)

'The Last Mountain' premieres tonight in D.C., N.Y.

UPDATE, June 10: The journalist who knows this issue best, Ken Ward Jr. of The Charleston Gazette, has a review of the film.

Coal River Mountain in West Virginia is not the last mountain in Central Appalachia, or even "one of the last," as the trailer below says, but it is the subject of the mountaintop-removal documentary by that name, featuring environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., that premieres in Washington, D.C., tonight and will have a free showing in Charleston, W.Va., in a week. Here's the schedule.



The movie is "unabashedly polemical," reviewer Mark Jenkins writes in The Washington Post. "The film provides evidence of catastrophic health problems, resulting from high levels of lead, mercury and other metals in drinking water, and flood hazards, from earth dams that hold (or fail to hold) water contaminated by toxic sludge. The movie’s credibility is boosted by the weakness of its opposition: Massey Energy," which wants to mine Coal River Mountain but "has been on the retreat" because of safety isuses at its underground mines. This week Massey passed into history, merging into Alpha Natural Resources. (Read more)

The Atlantic's story has a silly headline, "Will 'The Last Mountain' Stop Coal Mining?", and ignores the fact that mountaintop mines do not remain "pockmarked moonscapes." Still, writer David Thier asks a pertinent question, one that he says applies to all "films that double as activism: Do they translate outrage into action?" Kennedy "says that the movie is meant to make viewers understand the economic, environmental and moral costs wrapped up in coal."

For many Americans, especially those working blue-collar jobs in Central Appalachia, such problems and questions are outweighed by shorter-term economic concerns. Thier says director Bill Haney (also the /co-screenwriter and co-producer) focuses "on working-class West Virginians and paint[s] the coal company execs as fat cats. But the ultimate focus on Kennedy, a man whose family is a stand-in for northeastern privilege, may undercut that message. ... It's a well-told story, but its conclusion is unwritten. It succeeds in producing that raised eyebrow and sense of guilt about the power coursing into the TV, but it's hard to tell if it will do much more. The real test of its quality won't be told in box-office receipts, but on the top of Coal River Mountain." (Read more)

The New York Times review displays a disappointing lack of familiarity with the region's landscape. And much of the coverage casts mountaintop removal as an issue only for West Virginia. We hope the film does not; one of the producers, Clara Bingham, has Kentucky roots. Kennedy told The Hill that the most surprising thing he learned during the production was "How much democracy had been subverted in this state" of West Virginia. (Read more)

UPDATE, June 24: Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe writes, "It’s sincere. It’s misguided. It feels like a stunt." Morris also calls it "a righteous embarrassment" and says Kennedy's "outrage just doesn't really connect with anyone else's," and calls the movie "an infomercial for wind farms." (Read more)

'Best of the Road' finalists include friendly, fun, beautiful, patriotic and 'best for food' rural spots

Several rural towns are among the 30 finalists in the "Best of the Road" contest sponsored by USA Today and map firm Rand McNally. The contest has five categories.

The "Most Beautiful" category includes Baker City, Ore.; Pacifica, Calif; Sandpoint, Idaho; and Franklin, Tenn., which has kept much of its county-seat charm while being swallowed by metropolitan Nashville.

"Friendliest" could be Walla Walla, Wash.; Woodward, Okla.; Nacogdoches, Tex.; or Mount Airy, N.C., which has adopted the Mayberry identity created by native son Andy Griffith.

The "Most Fun" category includes Yellow Springs, Ohio; Vacaville, Calif.; Glenwood Springs, Colo.; and Santa Claus, Ind., home of a popular amusement park, Holiday World & Splashin' Safari, formerly Santa Claus Land.

"Most Patriotic" includes Emporia, Kan.; Rapid City, S.D.; and Williamsburg, Va. And "Best for Food" includes Addison, W.Va., better known as Webster Springs. The USA Today story is here.

U.S. Education Dept. to hold conference call for rural journalists Friday on i3 grant competition

The U.S. Department of Education will announce the design of the 2011 Investing In Innovation (i3) grant competition at 1 p.m. EDT Friday. A press conference call for rural journalists has been scheduled for reporters to speak with Assistant Deputy Secretary Jim Shelton, who oversees the competition, to discuss its potential for rural schools, their partners, and communities. Dial 888-917-8040, and use the password RURAL. Education Week reports that school districts and nonprofit groups who apply are being encouraged to focus on rural schools. For the release about the program, click here.

N.Y. Times rounds up examples of rural areas losing population and power in state legislatures

Rural areas have been losing influence in Congress and state legislatures since the reapportionment and redistricting rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1960s, and the 2010 census mandates that the trend will continue. We've noted this more than once, but it's an important topic and The New York Times has done a nice job of collecting some interesting pieces of the puzzle "in states that have long been considered synonymous with rural America," as reporter A.G. Sulzberger puts it. He used an excellent source for anyone covering the issue: Tim Storey of the National Conference of State Legislatures, who told him, “It really is the next chapter in the long saga of the loss of rural political power in America.”

The story's litany begins with Nebraska, where more than half the population is now concentrated in three urban counties in the east; goes to North Dakota, where "More education money has migrated to urban schools and universities;" then to Kansas, where "Rural legislators were unable to block a transportation bill favorable to the thriving metro areas;" and finally to Georgia, where "The Atlanta region appears likely to take control of a majority in the legislature."

In Nebraska, “As political power and population shifts, the legislators are less and less tolerant of the subsidies that have been built in” for rural areas, Nebraska State Education Association research director Larry Scherer told Sulzberger. However, the power of metropolitan lawmakers "is sometimes diffused by infighting between city and suburbs or city and city — a contrast to the more monolithic rural coalitions," Sulzberger reports, quoting Lincoln Sen. Bill Avery: “We haven’t seen the creation of a strong urban identity. It takes a while for people’s attitudes and cultural orientations to catch up with the numbers.” (Read more) 

Interior Dept. backs off new wilderness policy

The Department of the Interior will not implement a new, controversial policy to protect wilderness-quality lands in the West, Secretary Ken Salazar announced Wednesday. The decision, made under "intense political pressure . . . drew cheers from Western critics but was attacked by environmental groups as a retreat from common-sense conservation," Phil Taylor of Environment & Energy News reports. The move "also resolves a likely battle over the Bureau of Land Management's 2012 budget and could render moot parts of a pair of lawsuits filed in Utah seeking to block the agency's wilderness policy." (Read more, subscription required)

32nd New York Mississippi Picnic set for June 11

You may have heard of the New York Mississippi Picnic, but we haven't, and we think it's a fine idea, so we're telling you about it. The 32nd annual picnic, a free event, will be held Saturday, June 11, from noon to 6 p.m. in Central Park (Center Road at 72nd Street and Fifth Avenue entrance, by the bandshell). Photo: Unidentified picnicker with shirt reading, "Mississippi: Hard to spell, Easy to love."

The picnic began in 1979, when a few native Mississippians living in New York "worked together to create an event that would highlight their state in a positive way," a news release about the event says. "The result was the annual picnic that brings thousands of Mississippians together every year in New York’s Central Park and the creation of the New York Society for the Preservation of Mississippi Heritage."

The theme of this year’s picnic is "Find Your True South," and it will pay tribute to blues musician Robert Johnson and playwright and author Tennessee Williams, in the 100th anniversary year of their births. Mississippi bluesman Eddie Cotton, Jr. will be among the entertainers, and Mississippi artists and authors will show, sign and sell their work. The menu: 500 pounds of Southern-fried catfish, 120 pounds of hushpuppies and iced tee, sweet of course.

“This picnic is a way for those residing in the New York City area to connect with Mississippi,” said Rachel McPherson, co-founder of the picnic. “Those who are from Mississippi can reconnect to those things familiar from home. Those who are curious about Mississippi can come to learn about the things Mississippians are most proud of—the food, the music, the culture and our people.” For more information, including a list of artists and authors that will be at the picnic, click here.

Reporters share award for historic preservation

Three reporters for a thrice-weekly newspaper and a local preservationist have won a service award from a Kentucky foundation dedicated to historic preservation. The award from the Ida Lee Willis Memorial Foundation went to Donna Horn-Taylor of Corbin for her efforts to save a historic home that was to be demolished for a new courthouse in London, and to the reporters for The Sentinel-Echo of London for their coverage of the issue.

The newspaper reports, "Staff members recognized during the ceremony were Staff Writer Nita Johnson, former editor Julie Nelson-Harris and former reporter Tara Kaprowy." Johnson said, “Our newspaper tries to reflect the events in the community and the support to save the Pennington House was a community concern.” (Read more)

House panel narrowly backs law that effectively bans horse slaughter for human consumption

Concern about abuse and abandonment of horses may be stirring opposition in Congress to legislation that removed the floor from the horse market by denying federal funds for inspection of horse slaughterhouses. (Sign on US 62 between Summit and Elizabethtown, Ky., offers cash for unwanted horses; photo by Al Cross, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues)

The House Appropriations Committee voted only 24 to 21 yesterday in favor of an amendment by Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., "to continue de-funding inspections of horses to be sent for slaughter for human consumption, meaning commercial horse slaughter would remain illegal in the United States," Agri-Pulse reports. "The amendment effectively keeps in place a shutdown of the practice begun six years ago when the full House passed language in a bipartisan 269-158 vote, Moran said."

The amendment was attached to the appropriations bill for the Department of Agriculture for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. Agri-Pulse is a Washington-based newsletter available only by subscription, but it offers a free, four-issue trial subscription.

House budget writers vote unanimously for limit Obama proposed on farm subsidy payments

Budget-cutting Republicans endorsed one of President Obama's ideas to limit farm subsidies yesterday, as the House Appropriations Committee approved its version of the Department of Agriculture's budget for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. The vote was the latest sign that concern over the federal deficit and national debt will trump traditional support for longstanding programs.

"In a surprise move, the committee approved an amendment by Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., to lower the maximum adjusted gross income a farmer can have to earn certain subsidies," The Associated Press reports. "While many farmers can now make as much as $750,000 annually and still receive subsidies, Flake’s amendment would lower the threshold for some to $250,000."

Obama's attempts to impose such a limit were blocked by a bipartisan coalition of farm-state lawmakers last year, when Democrats controlled the House. But yesterday, Flake's amendment was approved by unanimous consent. “It says a lot that no one is publicly willing to defend this kind of largesse,” he said afterward, AP reports. The bill is expected to pass the House with few changes. For our previous report on the bill, which would cut USDA's discretionary programs, go here. The text of the bill, from FarmPolicy.com, is here and the committee report is here.

The bill would deny funding for the administration's proposed changes in rules of the Grain Inspection Packers and Stockyards Administration, aimed at protecting small producers. "Supporters of the GIPSA rule say it is needed because too few packers control too much of the meat industry," Brownfield Network reports. "Opponents say it would eliminate marketing agreements which reward producers for providing higher quality beef and pork." The provision's fate in the Senate is uncertain. (Read more)