Opinion: The Congresswoman who is telling her party to step into the reality of 'regular people'

Gluesenkamp Perez

U.S. Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is a donkey of a different color. As a Democrat elected in a red district, she has worked to keep her finger on the pulse of her rural constituents while pointedly telling her party to step into the reality of "regular people," writes James Pogue in his opinion for The New York Times.

Gluesenkamp Perez believes our society "ought to be oriented toward working with your hands, living in nature and fostering deep and considered connection to a community," Pogue explains. "Her two biggest influences, her former senior adviser guessed, are the Bible and the ruralist Kentucky farmer-author Wendell Berry."

She has gone against her party with bold strokes by "voting against President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan and repeatedly criticizing his administration’s incomprehensible border policy," Pogue adds.

While many Democratic lawmakers have, for decades, focused on data points and expert opinions to win over voters, Gluesenkamp Perez insists that pushing such singular thinking on rural and working-class Americans has created resentment and anger. 

At the Capitol, Gluesenkamp Perez has become the "most visible member of a small movement that has taken the name of the decades-old Blue Dog congressional caucus," Pogue explains. "The Blue Dogs have been arguing that Democrats cannot win over rural or working-class voters simply by studying them . . . . This little movement may well get driven out of the party before Democrats grasp what it’s truly offering."

President Donald Trump's MAGA supporters, who include many voters in rural America, see his administration’s immigration crackdowns and tariffs as "twin pillars in an attempt to create an economic system governed not by gross domestic product data and consumer spending, but by conservative values and nationalist geostrategic ends," Pogue points out. "'Kids don’t 'need 37 dolls,'" Mr. Trump has said. They should have 'three dolls or four.'"

Gluesenkamp Perez and Blue Dog partner Jared Golden, a Democrat from a deeply conservative Maine district, produce a podcast called “Blue Dog Radio" that strives to offer something different from MAGA: an approach that focuses on 'regular people' and the independent spirit many rural Americans hold dear. 

"Together, they’ve tried to articulate a friendly and Americana-inflected cultural politics 'for people who still believe in community, country and the common good,'" Pogue writes. "Coupled with an economic vision that is arguably more radical than programs offered by many leftists. It encompasses antimonopoly policies, right to repair and regulatory changes to smooth the path for people to start businesses, buy and work land, even build their own houses and invent things. . . "

Pogue's entire essay is here.

Most stakeholders, lawmakers don't support USDA restructuring plan

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Headquarters complex in 
Washington, D.C. (Adobe Stock photo)

After the Department of Agriculture announced in July plans to reorganize and relocate thousands of its Washington, D.C., workers, close its flagship D.C. research facility and create five regional hubs, employees, lawmakers and agriculture stakeholders voiced concern that the consolidations could "lead to a significant brain drain and disruptions to key farmer-support programs," reports Eric Katz of Government Executive. 

The restructuring plans currently include keeping 2,000 USDA employees in Washington, D.C, but the remaining 2,600 people would be offered positions in newly formed USDA hubs in Raleigh, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis, Indiana; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Salt Lake City, Utah.

The USDA requested public comments via email from Aug. 1 to Sept. 30, to which it "received nearly 47,000 responses, most of which were from form letters or part of an organized campaign," Katz writes. "Of the 14,000 remaining messages, 82% expressed a negative sentiment, according to USDA’s analysis of the responses. Just 5% expressed a positive tone."

"Among the most common concerns, USDA said, were for the impacts of reductions in personnel and resources," Katz explains. "'Stakeholders worry that cost-cutting measures will prioritize efficiency over service quality, undermining public trust,' the department said in its analysis."

Lawmakers and commentators criticized the USDA's lack of transparency about its plans."As the department looks to slash regional offices across the country, stakeholders raised concerns about the loss of 'local oversight and expertise,'" Katz reports. "Lawmakers...expressed concern over the potential loss of local input."

Employee unions "cited USDA’s relocation of two offices in 2019 to Kansas City, which resulted in the loss of more than half of their staff and significant drops in productivity," Katz adds. 

Despite the negative feedback, the Trump administration seems unwilling to change course. Katz adds, "Several employees told Government Executive the plan is proceeding full steam ahead."

Drought in Washington state will affect rural communities most

Because of the little to nonexistent snow on many mountain ranges in Washington, Gov. Jay Inslee announced a statewide drought emergency last Friday.

Snowpack levels are only 16 percent what they usually are, and they are 10 percent lower than in 2005 during the last statewide drought emergency, Natasha Geiling writes for Think Progress. "Rain amounts have been normal, but snow has been scarce. And we're watching what little snow we have quickly disappear."

Inslee said the drought will be "unlike anything we have experienced," Karen Taylor reports for KGMI Radio in Bellingham. The drought will not affect citizens living in populated areas like Seattle as much because they have municipal water, ecology department director Maia Bellon said. However, farmers and rural communities will need assistance from the state to deal with the shortages.

River flow levels might be lower than they have been in 60 years, Inslee said. (Read more)

Terminal patients in rural Washington look for doctors willing to help with suicide

In Washington state, where legalized physician-assisted suicide took effect just two months ago, debates over the rural-urban divide in health care have taken a twist: Many terminally-ill patients say they cannot find doctors willing to prescribe the lethal dosage of barbituates allowed by state law.

The law, which went into effect March 5, allows the medication to be prescribed if two doctors attest that a patient will die of a disease. "But outside the larger population centers around Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia, many physicians are unwilling," writes Kim Murphy in the Los Angeles Times. "That leaves residents east of the Cascades who choose to utilize the statute with the same problem women seeking abortions in conservative rural communities have faced: It's legal, but health providers' moral qualms mean it's essentially unavailable."

The American Medical Association and other critics say pain management is a better solution, while supporters of the law contend pain management is not always realistic. In rural Kennewick, Wash., information about the law was presented by the Benton Franklin County Medical Society at a gathering of doctors, but the presentation was met with silence. "There was no feedback," said executive director Nicole Austin. "We're trying to walk a very neutral line. It's their decision as physicians if they choose to participate. I sense that it will be a challenge in this community." (Read more)

Small-town America looks different from a bicycle

University of Kentucky law professor Bill Fortune, left, gained "a new appreciation for small-town America and its people" by riding a bicycle 4,100 miles with a small group from coast to coast this summer, Tom Eblen reports in the Lexington Herald-Leader. (Photo of Fortune at the Atlantic Ocean near Portland, Maine, by Bill Rund)

"What impressed Fortune most were the places he never would have stopped to see, and the people he never would have met, had he been driving through in a car," Eblen writes. "There was the couple in Waterville, Wash., who bought and renovated the abandoned Lutheran church where they had been married years before. Now it’s beautiful again, and the couple rents it as a wedding chapel. . . . Fortune now knows that Buffalo, Wyo., claims to have the world’s largest swimming pool, and Huron, S.D., the world’s largest statue of a pheasant." Fortune says, "You see the country in a different way when you’re on a bicycle. If you made the trip in a car, you couldn’t see it as slowly and intensely as we saw it."

"Fortune marveled at the vast openness of the West as he passed abandoned houses and towns depopulated by a changing economy," Eblen writes. "Many people had lived in their small towns all their lives, but their children had left in search of jobs and a more exciting lifestyle. He saw human despair on Indian reservations, and noted there was at least one bar in every Western town, no matter how small, and gambling machines in every bar and gas station."

Explorers often like to draw boundaries, and we tend to agree with our friend Bill on this one: "The cyclists agreed that the West ended and the Midwest began when they crossed the Missouri River in eastern South Dakota near the Minnesota line," Eblen writes. "Gradually, the empty country gave way to tidy farms and farmhouses and well-kept small towns." (Read more) For the blog version of Eblen's story, with a very nice, three-minute audio slide show from Fortune, click here.

Cockfighting probe accuses 63 people of taking part in contests in rural Oregon and Washington

A sting operation that involved 500 law enforcement officers has led to 63 people being accused of taking part in a dozen cockfight derbies in rural parts of Oregon and Washington over the past two years, reports Bryan Denson of The Oregonian.

"A mammoth task force of federal, state, county and city police agencies -- more than 500 law enforcement officers and support staffs -- took part in some aspect of the two-year investigation and weekend raids in both states," Denson writes. "The investigation was dubbed 'Operation Red Rooster' in Oregon and 'Operation Tattered Wing' in Washington."

Five of the mean accused of being part of the cockfighting contests also are accused of being involved in drug trafficking. During a raid last weekend in southern Oregon, police "seized more than 700 roosters in Klamath County, at least $100,000 in cash, 50 guns, 2.5 pounds of meth, 1.5 pounds of cocaine, 6 pounds of marijuana and 48 marijuana plants, authorities said," Denson writes. (Read more)

Walla Walla Union-Bulletin package explores rural reality for gay and lesbian teens

Growing up as a gay or lesbian teen in a rural area can be a tough challenge. In seven stories for the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, Sheila Hagar explores how some teens and activists are facing those challenges in the Inland Northwest. (A youth group for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender teens meets in U-B photo by Joe Tierney)

Hagar's package highlight various aspects of the rural reality for gay and lesbian teens, especially the lack of resources in many small towns. Hagar highlights one of the few places offering such resources, the Vista Youth Center in the Tri-Cities — the towns of Kennewick, Pasco and Richland, which have a combined population of about 80,000 and are about an hour northwest of Walla Walla. Executive Director Mark Lee told Hagar that after moving to the area from Portland he realized teens had few places to feel safe.

Hagar wrote: "What he found when he visited a Spokane center with the same mission spoke volumes, he said: teens willing to travel by bus more than an hour one way to be somewhere they felt safe, kids who had come from Idaho, kids who couldn't tell anyone they knew about being queer, Lee said." His direct quote: "The tone I got was being in a rural area and being 'out' was not safe. Expressing themselves was not safe."

Hagar added, "Those are children perhaps most in need of help. Nearly half of that demographic reports using drugs and alcohol, and a quarter say they are currently being sexually or physically abused, he said, citing figures from internal surveys done at Vista." (Read more)

In the rest of the series, Hagar addresses how some local schools are trying to curb harassment and she speaks with local teens about what they think. Here are the other stories in the series:

• Local teens describe the situation they see
• 'Triple Point' offers gatherings for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender kids
• One teenager recalls coming out in a Mexican-American home
  
• A local activist leads a support group in rural Oregon
• Middle schools and high schools seek to teach tolerance and stop bullying
• Private schools work to keep all students safe
  

This is serious reporting, and it is worth a look. The series also includes some key statistics about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender teens, which could be a good place to start similar reporting.

In some rural areas, cell phones pose problems for 911 calls, which can lead to tragedy

Emergency services are often slower and less dependable in rural areas, and while cell phones should help speed response time, theyadd to the problems for rural residents, reports Sheila Hagar of the Walla Walla Union Bulletin in southwest Washington state. That's because not all counties have systems in place that can deliver a caller's number and address.

"Cell-tower information is also often sketchy or completely wrong in rural areas," Hagar writes. "It’s not unusual for calls to get routed to Walla Walla’s 911 center from phones located in Finley, Wash., or in the Columbia [River] Gorge, (Police Capt. Dan) Aycock said." The gorge cuts through the Cascade Range downstream from The Dalles, more than 150 miles west of Walla Walla. (Encarta map)

In some areas, the only location information 911 centers get is the site of the nearest cell tower (assuming it's the right one), which leaves emergency services with a 985-foot radius to look in — or not much smaller than the size of some small towns, Hagar adds. The best advice is for callers to know their location and address when dialing 911 and to realize that wireless communication (or even GPS receivers in cars) might be worthless in some rural areas. (Read more)

Hagar offers a heartbreaking sidebar, about a local elderly woman who died after trying to get help by calling 911 on her cell phone. She did not have a land line. Her body was discovered five days later, a delay caused in part because the call was considered "a hang-up" by the 911 center in Pendleton, Ore., about 30 miles south of the woman's home in Milton-Freewater, Ore., about 10 miles south of Walla Walla.

The woman's daughter discovered her mother had made a 911 call when she checked her mother's cell phone and found a voice mail message that said, "Hello, this is Tammy from the Umatilla County Sheriff’s Office out of Pendleton, Oregon. I just received a 911 call from this phone. If you’re able, please call us back on 911 so we can get a location on you if there is an emergency. Thank you.” The dispatch center could not get an exact location on the call and only was able to trace call to an intersection about a mile from the woman's home. (Read more)