Obama's rural problem is an Appalachia problem

Much has been written about Barack Obama's problem with rural voters, but we haven't seen anything better than the piece this week by Jonathan Tilove, left, who has covered race for Newhouse News Service since 1991. Tilove focuses, appropriately we think, on Appalachia and its traditional culture, and uses a nicely varied set of sources to make his case.

"There are enormous regional differences in how whites vote, differences with deep historical roots," Tilove writes, noting how well Obama did in Vermont, the most rural state and the second-whitest. But Vermont was not settled by Scots-Irish, who with their neighbors from the northern English borderlands largely settled Appalachia. Their descendants' main problem with Obama may not be his race, but his approach.

"With his Harvard pedigree, mellifluous voice and high-minded talk of moving beyond the politics of confrontation, he is totally out of place in Appalachia," Tilove writes, quoting what Dave "Mudcat" Saunders, former rural adviser to John Edwards, told Politico the day before West Virginia's primary: "We've heard all this 'hope' and 'change' stuff since the English kicked the Scotch-Irish out in the 1700s. We're 'hoped' out. Nothing ever changes out here."

Tilove writes, "For those keeping score, seven of the 10 whitest states have held primaries or caucuses. The Illinois senator has won five and the New York senator two — New Hampshire by an inch and now West Virginia by a country mile. Stretch it to the 20 whitest states and the tally is 12 for Obama and five for Clinton, with three to go. If you limit it to primary and not caucus states, of the 20 whitest states, Obama has won four — Vermont, Wisconsin, Utah and Missouri — and Clinton has won five — New Hampshire, West Virginia, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Ohio."

Citing Josh Marshall on Talking Points Memo, Tilove writes, "The map of Appalachia lines up pretty well with a map of counties where Clinton has won more than 60 percent of the vote. Tilove also cites Dana Houle, who has written about the Appalachia vote on Daily Kos: "Houle does not believe that Obama's difficulty in Appalachia does not necessarily translate into a broader or more permanent problem with white voters." Houle pits it this way: "Obama doesn't have a racial problem. It appears that Appalachia has an Obama problem."

Tilove also cites one of the most important books about ethnicity in America, Albion's Seed, by Brandeis University historian David Hackett Fischer. It teaches us that there are significantly different ethnicities among whites, such as the four main groups that came from Great Britain. "Obama appeals more to whites like those in New England ... who inhabit the lands first settled by the more intellectual and moralistic Puritans, and the places from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Northwest where those New Englanders migrated," Tilove explains. "Voters in Appalachia are Andrew Jackson Democrats, for whom John McCain, with his Scots-Irish heritage and temperament, may appear to be the real McCoy."

Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., says in his 2004 book Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, that his forebears formed the "core culture around which Red State America has gathered and thrived." But he thinks their descendants have common ground with the core Democratic constituency. He wrote in The Wall Street Journal in 2004, "The greatest realignment in modern politics would take place rather quickly if the right national leader found a way to bring the Scots-Irish and African Americans to the same table." Tilove quotes that and notes, "It's an intriguing statement from a man who two years later was elected to the Senate and now is mentioned as a potential running mate for Obama." (Read more)

For an analysis that is much to the contrary, click here.

UPDATE, May 21: In the wake of Kentucky's May 20 primary, which produced results similar to West Virginia's, CNN analyst Bill Schneider picked up on the theories of Tilove, Saunders and Webb, an Appalachian who wrote a book about the Scots-Irish called Born Fighting. He said of Clinton, "She comes across as a fighter. Obama is running as a conciliator and a consensus-builder," and that is not working "with blue-collar and Appalachian whites who want a more combative style of politics … Obama’s betting that voters are fed up with the fight and want to try something different – for a change."

UPDATE, May 22: On Huffington Post, Jeff Biggers accuses the national media of superficial, simplistic reporting on the Appalachian vote. Appalachian Media Institute youth producer Ada Smith expresses concern on National Public Radio that stereotyping of Appalachian voters will make talking about racism and dealing with it more difficult. "I think we may be scared to admit that more Americans than just Appalachians have a race problem," she says. "Instead of questioning how we're going to deal with racism as a country, it's easier to make Appalachia the scapegoat, carrying the load." To listen, click here.

J-Lab New Voices grants include many rural ideas

Several projects with clear or potential impact on rural areas are winners in the fourth annual round of New Voices grants from J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which was the major initial funder of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues. Winners get $12,000 in the first year and $5,000 in matching support in the second year.

From the press release, here are selected project:

• Miami-Whitewater Valley Public Media Project. Partnering higher learning with public and commercial media, this project will create a regional news service for Southwest Ohio and East Central Indiana. Citizen journalists and students at Miami University and Earlham College will produce stories for an interactive Web site and content will be shared with local mainstream media. Pilot partners include WMUB and WECI public radio, the Cincinnati Business Journal, Cox Ohio newspapers in Dayton, Hamilton, Oxford and Middletown, and Gannett’s Palladium-Item in Richmond, Indiana. They seek to create a new model for covering regional news.
  
• The Kentucky Citizen Media Project: The Lexington Commons. A University of Kentucky partnership will build a digital neighborhood newspaper. While it will highlight Lexington news, the leaders also hope to build a sense of community across lines of race, ethnicity and income. The university’s Department of Community and Leadership Development is spearheading the project in partnership with the University’s Cooperative Extension Service, which will help recruit citizen reporters, and the Department of Agricultural Communications, which will launch and maintain the project’s Web site.
  
• Grass Roots: Digital Journalism in the Nation’s Birthplace of Aviation. Journalism professors at Kent State will mentor student reporters and general aviators to cover Ohio’s 166 public airports, 772 private airfields and 18,000 pilots. Reporters will take photos, audio and video to go on a central Web site. The project also plans to produce mini-documentaries and a book. Content will be available to the Akron Beacon-Journal’s Ohio.com, local public television stations and the university’s NPR affiliate.
  
• Cool State Online. Journalism students and faculty at California State University-Los Angeles will partner with community groups to launch “micro-bureaus” to cover the San Gabriel Valley’s largely Asian and Latino community. Computer science grad students will help build a news management system for the project.
• The Appalachian Independent. A civic group will create a bi-weekly online newspaper community for the rural community around Frostburg, Md., modeled on the National League of Cities’ Inclusive Community Program. Frostburg State University and Allegany College of Maryland students and faculty will participate.
• Immigration: The View from Here. KBUT-FM community radio in Crested Butte, Colorado, will explore the local impact of immigration, which has tripled in the last decade in rural Gunnison Valley. The station will train citizen journalists and produce stories for its daily news show and 30-minute specials. All content will be in English, with Spanish translations posted online. The station will share MP3 files of the features with all the state’s community radio stations.
• Voices of Rural Alaska. Koahnic Broadcast Corp. will train people in remote Alaskan native villages to record interviews, first-person diaries and reports on issues that affect their daily lives. One-to-three minute segments will be broadcast monthly on KNBA-FM and National Native News. They will also be available online as podcasts and offered to the Alaska Public Radio network.
  

Clinton, Obama support Farm Bill, but she is more complimentary of it

An earlier version of this item incorrectly said the candidates had voted on the bill.

The Farm Bill is on its way to the White House and a promised veto by President Bush, then a likely override by at least a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate. The Senate voted 81-15 for the bill today. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were campaigning and did not vote, but issued statements in favor of the bill, which John McCain opposed.

Clinton issued a press release that strongly endorsed the bill, repeating an endorsement she made last week but saying she favors "closing loopholes that disproportionately benefit wealthy corporate farmers." Barack Obama's release (not available online) said the bill could have been much better, with tighter limits on subsidies and a ban on meatpacker ownership of livestock, but "We cannot make the perfect the enemy of the good." (You know the Democratic race has changed when Obama starts repeating one of Bill Clinton's quntessential quotes.)

McCain was also campaigning and did not vote, but as reported here 10 days ago, he told The Des Moines Register, "At this time, to have an increase in agricultural subsidies when farmers are having higher incomes than at any time in memory, I just think it’s legislation that’s not in keeping with the economic hard times of America where people are losing their homes and their jobs."

Interior calls polar bears 'threatened,' says move won't affect environmental rules; groups disagree

(Canadian Press photo by Jonathan Hayward) Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne made the polar bear a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act yesterday, but warned that his action "should not open the door to use of the ESA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles, power plants, and other sources." Environmental groups disagreed.

"The law says what it says, not what the administration wishes it says," Kassie Siegel, climate program director at the Center for Biological Diversity, told The Washington Post. "This is great news for polar bears. . . . It's also a watershed moment, the strongest statement we've had to date from this administration about global warming."

Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which recommended that the bear be listed as threatened, "said such regulations would be justified only if the administration could prove a direct connection between the emissions and the polar bears' predicament," writes the Post's Juliet Eilperin. "We have to be able to connect the dots," Hall told her. "We don't have the science today to be able to do that." (Read more)

What's the difference in threatened and endangered? "A species is listed as threatened when it is at risk of becoming endangered within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range. In contrast, a species is endangered when it is currently in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range," says the Interior Department news release. For the rest of it, click here.

Knight News Challenge awards include several intended to help rural areas in U.S., other nations

Several projects designed to help rural areas and journalists who serve them were among the winners in the second annual round of awards from the Knight News Challenge, which the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation started to help what it calls "digital information innovations that transform community life."

Some of the smaller awards may have some of the larger impacts. For example, Ryan Sholin, left, director of community site publishing at GateHouse Media, doing business as Reporting On, received $15,000 for a project to allow reporters working on similar topics to "communicate and share ideas using a social networking tool and a web site," which will show "how many journalists across the country are working on the same issue, such as declining tax bases or water problems," Knight Foundation said in a news release. "Reporters then could exchange resources and approaches, or use one another’s communities as examples in their own stories. Journalists in small newsrooms often feel isolated. Given the opportunity to communicate with others, a reporter can add context to articles and, perhaps most importantly, know when a seemingly small local story is part of a larger regional, or national, trend."

DataDyne of Washington, D.C., is getting $325,000 for a project to make it easy for cheap cell phones to "select and receive news feeds, expanding the news universe for those whose only digital device is a cell phone. Users, particularly in areas where Internet access isn’t affordable, will be able to receive news via text messaging. They also will be able to rate top stories in lists to be shared with friends. The project will be tested in the rural area of a developing country."

The University of Waterloo in Ontario was awarded $200,000 for a project to "connect rural radio stations to the Internet by using new software and computer-based FM transmitters. The innovations will significantly reduce the cost of creating the stations in India from an estimated $50,000 to $2,500.

Minciu Sodas, an online laboratory operated by Andrius Kulikauskas, right, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Lithuania, got $15,000 for blogging "about different methods of getting digital information to rural areas that don’t have Internet access. He will discuss using a 'reader,' or a device for writing and reviewing text files stored on any USB flash drive. The device is meant for people in rural areas with marginal online access so that messages can be physically transported to and from places connected to the Internet. In this system, an individual would load a USB drive at an Internet café, then travel to a village where the information could be read with another device. This method will be discussed in contrast to the pros and cons of using the $100 wireless laptop."

Rhodes University in South Africa received $630,000 for a project in which "Local news reports disseminated through cell phones will help connect an all-black township in South Africa with the white population living in the urban center – giving everyone in Grahamstown equal access to news and information. Articles from the community newspaper, Grocott’s Mail, will be delivered to mobile phones, the only modern communications system available in the rural township."

Some other winners have potential for rural areas, though that angle was not mentioned in Knight Foundation's description of them. David Cohn, left, doing business as DigiDave.org, won $340,000 for Spot Journalism, a project that will seek small, online contributions to finance local investigative reporting by "independent journalists and residents" who will propose stories, Knight Foundation said. "If enough donors contribute the amount needed, a journalist will be hired to do the reporting. The money has to come from a variety of sources, though. Each project will need many small contributions before being approved in order to avoid personal crusades."

The Bakersfield Californian newspaper received one of the larger awards, $837,000, for Printcasting, which will allow easy creation of advertising-supported, "customized publications with a mix of local news and information. The software will help aggregate feeds from news organizations, bloggers or newsletters, for example, so that would-be publishers can pick and choose among them to create a niche publication. The Printcasting model then will guide users through placing articles, photos and ads onto a template that either could be delivered by e-mail or printed at home and distributed. For example, a publication for reef-diving photographers could include ads for nearby dive shops or underwater cameras. The idea is to pair localized ads and content to create targeted publications."

The awards totaled $5.5 million. Knight Foundation highlighted a $350,000 grant to Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web, and Martin Moore for a project to create technology to give users more information about the sources of digital content and ways to easily access more detailed information. The project project "is a partnership between the Media Standards Trust and the British-based Web Science Research Initiative, of which Berners-Lee is a director. For a complete list of winners and descriptions of projects, click here.

House passes final version of Farm Bill by veto- proof majority; Senate expected to follow suit

The House-Senate conference report version of the Farm Bill passed the House 318-108, "28 votes more than the two-thirds majority required to override a threatened veto of the measure by President Bush," reports Peter Shinn of Brownfield Network. A Senate vote on the measure is expected Thursday. "It's expected to pass the Senate by a veto-proof majority as well," Shinn reports. (Associated Press chart)

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn., noted that the bill included new limits on subsidies and country-of-origin labeling for meat and did not add to the federal deficit. But Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., "noted prices for so-called program crops are historically high," Shinn writes. "That, according to Kind, meant now was the perfect time for a more aggressive shift away from traditional farm programs." (Read more)

The bill "is a farm bill in name only," and "continues to balance subsidy payments to the wealthy on the backs of the middle class taxpayer," Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said in a release. "This bill is loaded with taxpayer-funded pet projects at a time when Americans are struggling to buy groceries and afford gas to get to work." He said the bill "does not target help for the farmers who really need it, and it increases the size and cost of government while jeopardizing the future of legitimate farm programs by damaging the credibility of farm bills in general."

For President Bush's statement on the bill, click here. For a White House "fact sheet," click here. For a Department of Agriculture compilation of editorial criticism of the bill, click here.

Methamphetamine labs are on the rise in Alabama

Methamphetamine use is a cancer within many rural communities nationwide. Federal and state legislation has been implemented in recent years to curb the production of the drug, commonly known as meth, but this has not curtailed its existence.

Mike Cason writes in the Birmingham News that Alabama is facing a resurrection in meth labs. "More meth cooks in the past year have started using a simpler, 'one-pot' cooking method that takes fewer ingredients and can be mostly completed in a two-liter plastic soft drink bottle, authorities say."

The Talladega County Drug Task Force has "found 70 of the 'one-pot' or 'shake and bake' meth labs since October,' compared to 45 meth labs discovered by the task force in all of 2007.

Matt Germanowski, a supervisor in the federal Drug Administration's office in Birmingham told the News that, "the 'one-pot' labs have not emerged as a significant problem in Jefferson, Shelby and Tuscaloosa counties. 'Meth is still a rural drug.'"

Inquiring journalist wants to know: Are high prices leading to shutdown of rural gasoline stations?

With gas prices around $4 a gallon, are some rural stations closing down for one reason or another? That could be a story for you, and for Howard Berkes, rural correspondent for National Public Radio.

Howard, left, asked the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues if we had heard of rural stations "shutting down because their pumps can't handle gas prices as high as they are." We recalled that gas-station signage can be so expensive that the last time a dollar barrier was broken some closed. This may be happening again, or the rising prices may have stiffened competition and reduced demand to the point that some stations are closing. Or there may be other reasons. Or it may not be happening at all. In any event, it sounded like an interesting story to pursue, and we're happy to help Howard and you do that. You can post a comment here or e-mail him.

Farm cost increases outpace those of food prices

Soaring food prices, especially foundational foods such as barley, milk, corn and rice, are invoking concern worldwide. However, farmers are not racing out to plant more of these crops in hopes of cashing in on the higher prices.

Jerry Hirsch writes in The Los Angeles Times that "farmers are planting cheaper-to-grow wheat and soy" because "the cost of planing some crops in rising as fast as their prices, and sometimes faster, leaving little incentive to increase production of some foods that remain in high demand around the world."

According to Wells Fargo & Co., it costs a farmer approximately 47 percent more to farm an acre of corn this year compared to last year, but the price of corn has increased only 35 percent during the same time frame. Chad Hart, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University, told the Times, "'The price of crops drove what farmers did last year,' now 'it's costs, and that's prompting farmers to reevaluate how they allocate their land this year."'

The Times article notes "one problem for all farmers: the rising cost of fertilizer, which has nearly doubled in the last year, according to the Department of Agriculture." This increase in fertilizer costs has yet to be offset by increases in produce prices. Jim Prevor, editor of Produce Business magazine, recently told The Associated Press that "some produce prices are already beginning to creep up due to fertilizer and other costs, but major increases won't be seen until farmers curtail crops that become too expensive to grow." Farmers are affected by an assortment of other increased costs, including shipping expenses, diesel fuel, seed prices, and higher rents, that has resulted in cutbacks and alterations to farming methods or crops planted.

Iowa starts charging fees for reviewing requests for records if lawyers' review takes more than 3 hours

The Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues is generally not an advocacy organization, but we do advocate for the coverage of issues -- and the tools that journalists need to perform that public service. That's why we're against the idea of letting government agencies charge the public and the press for time that their lawyers spend reviewing requests for public records.

The latest proponent of this bad idea is Democratic Gov. Chet Culver of Iowa, whose office started charging such fees after The Des Moines Register made "two unusually large and unconnected requests for public e-mails" in March, Lee Rood of the Register reported last week. "The requests also came after the governor’s office had mulled for more than a year about rare requests for large numbers of public information that take a lot of agencies’ time to compile," Rood writes, quoting Culver General Counsel James Larew as saying that charging fees to retrieve public documents is supported by case law and has prompted requesters to scale back their requests, and the new fees were intended to “discipline” requesters, not restrain them. "The charges can be levied when a request for records is estimated to take more than three hour of lawyers’ time, Larew said."

"The advice runs contrary to past practices of numerous city and state agencies, which sometimes charge citizens or media to retrieve and copy records and e-mails but have not harged for having lawyers review records that are presumed public under law," Rood reports. "At stake is whether the government or its citizens should bear the cost of determining whether a record should be kept confidential. Open records experts say the new charges — which have been estimated at $25 and $35 an hour — are largely untested in Iowa courts and uncommon in other states across the country." Rood's story is reprinted in the latest issue of the Iowa Newspaper Association Bulletin.

Rood reported in a follow-up story that Iowa's Senate majority leader said he didn't like the idea of making access to public records more expensive, and said the legislature would review the policy. But Culver defended the idea at a press conference, and bad ideas like this have a way of spreading, and they are more likely to affect rural news outlets, which often lack the newsroom budgets to pay fees for government lawyers. Our advice: If you see this happening in your state, work with other journalists and news-media organizations to nip it in the bud. But it's also a good idea to avoid overly broad records requests, and to be willing to negotiate with agencies about the extent of requests and the cost of fulfilling them.

Hundreds of immigrants arrested in raid on Iowa meatpacking plant; largest ever at a single site

Around 390 workers were arrested by federal agents Monday at a meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa. The AgriProcessors facility, the country's largest kosher packing plant, was temporally shut down in the raid's aftermath.

Josh Nelson wrote in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier that the raid "now ranks as the largest one ever targeting a single site." The majority of those arrested came from Guatemala and were male. Charges range "from aggravated identity theft to fraudulent use of a Social Security number. The amount of people facing criminal charges could increase as the investigation continues." (Courier photo by Matthew Putney)

Susan Saulny reported in The New York Times, "The raid had been planned for months and was conducted in coordination with local law enforcement." Mark Gray, a professor who focuses on immigration at the University of Northern Iowa, told Saulny, "It's absolutely devastating to the local economy."

The Associated Press reported that immigration rights activists feared such a raid would come. "Several activists gathered Sunday at a Waterloo church and at the home of a local social worker to discuss what they consider to be an impending raid." The activists dicussed strategies for child care and identifying detainees in the event of a raid, and distributed flyers to migrant workers that provided contact information for local immigration attorneys and details of what they should do if confronted by police.

For the Iowa Independent, Doug Burns interviews University of Iowa professor Stephen Bloom, author of Postville, "which examines a cultural calamity in the small, predominantly Lutheran town after Lubavitcher Jews settled there to run the local slaughterhouse, resurrecting the local economy but shaking up life for the rural Iowans who already lived there." Bloom tells Burns the illegal workforce was an open secret. "The only way the meat-packing industry could operate in Iowa was this way, since fewer and fewer Iowans want to work for minimum wage, doing such back-breaking work with such few benefits (if any)," he said. "The question wasn't whether the raids were going to happen. It was when." (Read more)

Ethanol producer says pipeline operators are figuring out how to handle the fuel

A major obstacle to the continued growth of the ethanol industry is the inability to ship the fuel in pipelines, where condensation of water can contaminate the product. Pipeline companies are figuring out how to prevent that, and ethanol will be in pipelines before too long, the CEO of the country's second-largest ethanol producer predicted yesterday.

Don Endres of VeraSun Energy Corp., based in Brookings, S.D., told Doug Cameron of Dow Jones Newswires that the condensation problem can be resolved by alternating shipments of ethanol and unleaded gasoline. Shipping in pipelines, rarher than rail or truck, would improve logistics and reduce costs for the industry.

"Endres predicted the first pipelines -- which are also being developed by Brazilian ethanol producers, who make the fuel using sugar -- would be short, running to local rail lines," Cameron writes. "However, he forecast the development of long-haul pipelines running from the Midwest corn belt to the East Coast and from the eastern edge of the region to southern states." (Read more)

Some lobbying groups support Bush's vow to veto the Farm Bill, but they are badly outnumbered

President Bush should keep his promise to veto the Farm Bill, and Congress should not override him, because its payment limits would still funnel most subsidy dollars to the richest farmers, among other reasons, opponents of the bill said today.

The bill would ban subsidies to anyone with more than $500,000 of annual non-farm adjusted gross income per year and end direct payments to anyone with an AGI of more than $750,000 a year from any source. An amendment by Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, would have imposed a "hard cap," limiting subsidy recipients to $200,000 per year to anyone from all sources. The cap had a majority of votes in the Senate, but failed "because a procedural rule required the amendment to pass by at least 60 votes," writes Peter Shinn of Brownfield Network.

The Nebraska-based Center for Rural Affairs focused on the subsidy limit at a press conference held by foes of the bill. Oxfam America said its objections "are more broad-based, involving not only payment limits, but reducing subsidies generally and increasing cash-based spending on food aid," Shinn reports. "The National Wildlife Federation also came out Tuesday in opposition . . . largely because the measure included only a watered-down version of the so-called sod-saver program aimed at keeping native grasslands out of agricultural production."

But these groups are clearly in the lobbying minority. The National Farmers Union "said 557 groups with widely divergent priorities had come out in support of the pending farm bill," Shinn writes. "NFU President Tom Buis said the diversity of groups backing the new farm bill argued for a strong vote in favor of the measure." (Read more)

Biotech firms race to create crops for new climates

Food security and healthy crops are of utmost importance to farmers and consumers worldwide. The biotechnology industry is trying to develop genes that will enable crops to overcome the effects of climate change.

Rick Weiss of the Washington Post reports, "A handful of the world's largest agricultural biotechnology companies are seeking hundreds of patents on gene-altered crops designed to withstand drought and other environmental stresses, part of a race for dominance in the potentially lucrative market for crops that can handle global warming." The genes will boost crops' abilities to "survive drought, flooding, saltwater incursions, high temperatures and increased ultraviolet radiation -- all of which are predicted to undermine food security in coming decades," Weiss writes.

The Post story was based on an advance look at a report released today by ETC Group, an Canada-based activist group that advocates for subsistence farmers. The report contends that the applications are an intellectual-property grab, but the companies said "Gene-altered plants will be crucial to solving world hunger but will never be developed without patent protections," Weiss reports.

Washington Post reveals racism encountered by Obama campaign workers in Indiana

As Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama by more than 2 to 1 in West Virginia yesterday, The Washington Post published a troubling story detailing instances of prejudice and racism experienced by Obama campaign staffers in other states, Indiana in particular. Kevin Merida wrote, "For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season."

In West Virginia, pre-election reporting found Obama's race was a disqualifier or a disincentive for a significant slice of voters, and so did the exit poll by Edison Mitofsky Research. Twenty-one percent of Democratic voters said the race of a candidate was important to them, and Clinton was the choice of 82 percent of those voters -- 17 percent of the total. Eight percent of the electorate said race was the most important factor for them, and Clinton won 85 percent of those voters, or 7 percent of the total. Among the 77 percent of voters who said race was not important to them, Clinton won 57 percent of the vote. African Americans were only 3 percent of the total electorate, so little that exit-poll results for them were not released.

The controversy over Obama's former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, had an impact. Half the voters said they believe Obama at least somewhat shares the views of Wright, and Clinton won 80 percent of that vote -- or 40 percent of the total Democratic ballots. Just over half of voters said they did not believe Obama shares their values.

Among voters who said candidate gender was important to them, three-fourths voted for Clinton. Those voters were 18 percent of the electorate and were evenly divided between men and women; 61 percent of the men and 85 percent of the women voted for Clinton. Race and gender aside, education continued to be a major predictor of vote. Clinton won 72 percent of white voters without a college degree. "Those voters have rarely for a Democrat in presidential elections," CNN analyst Bill Schneider pointed out. Among voters who have a bachelor's degree, Clinton won 57 percent. Among those with advanced degrees, the candidates were tied. (College graduates were 30 percent of the electorate.)

In Indiana last week, 16 percent of Democratic voters in the exit poll said the race of a candidate was important to them. Two-thirds of those were white, and Clinton won 78 percent of their vote -- or about 8 percent of the total Democratic electorate in the Hoosier State.
The Post story reported that Indiana vandals smashed a large plate glass window, stole an American flag, and defaced other windows with anti-Obama remarks at his campaign office in Vincennes, a town of 18,000, on the eve of the state's May 6 primary. Ray McCormick, a farmer and conservationist who put a massive "Farmers for Obama" billboard along a major highway, took photographs of the damage (including the one above) and wanted to notify the media, but campaign officials told McCormick they did not want to make a big deal of the incident. The Vincennes Sun Commercial ran only a police-blotter item. Later, the office and two others in Indiana received bomb threats, campaign sources told the Post. The paper also detailed racist remarks directed at Obama campaign workers in the Rust Belt city of Kokomo, pop. 46,000.

According to the Secret Service, Obama was placed under its protection earlier than any previous U.S. presidential candidate. The protection was granted partly because of racist postings on white supremacist Web sites. Obama has spoken little about racism during his campaign and has focused on connections among Americans rather than divisions, but the controversy over his former pastor has raised the profile of race. Racism has been called our nation's "original sin," and we do not believe such issues, especially in rural areas, should be ignored by journalists or citizens.

Notice to Kentucky journalists: Learn how to open government at Sunshine Seminars May 29, June 5

Kentucky’s open-meetings and open-records laws are some of the strongest in the nation, but journalists in the state often don’t take full advantage of them, so they miss stories that their readers need and want. To help reporters and editors at all levels improve their skills at using state and federal freedom of information laws, two Sunshine Seminars have been scheduled, May 29 in Lexington and June 5 in Madisonville.

These workshops are sponsored by the Kentucky Press Association and the Scripps Howard First Amendment Center and the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, both in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky.

The panelists will include leading experts: Jon Fleischaker of the Dinsmore & Shohl law firm, author of the state open-meetings and open-records laws; Amye Bensenhaver, the assistant attorney general who usually handles open-records and open-meetings cases; and veteran Courier-Journal Frankfort Bureau Chief Tom Loftus, who mines campaign-finance data for important stories. Presenters will also include journalists from weekly and daily newspapers, who will tell how they used freedom-of-information laws to keep government open and cover closed court proceedings. There will be plenty of time for questions and answers, and discussions of your own experiences.

The workshops will run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. local time, in the Buckner Room of the Herald-Leader and the Country Cupboard Restaurant in Madisonville. Both locations include a continental breakfast at 8:30 a.m., and lunch will be provided. Registration is $20 per person. Registration deadline for the May 29 seminar in Lexington is Friday, May 23. Registration deadline for the June 5 seminar in Madisonville is Friday, May 30.

Click here for the registration form, complete it and return it to KPA by the applicable deadline date. If paying by credit card, fax the registration form to KPA at 502-226-3867. If paying by check, mail the form and a check for $20 per person to: Sunshine Seminars, Kentucky Press Association, 101 Consumer Lane, Frankfort KY 40601.

Rural areas fall farther behind metros in income; most counties where income declined are rural

Personal income in rural America, as a percent of metro personal income, fell for the third straight year from 2005 to 2006, according to the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis. It reports that of the 227 counties that suffered declines in personal income, 194 were rural. An overwhelming majority of counties with declining income from 2005-2006 are classified as rural.

Bill Bishop and Kathleen Miller write in the Daily Yonder, "In the BEA's calculation, personal income is a comprehensive measure of the income of all persons from all sources. It includes wages, salaries, employer-provided health insurance, dividends and interest income, social security benefits, and other types of income, including farm subsidy or disaster payments. Also, in this study, 'rural' counties are defined as those that are 'non metro' counties according to the U.S. Census." That is a somewhat blunt instrument, because there are many rural areas in metro areas; in fact, about half of the rural U.S. population lives in metro areas.

National average personal income increased 6.7 percent from 2005 to 2006, but most rural counties were below national averages for absolute personal income, and increases in it, from '05 to '06. Income increases equal to or higher than the national average were reported in only 18 percent of rural counties (362 out of 2,029). Only 3.4 percent of rural counties (68 out of 2,029) generated average incomes greater than the national average, many of which are resort communities. For the Yonder's report, click here.

Is your county among the well-off or the worse-off? Here are the 50 rural counties with the largest percentage declines in income between 2005 and 2006; the 50 rural counties with the largest percentage increases in income; the 50 rural counties with the lowest personal incomes in 2006; and the 50 rural counties with the highest personal incomes in 2006.

Obama's likely landslide loss in West Virginia signals trouble in the fall with rural, white voters

West Virginia votes Tuesday. With Hillary Clinton leading Barack Obama by 40 percentage points or more in some polls, the outcome is not in doubt. But the expected vote in one of America's whitest, poorest and most rural states points up the problems Democrats fear Obama will have in November with rural whites, especially older ones and those who have not been to college.

Stephen Braun of the Los Angeles Times reports on interviews with Democrats in Moorefield, W.Va.: "Some fear voters will be turned off by Obama's black heritage. Others, they say, will find reason to doubt his patriotism or will perceive him to be an elitist. It remains unclear how racial unease will factor into election-day decisions come November. Those hidden impulses are elusively difficult to capture in polling. But seasoned Democratic players here reckon that some racially tinged voting will inevitably occur far beyond Hardy County's cresting hills."

"There's a lot of bigotry in the country, not just West Virginia," Democrat Clyde See Jr., former speaker of the state House and two-time candidate for governor, told Braun. And Braun found some of it for himself, quoting one suspicious Democrats "Obama just doesn't sound right for an American president" and an Obama supporter on some of her neighbors: "They're convinced he is a Muslim, a terrorist, a guy who's coming to take away their guns. It's just sad." (Read more)

Bill Clinton 'ginning up resentments' by rural voters against elites and Obama, ABC correspondent says

As the Democratic race for president focuses on two of the most rural states, West Virginia and Kentucky, where Hillary Clinton is heavily favored, her husband is "ginning up resentments" against Barack "Obama and his elitist political/media cabal allies," ABC News correspondent Jake Tapper writes on his "Political Punch" blog.

In a blog post headlined "Bill Clinton's Message to Rural America," Tapper writes that Bill Clinton is "using the kind of language Democrats typically use against Republicans -- as in, stuff you say when you don't want voters to vote for the other guy under any circumstance." Drawing on a report from ABC's Sarah Amos, he quotes Clinton in Ripley, W.Va., Friday night:

"Hillary is in this race because of people like you and places like this and no matter what they say. And no matter how much fun they make of your support of her and the fact that working people all over America have stuck with her, she thinks you're as smart as they are. ... They say I have been exiled to rural America, as if that was a problem. I don't know about you, but I'd rather be here than listening to that stuff I have to hear on television."

"His message to these voters: Obama and the media are laughing at you and think you're stupid!!! Obama has a clear problem with white working class voters. This kind of rhetoric exacerbates it," Tapper writes. "Clinton knows that -- he's trying to drive up turnout to maximize his wife's popular vote argument to superdelegates. He has every right to do so -- the race is not over, no nominee exists yet. But this is what keeps Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi up at night." (Read more)

Tapper wrote that Obama is avoiding "any real campaigning in West Virginia." After he posted, the Obama campaign announced it would hold a rally in Charleston, West Virginia's capital and largest city, on Monday, followed by one in Louisville, Kentucky's largest city, Monday night. Obama is expected to be in the Lexington, Ky., area on Tuesday, the day West Virginia votes. Kentucky votes a week later, as does Oregon.

Farm Credit Banks making permanent their experimental loans for community facilities

Lending institutions in the Farm Credit System, the major source of loans for farmers in the U.S., have been experimenting with financing community facilities in agricultural areas. The pilot program would become permanent under a rule proposed yesterday by directors of the Farm Credit Administration.

The idea behind such loans is that "Economic growth in rural areas is seen as crucial to attracting young adults and their families into and back into farming," writes Julie Harker of Brownfield Network. FCA Chairman and CEO Nancy Pellett told Brownfield in an interview that young farm families need "a second job for a spouse ... good schools, good medical services, recreational opportunities, etc. And these are the types of things that we need to bring those young people back to the community." (Read more)

The plan would allow loans for "essential community facilities, basic transportation infrastructure," disaster recovery, rural-development projects sponsored or guaranteed by government, and "venture capital funds that invest in rural businesses that create jobs and economic growth under certain conditions," FCA said in a press release. The agency said it has approved such loans "on a case-by-case basis to initiate pilot programs" since 2005, and 37 lending institutions in the system "have made investments through these pilot programs."

Illegal migrant farm workers depend on spiritual healers, home remedies and self-medication

Migrant farm workers in California's Central Valley "need help because they are in the United States illegally and because they are poor," reports Kevin Sack of The New York Times. "Few have health insurance, but the backbreaking nature of their work, along with the toxicity of American poverty, insure that many are ailing." (Times copy desk: That should be 'ensure.' This is a story about lack of insurance, remember?)

Sack writes that the workers "may visit a clinic or hospital if they are severely ill. But for many illegal immigrants, particularly indigenous Mexican groups like the Mixtecs, much of their health care is provided by a parallel system of spiritual healers, home remedies and self-medication. Stories abound here of people who died — of cancer, diabetes, even gangrene — because they did not make it to an emergency room until it was too late. Public health officials also worry that the lack of access to conventional care may contribute to the spread of communicable diseases. They warn that the rampant use of antibiotics, often without medical direction, may speed the development of resistant bacterial strains." (Read more)

Poverty is about real people, not politics, Youth Radio essayist says on NPR

Machlyn Blair of Blackey in southeastern Kentucky talked with former Sen. John Edwards last fall about what it's like to live in a poor place, during a stop on the "poverty tour" of Edwards' presidential campaign. When he saw himself on television with Edwards, "My perspective began to shift," the 21-year-old said in an essay on National Public Radio today.

"It made me realize that when lots of Americans think about poverty they probably think about all the usual stereotypes. Like hillbillies, junked out cars and kids without shoes — they probably think about here. . . . I always knew that things didn't add up around here, though. I saw people working hard every day and then going home with nothing. When I was 17, I learned the phrase "the working poor'" — I'm not sure that anything else has made me feel as small as those three words did, because then I started to realize that struggling with poverty wasn't a personal thing, that the whole problem was a lot bigger than me or where I live."

Blair said he has been unable to go to college and is considering coal mining, the best-paying job in the area. "The coal industry pays miners decent wages to do dangerous work, but the industry also tears down our mountains and pollutes our water," he said. "I guess that's a part of living in a poor place: feeling like you have to do things that are not the best choices for you or your community. You do it because it seems like the only way you'll survive."

Blair concludes, "The issue of poverty isn't about debates or which political party you're with. There are people here, who are in real need of a new kind of help." To listen to his essay, click here. It was produced by the Appalachian Media Institute and Youth Radio.

Obama says his rural problem is overstated; Clinton backs Farm Bill; N.Y. Post decries 'hillbillies'

Sen. Barack Obama told The Oregonian "that his problems in reaching out to rural and blue-collar workers have been overstated," Jeff Mapes and Harry Esteve report. "He said many of those voters prefer Clinton, but he predicted they would stick with the Democrats in the fall." Obama told the Portland paper, "Where we have been having problems is with voters over 65. ... I am the younger candidate, and they may be putting a higher premium on experience, so we're going to have to do more effective outreach to seniors." (Read more)

Obama, however, did not have anything to say about the Farm Bill, now in final form and awaiting House and Senate votes and a presidential veto. Sen. Hillary Clinton issued a press release saying that she would vote for the bill. "“Saying no to the farm bill would be saying no to rural America," she said.

In a column headlined "Desperate hillbillies threaten to break up party," Charles Hurt of the New York Post writes, "First it was Bill Clinton dismissing Barack Obama as just another black candidate winning South Carolina. Now comes Hillary Rodham Clinton, splashing moonshine onto those smoldering embers by telling West Virginia voters that 'hardworking Americans, white Americans' support her, not Obama." (Read more)

Hurt was writing about Clinton's comments in an interview with USA Today: "I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on. . . . Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me." (Read more)

The comment riled columnist Bob Herbert of The New York Times, who writes that Clinton's real message was "He can’t win! Don’t you understand? He’s black! He’s black! The Clintons have been trying to embed that gruesomely destructive message in the brains of white voters and superdelegates for the longest time." Ben Smith of Politico notes, "The blunt talk on appealing to whites surfaces the day after the last round of primaries in which there's a substantial number of black voters." Herbert writes that the "Southern strategy" of Richard Nixon won't work any more because racial attitudes have moderated: "The idea that most white people — or most working-class white people — are unwilling to give an African-American candidate a fair hearing in a presidential election is a slur against whites." (Read more)

Jennifer Agiesta and Jon Cohen write in The Washington Post about Tuesday's exit polls: "Among white active churchgoers in both states, a majority said Wright was very important to their vote, and in each state about nine in 10 of those for whom the issue was very important voted for Clinton" (Read more)

In West Virginia and Oregon, Clinton started new TV ads that don't mention Obama. "The West Virginia spot focuses on trade deals and special interests, while the Oregon one criticizes the Bush administration’s conduct of the Iraq war," writes John Broder of The New York Times. In Beaverton, Ore., Clinton contrasted her health-care plan with Obama's, but did not mention him by name. Broder writes, "It was nothing Mr. Obama had not heard before and was relatively gentle, at least in comparison with her pointed attacks on the stump and on the airwaves in the most recent primaries, in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Indiana, where she taunted her rival about his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., and Mr. Obama’s remarks about 'bitter' small-town voters." (Read more)

Utah mine disaster was preventable, and manager should face criminal charges, House panel says

The coal-mine disaster that killed nine people in Utah last summer could have been prevented if the general manager or other officials at the Crandall Canyon Mine had shared key information with the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration, a congressional investigation has found.

The report said that the manager should be charged with crimes, that "the mining company should never have submitted a request to remove coal from the section of mine where the collapse occurred, and that federal mining officials should not have approved the proposal, because of foreseeable dangers," Ian Urbina writes for The New York Times.

The report said the Murray Energy Corp. mine failed to tell MSHA about a collapse five months before the Aug. 6 collapse that was similar and killed six miners. Three more died during rescue efforts, which were suspended. MSHA is due to issue its own report next month. (Read more)

Final Farm Bill is unveiled, faces a veto by Bush

UPDATE, 7 p.m: The final version of the Farm Bill "will have to overcome a veto by President Bush to actually make it into law," Peter Shinn of Brownfield Network reported this afternoon from Washington. Congressional negotiators said they might be able to override a veto. The bill bans subsidies "to anyone making more than $500,000 of non-farm adjusted gross income per year and ending direct payments to anyone with an AGI of more than $750,000 a year from any source. The Bush administration had wanted a $200,000 AGI means test for all farm program payments." (Read more) The limit could be $1.5 million for a couple if both were deemed to be farmers. The effort to limit subsidies was blocked by rice and cotton producers, Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., told Brownfield's Bob Meyer. (Read more)

Earlier post, revised: "The House is viewed as less likely to override a veto," writes Philip Brasher, Washington reporter for The Des Moines Register. "The 231-191 vote on the House version of the bill last summer fell well short of the two-thirds majority." Bush said the bill would cost too much and not do enough to limit subsidy payments for the wealthy. "The administration also wanted the bill to liberalize rules for international food aid so that some commodities could be procured closer to where they are needed rather than being shipped from the United States," Brasher reports. (Read more)

Energy Department unveils plan to break up clean- coal project; backers of one big plant play for time

In the face of congressional opposition, the U.S. Department of Energy said yesterday it would move ahead with its plan to split $1.3 billion in clean-coal appropriations among four projects and forsake an industry-backed project in the Illinois Basin coalfield while keeping the project's name, FutureGen.

The department said it "would solicit applications from power plant developers to win a piece of the $1.3 billion the agency has set aside to help finance new coal-fired power plants that use carbon capture and storage technology, or integrated gasification combined cycle technology," writes Cassandra Sweet of Dow Jones Newswires.

Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., is vowing to keep alive the original idea for a plant in Mattoon, Ill. (Encarta map), "and has suggested that he would block Bush administration appointments to the DOE to do so," Sweet reports. Durbin is in harness with the FutureGen Alliance of utility and coal companies, which told Sweet that congressional approval will be needed to reallocate funds earmarked for the Mattoon project. The allies hope to keep the original plan in place until a new president takes office -- perhaps Durbin's Illinois colleague, Barack Obama. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman is scheduled to testify today before the Energy and Water Development Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee. (Read more)

Humane Society videos show downer cattle outside auction markets in Pa., Md., N.M. and Texas

The Humane Society of the United States last week gave Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer video that it took last month at livestock auction markets in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Texas and New Mexico, showing "downer cattle in various states of distress or neglect," reports Tom Steever of Brownfield Network. The group released the videos today.

The Humane Society says on its Web site, "The shocking abuse of 'downer' cows occurs not just at slaughter plants but may be an everyday happening at livestock auctions and stockyards around the country." The organization's undercover video showing abuse of downer cows at a slaughter plant in California in January led to the nation's largest recall of meat, much of it from school lunchrooms. The group asked Schafer to ban all use of downer cows for human consumption and enact regulations requiring "more humane treatment of animals destined for the food supply, at every step from producer to slaughter."

The Livestock Marketing Association said, "We intend to work immediately with the businesses where the improper handling reportedly occurred, as soon as they are specifically identified." It said the HSUS refused to meet with LMA before holding a press conference today, and said "their genuine concern for animal welfare" was in doubt because the videographers "did nothing about the animals in distress."

HSUS President Wayne Pacelle said helping animals "wasn’t part of this particular operation," Steever reports. "None of the on-line video shared with reporters Wednesday showed cattle actually being abused, however in all four cases, the animals were unable to stand or walk." (Read more) For audio of Steever's 30-minute interview with Pacelle, click here.

Kentucky special: Memo to journalists on primary

Last night’s results in North Carolina and Indiana leave Kentucky as the largest state yet to vote in the presidential primaries, with the Democratic nomination still undecided. Our state has never played such a role before, but it’s possible that the closest primary on our May 20 ballot will be for U.S. senator, not president.

Kentucky’s presidential primary already has an anticlimactic air about it. Nationally, more superdelegates remain at stake than regular delegates, and the candidates’ focus is shifting to them. Sen. Barack Obama may trot out some to endorse him today; Sen. Hillary Clinton has already started talking more about full seating of delegates from Florida and Michigan, which currently have none because they held primaries too early.

Clinton’s end-game strategy has called for her to gain the edge in total popular vote by racking up big margins in Kentucky, West Virginia (which votes next Tuesday) and Puerto Rico (which votes June 1). But Obama’s big margin in North Carolina makes that strategy less likely to succeed, and now Clinton supporters are pointing to the other state that votes May 20: Oregon. “She needs to shake something up. . . . She has to win Oregon,” Clinton supporter James Carville, who has some experience in Kentucky, said on CNN this morning.

For the rest of this memo, click here.

Clinton repeats big rural success in Ind.; in rural N.C., where many voters are black, Obama wins

A huge margin among rural voters helped Sen. Hillary Clinton post an early lead in the Indiana presidential primary tonight, but Sen. Barack Obama edged her out among the much larger number of rural voters in North Carolina on the way to a big victory in that state, which has more rural residents than any other. (Photo of Obama in Raleigh by The Associated Press)

In the North Carolina exit poll by Edison Mitofsky Research, 46 percent of voters were defined as rural, and Obama won them, 50 percent to 44 percent. He carried suburbs 53-44 and urban areas 66-32. Among the one-fifth of voters in the Indiana exit poll who live in rural areas, Clinton won 70 percent of the vote. She carried suburbs 54-46 and Obama won urban areas 62-38. But a third of the voters in North Carolina were African Americans, many of them in rural areas, primarily the eastern third of the state, and they favored Obama 91 to 6. The black vote went likewise in Indiana, but was only 15 percent of the total and very little of it was rural. Obama "weeks ago gave up hopes of victory in Indiana, with its mostly white population scattered in small towns and rural areas," writes Jackie Calmes of The Wall Street Journal. (Read more; subscription required)

Race and rurality aside, the big predictors in the Indiana result were age and education. Clinton won voters over 40, Obama those under 40. College education was two sides of the same coin: Degree holders chose Obama 56-44, while the non-graduates favored Clinton by the same margin. Among those who went to college but got no degree, Clinton won 56-43. Divided by whether they had been to college at all, the voters split 50-50. In North Carolina, education made little if any difference, reflecting the larger number of African American voters.

Among the 10 percent of Indiana voters who are white and said race was important in their choice, 79 percent voted for Clinton. Among the 15 percent who said gender of the candidate was important, two-thirds of them women, 62 percent voted for Clinton. Among the 44 percent who defined themselves as moderates, Clinton won 53-46. Among the 23 percent who said they are independents, Obama won 53-47. Among the 11 percent who are Republicans, Clinton won 53-45.

In North Carolina, race was important to 17 percent of voters, about evenly divided between white and black. Those blacks chose Obama by 93 to 6 and the whites chose Clinton by 60-35 -- the same result found among the slightly more than half of whites who said race was not important. Twenty percent of Tar Heel voters said gender was important, and Obama won 53 percent of them, carrying both men and women in that group -- indicating that while they said gender was important, it was not a deciding factor for most. The result may also reflect a resistance among Southern rural voters, black and white, to a woman as commander in chief.

Bill Clinton's talk, voter's reaction, writer's report lay open the raw underbelly of the rural vote

(Photo from Indiana by Scott Olson, Getty Images)
Despite several items about Bill Clinton and rural voters, we couldn't resist one more before the polls close today, after reading Toby Harnden's story for The Telegraph, a British newspaper, from Zebulon, N.C., population 4,329. (It sounds more rural than it is; it's in Wake County with Raleigh, the capital.)

"In a feat of endurance notable even for the most relentless campaigner in American politics, the former president chalked up an astonishing nine events in North Carolina, beginning at 7:30 a.m. and finishing at close to midnight," Harden begins, later quoting Doug Hattaway, who was a spokesman in the White House and now for the campaign: "The rural votes have provided a real margin for her and he’s really turning people out for her by going the extra mile."

Clinton told the crowd in Zebulon, "They have declared Hillary dead more times than a cat’s got lives. But people like you in places like this brought her back in New Hampshire, they brought her back on Super Tuesday." But the quotes that caught our attention came from 74-year-old real estate broker Marion Lipscomb, who just seems to us like a person of influence in Zebulon.

He said of Clinton, “He’s one hell of a guy. He likes women and so do I. He tells the truth about as much as I do.” He said of Barack Obama, “He’s a Muslim. The president of Iran’s a Muslim too and he wants to kill all the Jews. I’m not sure what this one here wants to do but if he’s elected there’ll be turmoil in this country.” (Read more)

We suspect that many American reporters have gleaned such inflammatory quotes but have not used them because they would feel obliged to add that Obama is a practicing Christian, as Mark Barabak of the Los Angeles Times noted after a similar quote today. But we tend to think that no matter where journalists hail from, they should not hide the raw underbelly of public opinion.

Montana woman mourns loss, wants to remind rural residents to use their seat belts

This video, www.youtube.com/banikMDT, tells a very sad story about one night's bad choices causing life time pain and struggle. It is a PSA the Montana Department of Transportation just released and it is very powerful.

Drunk driving is one of the many acts of violence we have to deal with here in Montana. Having a loved one not wear a seat belt, then die, is another. Five years ago this August, I lost someone very close to me on a stretch of Montana Highway 2. He was 15 miles from the ranch coming off of a dirt road onto the highway. It was late and we don't have lights out there. He skipped the highway and did a nose dive into a 5-foot irrigation ditch. He would have walked away without a scratch but wasn't wearing his seat belt and crushed his chest on the center console. He was 27 when he died.

Lack of seat belt use isn't discussed enough out on the prairie. We all just hop in our trucks and speed off down a dirt road or empty stretch of highway. I want there to be an open forum for discussion over the seat-belt use in rural communities. Did you know that in the last five years, 1,063 drivers and passengers died in vehicle crashes on Montana roads? More than 70 percent – 751 people – were not wearing their seat belts. Single vehicle, run-off-the road crashes cause over 60 percent of the fatalities in Montana — most due to ejection from the vehicle, according to MDOT.

The more people who see the video, the better chance that someone's son or daughter will chose to buckle and it will save their life.

Jennifer Lehman, Great Falls, Mont.

College senior in Northern New York challenges rural stereotypes perpetuated by fellow students

"Rural people are one of the last groups in America in which society deems to be fair game for attack," writes St. Lawrence University senior Jon Cardinal, left, in the campus newspaper, The Hill News, mentioning media representations, Barack Obama's "bitter" comment (which Cardinal says "has been misconstrued"), jokes his fellow students tell about "hicks and rednecks", and their "redneck parties, calling for their friends to wear flannel shirts and hunting hats and act as if you’re a Bible thumpin,’ Dale Earnhardt lovin,’ black person hatin,’ gay bashin,’ gun totin,’ trailer park livin,’ dumb slob. Can you imagine the outrage that would emerge if a party was held with a theme that played off of societal stereotypes of black people or Jews or women or Native Americans or other such groups?"

Cardinal continues, "You can call a rural person a dumb, racist, gun crazy, religious zealot without even turning a head. To many in our urban areas and in our wealthier communities this characterization is a no-brainer. But to those people I would advise that after branding a “redneck” an ignorant rube they look in the mirror and realize that they may be acting like ignorant elitists, unwilling or too lazy to look deeper into the complexities of our society. Because the truth is that there are just as many racists in cities and among the wealthy as there are in small towns and among the working-class – racism is a disease that plagues all of our nation. They would find that people use guns in rural areas mostly for sport whereas people use guns in cities to kill other people or to protect themselves out of fear of crime. They would realize that people are deeply religious in cities and towns alike, and that our society as a whole struggles with its acceptance of homosexuality because otherwise, we would have risen up by now and ended the injustice that says our GLBT sisters and brothers aren’t entitled to the same rights that straight people are."

Cardinal then mentions his own rural upbringing in nearby Ogdensburg, N.Y., on the St. Lawrence River, and how impressed he was with Obama's speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention. "What really caught my attention was his ability to unite and to point out what we all share in common," he writes. "I hope that for the purposes of my argument here we can always remember to embrace our differences, whether they be racial, economic, gender, cultural and yes, rural versus urban, knowing that we can learn a lot from each other while at the same time recognizing all that we share in common." For the entire 1,675-word article, click here.

May 13 conference to focus on needs of rural vets

With the war in Iraq in its sixth year and a new generation of veterans needing care, Geisinger Health System of Danville, Pa., will host a conference May 13 with military and civilian experts to increase understanding and meet the unique challenges faced by rural soldiers. The goal of the conference, "Combat Stress Injuries/Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Implications for Rural Veterans and Their Families," is to encourage regional health care workers to work together to triage vulnerable rural soldiers to the Department of Veterans Affairs and other agencies. (Encarta map)

Today, rural soldiers returning from a deployment — and eager to get home — often find themselves miles away from the closest government facility. As a result, many postpone needed behavioral care. The conference will focus on making sure rural soldiers receive timely care from the appropriate source. Attendees will include doctors, nurses, social workers, mental health counselors and veterans. Florida State University Traumatology Institute Director Charles Figley, Ph.D., will be the keynote speaker. Retired U.S. Army officer and former Wilkes-Barre television news anchor Keith Martin will be the moderator.

Geisinger Health System says it is one of the nation’s largest integrated health services organizations and serves more than 2 million residents of central and northeastern Pennsylvania.

As fast-food outlets open and supermarkets close, obesity and diabetes increase in rural America

Small towns all over rural America have been gaining fast-food restaurants and losing supermarkets for many years. That is probably contributing to obesity and diabetes in rural areas, suggests a study by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the California Center for Public Health Advocacy.

The study examined the correlation between the health of nearly 40,000 Californians and the mix of retail food outlets near their homes. For rural areas, "near" was within five miles. The study "shows clearly that you are at a higher risk for obesity and diabetes if fast food and convenience stores dramatically outnumber grocery stores and produce markets in your neighborhood," says a press release from PolicyLink, a social-justice organization.

For a PDF of the study report, click here.

McCain, in Iowa, says he would veto new Farm Bill

Arizona Sen. John McCain, a longtime foe of farm subsidies, isn't changing his tune now that he is the presumptive Republican nominee for president. Last week in Iowa, a state that benefits greatly from subsides in the federal Farm Bill, he said he would veto the new bill awaiting passage in Congress.

“I do not support it,” McCain said. “I would veto it. I would do that because I believe that these subsidies, the subsidies are unnecessary.” In an interview with The Des Moines Register, he added, “At this time, to have an increase in agricultural subsidies when farmers are having higher incomes than at any time in memory, I just think it’s legislation that’s not in keeping with the economic hard times of America where people are losing their homes and their jobs.”

Reporter Thomas Beaumont wrote that McCain said "He was willing to risk the political backlash in heavily agricultural states such as Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, which also have been among the most competitive electoral battlegrounds in the previous two presidential campaigns. But he said he hoped voters in farm states would appreciate his plan to expand markets for U.S. agricultural products abroad." (Read more) Hat tip to Barbara Leach of My Rural America for alerting us to Beaumont's story.

Clinton mailer attacks Obama's stances on guns

A last-minute mailing by Hillary Clinton, aimed at rural voters and gun owners in Indiana (and perhaps North Carolina), pushes the truth envelope in attacking Barack Obama for his changing positions on Second Amendment issues, writes Greg Sargent on Talking Points Memo (from which the image was taken).

The mailer says Obama told a Chicago group that he favored a ban on handguns, said in Idaho that he supports the right to keep and bear arms in order to get votes, and "accused people in rural places and small towns of being 'bitter' people who 'cling to guns'."

The latter quotation was selective and "omitted all of Obama's references to people's economic circumstances, leaving the misleading impression that all Obama did was 'accuse' rural and small-town Americans of those things, Sargent writes. Also, "The mailer says Obama made the small town comments 'this month,' as opposed to last, meaning it could have been drafted in late April, which of course ended only a few days ago." But it may leave the impression that he repeated the controversial comments he made to donors in the San Francisco in early April, as reported here and analyzed here.

High fuel costs squeeze rural emergency services

High fuel costs are squeezing rural fire and ambulance services, "and most small town and rural fire chiefs don't see an end to the high costs in sight," Dustin Tracy reports in the Northwest Arkansas Times. (Read more)

While state and local laws and policies vary widely, this seems like a story that could be done almost anywhere. How are your rural communities coping with $4-a-gallon diesel fuel and $3.59-a-gallon gasoline?

A new kind of high-tech 'farm' blooms in rural areas

Cheap electricity, particularly that generated by dams, has brought massive "server farms" of Internet-based businesses to some rural areas, with the promise of economic dividends, but skeptics say expectations are too high, Hugo Kugiya reports for the Los Angeles Times from Quincy, Wash., pop. 6,000, just across the Cascade Mountains from the Internet hot spot of Seattle, where Microsoft, Intuit and Yahoo have built a server hub.

"Rural America -- particularly the inland Northwest, where wind- and water-generated electricity is some of the cheapest in the nation -- is suddenly coveted by technology companies. They construct sprawling buildings with massive computer servers, the hidden muscle and bone that process the seemingly weightless, rapidly growing data of people's everyday lives," Kugiya writes. "For a town like Quincy, built on potatoes and apples, the arrival of high tech has proved an inspirational and a cautionary tale."

The town spent millions to buy land and install infrastructure, and "arrival of Microsoft and Yahoo triggered a wave of local real estate development last year," but many homes went unsold and prices have been slashed, Kugiya writes. But Aleeta Merred, executive director of the Quincy Valley Chamber of Commerce, told him,"It's like we're still waiting for something. So far, we're not really seeing the growth we expected."

Some basic facts: "Data centers employ dozens, not hundreds. Some are technicians and engineers, but most are electricians, plumbers, heating and cooling specialists: skilled tradespeople, but not the makings of another Silicon Valley," Kugiya writes. "The hope is that every job at the data center will support two or three other jobs in town -- a subcontractor or a short-order cook, a teacher or a landscaper." (Read more)
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