Bush vetoes Farm Bill; quick override expected

President Bush vetoed the Farm Bill today, saying "At a time of high food prices and record farm income, this bill lacks program reform and fiscal discipline." He said it uses "budget gimmicks" to hide spending increases" and "continues subsidies for the wealthy." His statement continued, "The American taxpayer should not be forced to subsidize that group of farmers who have adjusted gross incomes of up to $1.5 million."

Bush also criticized creation of a new program that could cost billions if commodity prices drop, several specific spending earmarks in the bill, and the extension of prevailing-wage rules, which he said have no place in the bill. He also cited unspecified "constitutional concerns." But the House and Senate, which passed the bill by veto-proof margins, are expected to override the veto quickly because current farm programs expire Friday.

UPDATE: The House discovered that it failed to send the full bill to Bush, invalidating his veto, so an emergency measure may be needed to extend farm programs again. But the ultimate outcome, passage of the bill into law, does not appear to be in doubt. For details from Peter Shinn of Brownfield Network, click here.

Memphis-area initiative aims to develop crops as feedstocks for industrial products

The Memphis Bioworks Foundation is promoting a "future in which farmers throughout the Mid-South [will] ship crops to Memphis, where chemical companies convert them into everything from paint to plastic bottles," writes Daniel Connolly in The Commercial Appeal.

"The nonprofit, which focuses on building up science-based businesses and creating highly paid jobs, is planning a big push into industrializing agriculture. They're calling the initiative AgBio. 'The long-term trend says that a bio-based economy is going to develop,' said Bioworks leader Steve Bares. 'That opportunity for job growth is something we want to be positioned for.' Bares and associates emphasize that the effort goes beyond bio-based fuels. The foundation envisions farmers growing special crops for industrial purposes and using non-edible 'biomass,' including leftovers like corn stalks, to make products such as lubricants, fibers and coatings."

"Bio-based products are a dramatically growing part of our domestic and the global economy," Bruce Scherr, head of Informa Economics, a Memphis-based agriculture consulting firm that focuses on agriculture, food and energy, told Connolly. Some time may pass before bio-based fuels take hold in the United States, he said: "The science for creating fuel out of cellulose remains crude, he said. But there's lots of potential to create lubricants, fibers and other products from biological sources."

A strategic plan for building up the agricultural industry in the Memphis area "should by ready by early 2009, and while it's being developed, the group plans to draw farmers throughout the area into the planning process," Connolly writes. Bares told him, "The message to farmers is this is clearly an opportunity for farmers to make money and to leverage the assets they have in hand."

Ag Department to eliminate exception, tightening ban on 'downer' cattle at slaughterhouses

Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said yesterday that his agency will enact a regulation to ban from slaughterhouses "downer" cattle, those that cannot stand on their own. The move comes after the largest beef recall in history, prompted by activists' video "that showed California meat plant workers using forklifts and electric prods on animals unable to stand," writes Christopher Lee of The Washington Post.

"Under current regulations, cows that cannot stand or walk on their own are supposed to be kept out of the food supply, in part because they may be infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease," Lee writes. "An exception allows a government veterinarian to approve for slaughter an animal that passed initial inspection but went down before reaching the "knock box," if a second inspection determines the animal is not sick but is suffering from an acute injury such as a broken leg. The USDA plans to propose a rule that would end the exception." (Read more)

Farm Bill contains new program that USDA says could cost $10 billion a year if prices fall

A new program added to the Farm Bill in final negotiations could cost billions if commodity prices decline from currently high levels, the Department of Agriculture warned this week. "They have taken a good idea and gone to an extreme," Deputy Agriculture Secretary Chuck Conner said. President Bush has said he will veto the bill, but it passed by veto-proof margins.

The new program, Average Crop Revenue Election, "received almost no attention during floor debate last week," Dan Morgan writes for The Washington Post. "The voluntary program guarantees farmers a subsidy if they suffer losses because of low prices or poor crops. Since the amount of the subsidy for 2009 is tied to recent record prices, farmers could reap a windfall if prices drop suddenly." Supporters of the program said USDA's $10 billion annual estimate was a worst-case scenario that was highly unlikely. (Read more)

Airlines end service to some smaller communities

Some smaller communities are losing scheduled air service because of the rising cost of jet fuel and the decline in number of passengers, prompting some in Congress to push for more money for the 30-year-old Essential Air Service Program, which was created to ensure that communities in rural and remote areas would be linked to the nation’s air system even as the industry was being largely deregulated.

"The government provides subsidies of about $100 million a year to the airlines, resulting in service to 102 communities," Micheline Maynard writes in The New York Times. "But the subsidies have not risen fast enough to cover the jump in jet fuel costs, and passengers have resisted paying higher prices for plane tickets, prompting carriers to pull out of a number of cities," including Bluefield, W.Va., Lancaster, Pa., Boulder City, Nev., and three cities each in Arizona and Washington. Here's the list. "The service cuts are far from over, as jet fuel prices rise, airlines shut down and companies consider mergers." (Read more)

Clinton posts Ky. landslide on race, religion, rurality, economy; should she reject racist votes?

Race, religion and rurality were the keys to Hillary Clinton's 35-point victory in Kentucky's presidential primary today, according to the exit poll taken for national news organizations. (There were no exit polls in Oregon, which Barack Obama won, because that state's election was held entirely by mail.) The results, similar to those last week in West Virginia, prompted some pundits to say Clinton should announce that she doesn't want racially motivated votes. (Photo by Michael Hayman, The Courier-Journal)

Among Kentucky Democrats, 21 percent said the race of the candidates was important to their vote, and 81 percent of those voted for Clinton. Among whites, it was 86 percent. (Asked about gender, 16 percent said it was important, and 79 percent of those voted for Clinton. Most were women.) The results of the exit poll were very similar to the poll taken in West Virginia a week ago.

Race is a tricky subject for pollsters, because many people won't speak honestly about it to strangers. Sometimes related questions reveal more, and that seemed to be the case when Kentucky Democrats were asked about Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright; 54 percent said Obama at least somewhat shares Wright's controversial views, and 84 percent of those voters went for Clinton. She did even better, 91 percent, among those who said the two men share "a lot" of views.

The views of a pastor are more important if voters go to church a lot. In Kentucky, 45 percent of Democratic voters said they attend church at least weekly, and it's reasonable to conclude that many of them can't understand how he could attend a church for 20 years and not somewhat share the views of its pastor. More than half of the voters said Obama does not share their values, and 89 percent of those who said he doesn't voted for Clinton.

Among voters who live in rural areas, Clinton won 77-17; small towns went for her by 69-24, and she carried suburbs 57-39. Obama won cities 56-38. The rural vote in Kentucky's Democratic primary was 45 percent of the total, mirroring the state's share of rural population, one of the nation's highest. Small towns were 13 percent and suburbs 29 percent. In several rural counties, Clinton won more than 90 percent of the vote. For county-by-county results from Edison Mitofsky Research, click here. CNN analyst and superdelegate Donna Brazile said there were other reasons for Clinton's landslide, such as the fact her husband carried Kentucky twice and campaigned hard for her. Education was also a factor, a key in Obama's win in Oregon, according to a telephone poll conducted there.

CNN analyst David Gergen, who was an aide to Bill Clinton and Republican presidents, said Hillary Clinton should talk to voters directly about the race and Wright issues. He said the Kentucky exit poll "raises the question of whether she should say, 'If you're going to vote against him because he's black, I don't want your vote.' I see no reason why she shouldn't take the high road in the closing days of this campaign." Fellow analyst and former Bill Clinton aide Paul Begala said Wright and Obama's character would be better subjects for Clinton, because it is hard to talk directly about race, especially if the speaker is white. In any event, Begala said, it is more important for Obama to talk about economic issues and transcend race. Another analyst, Jeffrey Toobin, said some pointed Clinton comments about race would bring her long-term political benefit. "She might as well say it," Toobin said, "because it would make a difference."

Don't forget the economy as a factor, NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd reminds us: "Obama doesn’t have a problem with white working-class voters; he has a problem with white-working class voters in Appalachian states. In Kentucky, just one in five of these folks backed him, but in Oregon nearly half of them did. ... One other thing to keep in mind regarding Clinton's success in Kentucky and West Virginia, and it has to do with the Clinton brand and the economy. These folks in Appalachia have been hit harder by this economy than folks in other parts of the country. And the last time things were looking up was when a Clinton was in the White House. So while there are a lot of folks wanting to think the worst of some of these voters, let's keep in mind: Appalachia and the Rust Belt, more than any other region of the country, are more likely to vote their pocketbook when the economy is in the toilet." (Read more)

Dana Milbank of The Washington Post quotes Bill Clinton going after the media elites: "Every time you turn on the television and listen to one of the people dissing her, they all have a college degree, they've all got a good job, they've all got health care and they're having no trouble filling up their gas tank." Milbank says the Clintons were offering rhetorical Kool-Aid. As usual, he writes a good read.

Kentuckians say upbringing, education and peer pressure help stir racial reactions to Obama

It's Kentucky's turn in the box today. Not just the ballot box, but the hotbox of media attention, particularly as an example of another state where some Democrats won't consider voting for Barack Obama because of his race. Rex W. Huppke of the Chicago Tribune reports from Munfordville (Encarta map), a county-seat town of 1,600 on the Green River in the rural heart of the state:

Whether in the Dairy Queen or the dollar store or along the sidewalks of a courthouse square ringed with shuttered businesses, people speak freely of their dislike for the lanky senator from Illinois. . . . Anyone thinking a black politician could come onto the national stage and simply win these Kentuckians over is being naive, residents say. And it's not, as some outsiders might believe, because the town's voters are ignorant.

"To attribute it solely to ignorance would be totally inaccurate," said Melody Chaney, a financial adviser in Munfordville and a Clinton supporter. "It's a matter of education, their upbringing and their background, peer pressure. There are lots of factors that contribute to this."

Perhaps out of sympathy, Huppke quoted the more dispassionate observers early and put most of the prejudiced people near the end of his story -- after a couple of African Americans. At the 2000 census, blacks were 11.5 percent of Munfordville and 6.2 percent of Hart County.

Bill Clinton's rural barnstorming offers opportunities for a wide range of news coverage

When presidential campaigns come to rural America, they generate the widest possible range of news coverage, from the local weekly newspaper to international networks. It's a chance for rural journalists to blend solid local color with big issues, and an opportunity for regional dailies to try new approaches. Both efforts were on display in Kentucky today, after former President Bill Clinton's visit yesterday to Mount Sterling, Ky., population 5,900.

Mike Wynn of The Winchester Sun, a 7,000-circulation daily published in an adjoining county, had a solid lead: "During a rare campaign stop in Mount Sterling Monday, former President Bill Clinton called on voters to ignore naysayers and shore up support for his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, as Kentucky heads into a historic Democratic primary today. The rally was part of a last-minute swing through the Bluegrass region as the Clinton camp seeks to secure a majority in the national popular vote despite Sen. Barack Obama’s continual gains in the delegate count."

Wynn's story laid out the issues for local voters. Katheran Wasson took the photo above and also wrote a story about Michelle Obama campaigning in nearby Lexington. The local metropolitan daily, the Lexington Herald-Leader, wrapped up the Kentucky barnstorming by Obama and the Clintons and advanced today's election in a story by Ryan Alessi. But it also featured on its front page, and for awhile led its Web site, with a first-person account from Kenn Johnson, a writer and retired English teacher whose wife was recruited to help the campaign find a place for the former president to speak.

"After an hour or so with no luck finding a suitable site, my wife mentioned that our house might meet the qualifications: a front porch, a level lawn and understanding neighbors. They wanted something decidedly New Deal middle class. No tax-breaks-for-the-rich mansion," wrote Johnson, left. "My wife was beside herself with joy. Bill Clinton's visit would be the best thing to happen to her since she tossed her underwear at a Tom Jones concert."

(Johnson's "New Deal" reference struck a chord with those of us who have been to the Franklin D. Roosevelt home and library in Hyde Park, N.Y., and seen the photograph of FDR campaigning in Mount Sterling in 1920, when he was the Democratic nominee for vice president.)

"Much to my wife's embarrassment, the Secret Service insisted that the former president enter through our basement, the one part of the house she allows me to use without much interference," Johnson wrote. "He complimented me on my bathroom downstairs and mentioned he liked the poster of Hemingway hung behind the toilet. My wife groaned, but I was proud that my toilet had served such an historic purpose. ... I am going to get a little rope like you see in museums and drape it in front of my bathroom door. Instead of 'George Washington Slept Here,' the sign will say, 'Bill Clinton Used This Toilet.'" (Read more)

The weekly Mount Sterling Advocate covered Clinton, but does not plan to post its story until Friday, the day after its print edition is published. That is normal practice for the paper's Web site. However, it did post results from the primary election.

One-third of beekeepers experience losses from colony collapse disorder, still a mystery

Surveys of beekeepers indicate that more than 36 percent of their honeybee colonies were lost during the past winter, according to Science Daily. More than one-third of these losses can be attributed to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a mysterious plague that threatens the pollination needed for many crops.

The survey, which was conducted by the U.S. Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and the Apirary Inspectors of America (AIA), investigated approximately 19 percent of the nation's 2.44 million colonies. The Department of Agriculture reports that CCD "currently does not have a recognizable underlying cause" and its primary symptom "is simply no or a low number of adult honey bees present but with a live queen and no dead honey bees in the hive. Often there is still honey in the hive, and immature bees (brood) are present. ARS scientists and others are in the process of carrying out research to discover the cause(s) of CCD and develop ways for beekeepers to respond to the problem." (Photo by David Cappaery, Michigan State University)

Science Daily reports that honeybees "add about $15 billion a year to the value of U.S. crops by pollinating fruit, vegetable, tree nut and berry crops. Some beekeepers have already lost one-half to two-thirds of their colonies to CCD." Is this disorder causing problems for farmers in your community? Check with your local extension office.

Deadly syndrome spreading among bats in Northeast; could affect agriculture

Thousands of bats in the northeastern U.S. have perished since Fberuary from a mysterious disease known as white-nose syndrome. The deaths could have negative impacts, especially on agriculture. (Map by Cal Butchkoski, Pennsylvania Game Commission)
The syndrome was first observed in caves near Albany, N.Y., by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation in February 2007. A white substance was present on the heads and wings of dead and hibernating bats. Now that spring is here and people are more active outdoors, the U.S. Geological Survey issued a Wildlife Health Bulletin urging wildlife and conservation officials throughout the U.S. to be on the lookout for the syndrome and to report suspected cases of the disease.

"Bats are an important part of our ecosystem," says the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "One bat eats as many as 3,000 flying insects a night during the summer months. Because females produce just one pup a year, the plunging number of bats — apparently as many as 90 percent loss in some hibernacula — translates into a crisis in bat populations in four states with no end in sight and potentially far-reaching effects, an ecological disaster in the making."

"The most common findings in the bats have been emaciation and poor body condition," reports Science Daily. "Many of the bats examined had little or no body fat; some exhibited changes in the lung that have been difficult to characterize; and a majority had microscopic fungi on their bodies. The white substance (as illustrated in the photograph by Alan Hicks) observed on some bats may represent an overgrowth of normal fungal colonizers of bat skin during hibernation and could be an indicator of overall poor health, rather than a primary pathogen. Scientists from a variety of agencies are investigating underlying environmental factors, potential secondary microbial pathogens and toxicants as possible causes."

Scott Darling, a bat biologist for the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, told WCAX News, "When you do the math and make the calculations of some 500,000 bats being affected by white nose syndrome, that adds up to literally 2 billion insects per night that won't be eaten by those bats."

Darling estimates that, based on preliminary findings, the syndrome has an expected fatality rate of 90 percent and has affected approximately 600,000 bats in the region. "At this point, I consider all of Vermont affected," he said. "We have upwards of 25 confirmed sites in New York, Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut, and we have suspected it in some sites in Pennsylvania." Large-scale wildlife deaths should be reported to the USGS here.

Ponzi pigeons? Washington state thinks so

The state of Washington has issued a cease-and-desist order to Pigeon King International, which officials in at least one state suspect is a Ponzi scheme, reports Farm and Dairy, based in Salem, Ohio.

Andrea Zippay writes, "Investigation showed pigeon breeder Arlan Galbraith and his company violated the state's Business Opportunity Fraud Act and were not registered with the state to offer business opportunities there." Galbraith dismissed the state's action. The order "doesn't mean anything, really. It sounds important, but it's not," he told Zippay. He said the action resulted from "lots of troublemakers out there who are complaining." The state fined Galbraith $1,000, which prompted him to say he is not interested in doing business in Washington or any state where he and his company are not welcome.

Pigeon King International tags itself the world's second largest pigeon breeder and "invites investors and buyers to invest as much as $50,000 to $100,000 or more to buy hundreds of pigeon breeding pairs. Galbraith, in turn, contracts with the growers to buy back the offspring. he's told them the pigeons will be sold to new investors, and on the marketplace for meat or as pets." (Photo by Mike Segar, Reuters)

Farm and Dairy reported that the Iowa attorney general completed an investigation of the company in March and expressed concern that Pigeon King was a Ponzi scheme, defined "as an investment fraud in which early investors are paid with money obtained from later ones in order to create the illusion of profitability."

Galbraith said Pigeon King owns more than 2,900 pairs of breeding pigeons in Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, and conducts business in several U.S. states and Canadian provinces. The company's Web site was under construction at the time of this post.

McCain leads Obama by 9 points in rural areas of states that are expected to be battlegrounds

Republican John McCain leads Democrat Barack Obama by 50 percent to 41 percent in a poll of rural voters in 13 states that are expected to be battlegrounds in the fall election for president. Hillary Clinton, whose Democratic campaign is nearing an end, tied with McCain at 46 percent in the bipartisan poll conducted for the Center for Rural Strategies. "Obama fares considerably worse in the eastern portion of the Midwest and the South, while performing better in the West and Northeast," the pollsters said. (Associated Press photo from January 2007)

"The poll indicates that [McCain] cannot count on rural voters to provide him a winning margin," as they did for President Bush in 2000 and 2004, rural correspondent Howard Berkes reported on National Public Radio. Republican pollster Bill Greener told Berkes that McCain needs to widen his rural margin to win the election, and Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg was more specific: "If John McCain can't win rural voters by the same kind of margin that George Bush did, it's hard for me to see how he wins the election." Bush won rural counties by 16 percentage points in 2000 election and by 19 points in 2004. For an audio version of Berkes's report, including interviews with voters, click here.

Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta, told NPR that the poll was good news for Obama "because he's only losing rural voters by nine points. ... He's pretty well-positioned to do very well in these swing states." Obama has had difficulty attracting rural voters in some states, particularly in Appalachia and the Rust Belt, but Abramowitz said he has an opening on economic issues. More than half of the voters in the poll, 54 percent, agreed with this statement: "John McCain served his country honorably, but he does not seem to understand my economic problems." But 52 percent agreed with this statement: "Barack Obama says he wants to represent all of America, but he does not share my values."

The pollsters said in a detailed memorandum, "Concerns about the cost of living are intense, particularly gas prices in a part of the country where many must drive long distances to work. Moreover, we see real ambivalence about all of the three presidential choices -- each candidate has a genuine opportunity to define the race on his or her own terms. All told, we can expect a real fight for the heartland, because McCain needs a larger margin than he currently enjoys among rural voters to win nationally and Obama needs to find a way to bring Democratic defectors back into the fold."

Berkes said Clinton's strong standing with rural voters was "a stunning upgrade for Clinton, who rated as unpopular as 'illegal aliens' in a similar rural survey done just last year. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have worked hard since then to win over rural voters." Bill Clinton has campaigned heavily in rural areas and called himself the campaign's "designated rural hit man."

The survey has an error margin of plus or minus 3.75 percentage points. It was taken May 13-15 among 682 likely voters outside metropolitan areas in Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Virginia and Florida. Most of the states are more rural than the national share of 21 percent; in the 2000 census, the rural share was 8.5 percent in Nevada, 11 percent in Florida and 15.5 percent in Colorado. For a longer summary of the results, from the Daily Yonder, click here. For the full poll results, click here.

Bush plan for aid to relieve world food crisis includes promotion of genetically modified crops

The Bush administration's plan to relieve the world food crisis includes "language that would promote the use of genetically modified crops in food-deprived countries," an idea that is "intensely disputed," Stephen Hedges of the Chicago Tribune reported this week. "Opponents of GMO crops say they can cause unforeseen medical problems. They also contend that the administration's plan is aimed at helping American agribusinesses."

Mark Rosegrant of the International Food Policy Research Institute endorsed the idea, saying because genetically modified crops are "showing quite a bit of potential in starting to address some of the long-term stresses, drought and heat." But Noah Zerbe, an assistant professor of government and politics at California's Humboldt State University, said many such crops require "fertilizer and water at the right times, and herbicides to go along with that," and "most African farmers . . . can't afford these inputs."

When the U.S. tried to introduce genetically modified crops to Africa in 2002, several African nations refused, partly because of opposition from the European Union. "In a severe drought, Zambia rejected the U.S. aid altogether," Hedges reported. "Several other countries accepted the U.S. corn, but only after it was milled." (Read more)

Obama's Appalachia problem stems from gender, class and economic concerns, not its heritage

Appalachian scholar Ron Eller, left, takes issue with journalist Jonathan Tilove's analysis, published here, that Barack Obama's problem with rural voters is fundamentally an Appalachian problem, stemming from the rural region's traditional culture.

"Such characterizations of Appalachia not only obscure the historical diversity of the region and project a static view of human culture but also ignore most of the recent scholarship on Appalachia that contradicts the idea of Appalachian 'otherness' and attributes its history and economic problems to political struggles that have shaped the rest of the nation," Eller, a history professor at the University of Kentucky, writes in the Daily Yonder. "Appalachian voting patterns are much more a reflection of fundamental class, racial, and gender differences in America than they are of any ethnic heritage within the region."

Eller acknowledges the role of race and education in Obama's poor performance in Appalachia, but says prejudice in the region "is often a reflection of more deeply seated insecurities that are rooted in gender and class. For blue collar voters in Appalachia, economic concerns, not Appalachian identity, shaped their decisions at the polls. Job insecurity, rising food and gas prices, and uncertain access to health care and education turned Appalachian voters toward the more working class message of Hillary Clinton, especially among women who occupy the center of the modern mountain economy."

Eller concludes, "Obama has yet to learn this basic truth about Appalachia. The cultural conservatism that has often fueled a misunderstanding of the region’s history and problems is grounded in economic conditions, hopes, and values that reflect those of the larger society. Appalachia is only the “other America” if we want to ignore the contradictions and challenges of our time. We do so at our own peril." (Read more)

Eller is author of Miners, Millhands and Mountaineers: The Industrialization of the Appalachian South, and the forthcoming Uneven Ground, a book about the development of Appalachia since World War II. He is a founding member of the advisory board of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues.

The maps below appeared in The New York Times today with a column by Charles M. Blow analyzing Appalachia's vote in the primaries and Obama's prospects there for the general election.

Obama's Ky. campaign focuses on his religion

The Constitution says there shall be no religious test for "any office or public trust under the United States," but Barack Obama is conducting what The Revealer calls "a blatant Christian campaign" in an effort to avoid in Kentucky's Tuesday primary an embarrassment like the one he suffered last week in West Virginia, one of the few states more rural than Kentucky.

"In addition to radio and television ads that began airing this week, a handbill [right] is being distributed that deals entirely with the Democratic presidential candidate's religion -- even relating his salvation experience," reported Joseph Gerth of The Courier-Journal. In radio ads, Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo and U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler say Obama is a Christian, and a narrator in a TV ad says "Through his service as a community organizer and his Christian faith, he came to believe in something larger than himself."

The handbill, like one distributed in other Southern states, "calls Obama a 'Committed Christian' and has a picture of him standing in a pulpit with a large cross behind him," Gerth wrote. "A survey released this year by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 85 percent of Kentuckians identified themselves as Christians. And in a 2007 Courier-Journal Bluegrass Poll, 49.8 percent of those surveyed identified themselves as evangelical or born-again Christians." (Read more)

"One aim of the flier is to counteract the persistent and false belief held by some voters that Obama is Muslim," wrote Shailagh Murray of The Washington Post, who called the flier "startling." For the general election, the piece "also signals Obama's determination to compete for evangelical voters, who may not be as enthralled with John McCain as they have been with past Republican presidential nominees." (Read more)

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.