Professor urges college grads to consider living in rural area

"The conventional wisdom among young college-educated people seems to be that living in a small country town would be a dead end for them — that rural America is a homogeneously conservative, isolated and unpleasant place. But these preconceptions are not only incorrect, they are also unduly limiting the opportunities of new college graduates," Samual Abrams writes for The New York Times. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College.

Now more than ever, young adults prefer to live in cities, partly because they want access to mass transit and amenities like retail shopping, entertainment and recreation opportunities. That includes people who were born in small towns but chose not to return after college, fearing that they could not be successful in their careers if they moved back home.

Rural America doesn't live up to the stereotypes, Abrams writes, citing data from a nationwide survey on community and society: "The data show that rural areas are not ideologically monolithic; that college-educated Americans living in rural areas feel they are meaningfully connected to their communities; that these people are quite satisfied with their communities and the available professional opportunities, and are not looking to move away."

There are tradeoffs to living in rural areas, just as there are with living in urban areas, "but rural America is not 'flyover' country; it is a dynamic part of our nation, even — and perhaps especially — for the highly educated," Abrams writes. "Understanding this reality could improve the lives of many college-educated people. At the very least, it should help rid them of some common anti-rural prejudices."

Gazette-Mail's owner is in gas industry but praises reporter's work on it; says he seeks balance of readers' wants, needs

Reporter Ken Ward Jr.

When reporter Ken Ward Jr. drove five hours from Charleston, W.Va., to Richmond, Va., to hear oral arguments in former coal operator Don Blankenship's appeal of his conviction for violating health and safety standards at a coal mine that blew up, he met relatives of some of the 29 dead miners. He recalls, "One of them saw me and said, 'We knew the Gazette would be here.'"

Ward's voice cracked as he told that story to Brent Cunningham, executive editor of the Food & Environment Reporting Network, for a long story in Pacific Standard about the Charleston Gazette-Mail, the merger of the business-friendly Charleston Daily Mail, for which Cunningham reported, and the Charleston Gazette, whose unofficial motto was "sustained outrage," as defined by late publisher Ned Chilton. The story's protagonists are Ward, and Doug Reynolds, the Huntington lawyer who bought the paper in bankruptcy last year. Asked to describe his journalism philosophy, Reynolds said, "You've got to kind of balance what people want to hear with what they need to hear."

Paper owner Doug Reynolds
(Beckley Register-Herald photo)

"It wasn't 'sustained outrage,' but it wasn't the rapacious indifference of the vulture capitalists either," Cunningham writes. "Finding that balance, never easy, will be even harder in a newspaper business that continues to struggle. It will be harder still given that Reynolds is entangled in what could be the biggest economic shift in the state since industrialization: the pursuit of shale gas. . . . He is president and chief executive officer of Energy Services of America, which makes natural-gas pipelines. Brian Jarvis, another principal in the group that bought the Gazette-Mail, also is a two-way player. He is president of NCWV Media, which owns newspapers in the north-central part of the state, and also of Hydrocarbon Well Services, an oil and gas service operation."

Recently, Reynolds started Daily Mail WV, "which offers a mix of business-focused opinion pieces and features that is singularly bullish on the future of West Virginia," one of the nation's most rural states. He says he's doing it for revenue to support the newspaper. He also owns the Herald-Dispatch in Huntington and some smaller papers. A Democrat, served in the state legislature until making an unsuccessful race for attorney general in 2016.

As for Reynolds' best-known reporter, Cunningham writes: "If there is one person who embodies the complexity Reynolds faces in trying to strike the balance he seeks in the Gazette-Mail's coverage, it is Ken Ward Jr., the paper's 51-year-old environmental reporter. . . . Ward, as much as anyone, helped ensure that 'sustained outrage' continued to define Gazette journalism. He embraced Paul Nyden's belief that journalism's highest calling was not some feckless notion of 'objectivity,' but rather to follow the paper trail and expose the many ways the powerful exploit the powerless." (Ward and Nyden are recipients of this year, along with NPR retiree Howard Berkes, of the Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, tenacity and integrity in rural journalism, given by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, which publishes The Rural Blog.)

"In 2018, Ward was selected for the inaugural class of ProPublica's Local Reporting Network, an effort to support investigative journalism at smaller papers around the country by paying reporters' salaries for a year, helping them develop stories around a theme, and then co-publishing those stories," Cunningham writes. "Ward's project was to scrutinize the state's natural-gas boom from a provocative standpoint: Is West Virginia making the same regulatory mistakes with gas that it made more than a century ago with coal?" Reynolds called Ward's series "The most important thing we've done in my short time here. There's a huge change happening, and an incredible amount of wealth is being created. So the logical question is, where are we going to be at the end of all this?"

Asked about Ward's contention that the state could lose out on its fair share of that "incredible wealth" the gas boom is generating, as it did with coal, Reynolds said, "There is not a doubt in my mind that the state, in this current environment, will take less than other states are going to take." Why? "Because the people who run the gas industry have more influence here. The public decides the kind of people they want running the state. They want less regulation, less environmental regulation . . . No one has won elections in West Virginia lately saying they're going to make sure these mining permits are held to the highest standard."

Cunningham concludes, "Doug Reynolds is not Ned Chilton. But maybe Ned Chilton wouldn't be the same newsman today as the one we celebrate. After all, Chilton's conviction that a newspaper's pursuit of profit could and must coexist with its commitment to public service is a far more difficult proposition now. Reynolds is clear that he intends to profit from journalism. And he seems fine with the public-service end of that equation, as long as it can be monetized. 'The bottom line," he told me, "is I don't care if people are happy or sad about our coverage, as long as they aren't ambivalent.' Maybe that's the best we can hope for these days. I worry, though, that it won't be enough. West Virginia is at a crossroads. With coal in decline, the state has a chance to diversify its economy, to build a future that is environmentally sustainable, one in which opportunity and prosperity are more broadly shared. But for that to happen, it needs leaders who actually put the public interest first—and a vigorous watchdog to make sure they do."

Some rural hospitals find ways to survive and thrive; 'The secret sauce is always ... strong, collaborative leadership'

Rural hospitals across the nation are threatened with closure – more than 100 have closed since 2010 – but many have found ways to survive and thrive, with a generous helping of community support and creative collaboration. 

Take Lakeland Community Hospital, in Haleyville, Alabama. When Mayor Ken Sunseri found that the hospital would close by the end of 2017, he knew it couldn't be allowed to happen. The town of 4,000 would lose a major employer and the nearest emergency room would be at least 45 minutes away. He began making calls to other hospitals, legislators and potential investors to figure out how to keep the doors open, and kept hearing the same message: take ownership of the hospital, Katelyn Newman reports for U.S. News & World Report.

"So that's exactly what the community did. Hospital employees worked extra shifts as Sunseri and the City Council worked on the necessary contracts, partnerships and loans to acquire the facility from Tennessee-based Curae Health, which filed for bankruptcy late last year," Newman reports. "Officials cut the number of inpatient beds from 59 to 49, and local authorities approved a 1-cent sales tax, as well as a county property-tax increase, to help fund hospital efforts. A city and county authority now owns Lakeland, which is operated by Java Medical Group."

A tax hike might normally be a "reelection death notice," Sunseri told Newman, but he never heard any complaints about it, and that he felt the community supported it for the sake of their hospital.

"Simply stated, rural hospitals are anchor institutions – their success or failure dictates the success or failure of the community itself," Alan Morgan, chief executive officer of the National Rural Health Association, told Newman. "There's so many other health care services that are anchored into these rural hospitals. So hospitals, schools, small business – if you pull the leg out on one of those three, you're going to lose the little town."

The rural hospitals hit first in the wave of closures tended to be in communities with a high percentage of people of color and high rates of Medicaid coverage. That's because Medicaid tends to reimburse hospitals at lower rates than private carriers, which can erode a hospital's bottom line. "At the same time, states that haven't expanded Medicaid coverage – like Alabama – can be hit especially hard, with hospitals providing pricey, unreimbursed care to large pools of people who don't have any insurance at all," Newman reports.

Rural hospitals also have a harder time recruiting new physicians and other health care workers. One rural hospital in Montana has been able to lure more physicians to the area because of the local skiing industry. "On July 1, nonprofit Kalispell Regional Healthcare opened the first floor of Montana Children's – a $60 million pediatric facility funded by debt, operating reserves and philanthropy that offers high-level specialists and residential options for families whose kids are receiving care," Newman reports. Before then, the closest similar facility was in Spokane, Washington, a four-hour drive away.

In McKenzie County, North Dakota, the natural-gas and oil boom in 2010-18 doubled the local population to 13,600 between. Residents had to drive at least 50 minutes to get some health services, but "Thanks to federal and state loans, oil industry and private-citizen donations, and local funding – including a sales tax increase – the new McKenzie County Hospital in Watford City marked its one-year anniversary in June," Newman reports. "Each rural community is unique, Morgan of the National Rural Health Association says. But among those where hospitals have survived, 'The secret sauce is always just really strong, collaborative leadership'."

Many roads in Missouri River Valley are damaged and made dangerous by floods; repairs are expensive propositions

Flood damage on state Highway 12 in Nebraska in March (Nebraska Department of Transportation photo)

The bomb cyclone followed by historic flooding damaged more than crops in the Midwest; it also wreaked havoc on roads, and it will be a long time before many are repaired, because the damage is so extensive and fixing it is so expensive. Iowa estimates that needed repairs to state-controlled roads will cost $90 million. But local roads have been damaged too, and repairs for those are typically the responsibility of counties, Terri Queck-Matzie notes for Successful Farming.

"As the floodwater flowed south in the Missouri River, it led to widespread flooding in northern and central Missouri. Travel in these areas remains treacherous and cumbersome with many roads still closed due to flood damage," Russ Quinn reports for DTN/The Progressive Farmer. And in rural Nebraska, state Highway 91 and U.S. Route 30 both had sections washed away by floodwaters, and only recently opened again after three months of repairs.

Damage and closures on main roads means more vehicles are taking detours on rural roads, many of which are also damaged, and not suited to handle the big trucks hauling gravel and sand for road, railroad and levee repairs. That has caused several accidents, some serious, Quinn reports. "Please slow down and keep an eye out for farm equipment on these rural roads. Be courteous and share the road," he advises.

Proposed rural Alabama charter school faces opposition, partly because its manager is a foreign-born Muslim

Flyer produced by charter opponent and included in local newspaper in May
(Courtesy of Alabama Media Group; click on the image to enlarge it)

There are several reasons many locals in Chatom, Alabama, oppose a proposed charter school that state officials recently approved. They worry it will cost public schools enrollment and taxpayer funding; and a nonprofit that reviews charter organizations for the state gave Woodland Preparatory School a thumbs down, saying it didn't have a good curriculum or financial plan, and not enough information was available about the company that will operate the school.

There's another reason many object to the school: The manager is a Muslim with possible ties to a controversial cleric, Trisha Powell Crain reports for Alabama Media Group, comprising the Advance Publications newspapers in the state (including nearby Mobile): "Retired teacher Wayne Blackwell, among others, made his concerns clear in a letter to the editor of the Washington County News in March. 'It personally concerns me that Dr. Soner Tarim,' Blackwell wrote, 'is from Turkey and is of the Muslim faith.'"

Tarim told Crain that opening the school "is an excellent opportunity for me to prove that in a small community where there is no option, no choice, parents are fleeing to find a proper education outside of this county . . . This is the place that I can prove again -- one more time -- that the charter school model can work." Tarim owns charter school company Unity School Services, based in Sugar Land, Texas. He previously co-founded and was chief executive of charter-school chain Harmony Public Schools, which "critics say is part of an informal network of scores of charter schools operated by followers of Fethullah Gülen, a Muslim preacher from Turkey who lives in seclusion in Pennsylvania and is wanted by the Turkish government," Valerie Strauss reports for The Washington Post.

"A number of schools in the unofficial network have been investigated over a period of years by state and federal agencies amid allegations regarding hiring practices that favor Turkish nationals, abuse of the H-1B visa process and preferences in the awarding of contracts to related Turkish businesses," Strauss reports. "Former employees have alleged that they were required to contribute some of their salaries to the Gülen political movement, although representatives of Gülen have denied it over the years. Tarim has repeatedly denied that Harmony is part of a Gülen network of charter schools."

Meanwhile, Woodland Prep is having a hard time keeping board members and convincing local parents to enroll their children because of intense pressure from charter opponents. Most recently, Ford dealership owner Gene Brown resigned in early July. (Brown gained nationwide attention in June for a promotion that offered a gun, a flag and a Bible with every car purchase.) "Brown has since shifted his support. Last week, his Ford dealership's Facebook page said he donated a 'large sum to the athletic department' at one of the county's schools," Crain reports.

Local opposition has stopped the school from even being built: "The Montgomery contractor hired to build the school told the state commission that workers have walked off the job after opponents threatened that they'd never again find work in Washington County," Crain reports. It's unclear when or if the school will open. It's suspected that only about 50 children are enrolled so far; without at least 200, it can't open, Crain reports.

Rural bankers say Midwest economy helped by high crop prices and flood rebuilding, hurt by trade war, but favor fight

Creighton University chart; click on the image to enlarge it.

According to the July Rural Mainstreet Index, the economy in a 10 states where agriculture and energy are economically critical (Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming) is still growing this month, but not as much as last month.

The index rose above growth-neutral this month, the sixth time in the past seven months it has done so, reports Creighton University economist Ernie Goss, who compiles the index via a monthly survey of small-bank CEOs.

Higher farm-commodity prices and rebuilding efforts from recent flooding have helped rural economies, but nearly nine of 10 bankers surveyed said the trade war with China had hurt the economy. However, Goss reports that nearly seven in 10 support continuing or raising tariffs on Chinese goods; he doesn't relay any reasons they may have given.

The farmland and ranchland price index rose slightly from June to July, from 41.2 to 44.8, though it remained below 50 (growth-neutral) for the 67th straight month. Farm equipment sales also rose some in the past month, from 31.3 to 35.7, marking the 70th straight month it has been below growth-neutral, Goss reports.

The confidence index, which measures expectations for the economy six months from now, dropped from 53.3 in June to 51.5 in July, marking a positive but anemic outlook among bankers, Goss says.

Goss also reports: Land values are up in Colorado because of demand for hemp and marijuana production; Illinois bankers say crop planting is still significantly behind in some areas of the state; Iowa bankers noted that farmers will get a great price on their corn this year, if they were able to plant it; Minnesota bankers noted that some areas had not experienced the extensive flooding seen by the rest of the Corn Belt, and that their farmers were looking to have a good year.

Coal reporters Howard Berkes, Ken Ward Jr. and the late Paul J. Nyden win 2019 Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, tenacity and integrity in rural journalism

Left to right: the late Paul Nyden; Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston Gazette-Mail; and Howard Berkes of NPR

Three reporters whose outstanding careers have revealed much about the coal industry in Central Appalachia are the winners of the 2019 Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, tenacity and integrity in rural journalism, presented by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues.

They are Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston Gazette-Mail; his mentor, the late Paul J. Nyden of the Charleston Gazette; and Howard Berkes, recently retired from NPR, who nominated Ward for the honor several years ago.

“Each in their own way, they overcame adversity in reporting on coal and other topics in rural America, where doing good journalism often requires more courage, tenacity and integrity than in urban areas,” said Al Cross, director of the institute, based at the University of Kentucky, and publisher of The Rural Blog. “Extractive industries do most of their extracting in rural areas.”

Paul Nyden chronicled a reform movement in the United Mine Workers of America, and wrote a dissertation on it that earned him a doctorate in sociology from Columbia University in 1974. After teaching at the University of Pittsburgh, he came to southern West Virginia and reported for the Gulf Times before being hired at the Gazette in 1982 by the late W.E. 'Ned' Chilton III, “whose philosophy of ‘sustained outrage’ journalism Nyden personified,” Ward wrote in Nyden’s obituary in January 2018.

"Nyden defended the public’s interests by consistently taking on powerful state businesses and challenging political leaders across West Virginia," Ward wrote. "He exposed deadly safety violations, renegade strip-mining and unscrupulous tax scams in a career that spanned more than three decades.” Nyden retired in 2015 when the Gazette merged with the Charleston Daily Mail.

Ken Ward graduated from West Virginia University in 1990 and joined the Gazette in 1991. In 2018 he was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship that was based on his investigative reporting for the newspaper. The foundation said Ward was chosen because he excels at “revealing the human and environmental toll of natural-resource extraction in West Virginia and spurring greater accountability among public and private stakeholders.”

Ward said when he received the $625,000 fellowship that it was “a strong vote of confidence in local journalism, and more to the point in local journalism that doesn’t just parrot the official line, but questions and holds accountable powerful people, industries, governments and other institutions that might not be acting in the public interest.”

For the last year and a half Ward has been working for the Gazette-Mail as part of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network. Last year, his focus was the impact on rural West Virginia of the booming natural-gas industry, which has gained much economic and political influence in the state, partly at coal’s expense.

Howard Berkes retired at the end of 2018 after 38 years in public media, much of it reporting from rural America. His reports on the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens for KLCC in Eugene, Oregon, took him to NPR, where he covered the interior West and later became the network’s rural correspondent.

After covering the Upper Big Branch mine disaster in West Virginia in 2010, Berkes began investigating workplace safety, and discovered an epidemic of black-lung disease among coal miners in Central Appalachia that federal regulators had ignored or even denied. His work was the basis for “Coal’s Deadly Dust,” a documentary for “Frontline” on PBS.

“Howard spent weeks in rural Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky visiting lung clinics and persuading sick miners to talk with him,” said his editor, Bob Little. “I have plenty of reporters who would not take on an issue like that and choose to put themselves out there in that kind of environment; it does require you to pay a personal price; you have to own your belief in this story. He is inspired by nothing other than wanting to right a wrong.”

Tom and Pat Gish

The Central Appalachian coalfield also birthed the Tom and Pat Gish Award. It is named for the late couple who published The Mountain Eagle at Whitesburg, Ky., for more than 50 years and became nationally known for their battles with coal operators and politicians, and the firebombing of their office by a Whitesburg policeman. Their son, Eagle Editor-Publisher Ben Gish, is on the award selection committee, with other selected members of the rural journalism institute’s national advisory board.

The Gish awards will be presented Sept. 26 in Lexington, Ky., at the Al Smith Awards Dinner of the institute and the Bluegrass Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Their Al Smith Award for public service through community journalism by a Kentuckian will be presented to Kentucky Press Association Executive Director David Thompson, the longest-serving executive of a newspaper association in the United States and a winner of many battles for open government.

Chuck Todd

The keynote speaker at the dinner will be NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press” and “MTP Daily” and author of The Stranger: Barack Obama in the White House. On election night 2016, as he watched the county-by-county map of the U.S. go mainly red, Todd told viewers, “This is rural America saying, ‘Stop ignoring us!’”

Tickets to the dinner, which is the annual fund-raiser for the institute and the SPJ chapter, are $125 each. Reserve here.

Past winners of the Gish award have been the Gishes; the Ezzell family of The Canadian Record in Canadian, Texas; Jim Prince and the late Stan Dearman, publishers of The Neshoba Democrat in Philadelphia, Miss.; Samantha Swindler, columnist for The Oregonian, for her work in rural Kentucky and Texas; Stanley Nelson and the Concordia Sentinel of Ferriday, La.; Jonathan and Susan Austin for their newspaper work in Yancey County, N.C.; the late Landon Wills of the McLean County News in western Kentucky; the Trapp family of the Rio Grande Sun in Española, N.M.; Ivan Foley of the Platte County Landmark in Platte City, Mo.; the Cullen family of the Storm Lake Times in northwest Iowa; and Les Zaitz of the Malheur Enterprise in eastern Oregon.

Nominations for the 2020 Gish Award may be emailed at any time to al.cross@uky.edu.

Mountain Eagle rejects anti-immigrant views, recalls refugee whose family became pillars of community, state

The Dawahares in front of their first store. Srur Dawahare
is at rear left. (National Museum of American History)

President Trump kicked off a firestorm of criticism with a trio of July 14 tweets which were broadly viewed as racist. Though Trump didn't name names, he encouraged four Democratic representatives, all women of color, to "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came." Only one of the targets is an immigrant:  Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., whose family came here as refugees from Somalia.

The incident reminded writers at The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Ky., of another American who fled persecution in his home country. Srur Dawahare immigrated to New York City from Syria in the early 1900s, then at his wife's brother's urging, moved to the town of Neon in Letcher County to seek his fortune, the Eagle recalls in an editorial.

Dawahare soon opened a small store, then expanded the family business. He and his family were pillars of the local community. "They famously supported local charities, public housing, education, sports, and regional economic development. Indeed, it’s hard to think of a family that has done more for Eastern Kentucky," the Eagle writes. The Dawahares were known for fairness to customers and employees, and over the next century his family opened more than 30 Dawahares Department Stores in Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia.

"There weren’t many Syrian immigrants in our corner of this world a hundred-plus years ago," the Eagle notes. "It’s easy to imagine that at some point someone told Srur to go back where he came from, possibly even after he had become a citizen. Think what we would have lost if he had followed that advice. Whenever we hear [that phrase], whatever we think of the source or the target, we should think about what could be lost if we closed our doors and hearts to people whose principal crime is hoping for a better life. We should think about the possibility that in some detention center in Texas today there’s a child who, given a break, might grow up to lead her community, or her nation."

Dawahare's children say he told them about the value of helping each other with "the stick story." He showed them that it was easy to break one or two sticks, but impossible to break a bundle of sticks, and encouraged them to stand together. "As Americans, we should remember 'The Stick Story.' Played off against each other, for whatever reason or purpose, we can be divided, and broken," the Eagle says. "But if we could somehow see past the slurs and figure out how to stick together — well, who knows what we might accomplish?"

Small broadband providers claim partial win over telecomms giants in FCC regulations dispute

"The largest U.S. telephone companies last year asked regulators to kill limits on the rates smaller carriers can be charged for connecting to the giants’ networks," Todd Shields reports for Bloomberg. "Now the small carriers are claiming they have successfully defended the regulations as the Federal Communications Commission nears conclusion of a proceeding it has acted on in parts."

Small broadband companies must connect through lines controlled by telecommunications giants like AT&T and Verizon; the regulations, passed in 1996, aim to ensure that those small companies can access those lines and use them to expand their networks with new fiber links. That makes them more competitive with the big telecoms companies, Shields reports.

USTelecom, a trade group whose members include AT&T and Verizon, petitioned the FCC in May 2018 to eliminate the regulations, which they say will encourage more investment in modern networks. In the petition, USTelecom said greater industry competition and the increasing popularity of wireless service undermines the need for regulations, which they said mostly governed older, copper-wire lines, Shields reports.

Incompas, a trade group that represents small broadband carriers, led a campaign protesting the petition, including letters from more than 9,000 customers to the FCC. In response, USTelecom has made some concessions: in June it withdrew its request to remove regulations around fiber lines that mostly run between rural towns, and in July withdrew its request to eliminate rules about local lines that can carry broadband, Shields reports.

USTelecom is also claiming a partial victory in the issue, since the FCC "eliminated some reporting requirements in April, and earlier this month lifted pricing regulations for lines that carry bulk business traffic in most of the country," Shields reports.

"The FCC must act on the remainder of USTelecom’s petition by Aug. 2, and Chairman Ajit Pai has recommended the agency remove rate mandates on old copper lines that provide voice service, according to a background document provided by the FCC," Shields reports. "The FCC, while not commenting on the outcome, said in a statement that the issues that remain to be decided 'were intended to open monopoly local phone companies to competition in voice services' and are no longer necessary."

'Prison gerrymandering' shifts political power from urban people of color to rural whites in Pa. (and elsewhere)

"By counting prisoners as living in their prisons and not at their home addresses, Pennsylvania’s system for drawing political maps benefits white, rural voters at the expense of voters in urban areas, disproportionately affecting people of color, experts say," Jonathan Lai reports for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Many states have the same issue, especially since a significant number of prisons are in fairly rural areas that are mostly white and Republican, and prisoners tend to come from urban, often Democratic-led communities, and are disproportionately minorities, Ludwig Hurtado reports for NBC News.

The U.S. Census Bureau's decennial count defines someone's "usual residence" as "where a person lives and sleeps most of the time". That includes prisoners, college students, and patients at long-term medical facilities. But, unlike college students, prisoners cannot vote. Essentially, that gives the votes of white rural residents near prisons more power, Lai reports.

The practice has a 'profound impact' on Philadelphia, according to two Villanova University researchers: the city would gain one or two House districts with majority-minority populations if prisoners were counted based on their home addresses, Lai reports.

Editor of Louisville newspaper reaches out to Eastern Ky.

Rick Green

The Courier Journal was among the last newspapers to close its news bureaus in the far reaches of states the size of Kentucky and larger. That was in 2005. Since then, the paper's reporters made occasional forays from Louisville to cover issues in the great rural swath that runs from the Appalachian ridges to the Mississippi River, but no longer is there regular coverage of the coal industry, poverty and local politics that connected those areas to the rest of the state. The vacuum was felt especially in Eastern Kentucky, where those issues remain critical. Last month the paper's editor, Richard Green, marked his one-year anniversary in the job with a trip to the region, and now he's written a long story about it.

"I want to ensure the Courier Journal fully understands both the progress being made in Eastern Kentucky and the longstanding challenges still confronting those who live there," Green wrote. "That knowledge is essential in shaping our news coverage of November’s gubernatorial election and next year’s races involving President Donald Trump and Sen. Mitch McConnell, as well as surfacing issues our newly reconfigured editorial board should consider."

Here are two key passages of Green's piece:

Everyone wanted to talk politics, but few wanted to put their names next to the opinions they shared.
As one store owner in Pikeville told me: “Both sides so dislike each other and the politicians on both sides. I risk losing business if I say anything negative or positive about either Trump or the Democrats. And trust me, I need every dollar.”
There are many frustrated voters in Eastern Kentucky, I surmised. Despite polls that indicate President Trump remains highly popular in the state, I was surprised how many took swipes at him and his 2016 promise that mines would reopen and coal jobs would return.
A Prestonsburg merchant told me, “We had Hillary Clinton tell us she was going to put miners out of work, and Trump promised us we’d be better off with him. What choice did we have? Our desperation for jobs and a better economy became a throwaway line in his campaign speeches to get elected. He made promises he has not kept. But who will be a better alternative than Trump in 2020? Some crazy liberal who doesn’t reflect our values?” . . .
One other sentiment — perhaps stronger than any other — emerged over the four days: There is a new entrepreneurial spirit sweeping across Eastern Kentucky. New jobs are being created. New careers are being charted. New companies are being launched. . . . Many want to move beyond the unforgiving statistics on everything from unemployment to drug addiction that remind of the challenges still handcuffing Eastern Kentucky." Gary Ball, editor of the Mountain Citizen newspaper in Inez, told Green, “People are tired of being defined strictly by drugs and wars on poverty.”

3 children die, 33 are injured per day on U.S. farms; prevention workshops in Ky. Aug. 6-7 and Pa. Sept. 17-18

The National Children's Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety will host two workshops soon on preventing injuries of children on farms and ranches. Coverage by the news media is welcome.

The first workshop will be in Lexington, Ky., Aug. 6-7, and the second will be in Hershey, Pa., Sept. 17-18.

The workshop website says, "Learn how you can help safeguard children and youth who live, work and play on farms and ranches. This information can be used to develop and enhance childhood agricultural safety strategies for your organization. Interactive sessions will be facilitated by safety experts and leaders in the field of childhood agricultural injury prevention."

Registration is limited to 60 participants. Registration is $249, but only $199 for early birds. Click here for more information or to register.

Joan Mazur of the University of Kentucky, who is helping with the Lexington workshop, attended an earlier one in Iowa, and The Rural Blog asked her to write about it and her work. Here's her report:

By Joan Mazur
     I have been at the University of Kentucky College of Education since 1993 and have been associated with the Southeast Center for Agricultural Health & Injury Prevention with continual federal funding since 1994. The interdisciplinary nature of this center, housed at the UK College of Public Health, as well as its focus on solving real-world issues on family farms, has supported my research interests at the intersection of public education and public health. My husband and I also own a 70-acre farm in Washington County, Kentucky, so my interests in farm safety and health are also personal.

     Over the years I have developed with colleagues many educational programs, most of which involve technology and are targeted at a high at-risk group of teenagers from 14 to 19. Narrative simulations, digital games and other online interventions for preventing injuries and fatalities have been used at schools in farming and rural communities in the Southeast.

     While many of our more horrifying statistics on youth injury and fatality and injury in agriculture are decreasing, one segment of the at-risk younger population has resisted efforts. Every day on farms in the U.S., three children die and 33 are injured. These injuries and fatalities are preventable, and there are guidelines and best practices to assure that children can take advantage of the many benefits of living or working on family farms in safe and healthy ways.
     Recently I attended a Childhood Agricultural Injury Prevention (CAIP) Workshop in Iowa hosted by the National Children’s Center for Agricultural Safety & Health, whose national mission is to prevent agricultural injuries and fatalities to children. Many of us in all fields over the years have attended workshops, even entire conferences that disappointed despite a promise of improved professional learning. However the CAIP Workshop was excellent!

     Every session was highly informative -- delivered to the entire group, with many interactive small-group components to practice and absorb the various techniques and approaches to engaging stakeholders in preventing injuries to children, whether working or non-working, on farms or even in specialized settings such as agritourism sites (orchards, farms, petting zoos etc).

     We have now scheduled a CAIP for Lexington Aug. 5-7. I hope some of you can consider going, as journalists, teachers, counselors and other educators or others such as insurance personnel, FFA, bankers or other community member in positions to influence individual families and policy makers in decision making that can promote the economic, social, educational and personal mental and physical health of rural farm families and children.
     This KY-CAIP workshop is also a partnership between the National Childrens Center for Ag Safety & Health, the North Carolina Agromedicine Institute and the Florida Coastal Center for Agricultural Safety & Health, which will be providing expertise for regional agricultural safety and health issues.

How a top climate scientist, an evangelical Christian, is working to convince skeptics about climate change

Katharine Hayhoe
(Washington Post photo by Matt McClain)

Katharine Hayhoe walks a fine line: an evangelical Christian, she's also a climate scientist who speaks to dozens of audiences a year and has made it her mission to help skeptical Americans understand climate change, Dan Zak reports for The Washington Post.

Hayhoe, a director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University and the lead author on the U.S. government's latest National Climate Assessment, believes that caring for the environment is a divine commandment. "We humans have been given responsibility for every living thing on this planet, which includes each other,” Hayhoe said at a recent conference. "We are called to tend the garden and be good stewards of the gifts that God has given us."

The major barrier she faces in convincing Christians isn't that they believe the Bible doesn't value conservation, or that they reject the conclusions of scientists. "Religious people who deny climate science are generally spurred not by theology but by an assumption that climate science is based on political beliefs — namely, liberal ones. Converting nonbelievers on political grounds seems next to impossible," Zak reports.

Hayhoe makes headway though, mostly because of her ability to speak the language of her audience. "Her skills of communication do seem miraculous by the standards of modern climate politics: She can convert nonbelievers — or, to put it in her terms, make people realize that they’ve believed in the importance of this issue all along," Zak reports. "She knows how to speak to oilmen, to Christians, to farmers and ranchers, having lived for years in Lubbock, Texas, with her pastor husband. She is a scientist who thinks that we’ve talked enough about science, that we need to talk more about matters of the heart."

Hayhoe doesn't like being called a climate evangelist, though. "She sees herself more like Cassandra, who predicted the fall of Troy but was not believed, or Jeremiah, whose omens were inspired by selfish kings and cultish priests in ancient Jerusalem," Zak reports.

"We are warning people of the consequences of their choices, and that’s what prophets did," Hayhoe told Zak. She gets a lot of backlash on social media, including occasional death threats, but told Zak that the Bible tells people not to live in a spirit of fear.

EPA rejects ban of widely used pesticide linked to brain damage in children; clears way for likely court challenge

The Environmental Protection Agency has decided not to ban chlorpyrifos, a controversial pesticide linked to neurological damage in children. In a Federal Register notice filed Thursday, the agency rejected a petition from environmental and public-health groups seeking a ban. In rejecting the petition, the EPA echoed its earlier arguments for keeping the pesticide on the market, saying that the data was insufficient to conclude that chlorpyrifos is dangerous, Brady Dennis and Juliet Eilperin report for The Washington Post. In April a federal appeals court ordered EPA to make a final decision within 90 days on whether it would ban the pesticide.

For now at least, the decision is a coup for agriculture and pesticide lobbyists who have been working for years to keep chlorpyrifos on the market. The EPA proposed a total ban in the Obama administration, but President Trump's first EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, reversed that decision using the same argument: that the science was inconclusive, the Post notes. In the weeks leading up to Pruitt's decision, internal documents obtained by The New York Times show he had secretly promised farm lobbies that he was listening to their concerns.

Pesticide lobbyists had also convinced Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, then the deputy secretary, to block a 2017 Fish and Wildlife Service study that found that chlorpyrifos was so toxic that it threatened the existence of more than 1,200 endangered species. Some states, like California and New York, are in the process of banning chlorpyrifos, but many farmers say they want to keep it legal because it works, the Post reports.

Though the EPA's decision angered groups who have pushed for a chlorpyrifos ban, "the decision to deny the petition could bring the country closer to final resolution of a decades-long battle," since "critics can now challenge the EPA’s conclusion that the pesticide is safe," the Post reports.

"This is the entry ticket to the actual main event," Kevin Minoli, an attorney who served in the EPA’s Office of General Counsel under Republican and Democratic administrations, told the Post.

California wildfires are eight times bigger, burn 500% more land, because of climate change, study says

Because of climate change, California wildfires have increased in size by eight times since the 1970s and burn nearly 500% more land annually. That's according to a study published in Earth Future.

Since the early 1970s, warm-season days got an average of 1.4°C. hotter, which has made for drier conditions. That has had a much bigger impact on forest fires than on non-forest fires. Strong fall winds, which spread fire and dry out vegetation, and delayed winter precipitation are the major promoters of wildfire, Jordan Evans and Brandon Miller report for CNN.

The researchers expect the trend to continue, and warn Californians to prepare for the financial and human costs of continued increases in wildfire activity. The state endured some of the most destructive and widespread wildfires in history in 2017 and 2018. "In these two years, the state spent over $1.5 billion, more than any previous two year period," the study says.

As miners head to D.C. Tuesday to seek black-lung funds, NPR and PBS set screening of documentary on disease

NPR and the PBS program "Frontline" will hold a special screening of their documentary Coal's Deadly Dust from 7 to 8:30 p.m. July 23 at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Howard Berkes (Salt Lake Tribune photo)

The film, first released in January, explores the rise of advanced black-lung disease among coal miners and the government's limited response. After the screening, there will be a panel discussion with people in the film, including recently retired NPR reporter Howard Berkes, who reported tirelessly on black lung for years and whose reporting was the basis for the documentary; coal miners Greg Kelly and Danny Smith, who both have black lung; epidemiologist Scott Laney of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health; respiratory therapist Marcy Tate; and former federal mine safety official Celeste Monforton.

The event is free and open to the public, but an RSVP is requested. Click here for more information or to reserve a seat. If you're not able to attend, click here to view the film.

Also Tuesday, about 120 coal miners, many with black lung, will be in Washington to urge Congress to restore a tax that finances the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund. The tax, paid by coal companies, helps pay medical expenses of black-lung patients, but in January the tax was cut in half. The fund is at least $4.3 billion in debt, The Associated Press reports.

Quick hits: Amtrak gets backlash for proposed cuts in rural routes; 'Stranger Things' gets 1980s newspaper wrong

WSJ graphic shows Amtrak lines and the one a reporter took.

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

Amtrak is facing rural backlash over a proposal to cut long-distance routes, Jason Bellini reports in a seven-minute video for The Wall Street Journal, after taking the Crescent from New York to New Orleans. Ted Mann of the Journal wrote a story about the proposal a few months ago; it has a map of all lines and how much each loses.

The third season of "Stranger Things" features a subplot in which a teenage girl, interning at the local paper in 1985, is ridiculed and humiliated by her male colleagues. The show nailed many aspects of '80s life, but it got that one wrong, Kelly McBride writes for Poynter.

A biotech company CEO lays out a roadmap for how the biotech industry could help revitalize rural America. Read more here.

Aided by global warming, ticks spread to new areas of U.S., bringing diseases that threaten humans and animals

InsideClimate News graphic; click on the image to enlarge it.

It's the peak time of year for ticks, and they are spreading to new areas of the U.S. as the planet warms, bringing with them infectious diseases that can hurt or kill humans like Rocky Mountain spotted fever and Lyme disease, Nina Pullano reports for InsideClimate News. Warming helps ticks and other pests spread since warmer winters don't kill them off.

"While the total number of tick-related illnesses is difficult to gauge, since so many go unreported, the trend is clear," Pullano reports. "The number of cases of reported tick-borne diseases has been on the rise in the U.S., doubling from 2004 to 2016, and reached a record high in 2017, the latest annual data reported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

Ticks can threaten livestock, too. One species called the Asian longhorned tick has spread to at least 11 states since 2013, aided by the fact that it can clone itself. It carries a parasite that has likely killed cattle in three Virginia counties. "In a study published last week about the infections, researchers warned that the tick could put the Virginia cattle industry at risk. Once an animal becomes infected, there is no treatment or cure," Pullano reports.

University of Rhode Island researchers are gathering data about the spread of ticks through TickSpotters, which invites people all over the country to photograph or mail in tick samples they've found for analysis. Thomas Mather, who runs the project, "said there's been a clear increase in submissions over the past few years: From the site's inception in 2014 until 2017, he saw fewer than 8,000 entries. Last year alone, he saw nearly 15,000," Pullano reports.

Study finds that adverse childhood experiences increase risk of opioid addiction, relapse after treatment

A newly published study quantifies how trauma experienced during childhood, called adverse childhood experiences, can lead rural people to become addicted to opioids. Common ACEs include having an alcoholic or depressed parent, and being abused or neglected.

Researchers from the University of Tennessee and the University of Memphis conducted an in-depth study of 87 patients seeking opioid addiction treatment at a rural medical clinic. All the patients were white and 75 percent were male; almost half of them reported four or more adverse childhood events. A higher number of ACEs correlated to an increased risk of addiction relapse: every additional ACE increased the odds of relapse by 17%, according to the study.

On he other hand, each treatment visit reduced the odds of a relapse by 2%. Relapses occurred in 54% of patients, and the highest relapse rate happened after the first clinic.

Lead author Karen Derefinko said the study shows the lasting impact of ACEs, Jane Stevens reports for ACEs Connection.

"This study will help practitioners understand the importance of providing trauma-informed treatment," Derefinko told Stevens. "Because of the stigma associated with drug use, it’s hindered health care workers’ understanding of why people use drugs and has led to an assumption that they’re bad people. This shows that trauma-informed care and providing resources does impact how well people can do. It’s also validating for patients and gives them a lot of hope."

Study: Coal-reliant places risk financial ruin by not warning bond buyers of prospects, not diversifying economies

Coal-reliant communities are at an increased risk of fiscal collapse not just because of coal's decline and the prospect of tighter climate policies, but because local governments often fail to consider or disclose these threats in their municipal-bond filings, according to a newly published study from Columbia University and the Brookings Institution.

Even "moderately stringent" climate policies could create "existential risks" for the coal industry, which employs 53,000 workers in the U.S., and that would further threaten coal-reliant counties' ability to pay outstanding bond debt, Adele Morris, Noah Kaufman and Siddhi Doshi report.

Since there is growing support nationwide for stricter climate policy, it would be wise for coal-reliant counties and communities to try to diversify their economies. Federal investment and support may be required to make that happen, Morris, Kaufman and Doshi report. One logical source for such funding, they say, would be a tax on carbon emissions.

Facebook announces 23 winners of grants meant to boost community journalism; several have rural resonance

The Facebook Journalism Project and the Lenfest Institute for Journalism have announced the first round of Community Network grant recipients; the 23 winners each get up to $25,000 for six-month projects aimed at helping connect communities with local newsrooms.

"Whether an individual journalist or a larger news organization is trying to build a new business around memberships, or create a tool that helps local storytellers find and engage new audiences, Community Network grants provide both financial support and advisory assistance to help local news best serve its communities. The grants place special emphasis on the needs of news deserts and underrepresented communities," the FJP says.

Facebook announced the pilot program in March, saying it was an effort to shrink "news deserts" that no longer have local media coverage. However, this round of grants doesn't seem to get at that problem very much. Here are some of the winning projects with rural resonance:

• The Native American Journalists Association will provide indigenous student journalists with specialized training and mentorship as part of an effort to increase indigenous voices in newsrooms from 0.2% to 2% within the next 10 years.
• 100 Days in Appalachia plans to pilot of network of "context" creators to help reporters and editors cover the region with more nuance and depth, in hopes of mitigating or preventing coverage that relies on stereotypes and simplistic narratives. They're also producing a toolkit with guidelines on how (and how not to) cover Appalachia in 2020 election stories.
• Carolina Public Press plans to embed reporters in food banks across North Carolina and conduct community forums and listening sessions with clients, and produce stories and two online toolkits aimed at uncovering root causes and potential solutions to hunger.
• EducationNC in Raleigh will host a series of town halls to build community and audience among students at North Carolina's 58 community colleges.
• Mississippi Today plans to reach out to more Mississippi expatriates with events in nearby states, a monthly newsletter and an expat Facebook group.
• Nevada Public Radio is launching a collaborative reporting project focused on acute issues of rural health-care access in Tonopah, Nevada.

Report: automation likely to hit rural areas hardest

"Advancing technology and automation are likely to hit rural areas and the middle class hardest, according to a new report by McKinsey," Niv Elis reports for The Hill. "The report, entitled The Future of Work in America, looked at over 3,000 counties and 315 cities, and found that some 83 percent of the counties expected to see the highest levels of job displacement were rural areas. Those vulnerable areas house 20.3 million people."

Urban areas with more educated workers and diversified economies would feel the impact less. The trend will likely widen the rural-urban economic gap; rural areas generally have not recovered as quickly from the Great Recession as urban areas, and some still haven't hit pre-Recession employment levels.

"Another trend the report said was 'worrisome' was the hollowing out of middle-income jobs," Elis reports. "Much of that has to do with what kinds of jobs are created and lost as automation increases. Office support and food service jobs could decline, but jobs in health, STEM fields, business services and more creative fields would see growth."

Opioid distribution database shows rural counties inundated with pain pills in 2006-12; see data by county and drugstore

UPDATE: Paintsville (Ky.) Herald Editor Aaron Nelson took a look at the data and found that "Two pharmacies in Paintsville ranked number one and number four across the entire state of Kentucky for opioid shipments between 2006 and 2012." And he named the pharmacies in his story.

Washington Post map; click on the image to enlarge it or click here to view the interactive version.

Between 2006 and 2012, pharmaceutical companies distributed 76 billion doses of prescription pain medicine, "enough pills to supply every adult and child in the country with 36 each year," Scott Higham, Sari Horwitz and Steven Rich report for The Washington Post. But rural counties, especially in Appalachia, received some of the highest shares of pain pills per person.

Washington Post map; click on image to enlarge it.

UPDATE, July 18: The Post has updated the story to include a link to the raw data, a portal to search for data by county, a map showing opioid deaths from 2006-2012, and more.

That's according to a Drug Enforcement Administration database, made public for the first time, that tracks the path of every DEA-regulated pain medication in the U.S. County-level data shows the places that received the most pills, fueling the prescription opioid epidemic that resulted in nearly 100,000 deaths in that time period, the Post reports.

"The states that received the highest concentrations of pills per person per year were: West Virginia with 66.5, Kentucky with 63.3, South Carolina with 58, Tennessee with 57.7 and Nevada with 54.7. West Virginia also had the highest opioid death rate during this period," Higham, Horwitz and Rich report. "Rural areas were hit particularly hard: Norton, Virginia, with 306 pills per person; Martinsville, Va., with 242; Mingo County, West Virginia, with 203; and Perry County, Kentucky, with 175." The Post's Joel Achenbach has a close-up look at Norton.

Nearly half of the pills were distributed by three companies: McKesson, Walgreens and Cardinal Health. The top manufacturer was Mallinckrodt's SpecGx, with nearly 38 percent of the market.

Because the database is partly comprised of data that drug makers gave the DEA, it shows what they knew about the number of pills they were shipping at the epidemic's peak, the Post points out. Drug manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies must log and report each narcotic transaction, and are supposed to report suspiciously large or frequent orders to the DEA and withhold such shipments.

Nevertheless, nearly 2,000 communities, counties and Indian tribes have alleged in federal lawsuits that the drug companies filled suspicious orders and did not report them in order to maximize profits. The lawsuits were consolidated into one case, which is now larger in scope than the lawsuit against cigarette manufacturers in the 1980s, the Post reports.

The database was released Monday after the Post and HD Media, which publishes the Charleston Gazette-Mail, won a years-long legal battle to access documents and data from the ongoing litigation. The West Virginia newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on drug distribution, using other data.) The Post reports that the DEA, the Justice Department, and drug companies all fought hard against release of the data. The companies said the database would reveal information that could give competitors an unfair advantage, and the Justice Department said the data could compromise ongoing DEA investigations.

Post Executive Editor Marty Baron said, “The Post has invested tremendous legal and journalistic resources in obtaining, analyzing and presenting this database. But there is more work to be done — by us, by other journalists and by individuals seeking to learn what has transpired in their own communities. With this database on our site, many others can now contribute to a full understanding of the causes and impact of a devastating opioid epidemic.” Kristen Hare of The Poynter Institute opined, "This is a remarkable display of public service reporting performed by The Post. The information, available to every journalist in every corner of the country, can be used to impact, literally, every person in America."

Interior to move most of Bureau of Land Management's D.C. staff to Grand Junction, Colo., by the end of 2020

The Trump administration plans to move most of the Bureau of Land Management's Washington, D.C., office to Grand Junction, Colorado, and other Western cities by the end of 2020. About 300 employees, mostly top managers, will be forced to move out West or resign, while 60 will be left in the D.C. office, Juliet Eilperin and Darryl Fears report for The Washington Post.

The Interior Department says the move will save money and put the agency closer to regional stakeholders, a nearly identical justification for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's decision to move two of its agencies to Kansas City. The move is getting much the same kind of blowback; critics say many employees will quit rather than relocate, and that will end up costing the government more money and make the agency less effective for years, Eilperin and Lisa Rein report for the Post.

The move would also allow the agency to hire employees who might be more sympathetic to the administration. That has happened before: in June 2017, the Interior reassigned more than three dozen senior officials with only 15 days' notice, installing more administration-friendly employees, Eilperin and Reins report.

"Denise Sheehan, who worked at Interior for 33 years before retiring last month from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said in an interview that the round of reassignments had a 'chilling effect,' limiting what career officials are comfortable saying to political appointees," Eilperin and Reins report. Whether the effect was intended, it was, Sheehan said, "the most toxic thing in the senior executive corps I have ever seen."

Blackhawk 3rd major Appalachian coal producer to declare Chapter 11 since June, but says miners will keep jobs

Blackhawk Mining LLC, a coal company that employs 2,800 people in Kentucky and West Virginia, plans to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy later this week. "Blackhawk, based in Lexington, said in its proposed filings that the company has enough revenue to continue operating its mines during the bankruptcy and that it does not anticipate layoffs as a result of the reorganization," Will Wright reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader.

That no layoffs are expected is welcome news to Blackhawk employees and to a struggling region in general. Another coal company with Appalachian miners, Blackjewel LLC, declared bankruptcy just weeks ago, and soon after its employees discovered their last paychecks had bounced.

Blackhawk is a major employer in the region, operating 19 active underground mines and six active surface mines. It's one of the nation's largest producers of metallurgical coal, a relatively scarce commodity used in making steel. Though it generated $1.09 billion in revenue in 2018, the company has considerable debt. That's because Blackhawk, founded in 2010, bought mining operations through other companies' Chapter 11 bankruptcies. Blackhawk's "anticipated bankruptcy would allow the company to restructure its debt, and receive $50 million of new financing," Wright reports.

Biden unveils rural policy plan that aims to help farmers, strengthen ACA, bring green jobs, and fund broadband

Former Vice President Joe Biden, so far the leading Democratic presidential candidates in polls, has announced a plan for rural America that "includes investment in clean energy, payments to farmers to protect the environment and creating low-carbon manufacturing jobs in rural communities," Stephen Gruber-Miller and Robin Opsahl report for the Des Moines Register. "The rural plan builds on Biden's climate plan and the health-care plan he released Monday, which would involve adding a public option to the Affordable Care Act so people can buy into government health insurance."

Biden made the announcement Tuesday in Manning, Iowa, telling the crowd of about 230, "Rural communities power the nation. They feed our bodies. They fuel our engines. They are the stewards who protect our lands." Gruber-Miller and Opsahl report that the plan would:

• Double the maximum microloan available to new and beginning farmers to $100,000
• Foster development of regional food systems by working with small- and mid-sized farmers to deliver fresh produce and other products to schools, hospitals and other institutions
• Increase research funding for land-grant universities to create new technologies and seeds that are owned by the public
• Increase payments to farmers for practices that protect the environment so the American agriculture sector reaches net-zero emissions
• Strengthen antitrust enforcement through the antitrust laws and the Packers and Stockyards Act to help farmers and ranchers who are being hurt by market concentration
• Expand bio-manufacturing to create a low-carbon manufacturing sector in every state in the country, including bringing manufacturing jobs to rural areas
• Invest $400 billion in clean energy and research and deployment, including researching next-generation cellulosic biofuels
• Invest in wind and solar energy to meet a goal of a 100 percent clean-energy economy and net-zero emissions by 2050 or earlier
• Invest $20 billion in rural broadband infrastructure and triple broadband grant funding, which Biden's plan says has the potential to create more than 250,000 new jobs"

The Rural Blog reports major statements by presidential candidates about rural policy.

Counties want Medicaid coverage for inmates awaiting trial

"County officials and sheriffs from around the U.S. are ramping up an effort to press for changes to a federal policy that strips Medicaid coverage and other federal health care benefits from people who are in jail but who have not been convicted of crimes," Bill Lucia reports for Route Fifty. "Counties and their local taxpayers end up covering medical expenses for people locked up pretrial. But the federal government and states share the cost of people on Medicaid, which provides health coverage for low-income Americans."

The current policy, outlined in the Social Security Act, restricts the use of federal funds and services to provide medical care for inmates. That also includes funds from Department of Veterans Affairs programs, the Children's Health Insurance Program, which covers some pregnant women.

A task force on health care in jails, formed by the National Sheriffs' Association and the National Association of Counties, plans to lobby for change at the federal level. "Those involved in a new initiative focused on the issue say they’re not only concerned about money. The federal policy, they say, is also disruptive for the people it affects—who are disproportionately poor, minorities, or coping with mental illness and substance abuse," Lucia reports.

New Trump emissions rule makes it easier for power plants to comply, but isn't slowing the decline of coal

Despite the Trump administration's efforts to help the coal industry, the U.S. coal business has continued to decline steadily since 2014. Even the administration's latest effort, a scaled-back replacement of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, to lower compliance costs for power plants, doesn't seem to be helping much.

Though the new Affordable Clean Energy rule reduces the government's authority to regulate carbon dioxide, many power-plant operators who've been planning to shut down coal-fired plants over the next several years say the rule hasn't changed their minds. "Just days after the ACE rule was finalized, the Tennessee Valley Authority released an integrated resource plan that recommends further retirements of coal-fired power plants such as its 1,017-MW Paradise coal-fired plant, despite the president specifically advocating for keeping the TVA's plants open," Taylor Kuykendall, Darren Sweeney, and Ashleigh Cotting report for S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Though the new rule may slow the decline in coal-fired power generation, it won't stem the surge in energy production from natural gas and renewable energy, according to financial site Fitch Ratings.

"While the economics of natural gas and renewable energy compared to coal are driving much of the shift, Duke Energy Corp. spells out that part of the issue is growing public concern about climate change," S&P Global reports. Duke Energy Indiana wrote in a July report on its plans, "Carbon regulation is more a matter of if, than when, and warrants consideration in the plan. Given the magnitude of the change that would be driven by substantive carbon regulation, a measured transition towards a less carbon-intensive future is prudent."

Study: Youth less likely to die from guns in states with strong gun laws, even if gun ownership rate is high

A new study shows that children and youth are less likely to die from gun violence in states with strong gun-control laws, even if those states have high rates of gun ownership. Firearms are the second most common cause of pediatric death in the U.S., according to the study, which will be published in Pediatrics on Aug. 2.

Among high-income nations, the U.S. has the highest rate of firearm-related pediatric deaths, "the highest rate of gun ownership, and the loosest laws," Michelle Cortez reports for Bloomberg. "The findings are part of a new wave of research into the impact of firearms on public health."

Researchers analyzed firearms deaths of people under age 21 from between 2011 and 2015 using a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention database that tracks all fatal injuries in the nation, and cross-referenced their findings with state gun-law scorecards from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. They found that the stronger a state's laws, the fewer firearm-related deaths it had, even when accounting for variables such as gun ownership, race, income, and education levels.

Of the 21,241 firearms deaths among people under age 21, most (62 percent) were from assaults. More than 87% of the deaths occurred among males, and nearly 68% were age 18 to 21.

The study results "bolster the argument that gun restrictions may help avert some of the 4,250 deaths that occur each year among Americans under age 21, already the second leading cause of death in children after traffic accidents," Cortez reports. "States with stricter gun-control laws had 4% fewer pediatric deaths, and those with universal background checks for firearm purchases in place for at least five years had a 35% lower risk, the study found."