Isolated county involves residents in economic plan

As our Encarta map illustrates, Phillipsburg, Kan., population 2,668, might be deemed in the middle of nowhere. But its residents seem to take the attitude that they're in the middle of everywhere, and a recent project called Discover Phillips County offers some lessons and encouragement for isolated, rural communities that want to maintain and improve their quality of life and spur economic development.

They had some help, from the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University and the Dane G. Hansen Foundation in Logan, pop. 603, also in Phillips County. A man who served on the boards of both entities got the foundation to give the institute a grant to prepare a new model for community development in the county, based on leadership and entrepreneurship.

The project included two components: Outreach to entrepreneurs and a county-wide community engagement process," Institute Director Ron Wilson writes. "Hundreds of citizens came to meetings at the Huck Boyd Community Center and provided great input on their hopes and goals for the future. A core group of volunteers stepped forward to serve on the steering committee for Discover Phillips County. They developed a vision statement and identified strategic focus areas plus action steps to be implemented. One goal was a county-wide cleanup implemented in spring 2007." (Read more)

Rural votes are key to Huckabee's victory in Iowa

Iowa's rural counties were very important to Republican Mike Huckabee's victory in last night's presidential caucuses. They gave him 59 percent of his votes, a much higher share than his foes got in rural Iowa, according to a compilation and chart by Bill Bishop and Julie Ardery of The Daily Yonder. "Huckabee won the state with 34 percent of the vote. But, geographically, his success was uneven," they write. "Huckabee won 38 percent of the rural vote. In urban counties, however, he won just 30 percent."

In the Democratic race, winner Barack Obama's votes came mainly from urban counties, while Hillary Clinton and, especially, John Edwards got most of their votes from rural counties. "Obama, the young Illinois senator from Chicago, won rural Iowa, but he did considerably better in the cities," Bishop and Ardery report. Obama got 34 percent of the rural vote, while Edwards had 32 percent and Clinton 31 percent.

The Yonder counts nine of Iowa's 99 counties as urban. They have a little less than half the state's population. For more figures and analysis, and caucus reporting from a small newspaper in northern Iowa, click here.

Peter Shinn of Brownfield Network reports that both winners touched on agriculture issues in their victory speeches, but Huckabee had more to say: "One of the country's greatest needs is to make sure that we not only can fuel ourselves, but we can feed ourselves, and that's why farmers in states like your's and mine are important. I don't want us to have to wait until we have to let the Chinese send food over to us. My friends, if you think it's bad to depend on foreign oil, wait until this country messes up and has to depend on foreign food - that should never happen in the United States of America!" (Read more)

Landmark, a leading rural publisher, explores sale

The Batten family that owns Landmark Communications Inc. of Norfolk is exploring a sale of its assets, including Landmark Community Newspapers Inc., one of the nation's largest publishers of rural newspapers.

“We are exploring strategic alternatives, and that can entail a number of possibilities, one of which is the sale of the company’s businesses,” Richard Barry III, the parent firm's vice chairman, told The Virginian-Pilot, the company's flagship paper. It also owns The News and Record of Greensboro, N.C., and The Roanoke Times. "Officials are holding a series of meetings this afternoon with Virginian-Pilot employees to discuss plans to explore selling the Norfolk-based company," Bill Choyke, Jim Washington and Philip Walzer write for the Norfolk daily, quoting an e-mail from Chairman Frank Batten Jr.: "At this early stage, we cannot speculate on where this process will lead."

Landmark's best known and most profitable property is The Weather Channel, "one of the last privately owned cable channels in the United States," they write. (Read more) "It ranked 42nd in total viewers among all advertising-supported cable networks" during the third quarter, reports Jon Lafayette of TV Week. The channel's Web site, Weather.com, had more than 32 million unique users in November, making it the 18th largest media site by traffic, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

The company's community newspaper subsidiary, based in Shelbyville, Ky., has "54 paid newspapers in 13 states, 40 free newspapers and shoppers, 16 offset commercial printing plants, seven collegiate sports publications, and 30 special publications such as real estate guides and homes magazines," according to its Web site. The papers are known for their quality and local editorial autonomy.

UPDATE, Jan. 4: The sale of Landmark's papers would be "the largest sale of Kentucky media properties" ever, as far as the number of markets affected, Al Cross of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues tells Jim Jordan of the Lexington Herald-Leader. The Herald-Leader map shows LCNI has 17 weeklies, a daily and a publication that follows University of Kentucky sports. More Cross, via Jordan: "Landmark's Kentucky newspapers would probably be sold as a group because they are clustered in adjoining counties to reduce business costs, such as printing, he said. 'The most immediate threat' to strong news coverage would occur, Cross added, if a new owner decided to consolidate news operations and report news for several local papers from only one location. 'These are distinctive local editorial voices, which I think is important,' he said. 'If you run into clustering and consolidation on the editorial side to save money, there is probably going to be a decline in quality.'" (Read more)

Iowa caucuses put spotlight on farm and rural vote

Our friends at the Center for Rural Strategies got some great play for their seven-month-old poll in today's Wall Street Journal. Previewing today's Iowa caucuses, reporter Amy Chozick used the survey to show that "rural states may be most receptive to the Democrat who wins the nomination." That would be a shift from the last two elections, in which President Bush's margin among rural voters was key to his victories.

Chozick reports two reasons for the shift: Democratic support for a Farm Bill that includes "controls on big agribusiness companies and subsidies for farmers," and the poll's finding that "nearly 60 percent of all rural U.S. citizens are close to, or related to, someone serving in Iraq." For such people, "This is not a television war, " Chris Peterson, president of the Iowa Farmers Union, told the reporter. For the pollsters' memo about the survey, click here.

Chozick reports that former Sen. John Edwards has "the advantage for farm votes" in Iowa. "He draws huge support in agricultural areas, where fans relate to his background and anti-corporate message," she writes, but adds, "Mr. Edwards's opponents aren't ceding the rural turf." New York Sen. Hillary Clinton has farmers from her state touring Iowa to say how she has helped them, and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama "has introduced a package of farm- and rural-development policies, including plans to rejuvenate rural communities by cultivating alternative energies such as wind farms and ethanol." But she adds, "Mr. Obama raised eyebrows in Adel when he asked a crowd of poor farmers: 'Anybody gone into a Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?' The upscale organic-supermarket chain doesn't have a single store in Iowa." (Read more; subscription may be required)

Bill bolstering Freedom of Information Act is law

President Bush has signed a bill strengthening the federal Freedom of Information Act. The legislation could prove especially helpful to rural news outlets, because it creates an independent ombudsman to resolve disputes without legal action.

The bill, S. 2488, also creates a tracking system for FOIA requests, makes it easier for requesters to recover legal costs when agencies improperly deny requests, limits fees agencies can charge when time limits for a response are not met, requires agencies to explain which exemptions to disclosure are being used to justify deletions from records, and requires reports to Congress that will help oversight committees judge the effectiveness of executive-branch performance.

The bill defines "representative of the news media" as "any person or entity that gathers information of potential interest to a segment of the public, uses its editorial skills to turn the raw materials into a distinct work, and distributes that work to an audience. In this clause, the term 'news' means information that is about current events or that would be of current interest to the public. ... A freelance journalist shall be regarded as working for a news-media entity if the journalist can demonstrate a solid basis for expecting publication through that entity, whether or not the journalist is actually employed by the entity. A publication contract would present a solid basis for such an expectation; the Government may also consider the past publication record of the requester in making such a determination."

Bush signed the bill without comment, other than a brief summary from his press office.

Southern Political Report poll suggests 15% rule, rural skew will give Edwards victory in Iowa

Add to the list of dueling polls in Iowa one from Southern Political Report, which suggests a victory for former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards in Thursday night's Democratic presidential caucuses, partly on the basis of strength among rural voters.

The Jan. 28-29 poll had Edwards trailing New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, 30 to 29 percent, but SPR reports, "Critically, Edwards was the second choice of 62 percent of those who supported other candidates that did not receive the required 15 percent of the vote." (In most precincts, those with four or more delegates, voters can switch if their candidate doesn't reach 15 percent.) Using "reallocation methodology" that it said predicted the results of the 2004 caucuses, SPR said that if this round had been held Dec. 29, Edwards would have received 41 percent of the vote, with Clinton at 34 percent and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama at 25.

Matt Towery, CEO of Insider Advantage, which publishes SPR, said the delegate allocation in the caucuses "gives rural areas, where Edwards is running strong, the opportunity to have a disproportionately significant impact on the ultimate outcome. Regardless of geographic areas of support, the Edwards ‘second choice’ percentage has remained well over 50 percent since we first released a second-choice survey in early December."

Towery, an ex-Republican activist, said he was "not comfortable releasing numbers" from SPR's poll of Republican caucusgoers. "I’ve seen enough GOP polls in 28 years to know when some sort of shift is taking place," he said. "The Republican numbers right now are all over the place and, in my experience, that means the numbers probably won’t settle until immediately prior to the voting." (Read more)

"What's clear from being on the ground here in Iowa is that Edwards's surge over the past week is real," writes Chris Cilizza in The Washington Post's political blog, The Trail. "Edwards is also relying heavily on his personal story -- his father's work in a mill, his humble upbringing -- to speak to rural voters who are already inclined to be for him. Edwards appears to be be running strongest in rural areas in the western part of the state." Cilizza analyzes other campaigns, too. (Read more)

Fundamentalists, small towns keep Huckabee ahead in Iowa, Des Moines Register's last poll says

On the strength of rural and small-town voters, but also with support from metro areas, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee had a marginal lead in The Des Moines Register's final Iowa Poll before the Jan. 3 Republican presidential caucuses. (Register chart)

Huckabee had 32 percent of likely caucusgoers, to 26 percent for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, 13 percent for Arizona Sen. John McCain and 9 percent each for former Sen. Fred Thompson and Rep. Ron Paul. The poll's margin of error was 3.5 percentage points, so Huckabee's lead was within the margin. The error margins for geographic subsamples were much greater, but the results do indicate the sources of each candidate's support. Small towns were Huckabee's main base; in them, he led Romney 36-25. Among rural residents, he led Romney 30-26; in metro areas, 31-26. The race was tightest in small cities: Huckabee 29, Romney 28.

The key to Huckabee's lead is "born-again or fundamentalist Christians," reports the Register's Jonathan Roos. Almost half of Republican caucusgoers fit that category, and among them, "Huckabee outpolls Romney, 47 percent to 20 percent. Romney has faced questions about his religious standing as a Mormon. Among those who think it's more important for the next president to be a social conservative than a fiscal conservative, Huckabee leads Romney 48 percent to 24 percent. "

There was no major trend during the Dec. 27-30 polling period, but some observers, such as the Register's David Yepsen, think Huckabee slipped badly today with a "goofy press conference ... in which he promised not to run attack ads against Mitt Romney while producing them and showing them to reporters anyway. " (Read more) Roos reports, "The poll shows there remains enough indecision among likely caucus participants to scramble both the race for first place between Huckabee and Romney, and the battle for third. Nearly one-half of caucusgoers say they could still be persuaded to support another candidate." (Read more)

Obama leads in Register's final poll, appears to take Iowa's small towns; Edwards has rural areas

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama had a marginal lead in The Des Moines Register's final Iowa Poll before Thursday's presidental caucuses, with 32 percent of likely Democratic caucusgoers. The poll found Obama leading in small towns, small cities and metropolitan areas but trailing former Sen. John Edwards among rural residents. Edwards and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton were virtually tied in the poll, with 24 and 25 percent, respectively. However, during the Dec. 27-30 polling period, support for Clinton declined while support for Edwards increased. (Register graph)

The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, so while Obama probably led during the polling period, that is not a statistical certainty -- contrary to the suggestion in the Register's story, which said Obama had "a lead larger than the survey's margin of sampling error." Error margins apply to each result, not the difference between two results.

The newspaper did not give the sample sizes of error margins for its temporal or geographic subsamples, but by definition their error margins would be much larger. The results among rural residents were Edwards 30, Clinton 25, Obama 24. Obama's other results were 32 percent in small towns, 35 percent in small cities and 37 percent in metro areas. In small cities, Edwards and Clinton were tied at 25; in the other categories, Clinton was running second and Edwards third. Clinton took issue with the poll, noting that 40 percent of the respondents were independents, and the Register's David Yepsen sounded skeptical.

The polling trend shows Edwards with the greatest current momentum, and his increasingly strong, populist message is aimed mainly at small-town and rural voters, reports Dan Balz, chief political writer for The Washington Post. "It is a call to arms that is raw and angry, populist and pugnacious. It is a message that is as exhausting as it is confrontational. It is a message that makes Al Gore's 'people versus the powerful' seem timid by comparison," Balz writes. "One Edwards supporter, departing after a big rally in Des Moines on Saturday night, said he hasn't heard a message as passionate or strong since Bobby Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign. . . . That message is strong brew and not for everyone, but it has found a following. Edwards is counting on enough Iowans -- those in small towns and rural areas especially -- to buy into it to put him over the top on caucus night." (Read more)

Meanwhile, Obama said in a Dec. 30 conference call with family farmers that he had been more consistent on agricultural and rural policy than Edwards, and made a subtle dig at the fact Clinton's rural organization "is headed by a large scale pork producer of the kind that family farmers want better controls placed upon," reports Al Giordano in his blog, The Field. Giordano also questions the validity of polling in Iowa at a time when many caucusgoers, according to reporting by Balz, have stopped answering their phones because of the onslaught from campaigns and pollsters. (Read more)

All-terrain vehicles damaging national forests

"Federally owned lands are rapidly being transformed into the new playgrounds — and battlegrounds — of the American West. Outdoor enthusiasts are flocking in record numbers to lesser-known forests, deserts and mountains, where the rules of use have been lax and enforcement infrequent," Felicity Barringer and William Yardley report for The New York Times.

"The federal government has been struggling to come up with plans to accommodate the growing numbers of off-highway vehicles — mostly with proposed maps directing them toward designated trails — but all-terrain-vehicle users have started formidable lobbying campaigns when favorite trails have been left off the maps. Even with the plans, federal officials describe an almost impossible enforcement situation because the government does not begin to have the manpower to deal with those who will not follow the rules."

From Durango, Colo., the writers add, "The temptation to go off-trail, legally or not, comes from the desire for variety, federal land managers say. 'The more a route is used, the less challenging it becomes,' said Mark Stiles, the San Juan [National] Forest supervisor. 'You end up getting lots of little spurs off the main route.' Even a few errant riders, he said, 'can do a lot of damage.'" (Read more)

Lack of state trauma systems kills rural Americans

Rural Americans are dying from accidents because their states lack systems to designate hospitals to treat trauma victims, Laura Ungar reports today in The Courier-Journal.

"Trauma systems are designed to get injured patients the care they need as quickly as possible within a 'golden hour' in which survival is more likely," Ungar writes for the Louisville newspaper. "In states with trauma systems, more hospitals are encouraged to develop certain levels of expertise, paramedics and emergency medical technicians are trained in where to take patients, medical professionals coordinate services and a registry tracks trends."

States without trauma systems are Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont and Wisconsin. Indiana and Alabama recently started state systems. For a detailed, state-by-state rundown from the American College of Surgeons, click here.

Ungar reports that a bill to start a system in Kentucky "faces obstacles -- legislators wary of spending the millions it would require, rural hospitals concerned about the costs of becoming trauma centers and already-overburdened rural doctors worried that their on-call workloads would increase." (Read more)

Obama, Huckabee may ride rural-newspaper endorsements to victories in Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses

Rural newspaper favorites Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama would win the Iowa caucuses if they were held tonight, say the latest "power rankings" of the Iowa Independent, an online news site that is our favorite source of grass-roots information on Hawkeye State politics.

The Independent knows rural Iowa, and says Obama's "wave of small-town newspaper endorsements should enhance his second-choice support in rural parts of the state where he has been perceived as weak." Second choices are important because supporters of a candidate who doesn't get at least 15 percent of the vote in a precinct can then caucus for someone else. The Independent's rankings have Hillary Clinton and John Edwards tied for second.

[This paragraph was updated Dec. 30.] In the Republican race, which has no 15 percent rule, Huckabee had five newspaper endorsements, three from weeklies. John McCain had four dailies and two weeklies; Mitt Romney had three dailies and Fred Thompson had one, the Ottumwa Courier. For a listing of all the endorsements and the newspapers' circulations, click here.

The Independent's rankings put Romney in second and Ron Paul in third. Chase Martyn (in photo below) writes, "Paul broke double digits in at least two polls for the first time this week and he seems particularly strong in areas of the state where the media has less of an impact on political deliberations -- especially in rural northwest and southern Iowa." Because rural precincts tend to be smaller, the rural vote in the caucuses is amplified. For an Independent story on that by John Deeth, click here.

The Independent is spotlighted in the January issue of Wired magazine, in a story about Iowa blogs that quotes former Des Moines Register reporter Chuck Offenburger: "Many times I notice, like with the Iowa Independent or smaller papers, they'll be out in front of the media on some campaign appearance, and then the larger media then works their way around to it."

Sarah Lai Stirland writes, "Founded eight months ago, the Iowa Independent is staffed with a motley mix of part-time contributing bloggers and more-established local writers. Its sole full-time employee is Martyn -- a former Democratic field coordinator and student political blogger who graduated from Grinnell College earlier this year."

The Independent is one of four state political blogs "funded by the Center for Independent Media, a nonprofit group headed by former Wired magazine writer David Bennahum," Stirland writes. The others are Colorado Confidential, Michigan Messenger and Minnesota Monitor. (Read more)

Study suggests farm women who apply pesticides put themselves at greater risk of getting asthma

If you're a farm woman who applies pesticides, you appear to have a much greater chance of developing allergic asthma -- especially if you didn't grow up on a farm. Those are the headline results from the first study of the subject, published in January of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, published by the American Thoracic Society.

The study looked at 25,814 farm women in North Carolina and Iowa, more than half of whom applied pesticides. It "found an average increase of 50 percent in the prevalence of allergic asthma in all farm women who applied or mixed pesticides," says Newswise, a research-reporting service.

About 40 percent of the women in the study did not grow up on a farm. Their greater risk of developing asthma from pesticide application is "due to a protective effect that remains poorly understood," Newswise says. "Growing up on a farm is such a huge protective effect it's pretty hard to overwhelm it," said Dr. Jane Hoppin of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and lead author of the study.

The study "found that most pesticides were associated only with allergic asthma, even though non-allergic asthma is generally more common in adults," Newswise reports. "Even some commonly used pesticides were associated with a marked increase in allergic asthma prevalence. Malathion, for example, a widely used insecticide, was associated with a 60 percent increased prevalence of allergic asthma."

Because the study was a cross-section of data collected from physicians' reports in the 1990s, the researchers cannot definitively say that using pesticides causes asthma. They are planning a large-scale study that will better evaluate the linkage. To read or download the current study, click here.

U.S. coal production down 1.4% from last year, mainly due to 3.6% drop in Central Appalachia

U.S. coal production dropped 1.4 percent this year, largely because of significant declines in Central Appalachia, according to the Energy Information Administration.

As of Dec. 15, production in Virginia was down 10.2 percent from 2006, to 25.8 million tons. Kentucky production was down 5.2 percent, to 110.8 million tons. In the entire Appalachian coalfield, "production dipped 3.6 percent to 364.6 million tons," The Associated Press reported.

Production in southern West Virginia, which comes from many of the same seams as those in Eastern Kentucky, declined 0.4 percent to 105.5 million tons. "Northern West Virginia mines increased output during the period 4.1 percent to 42.6 million tons," AP reported. "In Wyoming, the nation's biggest producer, production is up 1.6 percent to 433.1 million tons."

AP added, "U.S. coal producers faced weak demand from electric utilities and stagnant prices for much of the year. More recently, however, international demand for coal used to generate electricity and to make coke for steel manufacturers has spurred exports, particularly to Europe and South America." To read the EIA reports, click here.

Giuliani and Oxycontin: How much influence?

Last month, we heard from columnist Don McNay that "The mainstream media [have] ignored how [Rudy] Giuliani made his living. Helping a company that sold addictive drugs is worse than being married a few times." McNay started writing about that in May. Today, The New York Times tells the story of the presidential candidate and Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of the painkiller Oxycontin (in photo by Toby Talbot of The Associated Press).

"His work for Purdue, the company’s first and longest-running client, provides a window into how he used his standing as an eminent lawyer, a Republican insider and a national celebrity to aid a controversial client and build a business fortune," Barry Meier and Eric Lipton write of Giuliani Partners, the consulting firm of the former New York mayor and U.S. attorney.

They start their story with his final phone call last year to John Brownlee, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, who was about to bring charges against the company and three executives for "perhaps the most aggressive promotional campaign for a high-powered narcotic ever undertaken. It promoted the drug not only to pain specialists, but to family doctors with little experience in treating serious pain or recognizing drug abuse. As a result of the expanded access, critics charged, OxyContin wound up in the high schools and street corners of rural America where curious teenagers crushed the pill, defeating the time-release formula, and ended up addicts, or in some cases, dead."

From June to October 2006, Brownlee and Giuliani met or spoke six times. In the last of those conversations, the prosecutor told Giuliani "that he expected to ask for a grand jury indictment by the end of the month. Plea discussions ensued and Mr. Brownlee ultimately agreed that the three executives would not have to do jail time. . . . After years of denial and a high-profile public relations campaign, the company was forced to admit that it had misled doctors and patients. But to the parents of young people who had died getting high on OxyContin, the absence of jail time was evidence of Mr. Giuliani’s influence."

Not so, U.S. District Judge James Jones said when he accepted the plea agreement, which fined the company and the executives $634 million. “It has been implied that because Mr. Giuliani is a prominent national politician, Purdue may have received a favorable deal from the government solely because of politics,” he said. “I completely reject this claim.” (Read more)

Tama County, Iowa, bucks trend of rural decline

At least one Iowa county is bucking the trend of rural population decline in the state, thanks to low housing prices, government-backed home loans and relative proximity to urban hubs, reports Ken Black of the Times-Republican in Marshalltown, in the county to the west.

"Tama County is seeing an increase in population among those whose ages range from 15 to 49, a key demographic of economic health," Black writes, quoting Lindi Roelofse, executive director of the Tama County Economic Development Commission: "We really believe at least part of this may be attributed to the fact that relative to some of the surrounding counties, starter homes are cheaper, specifically in Tama County. Also, there are a lot of programs out there to help first-time home buyers."

Black notes that some of those programs, such as those under the Rural Development umbrella of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, are available only in rural areas, and every town in the county is eligible for them. "Because of that, the county can be very attractive to young families who may be looking to purchase real estate, especially for the first time," he writes, also crediting the county's low cost of living and its location, "25 to 35 miles from an urban hub such as Marshalltown, Cedar Falls, Waterloo, or Cedar Rapids." The county seat of Toledo is at the junction of US 30 and 63, 23 miles north of Interstate 80. (Read more)

Mine plan pits Alaska traditions vs. modern culture

Karl Vick of The Washington Post reports from Nondalton, Alaska (near center of Encarta map): "The gold mine proposed for this stunning open country might be the largest in North America. It would involve building the biggest dam in the world at the headwaters of the world's largest sockeye salmon fishery, which it would risk obliterating. Epic even by Alaskan standards, the planned Pebble Mine has divided a state normally enthusiastic about extracting whatever value can be found in its wide-open spaces."

The proposal by Northern Dynasty Minerals of Vancouver and Anglo-American Corp. also has serious implications for the rural culture of the area. Vick writes, "By tradition and law, natives have the run of the area for the moose, caribou and most of all the salmon that provide sustenance in a place hundreds of miles from the nearest road. But the outside world moves closer with each generation, and appetites change. The only food on the table where [Olga] Balluta sat were oily paper pouches of french fries hand carried on an airplane from a McDonald's in Anchorage. Lined up on the counter behind were jumbo containers of Hills Bros. coffee, CoffeeMate and Lucky Charms. "That's all they learn to eat now," she told Vick, referring to local children. Her favorite foods are bear fat and fish gut salad.

"The mining companies count on that change, dangling the prospect of cash incomes even while bowing deeply to traditions that no native consciously rejects," Vick reports, quoting company spokesman Sean McGee: "If we can't show to the satisfaction of the local people that we can protect the fisheries, we will not advance this project. We have no interest in replacing one resource with another, and we understand the burden of proof is ours." (Read more)

Va. coalfield congressman predicts greenhouse-gas limits, coupled with carbon-capture funding

The Democratic congressman for southwest Virginia, which includes part of the Appalachian coalfield, is telling local newspapers that Congress is "virtually certain" to enact limits on greenhouse gases in the next three years, and he will be part of the effort.

"Ninth District U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher has announced his intention to author legislation that will both mandate the reduction of greenhouse gases and ensure a viable coal economy for years to come," reports Keith Strange of The Coalfield Progress in Norton. Boucher told the weekly newspaper, "My goal is to have a meaningful control on greenhouse gas emissions, while at the same time enabling a growth in the use of coal."

"While some people may consider the two goals mutually exclusive," Strange writes, "the congressman said new technology could make coal mining much more environmentally friendly. ... The technology, commonly referred to as “carbon capture,” is not currently commercially feasible, but Boucher said he plans to put the strength of the federal government behind research into the process," which would funnel carbon dioxide from coal-burning power plants into underground rock formations or other reservoirs. (Read more)

McCain rides events and endorsements, including a chain of weeklies in rural New Hampshire

When John McCain passed up the Ames Straw Poll last summer, "It was not difficult to find Iowans who proclaimed the Arizona senator's campaign dead in the water," writes Lynda Waddington of the Iowa Independent. "Recent events, including newspaper endorsements and an assassination on the other side of the globe, have prompted some Iowans to give McCain a second look." (Independent photo)

Mary McEniry of Marion told Waddington, "With the [Benazir Bhutto] assassination today, that just made me think that we need somebody really strong, and he's the one." Waddington reports, "The assassination of Pakistan's former prime minister was at the top of McCain's list when he offered his prepared remarks." (Read more)

Michael Shear of The Washington Post reported yesterday, "McCain still trails in Iowa -- most polls peg his support in the single digits -- in part because of his opposition to ethanol subsidies and his support of immigration reform. But armed with an endorsement from the Des Moines Register and buoyed by his success in New Hampshire, McCain on Wednesday launched a three-day tour of Iowa's rural towns."

Today, McCain returned to New Hampshire, where he has keyed on rural votes. In his comeback since hit campaign hit bottom in early fall, "McCain also worked hard to win endorsements from the state's leading papers, seeing it as a no-cost strategy for building support." Shear reports. "Aides even pursued the Salmon Press chain of small weeklies, inviting its editors to ride on the bus." (Read more) The chain endorsed Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. Access to its sites requires a subscription; for a story by James Pindell of The Boston Globe on its endorsement, click here.

Congress cuts local drug task force funds by 2/3

Drug-enforcement efforts in many rural areas are likely to suffer from a 67 percent cut in a federal grant program, the Lexington Herald-Leader reports today, in a story that seems ripe for replicating in most jurisdictions around the country. (For an example, see this story by Tom Joyce of the Mt. Airy News in North Carolina.)

The budget bill that Congress passed last week has $170 million for the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant program, which got $520 million in the last fiscal year, reports the Herald-Leader's Cassonrda Kirby, quoting the executive director of the Kentucky Narcotics Officers' Association and David Steingraber, president of the National Criminal Justice Association.

Kirby writes, "The loss of grant money will mean disaster for small task forces, said Van Ingram, with the Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy. For those that manage to remain open, the cuts will severely limit their abilities, he said. 'You can't do drug investigations without money for informants, money for overtime and money for salaries.' David Gilbert, director of the Lake Cumberland Area Drug Task Force, which serves Pulaski, McCreary and Wayne counties, said 75 percent of the task force's budget comes from the grant. He says he doesn't know whether the Lake Cumberland task force will survive the cuts. In the past year, Gilbert said, [it] has worked more than 300 felony drug cases. Two years ago, the task force helped make the first seizure of liquid methamphetamine coming into Kentucky on a plane." (Read more)

Battle to improve oral health in Appalachia faces many cultural, economic, governmental obstacles

From southeastern Kentucky, Ian Urbina of The New York Times writes of the poor oral health of Central Appalachians -- "everyday people who are too busy putting food on the table to worry about oral hygiene. Many of them savor their sweets, drink well water without fluoride and long ago started ruining their teeth by chewing tobacco and smoking."

The story also blames "inadequate access to dental care or the inability to pay for a dentist," and notes that less than a fourth of Kentucky's dentists accept clients of the Medicaid program for the poor and disabled, partly because the reimbursement rates for adults and children, respectively, are 65 and 50 percent below market rates. Urbina also cites "widespread use of chewing tobacco and a pervasive assumption that losing teeth is simply part of growing old. West Virginia, for example, which has the highest proportion of people over 65 without teeth, also has one of the lowest percentages of adults who visit the dentist at least once a year."

Dr. Edwin Smith of Barbourville, Ky., "is trying to catch these problems before they progress," Urbina reports. "Each week, he drives his mobile clinic, Kids First Dental Care, up the windy Appalachian roads to visit schools and to provide free check-ups to children in the poorest counties of Kentucky. Dr. Smith paid about $150,000 of his own money to build the mobile clinic inside an 18-wheel truck. The clinic has a staff of seven and operates with private and Medicaid financing."

Urbina relates some of Smith's horror stories, which include tooth-eroding methamphetamine, "the shame of a 14-year-old girl who would not lift her head because she had lost most of her teeth from malnutrition, and the do-it-yourself pride of an elderly mountain man who, unable to afford a dentist, pulled his own infected teeth with a pair of pliers. He has seen the brutal result of angry husbands hitting their wives and the end game of pill-poppers who crack healthy teeth, one by one, to get dentists to prescribe pain medications."

Medicaid doesn't pay for root canals and dentures, so people who lose all or prominent teeth find it hard to overcome the economic disadvantages that may have contributed to their problems in the first place. "Try finding work when you’re in your 30s or 40s and you’re missing front teeth,” Jane Stephenson, founder of the New Opportunity School in Berea, which provides job training to low-income Appalachian women and helps them buy dentures, told Urbina. "She said about half of the women who go through the program, most in their 40s, were missing teeth or had ones that were infected. As a result, she said, they are shunned by employers, ashamed to go back to school and to be around younger peers and often miss work because of pain or complications of the infections." (Read more)