Sandy Hook's familiar safety steps likely saved many lives, but deaths show 'grim reality' of school safety

"By nearly all accounts, the administrators, teachers, and students at Sandy Hook Elementary did everything right Friday, and long before that day, when a young man armed with powerful weapons blasted his way into the school with gunfire," Nirvi Shah of Education Week reports. They followed safety protocols commonplace in schools since the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado in 1999. (Associated Press photo by Jason DeCrow: police officer at checkpoint in Newtown, Conn.)

The 26 deaths at the school illustrated "a grim reality" of what can happen even if schools do "pretty much everything right," Amanda Paulson writes for The Christian Science Monitor. But experts agree that the protocol at Sandy Hook likely saved many lives. The school's security system delayed the shooter; the school secretary flipped on the intercom, alerting teachers to the danger; teachers herded their students into closets and bathrooms, locking doors behind them; and the principal and school psychologist acted as human shields. "At Sandy Hook, a number of things went very well," National School Safety Center director Ronald Stephens said. "The standard of care that schools have at the end of the day ... is whether or not the schools took reasonable steps."

From 1999 to 2010, many more public schools installed safety features such as controlled access to buildings, faculty photo-ID badges, security cameras and telephones in every classroom, according to the Indicators of School Crime and Safety. Former Secret Service agent Dennis McCarthy, who consults on school safety procedures, said that in the wake of Sandy Hook, school administrators, faculty and staff should make sure they and their students are well-trained in lockdown drills, an effort he says likely saved lives in Newtown.

However, overdoing those drills can be counterproductive, especially for young children, said Richard Fry, superintendent of Big Spring School District in Pennsylvania. "If you do more than necessary they're going to internalize it," he told Shah, adding that it's difficult to make children love school and do well academically if they are scared. One school-safety expert cautions schools about increasing security measures after Sandy Hook, even though it's the natural reaction. Those decisions have to be "carefully considered," he told Shah.

"If you're going to rush this week to fix things, you are probably going to make some mistakes," Safe Havens International Inc. Director Michael Dorn said. He's a former school police chief in Georgia. "Districts need to take their time and build something that will work for the next decade." He added that security measures need to consider many different emergency scenarios, not just shooters, which are still rare. (Read more)

Mississippi River bedrock is being blasted to clear way for barge traffic, which will slow temporarily

Barge operators along a key stretch of the Mississippi River are bracing for months of shipping delays as the Army Corps of Engineers prepares to blast rock formations that are impeding river traffic because of low water levels, The Associated Press reports. Contractors from Iowa and Ohio will begin drilling holes into the river's bedrock near Thebes, Ill., and detonating explosives this week. They expect to remove enough rock to fill 50 dump trucks.

The decision to blast the rock comes at the same time as a Corps decision to release water from Carlyle Lake in southern Illinois to increase the river's depth by six inches so barges can pass the rock formations as the rubble is hauled away. A six-mile stretch of the river will be closed to shipping today until 10 p.m. so the explosives can be detonated safely. Then, barges will have to line up, waiting to be flagged through the stretch one at a time, a process that could take up to eight hours.

The project was to be done in February, but at the behest of legislators from Mississippi River states, the Corps moved up its plan. Corps spokesman Mike Petersen told AP that the project would be completed by the end of March. The rock to be removed would typically be underneath sand and silt in the river bottom, but it has been exposed by Corps dredging to keep the channel open. (Read more)

New food-safety rules slowed by complexity, budget problems and maybe politics

Two years after President Obama signed the law, "The rules at the heart of the largest food-safety overhaul in more than 70 years have yet to be put in place, blocked by their sheer length, growing complexity and a White House that critics contend has delayed their implementation for political gain," Christopher Doering of the Des Moines Register reports. At the same time, the Food and Drug Administration, which would enforce the new rules, has been crunched by budget cuts.

FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg has said that unless the agency's food-safety budget is increased, the agency would continue to struggle to implement the new rules. "The longer it takes the food laws to be enacted, proponents of the law argue, the more time the country's food supply remains exposed to an unnecessarily high level of risk," Doering writes.

Some rules took effect immediately after the bill became law, including giving the FDA access to documents at a food company tied to illness or death; increased plant inspections; and giving the FDA power to order a mandatory recall or suspend plant operations. But other rules, such as requiring plans to identify and prevent contamination, tougher oversight on imported foods and stricter requirements for overseeing production and harvesting of produce, are months behind in implementation. (Read more)

Feds find fraud at several livestock auctions, especially in Missouri

The Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration has found 12 separate cases of fraud at livestock auctions and from livestock dealers during a continuing, 18-month investigation into "schemes to falsify the selling price of livestock at livestock auction markets," Rita Gabbett of Meatingplace reports. The cases involve seven auctions and five dealers, and have been assessed for more than $200,000 in civil penalties.

"Federal regulations require that livestock auction markets, and individuals who buy on commission for someone else, keep and provide true written accounts of the transaction to the sellers and buyers," GIPSA Administrator Larry Mitchell said. "We continue to investigate evidence of fraud and any allegations of anti-competitive behavior in the livestock, meat and poultry industries, and aggressively enforce the P&S Act when we find them."

Livestock auctions and dealers in violation of GIPSA regulations include New Holland Sales Stables Inc. in New Holland, Pa., Milan Livestock Auction Inc. in Brookfield, Mo., Lolli Brothers Livestock Market in Macon, Mo., Appanoose County Livestock Inc., in Centerville, Iowa, and at least four others in Missouri. (Read more)

West Virginia senator ready to consider gun control

The school shooting in Connecticut is reopening the debate on gun control, which had been suppressed largely by Democrats who feared political repercussions. President Obama indicated at a memorial service for the victims last night that he would tackle the issue, and today a Democratic senator and former governor from a rural state that turned Republican partly because of gun issues said it is "time for an adult conversation" about the subject.

Joe Manchin (Photo by Mike Theiler, UPI)

"Never before have we seen our babies slaughtered," Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a lifetime National Rifle Association member, said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." He told reporters in a conference call, "I believe everything should be on the table. We should be talking about everything." He specifically mentioned "assault rifles" with "multiple-round clips," like those used at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Noting that he went hunting last weekend, he said, "I never had more than three rounds in my gun. I don't know any people who go hunting with assault rifles with 30 rounds in their guns."

"Manchin said several other issues should be talked about, including mental illnesses and promoting violence," reports Paul J. Nyden of The Charleston Gazette. "Manchin praised Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., for saying we 'should look at everything, look at violence and how we have glorified it.' Lieberman, who is leaving the Senate, said the country should not only look at our gun laws, but our 'entertainment culture' that glorifies violence."

Manchin wouldn't say if he would suppoart an assault-weapons ban being introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif, but said, "We will be anxious to see it. We want to see if it is a responsible way to move forward." Nyden reports, "West Virginia Republican Party Chairman Conrad Lucas issued a statement late Monday afternoon calling Manchin's statements 'classless' and accusing him of trying to politicize the Sandy Hook deaths." (Read more) Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell didn't comment on guns in a floor speech, but said the shooting "stands out for its awfulness." Feinstein said on the PBS NewsHour that the incident is "the straw that broke the camel's back" on the issue. "People have had it." Here's a screen shot of an interactive map of mass shootings from The Daily Beast; click here for the active version.

Researcher who linked mountaintop removal, health problems surprised by findings and reaction

The West Virginia University health researcher whose studies suggest that mountaintop-removal mining is damaging residents' health says he was surprised by his findings and by the push back he has received from "industry groups and supportive politicians," Manuel Quiñones of Energy & Environment News reports.

Michael Hendryx, left, directs the West Virginia Rural Health Research Center and is chair of the university's Department of Health Policy, Management and Leadership. He had never done an environmental health study before coming to WVU in 2008, but now has published more than a dozen peer-reviewed articles about health and societal impacts of coal mining in the region, and his name is synonymous with research critical of mountaintop removal.

He told Quiñones he found few studies about coal mining affecting public health, so he decided to do the research himself. When he ran the data for his first study and it showed a correlation between mountaintop removal and poor health, "I said 'Oh, my God!' I was surprised, frankly." Further studies have linked the mines to "increased cancer rates, higher mortality rates and birth defects," Quiñones writes. "He has questioned the economic value of coal mining in West Virginia and has joined other scientists in calling for a moratorium on mountaintop-removal mining." The studies show correlations, not causations, but Hendryx said he feels like he's made significant contributions to the linkage between coal mining and health effects: "I think coal mining in West Virginia is the single most important public health problem that we face because of the indirect and direct results."

The National Mining Association hired consultants to conduct research rebutting Hendryx's studies, and he said coal-industry lawyers have filed "two very large" Freedom of Information Act requests with him. Alpha Natural Resources Inc. "sought subpoenas against Hendryx and WVU and fought to keep his studies out of a West Virginia federal case over a mining permit," Quiñones writes. And a Yale University public-health professor says Hendryx's has over-emphasized coal and de-emphasized other factors. But Hendryx is unfazed, telling Quiñones he will continue his research about the health effects of mountaintop removal and may start research about natural-gas drilling. (Read more)

Nev. gets iPhone app to bring tourists to rural areas

The really rural roads of rural America gets less traffic and have few guides for travelers who might like to know which restaurants in the upcoming town are the best, or if there are any local attractions nearby. With little or no cell phone service, and miles from 4G networks, Nevada state officials hope a soon-to-be-released web application will draw more visitors into the state's rural areas. It could be an example to other states wishing to cash in on tourism dollars.

The state's Commission on Tourism is set to unveil the travel app in Spring 2013. It will provide maps and information about rural attractions, Richard N. Velotta of Vegas Inc. reports. The "Travel Nevada" iPhone app will also contain travel guides, trip planners, suggested itineraries and geo-location services. It will also let users take pictures and make comments that will be shared with future users. It will be free, and will eventually be available to Android users.

The commission decided to create the app because of research showing that 85 percent of leisure travelers use their smartphones when they travel, 30 percent use them to find hotel deals, 29 percent use them for flight deals, and 15 percent will download apps to guide them in future vacations. (Read more)

Western fires stretch state, federal budgets; they're both an effect and a cause of climate change

"Wildfires have scorched almost 9.2 million acres of U.S. land this year, the third largest one-year burn in the country’s recorded history. They’ve claimed lives, destroyed homes, killed animals and ravaged their habitats, spewing toxins that settle in water and on land. The fires have pushed government resources to their limits, and in some cases beyond them," Jim Malewitz of Stateline reports. Officials in the hot, arid West are trying to figure out how to fight these increasingly devastating fires with less and less dollars. (Getty Images photo: Homes destroyed by forest fire in Colorado Springs)

The federal government has spent $1.45 billion fighting fires in the West this year, outpacing the $950 million budget for the work. Most of the money is spent on fire suppression, leaving little for fire prevention efforts, Malewitz writes. As many as 82 million acres of the 193 million acres managed by the U.S. Forest Service need to be treated to lower fire risk. That can cost as much as $2,000 an acre. States are far outspending their firefighting budgets, prompting Western governors to ask the federal government for help. They want the "Flame Fund," set up in 2009 to make sure the USFS had enough money to fight fires without reducing prevention funds.

Researchers expect Western forest fires to become worse as the climate continues to get warmer and drier. A University of California study found that hotter temperatures will likely cause more forest fires in most of North America over the next 30 years. "What's more, wildfires, at least in some part, are contributing to climate change," Malewitz writes. Wildfires release as much as 1.3 percent of the greenhouse gas emitted from burning fossil fuels, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Those emissions are expected to increase by 80 percent over the next 40 years. "But more worrisome are the carbon-storing forests, grasslands and shrub lands that are being burned away," Malewitz writes. (Read more)

EPA announces new limit for fine particles in the air; some rural counties could be affected

A new regulation on fine-particle pollution was announced by the Environmental Protection Agency last week that will "force industry, utilities and local governments to find ways to reduce emissions of particles that are linked to thousands of cases of disease and death each year," John Broder of The New York Times reports. The EPA list of counties that would be affected includes some in rural areas.

The new standard is 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air, tightened from the previous limit of 15. The new figure is in the middle of a range the agency's science advisory panel recommended. Communities will face penalties, including lost federal transportation money, if they don't meet 12 micrograms by 2020.

EPA based its decision on health studies that found exposure to fine particles increases heart and lung disease, acute asthma attacks and early death. It estimates implementing measures to reduce particulates will cost $53 to $350 million a year, with benefits reaching $4 to $9 billion a year. There are 66 counties in eight states that don't meet the new standard.

Utilities "pleaded with" the EPA last week to delay the new rule, "arguing that the standard is based on incomplete science and would impose costly new burdens on states and cities," Broder reports. Utilities, trade groups, chemical companies and the oil and gas industry said new rules would push many communities into noncompliance, making it harder for them to get permits for new businesses. Advocates say those complaints are exaggerated because the EPA's new rule is a "common-sense pollution standard," Environmental Defense Fund lawyer Vickie Patton said. (Read more)

Poll finds public favors more regulation of fracking

Public support for more regulation of hydraulic fracturing has increased in the past three months, according to a national poll by Bloomberg News. Sixty-six percent of Americans want more government control of fracking, a process by which deep, dense shale formations are cracked under high pressure with a mixture of chemicals, water and sand. The number is a 12-point increase from Bloomberg's September poll. As might be expected, fewer people want less regulation than in September. Just 18 percent favor less regulations, down from 29 percent.

"More people are aware of fracking, and they are a little bit more opposed to it," University of Texas's Sheril Kirshenbaum told Bloomberg's Mark Drajem. Drajem writes that public awareness is likely to increase even more after the release of "Promised Land," a Matt Damon film about how fracking affects a small Pennsylvania community.

Advocates of greater regulation generally want some federal role; regulation of the process is now left up to the states. The Bloomberg poll was conducted among 1,000 adults Dec. 7-10. (Read more)

Paper starts year-long look at E. Ky. with biography of author who focused U.S. attention on the region

By Chris Ware, Herald-Leader

The Lexington Herald-Leader today began what it promises will be a year-long examination of one of the nation's most economically distressed areas, with the start of a five-part biography of the late Harry M. Caudill, who "brought the world to Eastern Kentucky" 50 years ago with the publication of  Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area.

The book was the seminal document in reporting and commentary that focused national attention on the mountainous Cumberland Plateau, led to the creation of the Appalachian Regional Commission and, the newspaper says, "forever changed Appalachia." Reporters John Cheves and Bill Estep write, "Coal mining was subjected to new taxes and new worker-safety and environmental laws. In the 1980s, Kentucky finally outlawed the 'broad-form deed,' a controversial legal device that allowed coal companies to strip-mine people's land against their will."

But the Whitesburg lawyer and former state legislator "never recognized this success," they write. "Ultimately, Caudill concluded that Appalachia could not be fixed because its people were broken, its gene pool hopelessly watered down by inbreeding among the 'dullards' who wallowed in ignorance and 'welfarism' in isolated hollows." The story reveals that Caudill and eugenicist William Shockley conceived a program to pay some families to undergo sterilization.

"Caudill's admirers . . . prefer that his legacy be advocacy of wise environmental stewardship and the courage to challenge long-entrenched powers, as a writer, a citizen-activist and a teacher," Cheves and Estep write, and quote University of Kentucky historian Ron Eller, the leading historian of modern Appalachia: "No one else at the time was saying the things that Harry was saying about the corruption in the relationships between business and government."

Part of an e-book the newspaper will publish, the biography is the first of Caudill. Former Los Angeles Times reporter Rudy Abramson nearly completed one, but "died in 2008 before he could publish it," the paper reports. "The manuscript rests with Abramson's grown children, who don't wish to discuss it." Abramson was a co-founder of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, which publishes The Rural Blog. (Read more)

UPDATE, Jan. 11: Cheves did an hour-long interview with WMMT-FM of Whitesburg, Caudill's home town. Lister to it here.

Small daily paper keeps Newtown and us informed; here's advice on covering school safety and guns

Today's horrific school shooting that left 26 victims dead was not in a rural place, strictly speaking, because it happened in a town of 27,000 people in the New York metropolitan area. But Newtown, Conn., is an exurb, not a suburb, with plenty of rural areas in a township of almost 60 square miles, one of the state's largest.

The Newtown Bee has been busy all day. "Newtown was stunned with disbelief and then shattered with grief Friday as few tragic details of a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School filtered out through authorities," the 8,000-circulation daily reported in its first full story. Here is the paper's first breaking-news report.

The paper provided photographs, like the one above by Associate Editor Shannon Hicks, to other news outlets. Kendra Bobowick reported on a memorial Mass; Andrew Gorosko covered the governor's visit. The paper's most circulated story appears to be this one by Associate Editor John Voket, headlined "Stories Of Heroism Emerging From School Shooting Tragedy." They include a custodian "who, as shots were ringing out, reportedly ran through the school halls making sure classroom doors were locked from the inside. And the school nurse who fought the urge to run toward the commotion to help, instead following the protocol and training she received never thinking she would have to use it." (Read more)

"Journalists will have to provide clear-eyed context to help the nation come to terms with the shooting" and inform debates about school safety and gun control, writes Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute. His guide, "What journalists should know about school shootings and guns," is here.

UPDATE, Dec. 16: Poynter's Julie Moos talks about the Bee's coverage with Hicks, a volunteer firefighter whose unit was called to the scene after she arrived as a journalist. When Voket arrived, she "passed the baton" to him and donned firefighter gear, she said. But at her editor's request she went back to the office to coordinate coverage. That's community journalism. (Read more)

Duluth paper, in wake of Vilsack's statement that rural America is less relevant: Where's the outrage?

In contrast to the outrage expressed at Mitt Romney's comment that 47 percent of Americans were unlikely to vote for him because they benefit from one government program or another, so he wouldn’t be campaigning too hard to reach them, no one has railed about Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack's recent comments that rural America is “becoming less and less relevant” to government and to politicians, the editorial page of the Duluth News Tribune notes.

"Where were the tractors rolling up Pennsylvania Avenue in protest? Where were the ranchers and farmers and outdoors-lovers demanding to be heard? No one would have blamed rural America, including nearly all of northeastern Minnesota and northwestern Wisconsin, for being up in arms," the paper opines. "What Vilsack was saying, essentially, was that the U.S. government and its elected leaders aren’t bothering to represent rural areas because there’s no political payoff or ballot-box support."

Yes, "More people are living in cities and suburbs. And President Obama, a Democrat, retained the White House in spite of overwhelming Republican support from the nation’s rural areas," the paper says. "But none of those are reason enough for elected leaders to ignore an entire segment of the population, as Vilsack said is happening. Elected representatives and others in government are supposed to work for all, not just for those who support their elections and re-elections." When they don’t represent all, those snubbed are entirely justified in expressing their strong disagreement. (Read more)

A contrasting view comes from Tim Hearden of Capital Press, a Western farm-news service: Despite what Vilsack says, "Rural Americans managed to string together an impressive array of successes during President Barack Obama's first term. Political pressure from farmers and ranchers played a big role in stalling key parts of Obama's agenda that they don't like," such as a cap-and-trade emissions system and "stringent new meatpacker rules." But it must also be said that cap-and-trade would have paid farmers for carbon sequestration and the meatpacker rules could have helped small producers.

Military weeding out obese and overweight troops

Between 1998 and 2010, CNN reports, the number of active-duty military personnel deemed overweight or obese more than tripled. In 2010, 5.3 percent of the force -- or 86,186 troops -- received at least a clinical diagnosis of overweight or obese, according to the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center. The trend has prompted the Pentagon to re-examine its training programs, and it is now actively weeding out soldiers deemed unfit to fight. It is also a tidy way to trim the budget at the same time as federal cuts loom. (CNN photo)

During the first 10 months of this year, 1,625 soldiers were dismissed for being out of shape. That's  about 15 times the number discharged for that reason in 2007 at the peak of wartime deployment, CNN reports. Overweight are considered "substandard" fighting units and a threat to national security and the nation' ability to maintain an adequate defense. Obesity is now the leading cause of ineligibility for those wishing to join, say military officials.

Rural America is more obese than America as a whole. In Kentucky, a state that ranks high in obesity, military recruitment rates (as a percentage of the recruits per 100,000 youth aged 18-24) have dropped steadily from 2007, when it was 2.53 percent, to 2010, when it was 1.94 percent. Perhaps the state's high obesity rate was a reason. (Read more)

Writer asks: Why have corporations and foundations not embraced rural philanthropy?

"Wonder what happened to the push for rural philanthropy?" asks Rick Cohen in Politico. "It has long been a truism that foundations follow election results. How could they not? On Nov. 6, the majority of voters in rural America cast their ballot for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Rural voters accounted for only 14 percent of the electorate but favored Romney with 61 percent of their votes. That showing obviously doesn’t reflect how the overall election results turned out, so what’s the upshot?"

Cohen writes that rural America also has revealed itself to be less powerful than ever through the failure to pass a Farm Bill, and he wonders how rural has been forgotten by those who owe it for their power. He remembers "when President Barack Obama first took office, (how) a hot concept among savvy political think-tankers was the idea of the U.S. as a 'Metro Nation.' This is the concept of 300 metropolitan regions as the economic engines of the U.S." Cohen writes that he recalls "the excited response of foundations to the Metro Nation concept, even as Metro Nation proponents made the obligatory bromides about the importance of rural America. Nonetheless, the strategy was to focus on metropolitan areas and somehow, with the increasing prosperity of those metropolitan areas, it was thought that rural areas would be carried along."

But, he notes, they haven't. He wonders then why U.S. foundations aren't seeing the connection between putting money into rural America where, after all, their profits emanate in the form of energy, timber and farming, and prosperity for us all. (Read more)

Gas boom boosts rural income, but not all benefit; in 3 Ky. counties government provides more than half

The nation's oil and gas boom is driving up income so fast in a few hundred small towns and rural areas that it's shifting prosperity to the heartland, according to USA Today, which looked at federal Bureau of Economic Analysis data. Inflation-adjusted income is up 3.8 percent per person since 2007 for the 51 million Americans in small cities, towns and rural areas, versus 1.8 percent in urban areas, Dennis Cauchon and Paul Overberg report. Credit the energy boom -- mainly hydraulic fracturing -- and some temporarily strong farm prices for the rural windfall.

The analysis also revealed that Owsley, McCreary and Wolfe counties in Kentucky are the only places in the nation that rely on government programs such as Social Security, food stamps and Medicaid for more than half of their income. (Read more)

Crop a few sizes too small: Future Christmas tree harvest likely grinchy because of drought

At Brad Miller's Christmas Tree Farm in Mindoro, Wis., almost his entire Christmas tree planting of 2,500 this year did not survive the dry, scorching summer. Across Wisconsin, reports Matt Hoffman of the LaCrosse Tribune, nearly 1 million Christmas trees are harvested from more than 1,000 rural farms on an average year. This year, more than 20 percent of the state's growers suffered drought damage, with losing as much as 40 percent of their crop. This means that in six to 10 years, when those trees are set to be harvested, the crop will be small, if at all, for those farmers. The outlook nationwide is not much different.

In Michigan, the $40 million annual crop is also at risk,  reports the Great Lakes Echo of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University. Christmas trees, traditionally grown in poor soil, have always been at the mercy of weather -- of all kinds. Wisconsin's Miller explained that even those few trees that survived the summer are at risk. A deep frost isolates a sapling's roots from moisture, he said, explaining he hopes a large snow pack will insulate the ground from extreme temperatures. However, Miller said, even if an early spring arrives, “We’ll probably lose more over the winter.” (Read more)

New poll shows Republican Party is the rural party, and not much more than that, at least for now

The latest NBC-Wall Street Journal poll has more bad news for the Republican Party. Just look at the "favorable" and "unfavorable" ratings, Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and their NBC News colleagues write in the network's morning political-news briefing, First Read:

"The GOP’s fav/unfav rating in the poll now stands at 30% - 45% (minus 15), which is down from 36% - 43% (minus 7) right before the election. That’s compared with the Democratic Party’s 44% - 35% rating (plus 9). And other than self-described Republicans and conservatives, just two other groups have a net positive view of the GOP: folks who live in rural America (39% - 33%) and folks who live in the South (39% - 38%); that’s it."

When the poll respondents were asked to give a word or short phrase about the party, "65% offered a negative comment, including more than half of Republicans," First Read reports. "By contrast, 37% gave negative descriptions of the Democratic Party, while 35% were positive. A Republican politician or operative might look at our poll and say, 'Well, the good news is that our numbers can’t get any lower.' That might be true, and they could very well drag Democrats down with them if there isn’t a deal [on the 'fiscal cliff']. But there’s another way to look at the poll: Republicans have a lot to gain, too. And if they want to be a competitive national party again and not simply a regional, rural party, they need to make gains." (Read more)

Candidates avoid buying ads in weekly newspapers, show they're 'clueless' about rural communities

Editor-Publisher Ross Connelly of the Hardwick Gazette in northern Vermont looked at 12 other weekly newspapers published in the area during the week before the November election, and found that candidates running for the state legislature advertised in those papers, but those running for statewide and federal office mostly steered clear of weeklies.

Elections at least every two years boost weeklies' advertising, but Connelly's observation is not just about money. "Vermont weekly newspapers, almost all of which are independent, are small businesses owned by people who live in this state . . . employ local residents and are integral parts of the economy in their towns," but statewide candidates bought ads on "distant, often corporately-owned television or radio stations that broadcast over large regions of the state."

"The candidates, who preach about the importance of the economy, who preach about the importance of strengthening the job market, of the importance of buying local, did not find it in their interest to support these small businesses by buying local," Connelly writes. "Statewide candidates, many of whom came up through local ranks, should not forget the lessons they learned when they held local office or served in the state's legislature: retail campaigning works, and is useful, for them and citizens . . . If we're not important enough for you to come to our towns to meet us and support our local businesses, why should we think you are important to us? We don't like to be taken for granted. Why should we vote?"

Connelly's editorial appears in the December newsletter of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors, the cover story of which is an editorial from Steve Andrist of the Crosby Journal in North Dakota. He writes about the $16 million U.S. Senate race between Republican Rep. Rick Berg and Democrat Heidi Heitkamp, who defeated Berg by fewer than 3,000 votes.

Berg wanted to travel through Crosby and Tioga to speak with local newspapers on a last-minute campaign swing; Andrist, right, writes that Berg's campaign staffers were "peeved, or disappointed, or maybe just surprised, when we politely said 'no'." Berg wanted these interviews to happen on a Tuesday, deadline day. Andrist says that proved the campaign's cluelessness about rural places and people.

"You'd think a congressman hoping to be senator of one of the country's most rural states would have a clue about life in a rural community," Andrist writes. "Rural communities, you see, have weekly newspapers. That means they have only weekly deadlines. Tuesday is drop-dead day at most weekly newspapers, which you would think might be well known to a person who grew up in a rural community and represents a whole bunch of them and often has reason to communicate through local media. Unless he's here to announce a multi-million dollar grant to the local hospitals, or to blow up the local courthouse, there's no way we're going to hold a deadline for him."

Andrist also says neither Berg nor Heitkamp spent "a red cent on community newspaper ads in oil-patch hotbed communities like Crosby or Tioga or Bowbells. ... We do know that during this heated, protracted, expensive campaign, not so much as a classified ad was placed in most weekly papers across the state. But there were plenty of requests for free coverage and letters to the editor."

However dismaying, or angering, those pieces might be for local newspaper reporters and editors, former Minnesota editor Jim Pumarlo, right, reminds them in his latest monthly column that election coverage shouldn't be over just because the election is, because followup stories can hold the winners "accountable. It also can enrich your reporting and interpretation of local public affairs." All three columns and several more can be found in the ISWNE's December newsletter, here.

Suspension of ethanol-in-gasoline rule wouldn't affect markets very much, Fed banker writes

In the wake of this summer's drought, corn prices skyrocketed, squeezing U.S. grain supplies. This reignited the debate about the Renewable Fuel Standard, which requires a certain percentage of ethanol in gasoline and has expanded the U.S. ethanol industry. The industry has produced so much of the biofuel that it soon will have a surplus. Some believe that temporarily waiving the RFS mandate will reduce ethanol production and reduce corn prices, Nathan Kauffman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City writes in The Main Street Economist, a publication of the bank. However, he says ethanol production isn't likely to decrease that much, even during a waiver period.

That's because the RFS mandates that ethanol be produced to supply gasoline blends through the next decade. "A temporary waiver would not relieve the pressure on current production to build credits to satisfy future mandates," Kauffman writes. The ethanol industry has become more market-based as production has soared, he continues, and if energy prices rise faster than commodity prices, ethanol profits could increase, raising production regardless of the RFS mandates. Ethanol is also the primary octane enhancer and fuel oxygenater on the market, with few alternatives. "Thus, it is markets, not mandates, that ultimately will determine the scale of ethanol production and its use of scarce corn," Kauffman writes. (Read more)