Critics at public forums say USDA changes to Horse Protection Act would ruin walking-horse industry

An award-winning high-stepper

The U.S. Department of Agriculture held a pair of forums this week—in Murfreesboro, Tenn., and Lexington, Ky.—to seek public feedback on proposed changes to the Horse Protection Act that would ban soring, the use of chemicals and physical abuse to induce high steps in show horses. Additional forums will be held Tuesday in Sacramento, Calif., and Sept. 6 in Riverdale, Md., with a call-in meeting on Sept. 15.

Most of the speakers at both forums opposed the new standards, saying they are unnecessary and would be harmful to the industry. The minority who supported the rules said they will protect horses from harm. Many in the horse industry have shown support for the rules. Comments can be submitted online by Sept. 26.

In Murfreesboro, horse owner Denise Rowland said, "It is a blatant attempt to bypass Congress. The Horse Protection Act was never meant to destroy the industry. To say that this legislation will not hurt the industry is to say the Titanic took on a little water," Mary Reeves reports for USA Today. "Bill Williams, a trainer, called it the "Horse Destruction Act," saying many stables "would be put out of business and employees who would lose jobs if the regulations passed."

In Lexington, U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, who represents most of Eastern Kentucky, called "the rules 'unnecessary, heavy-handed regulation' that were designed to intimidate and dismantle most of the walking-horse industry," Janet Patton reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader. He said new regulations “will impose significant and severe economic hardship on families, small businesses and communities across Kentucky, Tennessee and other states that depend on this industry for their livelihoods."

Most of the Lexington speakers agreed, saying "although only a minority of trainers use illegal methods, banning chains and pads would eliminate much of the current show horse structure and devastate the economy around it," Patton writes. Roger Varney, president of the Kentucky Horse Industry Organization, which provides inspectors for shows, said new rules "will send more walking horses to slaughter or result in more people leaving horses to starve on strip-mined land in Eastern Kentucky." He said, “These horses will not have a place to show. If you have to hire veterinarians and vet techs to come in and inspect, they are not going to be able to have a show and pay those entry fees.”

Texas eases voter ID law; court blocks ruling allowing Wisconsin voters to cast ballots without ID

Courts this week made drastically different rulings on controversial voter ID laws in Texas and Wisconsin, reported here previously. A federal appeals court ruled last month that the Texas law violates the U.S. law prohibiting racial discrimination in elections, while in Wisconsin a federal district judge ruled that voters without photo identification can cast ballots by swearing to their identity. Republicans favor voter-ID laws, saying they cut down on voter fraud, but Democrats say there is scant evidence of voter impersonation and the laws make voting more difficult for minorities—who are more likely to vote Democratic.

On Wednesday a federal judge said "it won't be mandatory for Texans to present an ID in order to vote in the November general election," Khorri Atkinson reports for The Texas Tribune. "Under the agreement reached by Texas officials and groups suing the state, anyone without an ID can sign a declaration stating they are a U.S. citizen and present proof of residence, such as a utility bill, bank statement or paycheck."

An appeals court on Wednesday blocked the ruling in Wisconsin, saying the judge went too far in allowing voters to cast ballots without an ID, Jason Stein and Patrick Marley report for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The three-member panel, all appointed by Republican presidents, wrote: "Our most recent decision in this case concluded that anyone who is eligible to vote in Wisconsin, but cannot obtain a qualifying photo ID with reasonable effort, is entitled to an accommodation that will permit him or her to cast a ballot. But instead of attempting to identify these voters, or to identify the kinds of situations in which the state’s procedures fall short, the district court issued an injunction that permits any registered voter to declare by affidavit that reasonable effort would not produce a photo ID—even if the voter has never tried to secure one."

Stein and Marley write, "Part of the voter ID law remains blocked because of a separate ruling in another federal trial court in recent weeks. Voters should keep following the news—the rules could change again between now and the Nov. 8 presidential election."

Too much belching and flatulence from cows being blamed for high methane emissions in California

California dairy lobbyists say the state is over-regulating by trying to reduce enteric fermentation—methane that livestock produce as part of their digestion—in an effort to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, Jeremy White reports for The Sacramento Bee. The Environmental Protection Agency says enteric fermentation "represents almost one third of the emissions from the agriculture sector" and "manure management accounts for about 14 percent of the total greenhouse gas emissions from the agriculture sector." California has more dairy cows than any other state. (EPA graphic)

Enteric fermentation is more commonly known as gasiness, or "mostly belching," according to a California Air Resources Board (ARB) document, White writes. However, "'FLATULENCE' blared the subject line of an email sent out Tuesday as part of an effort by groups like the Western United Dairymen and the Milk Producers Council to beat back climate mandates. Featuring an image of a cow with a red target on its body, the email urges readers to 'say NO to unbridled ARB authority.'”

The smelly subject is part of the state's plan to curb climate-altering methane by "getting food waste out of landfills, where it releases gas as it decomposes," White writes. "ARB has also suggested slashing methane from cow manure and from enteric fermentation, a source of about half of the emissions from California’s 5.5 million beef and dairy cows."

Western United Dairymen has spent about $116,000 on lobbying since 2015. White writes. Anja Raudabaugh, CEO of the group, told him, “The focus here is to highlight ARB’s efforts at over-regulating the dairy industry. By nature’s design, [cows] pass lots of gas. Quite frankly, we want them to expel gas so they don’t explode.” (Read more)

Trump still offers no details on help for coal; leading coal backer says 'He needs to be tempered'

Trump was in Abingdon, Va., Wednesday. (AP photo)

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump keeps saying he will reverse President Obama's policies and put coal miners back to work, but he has yet to say how he would that, and one of his main supporters says Obama has done so much damage to the industry that most jobs won't come back.

"He will help the coal industry all he can," coal operator Robert Murray told West Virginia MetroNews "Talkline" host Hoppy Kercheval. "But I think he actually has to be tempered because I don’t think he can do all for coal that he says he wants to do, like bring all the miners back. It will never happen. The Obama administration has destroyed the markets for the coal industry to the extent that it can’t come back to where it was. But the destruction can be stopped." Murray's remarks, which included a charge that federal mine inspectors are harassing his companies, were reported by Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston Gazette-Mail.

Trump was in Southwest Virginia on Wednesday to meet with coal miners and executives and speak to a rally. "Trump’s intimate discussion with miners at an industrial garage was a rare departure from the massive rallies and speeches that have characterized his campaign," reports Andrew Cain of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. "He returned to the rally setting shortly after in nearby Abingdon and lamented that coal workers don’t vote in larger numbers."

"He mostly did a good imitation of Casey at the bat — he struck out," The Roanoke Times said in an editorial. "Trump could have elaborated on his Detroit speech and explained how his economic program would result in increased use of coal. He did not. Instead, he merely repeated the same bromides he’s said all along: 'We’re going to put the miners back to work.' Great. How? Trump never said."

"His is a campaign based on faith, not facts," the newspaper said. "Here are some inconvenient facts that will make it difficult for even a pro-coal president to revive the coal industry: Global coal consumption is declining. It fell last year by 1.8 percent — the largest decline since the mid-1960s, when such data started being collected. One of the reasons that the Bristol-based Alpha Natural Resources had to declare bankruptcy was that it was banking on China being a big growth market for coal exports. China is, after all, the world’s biggest consumer of coal. But even China has cut its coal imports by 30 percent."

Trump "also said some things that were simply, well, strange," the editorial went on:

“Clean coal,” he started to say at one point. Was he going to talk about how his administration would invest in research to develop “clean coal” — the idea that carbon can be captured from the emissions and put to other uses rather than burned off into the atmosphere? There is such research going on – some of it taking place in the Virginia coalfields, led by Virginia Tech researchers. Instead, Trump never completed the thought: “You look at China, the amount of energy they’re using coal for. They’re not cleaning it. Believe me. … We have a very small planet compared to the rest of the universe.” That sounds like something an environmentalist might say. What point was Trump trying to make? Does he think clean technology is worth investing in? Does he think clean coal is a fiction and we should burn coal anyway? We still don’t know. If he believes the former, this was once again a missed opportunity. Which candidate has actually called for increasing federal funding into clean coal research? Umm, Clinton. . . . The global economy is a complicated thing — in which some foreign companies provide American jobs, and some American jobs are dependent on the health of economies overseas. Trump gave no indication in Abingdon that he understands that.

Is the crazy cat lady mentally ill? When is animal hoarding, which is on the rise, a crime?

Should animal hording, which is on the rise, be considered a crime or a sign of mental illness that needs to be treated? There are an estimated 2,000 to 5,000 animal hording cases each year, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), Sarah Breitenbach reports for Stateline. Those cases involve 250,000 animals, with the average number of animals involved per case being 50, with some cases involving thousands of animals. (ASPCA photo)

Despite the rise in cases, only two states—Hawaii and Illinois—have explicitly prohibited animal hording, Breitenbach writes. "Others rely on animal-neglect statutes that prosecute hoarders for failing to provide adequate food, water, veterinary and other care. But prosecutors are often hesitant to pursue these time-consuming cases because they require finding care for living animals and filing separate charges for each animal victim. So, groups like the Animal Legal Defense Fund are pushing states to adopt laws that could end hoarding in other ways."

ALDF lawyer Lora Dunn said "prosecuting animal hoarding cases is important, because without long-term intervention animal hoarders are all but guaranteed to re-offend," Breitenbach writes. "They need to be monitored for future instances of hoarding, she said."

"But stopping animal hoarding cases is more complicated than just filing criminal charges and taking away beloved, though neglected, pets, said Randall Lockwood, a psychologist working on anti-cruelty projects at the ASPCA," Breitenbach writes. "Prosecuting animal hoarders is equivalent to criminalizing a mental health disorder, he said. In 2013, 'hoarding disorder' was added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It was linked to obsessive-compulsive disorder, addictive disorders and personal trauma, like the loss of a spouse."

"Many animal hoarders he has encountered suffered abuse as children and had parents who were alcoholics or drug addicts. Often, they were looking to pets to fill the void of human bonds," Breitenbach writes. "That attachment persists even after the animals are dead, he said, pointing to a case in which an animal hoarder in Virginia made individual coffins for his 'dozens and dozens' of cats, keeping their remains in a shed." (Read more)

How one rural town is trying to reinvent itself through small businesses and retaining local youth

Rural towns that have lost agriculture, transportation and manufacturing jobs, and have seen a decline in population—especially the younger generation—need to reinvent themselves to survive, Kristofor Husted reports for NPR. One such town to do that is Brookfield, Mo. (Best Places map), a town of 4,400 that promotes its place on the American Genius Highway, an area where Walt Disney and Mark Twain grew up.

Vacant storefronts downtown are beginning to draw businesses, Husted writes. "Kristie and Drew Harper, who recently moved to Brookfield from Seattle, have bought into this bright, new vision for the town's future. The couple own a new bistro on Main Street. ... They also bought a small piece of land, which they're using to grow their own food for their family."

Becky Cleveland, the town's economic-development coordinator and a lifelong resident, said "encouraging business, education and health care leaders in Brookfield to collaborate and support each other is key," Husted writes. "The town lacks the health-care centers and assisted-living facilities to support the local aging population, for instance. So, town leaders are working together to push state legislators to provide broadband access for local health care providers, allowing the rural population to get care via tele-medicine."

At the same time "educators are working to retain their young people—and convince high-school students that it's fine to return home after college," Husted writes. "At graduation, these students receive DVD slideshows filled with photos from early grade school and scored with emotional music. A section of the slide show touts many of the graduates who have returned to this town. It ends with an 'unending invitation' from the entire community to make Brookfield their home again." (Read more)

Community-bank association chief says megabanks hinder efforts to help his members

Camden Fine, Independent
Community Bankers group

A lobbying battle is brewing between big banks and community banks, Ben McLannahan reports for Financial Times. "As regulators pushed through new laws to rein in the biggest and most complex lenders such as Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, their smaller rivals have complained of being swept up in the effort." Small banks say "Congressional attempts to free them from an expensive, inflexible and inappropriate regime have been repeatedly thwarted by the big banks."

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, the nation's largest bank, wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal arguing "that big and small banks should unite as allies, not enemies, as they are 'interdependent' as customers as well as competitors," McLannahan writes. Camden Fine, head of the Independent Community Bankers of America, which represents more than 6,000 banks with almost $4 trillion of assets, responded with a letter of his own. Fine said "the reliance of the biggest banks on 'a government guarantee against failure' had 'destabilised the banking ecosystem.'"

Fine also pointed out that "Democrats rejected a Republican bill to extend relief to community banks because they said it contained a host of unacceptable concessions for Wall Street," McLannahan writes. Fine told The Financial Times, “We could probably pass our agenda tomorrow, if the megabanks didn’t constantly interfere. And so the tactic of Jamie Dimon and some of the other CEOs and their trade-group allies is to try and paint this picture that community banks are somehow hurting Wall Street banks, when the truth is just the opposite.” (Read more)

Poor rural schools have improved under Obama, but more work still needs to be done

In 2007 then-Sen. Barack Obama said he was inspired by a 2005 documentary, Corridor of Shame, about the neglect of South Carolina's rural schools, to visit schools in poverty-stricken rural Dillon County, South Carolina (Wikipedia map). While there, Obama said improving education in poor areas would be one of his main priorities as president, Alan Richard reports for The Hechinger Report, which is funded in part by the Gates Foundation.

"Nine years later, as he approaches the end of his second term, educators and kids in Dillon County say President Obama made good on many of his promises," Richard writes. "Here, that came in the form of helping the town replace the decrepit J.V. Martin Middle School campus with an impressive new building. And his visits called more national and local attention to under-resourced, rural schools serving mostly minority populations."

"But in other ways, the president came late to addressing what experts and locals say are the specific needs of poor rural communities like Dillon, where roughly two-thirds of students are African-American, one-third are white and 90 percent are low-income," Richard writes. "President Obama’s signature education policies such as Race to the Top and the expanded School Improvement Grant program to turn around low-performing schools didn’t always reach places like Dillon and Southern communities like it, however, where schools face the triple problems of poverty, a legacy of racial segregation and distance from jobs and resources that could help uplift the community." (Richard photo: A 1 percent sales tax and a $3 million grant from the Obama administration helped build a new middle school in Dillon.)

In Dillon the high school graduation rate over the past four years has soared from 57 percent to 91 percent, Richard writes. But only half of graduates go to college, compared with 70 percent statewide. The schools still face teacher shortages, with salaries about $7,000 lower in Dillon than in the state's more affluent communities. Students also say some equipment is outdated.

Overall, "the nation’s students who come from low-income families have made some progress under Obama’s watch," Richard writes. "Achievement gaps have narrowed somewhat for minority students, but the differences remain glaring: 72.5 percent of African-American males finish high school on time, even as the national graduation rates reached a record high of 82 percent in 2013-14 (the latest year available). The gap in graduation rates between black and white males grew to 21 percentage points in 2012-13, the Schott Foundation for Public Education found—although federal data show a narrowing gap. South Carolina graduated just 51 percent of black males that year."

Study: More than 6 million Americans exposed to industrial chemicals in drinking-water supplies

Industrial chemicals that pose risks to developmental, immune, metabolic and endocrine systems have been found in the drinking water of more than 6 million Americans, says a study by Harvard University researchers published Tuesday in Environmental Science & Technology Letters.

The study, which consisted of 36,000 Environmental Protection Agency samples taken in 2013-15, found that water was more at risk in areas with higher numbers of industrial sites that manufacture or use these compounds, military fire training areas, wastewater treatment plants and civilian airports with personnel trained in the use of aqueous film-forming foams. (Harvard graphic)

Researchers found that "194 of 4,864 water supplies across nearly three dozen states had detectable levels of the chemicals," Brady Dennis reports for The Washington Post. "Sixty-six of those water supplies, serving about six million people, had at least one sample that exceeded the EPA’s recommended safety limit of 70 parts per trillion for two types of chemicals — perfluorooctanesulfonic acid and perfluorooctanoic acid."

"The federal government does not currently regulate PFAS chemicals," Dennis writes. "But they are on the EPA’s list of 'unregulated contaminants'  that the agency monitors, with the goal of restricting those that most endanger public health. Partly because the rules that it must follow are complicated and contentious, officials have failed to successfully regulate any new contaminant in two decades."

N.C. state epidemiologist quits, says state misleads public on screening of wells near power plants

North Carolina’s state epidemiologist resigned Wednesday, saying the administration of Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, a former Duke Energy employee running for a second term, “deliberately misleads the public” in its screening standards to test private wells near Duke’s power plants and coal-ash ponds, Bruce Henderson reports for The Charlotte Observer. Dr. Megan Davies had worked for the state for seven years.

"The millions of tons of coal ash stored at Duke’s power plants has contaminated groundwater under them," Henderson writes. "State tests last year found that cancer-causing chemicals were present in hundreds of nearby private wells, although Duke denies coal ash is the source. Davies and the state toxicologist, Kenneth Rudo, have testified in sworn depositions that state environmental officials pressured public health scientists to relax temporary limits created to test the private wells for two elements, vanadium and cancer-causing hexavalent chromium."

On Tuesday the state Department of Health and Human Services and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality "released an editorial that criticized Rudo for temporary standards that it said were far more stringent than those used in other states." Davies said the temporary standards were actually developed by DEQ.

Davies, who was Rudo's boss, said department officials knew Rudo was only one of several officials who reviewed the screening standards, Henderson writes. She wrote in her resignation letter: “I can only conclude that the department’s leadership is fully aware that this document misinforms the public. I cannot work for a department and administration that deliberately misleads the public.”

New income caps for federal farm benefits affect fewer farmers than previous Farm Bill did

The 2014 Farm Bill's income limit for receiving federal farm benefits affects significantly fewer farms than the limit in the 2008 bill, which was small anyway, Ron Durst and Robert Williams report for Amber Waves, the magazine of the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They estimate that about 7,000 farms would have been affected by the old limit while fewer than 2,500 are now.

"While crop insurance premium subsidies are not subject to the 2014 income cap, findings reveal that less than 0.5 percent of farms and 1 percent of crop insurance premiums would be affected by the 2014 income cap if extended to the crop insurance program." (USDA graphic: Farms affected by the 2008 and 2014 caps) 

The 2008 bill abandoned a 2002 limit on adjusted gross income "while establishing separate limits on the farm and off-farm income components of AGI," Durst and Williams write. The 2014 bill, which replaced separate limits on farm and non-farm income "with a single total adjusted gross income of $900,000," also "returned to an eligibility cap that determined payment eligibility based on a single AGI limit, as in 2002 but without an exemption for those with a high share of AGI from farm income. The cap applies to most commodity and conservation programs and payments but does not apply to premium subsidies received by farmers participating in the crop insurance program."

Federal income-tax data is not available "for farm partnerships, corporations, or limited liability companies," Durst and Williams write. "Published data from 2013, a year of record-high farm income and the most recent year for which such data are available, suggest that only about 0.7 percent of all farm sole proprietors and share rent landlords have AGI in excess of $1 million."

The 2008 bill "imposed three separate limits on the farm and nonfarm components of AGI — a $500,000 non-farm income cap, a $1 million cap affected eligibility for conservation payments, unless more than two-thirds of total average AGI was farm income" and "a person or legal entity with average AGI from farming that exceeded $750,000 was not eligible for direct payments," Durst and Williams write. Now, "Eligibility is determined on the basis of a 3-year average, and income on a joint return can be allocated as if a separate return had been filed." (Read more)

Film festival to feature documentary about transgender life in rural North Carolina

North Carolina, where the state's controversial bathroom law has received national attention for being accused of discriminating against transgender people, will host The North Carolina Gay + Lesbian Film Festival beginning Friday and running through Aug. 20 in Durham. Organizers call the festival the second largest gay, lesbian and transgender film festival in the Southeast, attracting thousands of patrons yearly.

Town Maps USA map

Among the films scheduled to play is Deep Run, a documentary produced by actress Susan Sarandon set in the rural town of Deep Run, N.C.,  home to 3,013 people. The film is described as "a powerful verite portrait of trans life in rural North Carolina. Exiled by her family and rejected by an ex, 17-year-old Spazz has no one to lean on for support. But when Spazz falls in love again and summons up the courage to become Cole, a strong-willed trans man, his candid humor and steadfast, all-inclusive Christian beliefs counter the bigotry he experiences daily. This raw documentary reveals rebirth and courage within America's deeply conservative Bible Belt." The film will be screened at 3 p.m. on Sunday.

Teletherapy could ease shortage of psychiatrists in rural America

Mental health advocates hope that teletherapy can ease some of the burden on psychiatrists, especially in rural areas, which often lack such professionals. A shortage of child psychiatrists is of particular concern.

"Psychiatrists and mental health advocates say America today needs more than 30,000 child and adolescent psychiatrists, and has only 8,300—and the need appears to keep rising," Emma Ockerman reports for Time magazine. Advocates have been struggling for an answer to the complicated problem for years. Teletherapy, a therapy session conducted remotely via digital technology, is one piece of that puzzle.

"As technology has become cheaper and more reliable, telepsychiatry has emerged as a practical approach to reaching more young people," Ockerman notes. "But it’s not without its detractors. Some advocates disagree on whether appointments . . . are as effective as those carried out in-person. Others see telehealth as just one promising piece of what must be a larger, more comprehensive solution."

The American Telemedicine Association reported earlier this year that the number of states requiring private insurers to cover telemedicine as they would in-person services had doubled in the past four years, Ockerman adds. Kentucky, for example, requires that "telemental health encounters" be covered through Medicaid and private insurance, including appointments with a licensed social worker. Ockerman's story uses a Kentucky teenager as an example; to read it, click here; for a shorter version from Kentucky Health News, go here.

More than half of homebound patients live more than 30 miles from a full-time provider, says study

More than half of Americans who require home-based care live more than 30 miles from a full-time provider, making it difficult for those patients to receive treatment, says a study published this week in Health Affairs. The study found that "about 5,000 primary care providers made 1.7 million home visits to Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries in 2013, accounting for 70 percent of all home-based medical visits. Nine percent of these providers performed 44 percent of visits." (Map: Home visits in 2012)

"The study defined high-volume and full-time providers of care as those who made more than 1,000 visits per year," Elizabeth Whitman reports for Modern Healthcare. "But 53 percent of Americans, especially those in rural areas, do not live within 30 miles of one of these centers, the study found. And a minority of places offering such care also do most of the heavy lifting."

Whitman writes, "For Medicare, a program whose growth rates are projected at 7.1 percent over the coming decade, to become a $1.075 trillion program by 2026, the savings from improved home-based care could be significant. Of the $632 billion Medicare spent in 2015, 23 percent went to hospital inpatient services and a slim 3 percent went to home health."

Two-thirds of the nation's health-care spending goes for "treating older Americans with chronic conditions," Whitman writes. "Medicare insures 57 million people, most of whom are 65 years of age or above. Over the next quarter-century, the number of elderly is expected to reach roughly 72 million." (Read more)

Report and map show the real value of money and the resulting purchasing power in each state

How much is a dollar really worth in your state? The federal Bureau of Economic Analysis creates something called Regional Price Parities, which measures price fluctuations across states and metropolitan areas, Niraj Chokshi reports for The New York Times. BEA in July released a report showing the real purchasing power of money in each state.

"Imagine a store offering a range of goods and services, each for sale at the national-average price for that particular item," Chokshi writes. "Now, imagine a shopping cart filled with $100 worth of items from that store. In Hawaii, $100 buys about 85 percent of the goods in the cart thanks to the high prices there. In other words, $100 in Hawaii feels more like $85.60, compared to the national average. In Mississippi, the opposite is true. With $100, you would be able to buy the cart’s contents and more: the equivalent of $115.30 of goods and services from the national-average store."

A dollar "buys the least in the District of Columbia ($84.70), Hawaii, New York ($86.40), New Jersey ($87.30), California ($89) and Maryland ($90.70)," Chokshi writes. "The 'real value' of a dollar is highest in Mississippi, Arkansas ($114.30), Alabama ($113.90), South Dakota ($113.60) and Kentucky ($112.70)," but those states have low per-capita incomes. (Map: Per-capita incomes after adjusting for purchasing power, based on the national average prices of a variety of goods and services)

Republicans more likely to say infrastructure has gotten worse; voters want roads, bridges repaired

While Democratic officials are more likely to be heard advocating more spending on infrastructure projects, Republican voters are more likely to say that the state of the nation's infrastructure is declining, according to a poll by the Association of Equipment Managers.

The survey of 2,000 registered voters found that 41 percent of Democrats and 53 percent of Republicans believe that U.S. infrastructure has gotten worse off in the last five years. The overall figure was 46 percent.

The poll found that 80 to 90 percent of respondents believe roads, bridges and energy grids are in some or extreme need of repair. State action was favored, marginally; 76 percent said state government should do more to improve infrastructure; 72 percent said the federal government should do more; and 70 percent said local government should do more.

A 2014 report found that as much as one-third of rural roads in some states are in poor condition and many bridges are deficient. A 2015 Associated Press story said that some states have stopped repairing rural roads, in favor of bigger, costlier urban projects. (AEM graphic)

The poll found that older Americans tended to be more concerned with road conditions, Stephanie Kelly reports for Reuters. "Seventy-three percent of those 65 and older rated U.S. roads poor to fair, compared with 55 percent of 18-34 year-olds. When asked about innovation, millennials placed more importance on vertical farms for producing vegetables in urban areas, self-driving cars and drones, the report said. Older voters felt most strongly about 'smarter infrastructure.'"

Florida turtles painted, in another instance of lack of respect for wildlife, and ignorance about it

In another example of people showing a lack of respect for wildlife, turtles in Florida have turned up with painted shells, Amy Wang reports for The Washington Post. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which posted photos on Facebook of turtles that were painted, said the action cam be harmful to the animals, making them more visible to predators and “can hinder their ability to absorb vitamins they need from the sun, cause respiratory problems, allow toxic chemicals into the bloodstream and more."

The state agency said in a statement: "Tortoises and turtles don’t need touch-ups! You can paint your house, a piece of furniture, a canvas or even your own fingernails or toenails, but you should never paint the shells of turtles and gopher tortoises!”

Cases of ignorance about wildlife abound. In May, a baby bison at Yellowstone National Park had to be euthanized after tourists put it in their car, thinking it was cold. In February, an endangered baby dolphin in Argentina died after swimmers passed it around for selfies. There have also been reports of people getting dangerously close to bears for selfies and an instance in May where a two-foot long nurse shark in Florida had to be killed after swimmers taunted it, causing it to latch on to a woman's arm.

University of Missouri creates program to help fill mental-health provider shortage in rural areas

The University of Missouri announced Tuesday that a new graduate education program will help improve rural health care in the state, Sheena Rice reports for the MU News Bureau. UM received a $699,772 three-year grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration "to train psychology doctoral candidates in integrated, primary health-care settings, in an effort to improve health care for under-served populations with mental health and physical disorders."

In Missouri, where the number of psychiatric beds dropped from 1,332 in 2010 to 874 in 2016, an average of 14.4 beds per every 100,000 people, 37 percent of residents live in rural areas, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Laura Schopp, professor of health psychology and co-principal investigator for the training program, told Rice, “Placing psychology doctoral candidates within primary health care agencies will enhance the current infrastructure in Missouri’s communities and improve comprehensive care for patients. For example, a patient with diabetes may need psychological help to address mental barriers that could be preventing them from changing their behavior. Having psychologists working side-by-side with primary care providers should result in better patient outcomes and savings to the state in Medicaid dollars.”

Declining populations in rural communities could be helped by an influx of refugees

Refugees could be a remedy for rural towns struggling with population decline, Tim Henderson reports for Stateline. "Small towns and rural areas across the U.S. have been losing population since 2010, though the losses have shrunk to 4,000 a year in 2015 from an average of 33,000 a year earlier in the decade, according to a May report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But in many areas, refugees have helped to offset or reverse the losses." (ABC News map)

"About 70,000 refugees were resettled in the U.S. last year," Henerson writes. "Iraq and Burma were the largest sources of refugees, with a combined 31,000 people. About 1,700 were from Syria; the Obama administration announced last year it wants to ramp the number up to 10,000 this year."

Some small towns are welcoming refugees with open arms, Henderson writes. Mayors from towns such as Rutland, Vt., Central Falls, R.I, Clarkston, Ga., Haledon, N.J., Socorro, Tex., Clearfield City, Utah and the Illinois college towns of Normal and Urbana have been vocally in favor of allowing refugees into their communities. But not everyone agrees. The Rutland mayor has faced opposition and the mayor of Sandpoint, Idaho, backed off from a proposal to welcome Syrian refugees after local protests.

Refugees, though, have something to offer rural communities, said Eskinder Negash, senior vice president of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, a network of groups that help resettle refugees around the country, Henderson writes. He told Henderson, “Every time a refugee rents an apartment, every time a refugee shops for food, there’s some income coming in for the city and going into the tax base. There’s a new realization that refugees can be an economic engine for some of these small communities.” (Read more)

Latest Trump flap obscures his allegation about Second Amendment, which seems fanciful

The flap over Donald Trump's line about "Second Amendment people" perhaps being able to do something about Hillary Clinton obscures "the substance of Trump’s accusation against Clinton: that she wants to overturn the Second Amendment, and plans to appoint judges and justices to the federal judiciary who would help her do that," write Isaac Stanley-Becker and Sean Sullivan of The Washington Post.

"Clinton has never said she wants to eliminate the Second Amendment," they report. "Even if she did, neither the president nor the Supreme Court nor lower-level federal judges have the power to do so. There are two ways to alter the Constitution. One requires a two-thirds vote of Congress and then approval by three-fourths of the nation’s state legislatures. The other requires calling a constitutional convention and, again, approval by three-fourths of the states."

Trump said yesterday in Wilmington, North Carolina: “Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick — if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.” Here's a video from the Post:

Trump's critics said he was inciting violence or even the assassination of Clinton, and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman unloaded on him, saying "people on the fringes of society . . . are not cooled by unfinished sentences." MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, a former Florida congressman, said the party should replace Trump as its nominee. Trump's spokesman said he was only encouraging political action.