That’s the per capita tax revenue that is directed to public broadcasting services in the United States. Compare that to well over $100 per capita in European countries. That $1.30 is apparently too much for some Republicans in Congress.

They want to cut funding to less than $1.00 per person per year for next year, and eliminate it within two years. If enacted the cuts stand to hit rural stations the hardest. While many urbanly located stations now raise 90% or more of their funds from private and corporate donors, stations in rural areas still depend on federal funds for 30% or more of their budget.

Much of this hostility has been generated by the conservative charge of a liberal bias in public broadcasting. A myth that I believe is the result of Republicans distaste for the truth. When reporters report on the issue, rather that regurgitating partisan talking points they are accused of being liberal.

This isn’t the first time public broadcasting funds have been threatened, and I’m inclined to think that funding will be restored this time as well. While pubic broadcasting might see minor cuts next year, I doubt Republicans will follow through with their full threat.

But that’s not the point, and they never intended it to be. Instead, repeated threats of funding cuts are intended to keep public broadcasters walking on eggshells as they attempt to please partisan newsmakers.

All the while rural stations are caught in a more precarious situation than most.

Last September (and again this March) the WTO ruled that U.S. cotton subsidies violated international trade agreements and ordered that they be lifted by July 1. As the deadline draws near the fervor around the issue is growing.

Yesterday Brazil threatened to retaliate if Washington doesn’t come forward with a plan.

BRASILIA, Brazil - 06/17/05 - Brazilian lawmakers have said that they are seriously considering removing protections on the intellectual property rights of US companies operating in the South American country if Washington fails to explain how it intends to move on plans to modify the existing US cotton subsidy mechanism.

Brazil isn’t the only country waiting to hear from Washington.

World cotton prices have dropped 30 percent in the past 18 months, increasing rural poverty in many African countries. Even in Egypt, for which cotton is not a crucial commodity, this shift has caused farmers to switch to growing rice, despite the fact that Egyptian long-staple cotton is considered to be one of the best in the world—whereas Egyptian rice has no particular competitive advantage. According to the British-based anti-poverty NGO Oxfam, “This system [of U.S. cotton subsidies] pits a typical Malian producer, farming two hectares of cotton, who is lucky to gross $400 a year, against US farms which receive a subsidy of $250 per hectare.”

“For the past three years, African cotton producers have not been able to make a decent living because of American subsidies,” said Sero Zorobouragui of the African Cotton Producers Organization.

U.S. cotton growers can be relatively assured that they will receive their check this fall, and it’s difficult to imagine that changing drastically in the near future. However, in 2003 the Bush Administration was forced to lift protective legislation aimed at the U.S. steel market after a similar ruling by the WTO.

Withdrawing from such free trade agreements seems to be one solution, though that isn’t likely to happen anytime soon. Shifting more subsidies to the unregulated “green box” category is another. The Conservation Security Program falls into the “green box,” but this program has seen little support in our current political climate.

Whatever happens in coming months the issue of agriculture subsidies will continue to be a growing issue. Any win-win solution will take significant work on the part of multiple players.

Update: The KickASS (Kick all Agricultural Subsidies) blog reports that Paul Wolfowitz, while in Africa, said that key to helping Africa’s poor cotton growers was to cut the subsidies paid to US and agriculture producers.

As the U.S. Open golf tournament gets underway in North Carolina today this story from last week deserves some attention.

MIDWAY, N.C. — If a hard rain falls on the North Carolina Sandhills this week, it could temporarily halt play at the U.S. Open golf tournament at Pinehurst.

It also might wash away the dirt Randy Thomas has packed in the driveway of his home a couple of miles away, leaving his septic system to leak raw sewage into his front yard.

Midway is one of five predominantly black communities tucked amid the area’s well-manicured golf course communities, often to the extent that they appear as doughnut holes on maps. They exist in a governmental no-man’s land, without sewer lines, garbage service or sometimes even water lines.

The people that live in these forgotten enclaves provided much of the manual labor that built the areas multiple golf courses, but they have received little in return. Today the 500 residents of these communities live just minutes from upscale golf communities.

Follow the rutted roads to the east end of the neighborhood, take a sharp right up a sandy embankment and you’re onto a paved cul-de-sac with $500,000-plus vacation homes that surround a manmade lake and members-only Pinehurst Beach Club.

And this from the NY Times.

The 500 residents of these unincorporated enclaves are close enough to point out sewer lines that run past their properties en route to new developments, or to watch garbage trucks trundle past without stopping.

Activists are working this week to bring attention to this despicable situation.

At the same time as rural residents are reiterating the importance of education, rural schools continue to consolidate.

The elementary school will not reopen in the fall because of declining enrollment and budget constraints in the Central Community School District. The story is the same for the Whiteside County river town of Albany, Ill., which lost its small Albany Grade School for the same reasons.

They join the list of 17 Quad-City region schools that have closed since 2000–seven this year alone.

Education officials in Illinois say 401 public schools have closed since 2000. In Iowa, about 90 public schools have closed since 2000, with rural communities hit the hardest because of declining population and enrollment, aging buildings, increasing costs and shrinking budgets.

While such moves might be necessary for districts faced with shrinking budgets, there is sufficient evidence that it does little to improve the quality of education, and may in fact do just the opposite.

I say the move only might be necessitated by district budget problems because I believe that there are other more creative solution.

The most obvious of these is to return to the funding source, in most cases the state governments, and demand adequate money. It’s a strategy that would likely pay off in the end for the state anyway. With higher graduation rates for rural schools, and the increased economic activity generated in rural communities that have schools, it is easy to imagine how a positive return on investing in rural schools might be generated.

Other options that school boards should consider before shuttering the doors include consolidating administrators and offering distance learning classes to high school students.

The rural school that I graduated from in northwest Iowa had its own share of poor teachers, but I don’t imagine it’s too much better in larger schools. I graduated with 31 classmates, quite small by most standards.

Bush was at the Pennsylvania State FFA (formally Future Farmers of America) Conference today to talk about Social Security reform. He also had a thing or two to say about his administration’s “successful” farm policy.

You see, we tried to reduce government interference in the agricultural market, and at the same time, create incentives for sound conservation practices.

I wonder if those “incentives for conservation” could be the new Conservation Security Program (CSP). The CSP was championed by family farm groups, and was considered a bright spot in an otherwise dim farm bill. To date the Bush Administration has prevented the program from being fully implemented. Current funding is capped at $202 million (total farm bill expenditures exceeded $11.5 billion in 2003). Properly funding the CSP would require at least $2-3 billion.

And speaking about tax relief, in order to make sure our farms stay within our farming families, we need to get rid of the death tax once and for all. […] For the sake of family farmers, Congress needs to get rid of the death tax forever. (Applause.)

Right. Except any farm large enough to be subject to the estate tax is quite likely anything but a family farm. In fact, the estate tax more than likely helps preserve family farms by leveling the playing field through taxes on the largest farm estates.

None of this should be a surprise from this administration. Instead, think of it as motivation to fight their poor ag and rural policy. Remember this was a speech to a captive group of young aspiring farmers. People who should be on our side.

The entire relevant excerpt of from the speech appears below the fold, including a bit about the upcoming vote in congress on CAFTA.

(more…)

The issue of broadband internet service in rural areas has been getting more attention lately. Most notably the broadband giants (Verizon, Comcast, Excite, SBC, etc) have been lobbying congress to pass legislation that would prohibit municipalities from getting into the internet business. These proposed regulations have been prompted primarily by plans to bring free WiFi to big cities.

If the regulations are approved they will also prevent rural municipalities from providing broadband in their communities. These rural communities often have no broadband available until the local government takes the initiative. The lack of high-speed internet in these communities compounds the difficulty of getting businesses to locate there.

There have been some victories at the state and local level. In Texas a grassroots group worked to defeat a bill in the state legislature that would have banned municipal broadband. And yesterday in a related case the Maine Supreme Court ruled that Verizon must offer competing providers bandwidth on their network, thus making it easier to extend broadband to rural areas of the state.

Other states have been friendlier to the big boys. Washington, Nevada, Utah, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri, Arkansas, Pennsylvania (Phillidelphia has an exemption), Virginia, and South Carolina all passed some form of legislation that restricts municipal broadband. In other states legislation is pending, and a small handful of states recently defeated similar proposals.

In our continued effort to follow the money we see that cable TV’s political contribuions hover between 5 and 10 million per election cycle with a pretty even partisan divide. While the telephone industry contributes between 10 and 20 million per cycle with Republicans edging out Democrats.

This has also been discussed over at Kos here and here.

Sometimes I just don’t know what to say. This story appeared in several papers today.

For decades, experts have insisted that new jobs, housing and highways were the keys to building prosperity among the nation’s 60 million rural Americans.

But a report scheduled for presentation today in Point Clear suggests that residents of the rural South are tired of the “more” mantra, and say that bigger isn’t always better. Instead, many want to enhance and preserve small-town character, not accumulate urban amenities as if they were Mardi Gras beads.

Such results were not what researchers had expected, according to Jim Clinton, executive director of the Southern Growth Policies Board, which sponsored the “2005 Report on the Future of the South.”

“They don’t really like it when people or organizations try to tie the success of a community to whether it’s getting big or not,” Clinton said. “They want it to get better, not necessarily a lot larger. They don’t want it to get urban.”

The story goes on to report that residents told researchers that they wanted better schools, and improvements in water, sewer and health care.

“They told us over and over again how important education is to rural revitalization,” Clinton said.

But remember, ”Such results were not what research had expected.” I suppose they were too busy trying to figure out how to bring a Wal Mart to every community.

The U.S. House voted this week to postpone the implementation of mandatory County of Origin Labeling (COOL). Opponents claim that the cost of implementing COOL would harm U.S. producers.

The labels “would present a nightmare” of record-keeping and legal costs that consumers would have to bear, said Rep. Henry Bonilla, R-Texas, who voted against the labeling.

The industry estimates it could cost as much as $4 billion in the first year.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the House Agriculture Committee chairman, said the labels would do the opposite of what was intended, adding $10 per head of cattle to ranchers’ costs.

“It will make our producers less competitive with foreign meat producers, not more competitive,” said Goodlatte, R-Va.

Depending on who is doing the calculations, estimates for the beef and pork industries combined range from just $200 million to over $7 billion annually. Even the figure cited in the article is for first year expenses. One can assume that the price tag would be significantly less in subsequent years.

But none of this should be a surprise. Food processors and retailers, who oppose the legislation, have given tens of millions of dollars to candidates in recent years.

Update: better add the additional millions given by meat processors in recent years. Money given almost exclusively to Republicans.

Nuclear waste—coming soon to a rural area near you.

Last Chance, Colorado (photo here) is an unincorporated town on the eastern plains of Colorado. Located in Washington County, population 5,000 (or a very low 1.95 people per square mile), Last Chance is so named because it was once the last chance to fuel up before a long drive across the barren plains of Colorado.

Yesterday Clean Harbors Environmental Services received clearance from the Rocky Mountain Low-Level Radioactive Waste Board to begin shipments of radioactive waste from a tri-state region to the Last Chance area. The site will begin by accepting waste from a Superfund site in the Denver area, but the company has expressed hope that they will ultimately be able to bring in waste from other areas and industries as well.

As I see it there are two ways that these sorts of waste dumps end up in rural areas.

In some cases these rural communities have suffered repeated economic setbacks. Out of desperation they court landfills, radio active waste, jails and other generally undesirable industries. This brings jobs to otherwise desolate communities and allows residents to pay the bills. The situation presents a double edged sward to say the least.

In other cases politicians from urban/affluent areas push these industries into low income and rural areas. Neither scenario is acceptable, but the latter seems worse.

This from the Associate Press.

Pam Whelden, a rancher who lives two miles north of the site and worries about water and soil contamination. She said residents were told when the dump opened in the 1980s that no radioactive waste would be stored there.

“It is a bogus and arrogant move by the Colorado Department of Health and Clean Harbors,” said Whelden, a member of Concerned Citizens of Eastern Colorado, which opposes the radioactive-waste permit.

She said state and Clean Harbors officials failed to take residents’ concerns into consideration.

“We have to become watchdogs in our area to keep us safe,” Whelden said. “They don’t listen.”

The site still has to receive approval from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, but approval is expected.

This time from Michigan.

Federal cuts pinch rural health care

Darren Seymour held Penny Dick’s arm as she walked cautiously across the living room, her breathing labored and an oxygen tube trailing behind.

Seymour, a physical therapist, visits Dick’s home in rural Gladwin County twice a week to helps the 59-year-old heart patient rebuild her strength. In about two months, Dick has gone from being barely able to walk 10 feet to pacing the length of her home three times.

It’s the kind of help that 20,000 of Michigan’s sick stand to lose in the wake of reductions in how much Medicare pays to treat people in rural areas, where homes are miles apart and the nearest hospital could be an hour away.

Until last month, agencies that provided home health services to rural areas received 5 percent more funding than urban systems because of the time and gas it takes to drive between homes.

Without the money, agencies nationwide are cutting back staff, eliminating programs and scrapping services to rural areas.

The health care crisis is mounting all across the nation, but moves like these exasperate the problem for rural areas already at a disadvantage.

Much of the problem with current rural health care is that rural health policy is by and large a by product of national health policy. A market/price competition based health policy doesn’t work terribly well anywhere, but it works even less well in rural areas where service providers are geographically dispersed if present at all.

Cutting the budget to Medicare support programs in rural areas and expecting them to make up the money somewhere else is less then realistic given the lack of health care professionals in rural areas and a deteriorating health care infrastructure that exists in rural areas.

To add to the problem cuts like this and the TennCare cuts come at a time when rural areas are becoming increasingly elderly.

Update: This story from Oregon tells of a program designed to train nurses for rural areas. Students train remotely from the communities that they will serve after they graduate. More of this sort of thing begins to get at the problem of a failure to distinguish rural health policy from urban health policy.

Tennessee’s ongoing budget problem (the state levies virtually no income tax) has resulted in a plan to cut over 200,000 state residents from the Medicaid rolls.

These cuts are posed to hit some rural areas of Tennessee particularly hard.

In rural Fentress County nearly half of the county’s 17,000 people are on TennCare. This marks the highest percentage for any county in the state. Close to 3,000 people in the county could be dropped from TennCare’s rolls by the end of the summer.

Certainly other residents share the untenable position of Terry Sheilds

Terry Shields [is] a 36-year-old long-haul trucker who can no longer drive professionally because of a debilitating combination of chronic pain and shortness of breath, high blood pressure, allergies and diabetes.

Shields stares at the collection of pills and inhalers spread across the table in his home and worries about the future.

“There is no way I can pay for my medicines. No way,” he said. “If the cuts go through like they are being proposed, it’s pretty much like the governor is saying, ‘Which disease do you want to die from?’” said Shields, who faces drug bills far exceeding the $1,600 he receives in Social Security each month to support himself, his wife and two children.

TennCare is administered by the state and funded with both federal and state funds.