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Leave it to the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute to do a new study that helps us understand the challenges of rural America.
The report -- "Place Matters: Challenges and Opportunities in Four Rural Americas" -- identifies four separate and very different places in rural America.
- Amenity-rich areas with seashores, mountains, forests and lakes, enjoyed by vacationers, retirees and 2nd home owners.
- Declining resource-dependent areas -- regions that once prospered because of agriculture or mining, timber or manufacturing, now without enough opportunity to maintain a middle class.
- Chronically poor regions which have lacked investment and lost jobs for decades.
- Transitional, defined as regions that seem to be balancing resource-based decline but still have amenity growth.
Some of our readers may ask why all this matters? Our answer to this very important question is that Carsey's "Place Matters" further proves that rural America isn't all alike, and that policy solutions will need to be flexable as we work to address rural America's unique challenges.
Could we make this up? I don't think so ... Apparently John McCain is proud of wanting to veto the Farm Bill since he picked Iowa ... a major part of the food basket of our nation ... to make his announcement. To veto the Farm Bill is to veto conservation, nutrition, crop insurance, school lunch, food stamps, food safety -- yes, even all the inspections necessary to make sure our meat packing plants and other food processing systems remain safe and clean so that contaminated food doesn't enter our supply system. It's also to veto research -- research about new kinds of biofuels and how to make our country energy independent.
Read the story by Thomas Beaumont, Des Moines Register staff writer here.
Several days ago, we noted the controversy where Obama used the word "bitter" to describe some of the disappointment ... and anger ... in rural America today. We wrote, "... a lot of rural folks have lost their dreams in these last 25-30 years ... suffering through the "farm crisis of the 1980’s" and communities losing plant after plant of good union jobs moving overseas."
My Rural America has joined a new coalition lead by Al Cross (writer of The Rural Blog and Director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Communications), which calls for a presidential forum or debate about the issues facing rural America. Cross sites the challenges of No Child Left Behind, the still-undone Farm Bill and environmental issues in his request to the presidential candidates. Certainly, there is much more to talk about, including:
- Re: Jobs Lost. Have you ever noticed that when the Department of Labor releases their figures on jobs lost, they never even count the jobs lost from the farms of America ... only "off farm" jobs get counted.
- Re: Soldiers Lost ... in the war in Afghanistan and the occupation in Iraq. According to the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute, our brave men and women soldiers who come from the small towns and country roads across America have a 60% higher death rate higher death rate than do the soldiers who come from urban America. For many of our rural kids, joining the military is the only way they can get to college. For other rural kids, serving in the National Guard and getting that extra pay is the "extra income" that keeps them above the poverty level.
- Re: Health Insurance Lost. 6% more of our rural kids get their health care from SCHIP -- State Children's Health Insurance Program -- than do urban kids, yet enough proudly conservative rural members of Congress voted no on the need to expand this great program so that more of our kids nationwide could take advantage of it.
- Re: Education Funding Lost. Rural schools serve 40% of our nation's students but receive only 22 percent of federal education funding.
Combine these issues and more with rural America's shrinking voice in Congress caused by the emptying out of rural America and what you get is forgotten. In my home state of Iowa, our "shrinking voice" has meant Iowa is down to five U.S. representatives. That's down from 11 in 1930. Next to come is 2012 when we can expect to have only four Members representing us.
Rob Rose, reporter for the Meadville Tribune in Indiana, writes, "Bitter is as Bitter Does", as he adds his voice to the growing call for a rural presidential forum:
ROSE -- "The presidential primary votes of Hoosiers are, for the first time in nearly a half-century, meaningful. Obama’s remarks give us an opportunity to back two national politicians into corners and keep them there until they give us real answers to real problems — and we should."
We agree. Everything is NOT coming up roses in rural America and it's high time the presidential candidates started talking in more detail. Obama started the conversation. Clinton criticized. Now let's put some meat on the bones of this discussion.
By now, everyone who has had their TV on has heard some of the "back & forth" between Hillary and Obama about how she thinks that he was demeaning in his description of rural voters. It made me think about the time in 1996 when the country was back to work and interest rates were on their way down. Then, someone asked me why was it that middle class voters weren't feeling secure? "Afterall, they are back to work," said my friend.
My answer then was that even though people were back to work, they hadn't paid off their credit cards or replenished their savings back into the bank, so they were still behind. In some cases, what "back to work" meant was that they were employed, not that they were employed in as good of jobs as they had when they were laid off during the Bush and Reagan years.
Now, those good jobs are still gone. It's a long time.
I think about where we are now -- 12 years later, good jobs gone, unemployment rising, shaky stock market, unbelievably high gasoline prices, kids in rural areas signing up to go to war with the hope that their gamble allows them to come home safe and go to college. And I think about some of my friends ... aging prematurely, working too hard ... working just to make ends meet .
It's true that "bitter" is kind of a tough word, so maybe better words to have used would have been "tired" or "worn out" ... "dreams gone". Thinking realistically, a lot of rural folks have lost their dream in these last 25-30 years ... suffering through the "farm crisis of the 1980's" and communities losing plant after plant of good union jobs moving overseas. And now, we've also got another mortgage lending crisis on our hands, too, so -- no, everything isn't coming up roses in rural America and from our view point, it's a good thing when political leaders start recognizing it.
Read "Clinton" and also "Obama" to see for yourself how the story continues.
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