Rural News
Three drug companies settle WV lawsuits for $800K
Charleston Gazette Mail | Posted on November 22, 2016Three more prescription drug companies have settled lawsuits with the state of West Virginia, for a total of $800,000, over the huge numbers of pain pills shipped into the state over several years. The settlements with J.M. Smith Corporation, Top Rx and Masters Pharmaceutical LLC were announced late Thursday in a news release from the state Attorney General’s office. The state Department of Health and Human Resources and the state Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety also approved the settlements, according to the release. J.M. Smith, also known as Smith Drug Company, agreed to pay $400,000; Top Rx and Masters Pharmaceutical agreed to pay $200,000 each. The lawsuit against more than a dozen pharmaceutical companies was filed in 2012 by former Attorney General Darrell McGraw and inherited by his successor, Patrick Morrisey. Before Tuesday, six other companies had settled with the state: Miami-Luken, Anda Inc., the Harvard Drug Group, Associated Pharmacies, KeySource Medical Inc. and Quest Pharmaceuticals. The largest settlement, with Miami-Luken, was for $2.5 million.
Missing links that connect human DNA variation with disease discovered
Science Daily | Posted on November 18, 2016Scientists have discovered the hidden connections in our genomes that contribute to common diseases. Using a pioneering technique, the results are beginning to make biological sense of the mountains of genetic data linking very small changes in our DNA sequence to our risk of disease. Discovering these missing links will inform the design of new drugs and future treatments for a range of diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis and other types of autoimmune disease.
Dedicated to the Mountains, Desperate for Jobs
Pew Charitable Trust | Posted on November 18, 2016It’s never been easy to make a living in central Appalachia’s narrow valleys. Without coal, it’s become a whole lot harder. Mining jobs were some of the best-paying in the area, and the industry supported an array of other professions, from truck drivers to personal injury lawyers. Today about 9 percent of eastern Kentuckians are out of work. Thirty percent live in poverty, according to the most recent federal statistics. Rates of drug overdose deaths, cancer, diabetes and disability are high. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to rejuvenate the coal industry by renegotiating trade deals and rolling back environmental regulations. That might bring back some jobs, but it won’t bring back the employment levels of the 1980s or ’90s.
New Aerial Survey Identifies More Than 100 Million Dead Trees in California
USDA | Posted on November 18, 2016The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced today that the U.S. Forest Service has identified an additional 36 million dead trees across California since its last aerial survey in May 2016. This brings the total number of dead trees since 2010 to over 102 million on 7.7 million acres of California's drought stricken forests. In 2016 alone, 62 million trees have died, representing more than a 100 percent increase in dead trees across the state from 2015. Millions of additional trees are weakened and expected to die in the coming months and years. With public safety as its most pressing concern, the U.S. Forest Service has committed significant resources to help impacted forests, including reprioritizing $43 million in California in fiscal year 2016 to conduct safety-focused restoration along roads, trails and recreation sites. However, limited resources and a changing climate hamper the Forest Service's ability to address tree mortality in California. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Forest Service officials are seriously hampered not only by short-term budgets passed by Congress, but also a broken budget for the Forest Service that sees an increasing amount of resources going to firefighting while less is invested in restoration and forest health, said Vilsack.
PETA Blames the Victim
Consumer Freedom | Posted on November 18, 2016People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) sure has a weird way of showing what it’s all about. In a recent lawsuit against the organization, PETA is accused of stealing and murdering a Hispanic family’s beloved dog named Maya in southeastern Virginia. PETA’s response has hit a new low in hypocrisy and stupidity. It has filed several motions to dismiss the case on the grounds that the dog was legally worthless and that what they did was not “outrageous” conduct. This from the group that tried to make the case that killer whales housed at SeaWorld should legally be considered slaves and released because of the 13th amendment. PETA has even stooped as low as blaming the family for the death of their murdered dog. PETA has suggested that the family was “negligent” because “they did not keep the subject dog restrained and did not keep proper identification or marking of ownership which resulted in the dog being removedat the time.” (The dog was sitting on the owner’s front porch when it was stolen by PETA.) Surveillance video of the theft shows that it was quite obvious that Maya was obviously not a stray dog. The footage shows a dog sitting on her porch, timid of the intruders, and only willing to leave the porch briefly because of the coaxing of the two defendants in this case throwing a biscuit to her. But like most dogs belonging to a family, Maya returned – to dismay of the defendants – to the safety of her porch. Unfortunately for Maya this did not stop the defendants from trespassing illegally onto the property and ripping her from her home. Maya was killed that very same day.
Rural economies get high on legal cannabis
High Country News | Posted on November 18, 2016In Trinidad, Colorado, revenue from eight recreational cannabis shops is paving streets and helping refurbish downtown apartments. Across the state in De Beque, nearly a quarter of the town’s general fund comes from marijuana sales tax. In Log Lane Village, the town repaved two city blocks thanks to sales tax from two new pot shops — revenue that nearly doubled the city’s budget. For rural Colorado communities like these — especially towns that were already struggling with the collapse of an economic engine, like coal or oil — the state’s three-year-old recreational marijuana industry has been a major boon. In many towns, marijuana sales have bolstered municipal tax bases, funding a variety of improvements. Store-owners, city councilmembers and mayors are cautiously optimistic that the influx of cash will continue, but say there’s no way to know how sustainable the growth will be. If surrounding states legalize marijuana, Colorado could lose its valuable status as an island of legalization in a sea of prohibition. Meanwhile, New Mexico medical cannabis suppliers look on, closely studying the Colorado experience in case recreational legalization makes it to the ballot.
How the Election Revealed the Divide Between City and Country
The Atlantic | Posted on November 18, 2016Not since then has the cultural chasm between urban and non-urban America shaped the struggle over the country’s direction as much as today. Of all the overlapping generational, racial, and educational divides that explained Trump’s stunning upset over Hillary Clinton last week, none proved more powerful than the distance between the Democrats’ continued dominance of the largest metropolitan areas, and the stampede toward the GOP almost everywhere else. Trump’s victory was an empire-strikes-back moment for all the places and voters that feel left behind in an increasingly diverse, post-industrial, and urbanized America. Squeezing bigger margins from smaller places, Trump overcame a tide of resistance in the largest metropolitan areas that allowed Clinton to carry the national popular vote, but not the decisive Electoral College. This election thus carved a divide between cities and non-metropolitan areas as stark as American politics has produced since the years just before and after 1920. In an extended tussle over the country’s direction, forces grounded outside of the largest cities overcame urban resistance to impose Prohibition in 1919 and severely limit new immigration in 1924. The same fear of “a chaotically pluralistic society,” as one historian put it, fueled a resurgence of religious fundamentalism and a revival of the Ku Klux Klan. Then, as now, the lines between city and country were not absolute: both Prohibition and immigration restriction drew meaningful support from within the urban professional and intellectual classes.
Fallout over water ruling heats up in Washington
Capital Press | Posted on November 17, 2016Several senators criticized Tuesday a recent Washington Supreme Court decision that threatens to halt home building in farm communities and said they will try to counteract the decision in the upcoming legislative session. “It’s totally ridiculous, what’s going on. It’s killing rural America,” said Republican Sen. Brian Dansel, who represents the state’s sparsely populated northeastern corner. The 6-3 ruling in Hirst v. Whatcom County in October struck down the routine approval of new domestic wells. It also gave the 2017 Legislature another major battle along rural and urban lines. The issue of whether wells can be drilled in places not served by waterlines has “bumped its way to the top of our list,” said Moses Lake Republican Judy Warnick, chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture, Water and Rural Development Committee. The committee was briefed on the ruling by the Department of Ecology and others. Domestic wells statewide are responsible for 1 percent of water consumption, and Ecology said new wells for single-family homes were OK in Whatcom County.
U.S. Sweats Out Third-Warmest October On Record
Growing Produce | Posted on November 17, 2016The contiguous U.S. experienced its third warmest October in 122-years of recordkeeping, with an average temperature of 57.7°F, which is 3.6°F above the 20th-century average. Forty-seven states were warmer than average. The precipitation total for the month was 0.17-inch above average.
Dwayne Andreas, who transformed Archer Daniels Midland into global powerhouse, dies
The Washington Post | Posted on November 17, 2016
Dwayne Andreas, the farmer’s son and college dropout who turned the grain-processing company Archer Daniels Midland into “the supermarket to the world,” then saw it rocked by a price-fixing scandal, has died. He was 98. Archer Daniels Midland spokeswoman Jackie Anderson confirmed the death. The company did not immediately provide other details. Under Mr. Andreas’s guidance, the company changed the agricultural world. He used his influence and friendships with politicians, including House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill (D-Mass.), Sen. Robert Dole (R-Kan.) and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, to encourage federal subsidies for corn and grain farmers, maintain huge overseas markets, and help turn ADM products such as high-fructose corn syrup into staples of the American diet.