Rural News
The Geography of Food Stamps
Daily Yonder | Posted on May 10, 2018With the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in the news because of proposed cuts, we took another look at the data. The bottom line: Rural areas cluster near the top of counties that are most reliant on SNAP.
Telemedicine: DIfferent Types of care require different kinds of broadband
Daily Yonder | Posted on May 10, 2018Communities should consider the needs of both long-term and acute medical care as they create networks for telemedicine. Whether it’s providing lifesaving stroke treatment or caring for chronic conditions like addiction or wound management, different treatments require different tools.
Rural Kansas is dying. I drove 1,800 miles to find out why
New Food Economy | Posted on May 10, 2018A native Kansan returns home to find that the broken promises of commodity agriculture have destroyed a way of life. Most Americans experience Kansas from inside their cars, eight hours of cruise-controlled tedium on their way to someplace else. Even residents of the state’s eastern power centers glimpse its vast rural spaces at 85 mph, if at all.But on recent trips back, I wanted to really see my home state—so I avoided I-70, the zippy east/west thoroughfare. The slower pace paid off in moments of heart-stopping beauty. At dawn, outside Courtland, wisps of morning mist floated above the patchwork of farms that gently rolled out all around me. Driving up a slight incline, I had a 360-degree panorama to a distant horizon. And that is when I realized what was missing. As far as I could see, there was an utter lack of people. The only other sign of human life was a farm truck roaring down a string-straight road toward the edge of the earth.
Va. state senator files suit against Forest Service in support of pipeline protests
The Washington Post | Posted on May 10, 2018A Virginia state senator filed suit against the U.S. Forest Service on Wednesday, claiming that federal officials are illegally blocking access to a road in the Jefferson National Forest where several people are protesting construction of a natural gas pipeline. State Sen. Chap Petersen (D-Fairfax), who is a lawyer, filed the suit at the federal courthouse in Roanoke after being prohibited from using the road to reach the protesters last week.His action opens another legal front in the fight over the right to protest the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 303-mile project that starts in West Virginia and crosses through Virginia’s southwest mountains.
LePage veto fails, clearing way for recreational pot sales in Maine
Bangor Daily News | Posted on May 10, 2018Maine lawmakers overrode Gov. Paul LePage’s veto of an adult-use marijuana regulatory bill Wednesday, putting the state on track to regulate a retail market that has been in limbo since voters legalized recreational marijuana use in 2016. The proposal that survived the Republican governor’s pen was Maine’s second attempt to create a framework for the system after a veto of an earlier bill was upheld in 2017, sending a special committee that was convened to handle the issue back to rehash it.
ABAC to house new Center for Rural Prosperity and Innovation
The Multrie Observer | Posted on May 10, 2018Gov. Nathan Deal opened a new door of opportunity for economic revitalization for rural Georgia on Wednesday afternoon when he signed House Bill 951, creating a Center for Rural Prosperity and Innovation that will be housed at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College. “On behalf of all Georgians who live in rural Georgia or who grew up in rural Georgia, I want to thank Governor Deal and the legislators who turned this idea into reality,” ABAC President David Bridges said. “Rural communities face many challenges, hurdles, and obstacles as they attempt to revitalize and strengthen their situations.”Bridges grew up in rural Terrell County in the tiny town of Parrott. President of ABAC since 2006, he is the longest serving president among the 26 institutions in the University System of Georgia. He prepared a proposal for enhancing community and economic development in rural Georgia and presented it the Georgia House of Representatives Rural Development Council in February.“Shrinking populations, export of the most ambitious and talented young people, failing businesses, loss of access to primary health care services, closure of hospitals and loss of tax-paying brick and mortar retail stores plague much of rural Georgia,” Bridges said in the report.
Niles To Roll Out Free Textile Recycling Program
Journal & Topics | Posted on May 10, 2018Niles officials awarded a contract for textile recycling, such as used clothing and rags, to a company last month which will begin pick up services in late June. Village trustees signed a contract with Great Lakes Recycling, which runs Simple Recycling, at their April 24 board meeting. The contract is expected to earn the village $900 in direct revenue and save Niles taxpayers nearly $28,000 by diverting nearly 600 tons of trash from landfills each year. Beginning Monday, June 25, Simple Recycling trucks will follow trucks from the village’s regular waste hauler Groot, along trash and recycling pickup routes on a weekly basis to collect textiles that residents want to recycle.
Newly introduced Utah public-lands bill that would protect 1 million acres is already drawing fire from conservation groups
The Salt Lake Tribune | Posted on May 10, 2018A new land bill introduced in Congress Wednesday seeks to set aside more than a half-million acres of wilderness in Utah’s Emery County.Backed by Utah Rep. John Curtis and Sen. Orrin Hatch, the Emery County Public Land Management Act would also create a 4-square-mile national monument at the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry and national conservation areas totaling 383,380 acres, mostly around the iconic San Rafael Swell.Proponents lauded the bill, nearly 20 years in the making, as a locally driven solution to long-standing land-use conflicts, bringing “desired certainty to a broad range of stakeholders.”
A sheriff’s dilemma in the face of Trump’s immigration agenda
High Country News | Posted on May 10, 2018Located in the sprawling farmland of southern Colorado’s San Luis Valley, five hours away from Denver, the closest major city, Alamosa can feel about as far removed from D.C. politics as you can get. But not when it comes to immigration enforcement: More than half of the town’s 15,000 people are Hispanic, many of them immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala who now find themselves in the crosshairs of the government’s immigration crackdown. It wasn’t just immigrants and their families who felt targeted. Since the 2016 election, the Trump administration has ramped up pressure on local law enforcement across the country into becoming a “deportation force.” From signaling its intention to aggressively promote the 287(g) program, which allows local law enforcement to question people about their immigration status, to withholding federal grants from so-called sanctuary jurisdictions, the White House has made it clear that it aims to enlist local police and county sheriffs in its war against unauthorized immigration. While some law enforcement officials support the administration’s efforts, others feel caught between these new demands and their legal and ethical ramifications.
Abuse of Opioid Alternative Gabapentin Is on the Rise
Pew Charitable Trust | Posted on May 10, 2018Doctors who are cutting back on prescribing opioids increasingly are opting for gabapentin, a safer, non-narcotic drug recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By doing so, they may be putting their opioid-using patients at even greater risk.Recently, gabapentin has started showing up in a substantial number of overdose deaths in hard-hit Appalachian states. The neuropathic (nerve-related) pain reliever was involved in more than a third of Kentucky overdose deaths last year.Drug users say gabapentin pills, known as “johnnies” or “gabbies,” which often sell for less than a dollar each, enhance the euphoric effects of heroin and when taken alone in high doses can produce a marijuana-like high.Medical researchers stress that more study is needed to determine the role gabapentin may have played in recent overdose deaths. However, a study of heroin users in England and Wales published last fall concluded that combining opioids and gabapentin“potentially increases the risk of acute overdose death” by hampering breathing and reversing users’ tolerance to heroin and other powerful opioids.