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Rural News

Dispelling GMO myths with Neil Degrasse Tyson and Bill Nye

inquisitr.com | Posted on August 6, 2017

Rosanne Rust, a registered dietitian nutritionist and author from Northwest, Pennsylvania, had this to say about the definition of GMOs. “GMOs come from modifying the genes of a plant or animal by inserting one targeted gene that possesses a desired trait into the other organism.” She added, “This highly specific process can help an organism stay healthy by preventing disease or malformation, or it may enhance the organism’s positive traits.” Some say that the debate still lingers on, but for many, the debate is over when people are dealing with the facts and not belief systems. Much of the scientific community seems to agree that GMOs in and of themselves are not harmful and may even be beneficial to the economy and the environment, as well as having long term effects that will help the world.


The elephant not in the room

Strongtowns | Posted on August 6, 2017

Instead of throwing studies and statistics at each other in a battle of the riders, we actually need to speak to each other's elephants. Or, more precisely, we need to listen and try to understand the other's elephant. Only then can we find real common ground that we can build upon. Only then can we change minds. Last week someone shared an article with me about the Foxconn deal that was announced by the Trump administration. When I read it, my elephant started to charge and my rider had no problem justifying it. I'm deeply skeptical of these kind of deals and, with the numbers presented in the article, I quickly went about presenting a pretty convincing case for why this was a ridiculous thing to do. At least, I thought it was convincing. There were a number of others who didn't. I heard from many people over the weekend that I was missing something and that my credibility was damaged as a result. Chuck, you're not taking into account all the related industries that are going to follow and the jobs they will create. Chuck, these subsidies are all tax credits so it's not like they get a handout for doing nothing. Chuck, you're not counting the property taxes or the sales taxes, which will certainly be significant. I responded to one of these comments by noting that, for the deal to make financial sense, the side aspect they claimed I was discounting would need to amount to multiple times the main deal. I responded as if that were obvious, because it was to me. Why would the state of Wisconsin want a bunch of new workers -- a bunch of people who are going to cost the state a ton of money -- when, under an ideal scenario, the state will get no revenue from those workers for more than half a century? How does this benefit anyone in Wisconsin not named or directly employed by Foxconn?


For Rural Veterans, New Approaches to Health Care

Pew Charitable Trust | Posted on August 3, 2017

Many rural veterans rely on a combination of VA health insurance and other forms of insurance, such as private insurance, Medicaid (the joint federal-state health insurance program for the poor and disabled), or Medicare (federal health program for the elderly), according to census data. The number of veterans enrolled in Medicaid increased by about 340,000 under the Affordable Care Act, according to an analysis by Families USA, a nonprofit that advocates for high-quality, affordable health care.


Anti-vax movement prompts Brooklynites to withhold inoculations from their pets, vets say

Brooklyn Paper | Posted on August 3, 2017

Some Brooklynites are refusing to vaccinate their pets against virulent and potentially deadly illnesses — some of which could spread to humans — thanks to a growing movement against the life-saving inoculations, according to borough veterinarians. “We do see a higher number of clients who don’t want to vaccinate their animals,” said Dr. Amy Ford of the Veterinarian Wellness Center of Boerum Hill. “This may be stemming from the anti-vaccine movement, which people are applying to their pets.”


This Food Bank Invests In The Local Community

NPR | Posted on August 3, 2017

Wayne County, New York, is the biggest producer of apples in the Empire State. Yet, in 2013 public school children in the county were being served apples from Washington on their lunch trays. At the end of the lunch period, the lovely, whole Washington apples ended up mostly uneaten in the garbage. Tom Ferraro, founder of the Rochester, NY, food bank Foodlink, set about solving the problem. Ferraro was familiar with a recent study showing that children were more likely to eat sliced fruit than whole. Since Foodlink had the facilities to wash, slice and package apples into portions, Ferraro decided topurchase apples from local farmers, process them, and sell them back to local schools. The program has been a success. Since July 2014, Foodlink has purchased 3.8 million pounds of local apples, investing $600,000 into the local agricultural economy. Children are eating the apple slices. And Foodlink uses revenue from apple sales in its own kitchen to prepare scratch-cooked meals for local school lunches, after-school and summer programs.


Obamacare Saved This Woman’s Life—and Her Farm

Mother Jones | Posted on August 3, 2017

After battling two brain tumors and breast cancer, Tina Hinchley still milks 130 cows twice a day. Not many people have jobs that are as physically demanding as Tina Hinchley’s. With her husband and four children, Hinchley, 51, milks 130 cows twice a day and works the corn and soybean fields on her family’s 2,500-acre farm in southeastern Wisconsin. To keep things running smoothly, Hinchley says the whole family needs to be healthy and strong. But like everyone else, sometimes farmers get sick.But Hinchley’s symptoms got so bad that she could no longer work in the barn, so her children had to pick up the slack, each of them milking dozens of cows before catching the school bus at 6:45 a.m. When she finally went to the clinic, the doctor immediately ordered CT scan, which revealed a brain tumor. She was scheduled for surgery right away. The surgeon removed the tumor, which turned out to be benign. But then the bill came: $187,000. Hinchley and her husband thought that maybe they would have to sell off their land. They ultimately scraped by, but Hinchley worried constantly. “When we don’t have health care, it’s scary,” she told me. “There is always the fear of: ‘If something happens, we could lose the farm.'”So in 2012, when the Affordable Care Act went into effect, Hinchley signed up for insurance right away.That decision may have saved her life. In 2013, Hinchley was diagnosed with another benign brain tumor as well as breast cancer. It was an extremely difficult time for the family, but having health insurance lightened the burden. “It was just an ease,” Hinchley said.


A Bipartisan Health Care Fix? Governors Have Some Ideas

Pew Charitable Trust | Posted on August 2, 2017

The apparent demise of the Republican drive to scrap the Affordable Care Act may open the door to bipartisan fixes to the law. If it does, some of the proposals being touted by a bipartisan group of governors may get a hearing on Capitol Hill. The seven Democrats and six Republican governors who crafted the proposals want federal money to stabilize the ACA’s health insurance marketplaces, and greater power to manage them. They argue it should be easier for states to customize Medicaid, the joint federal-state health insurance for the poor, and they want new tools to curb fast-rising drug prices. And they insist that states should continue to regulate the health policies sold within their borders.“We didn’t intend this to be a political statement, other than to say to Washington, ‘Here’s information, look at where there is agreement,’” said Paul Edwards, deputy chief of staff to Utah Republican Gov. Gary Herbert, one of the governors who helped devise the health care proposals.   Not all the proposals are new, but they are likely to carry weight because of their source. The National Governors Association assembled the group in March and it released its ideas in June.


Yellowstone Grizzlies Removed From Threatened Species List

US News and World Report | Posted on August 2, 2017

The U.S. government lifted protections for grizzly bears in the Yellowstone region on Monday, though it will be up to the courts to decide whether the revered and fearsome icon of the West stays off the threatened species list.More than a month after announcing grizzlies in and around Yellowstone National Park are no longer threatened, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officially handed over management of the approximately 700 bears living across 19,000 square miles (49,210 sq. kilometers) in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming to wildlife officials in those states.The ruling does not apply to the approximately 1,000 bears living farther north in the Northern Continental Divide area that includes Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness.Not much is expected to immediately change as a result of the handover. State wildlife officials have been working for decades to protect the bears as their population grows and their range expands farther away from the oldest U.S. national park, and they say they will continue to do so.Federal wildlife officials will also monitor the states for five years and re-impose protections if the population drops below 500 bears.


Georgia sees some progress on rural broadband

Ledger Enquirer | Posted on August 2, 2017

Last year there was a study committee on rural broadband issues and the growing digital divide facing our state. Residents of metro Atlanta and other densely populated parts of the state don’t witness this problem. Those living in rural Georgia too frequently deal with internet service that is slow, unreliable, or nonexistent.  The main work of the committee was to identify that there are really several major problems under the rural broadband umbrella. Access to service, speed of service, reliability of service, cost of service, and regulatory barriers impeding delivery of service are all subtopics worthy of understanding before any solution set is found.There also remains a question of the proper government role in solving this problem. Purists would suggest that the market will eventually self-correct. The problem with that frame of mind is that an entire generation of Georgians may lose out on education, commerce, and employment opportunities before economies of scale allow for modern broadband service to be deployed throughout the state. The problems of rural broadband deployment continue to be studied by legislators, this year under the much broader “Rural Development Council.” Broadband is being looked at as in context with economic development, education, rural healthcare, and other issues unique to the less developed parts of the state. The point is that all of these issues are interconnected, and solutions for one often depend on solutions for others.


Neighbors in a small Colorado town are splintered, but neither are correct.

High Country News | Posted on August 2, 2017

The political right and left are stuck in polarizing myths. Folks in my small Western town are divided: die-hard right-wingers on one side and so-called progressives on the other. But both appear to support those “deregistering” from the list of eligible voters for fear of federal intervention in what is a state right.  I see the hard-right folks in Safeway carrying pistols. Both are likely influenced by the myths of the Old West, either consciously or unconsciously. And both are dropping off the voting rolls at an alarming rate; somewhere around 3,000 have deregistered in Colorado so far.Neither group wants President Donald Trump’s voter fraud commission to know anything about them. They don’t want it known that they’re registered to vote, or what party they belong to, and they clearly don’t want to have their Social Security number put in some insecure database. Both are alarmed and suspicious that the Trump administration’s commission is really designed to suppress voter turnout.I know some of the “hard right, anti-federal” folks.  It’s a small town and we tend to know one another. Usually, we can all be cordial at break time at a city council meeting.


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