Rural

U.S. Census data shows that many of those leaving rural Montana are the young people, the high school graduates who leave to pursue post-secondary education and don’t come back. “If you can marry a superior and superb quality of life with the reliability and convenience of strong infrastructure, including internet connections and fiber connections, places like Choteau and Fairfield and Cut Bank and Shelby, become far more relevant and attractive for business development than they would be otherwise,” Tuss said. [node:read-more:link]

Oregon House Bill 4106 would directly correlate the amount of compensation ranchers receive for wolf attacks on livestock with the overall wolf population statewide. House Bill 4106 requires the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife to prepare a report each biennium detailing the change in wolf population over the preceding two years. Legislators would then allocate money from the general fund to the Department of Agriculture’s Wolf Depredation Compensation and Financial Assistance Grant Program based on the change.The bill is spearheaded by Rep. [node:read-more:link]

Many people get nervous any time they need to go to the doctor. But in the past year, some U.S. residents became more concerned than usual. Immigrants around the country who are on edge about broader enforcement under the Trump administration have been skipping appointments, questioning whether enrolling in government-funded health care coverage could undermine their immigration applications and showing anxiety about visiting unfamiliar physicians, according to nearly two dozen medical providers and lawyers interviewed recently. [node:read-more:link]

New York state will require internet providers to observe net neutrality or risk losing eligibility for state contracts under an executive order issued Wednesday by Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The new policy aims to protect consumers by using the state's lucrative information technology contracts as leverage over internet companies. It's similar to one enacted through executive order Monday by Democratic Gov. [node:read-more:link]

In rural America, however, economic conditions are considerably more challenging. Persistently low commodity prices have hurt U.S. agricultural producers, depressing farm income and eating into farmers’ working capital. There is continuing uncertainty about the direction the Trump administration will take with regard to NAFTA and other international trade agreements that are vitally important to agriculture. Rural utilities face growing pressure to consolidate in the face of high regulatory costs, technological change and the loss of population across many rural areas [node:read-more:link]

One of the year’s most important legislative battles in Washington state came to a surprisingly quick conclusion last Thursday evening when a water-use bill passed both chambers and went to the desk of Gov. Jay Inslee, who signed it into law the next day. [node:read-more:link]

Nevada’s manufacturing industry is heating up. But it’s not the type of manufacturing you might think. “It’s a multi-step process. Corn is cooked, washed and ground, then pressed out into tortilla chip shapes,” said Allan Perkins, director of manufacturing at Las Vegas tortilla chip manufacturer R.W. Garcia. “They are first baked at about 700 degrees Fahrenheit. Then they are lightly fried in corn or sunflower oil at about 330 degrees Fahrenheit.”Perkins said R.W. [node:read-more:link]

The fight over a patch of farmland in Goodhue County near Zumbrota is going to the Minnesota Supreme court. Concerned residents are contesting an appeals court ruling that allows construction of a proposed hog farm to go through.Opponents argue the farm would violate county zoning ordinances. [node:read-more:link]

You might think that the kind of extreme poverty that would concern a global organization like the United Nations has long vanished in this country. Yet the special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, recently made and reported on an investigative tour of the United States. Surely no one in the United States today is as poor as a poor person in Ethiopia or Nepal? As it happens, making such comparisons has recently become much easier. [node:read-more:link]

The back-to-back votes ended a yearlong standoff created by the state Supreme Court’s Hirst ruling. Some Democrats said new wells will trample tribal treaty rights. Some Republicans complained lawmakers were turning over millions of dollars to unelected watershed-restoration panels. Still, Senate Bill 6091 received bipartisan support in both chambers. “This bill provides a path forward for the people who just want to build on their few acres,” said Moses Lake Sen. [node:read-more:link]