Rural News
Hundreds of fish die along Florida's Space Coast beaches
Fox News | Posted on November 1, 2018Hundreds of fish have washed ashore along Florida's Space Coast beaches, a week after the first signs of a toxic algae outbreak were reported. The dead fish, mostly mullet, were found this week from Melbourne Beach to Satellite Beach on the state's east coast.Despite the fish kills, water samples this week along the Space Coast showed a decrease in the algae known as red tide.The red tide began last October off southwest Florida after Hurricane Irma swept up the state. It has killed massive numbers of fish, along with scores of sea turtles and the state's beloved manatees.
Why the Fear of Immigrants Is Un-American
Time | Posted on November 1, 2018“I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it,” said Ronald Reagan. “But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.”In moments of great reflection, transition, and vulnerability, great men saw the American story not through the lens of politics or tribe. They saw it as it surely looked to John Winthrop and every weary traveler who has ever approached American shores — rocky, imperfect, and unknown, but expansive, limitless, and defiantly hopeful.Since the beginning, immigration has been an affirmation of our success, not a threat to it. People risk everything to reach this land because they believe in our greatness — our fair laws, our good values, our promises and possibilities. We should not worry when the striving and suffering arrive on our shores; we should worry when they stop coming at all.
Scientists, high school students find new pathogens hiding in Indiana ticks
Purdue | Posted on November 1, 2018Almost anyone spending time outdoors knows about the link between ticks and Lyme disease. But there may be far more lurking in tick bites than previously thought – a cocktail of bacteria and viruses that may uniquely affect each bite victim and inhibit the remedies meant to cure tick-borne diseases. “Climate change is expanding tick ranges, and we’re spending more time in tick habitats all the time,” said Catherine Hill, a Purdue professor of entomology and vector biology. “As we come into more contact with ticks, we increase the likelihood of being bitten and contracting a tick-borne disease. We’re finding that it’s not just one microbe these ticks could pass on to us. It’s like a little microbe party in there, and we need to figure out how their interplay can affect human health.”
Mayor returns home to try to lift town plagued by poverty
Capital Press | Posted on November 1, 2018Beyond the boarded-up buildings and patchwork fences that others view as eyesores, Huron Mayor Rey Leon sees potential in this tiny central California farm town that has been mired in poverty for decades.Leon, 45, was a reluctant and unlikely leader for one of the state’s poorest cities. Huron is home to a large Latino population where mostly seasonal work leaves 2 in 5 residents in poverty and only about a quarter of adults have high school degrees.He graduated from the local high school, earned a degree at the University of California, Berkeley, and spent the bulk of his career as a clean air advocate and champion of environmental justice in nearby Fresno before returning a couple of years ago.“I came back home not because we have the good coffee shop, not because we have the nice plaza to hang out at or the trails to walk around, but because my community deserves that, and I want to make it exist,” Leon said.He returned home and discovered later he was a “Chicano nerd” with a curiosity for learning rather than following in the path of his older brothers. Several of them ended up behind bars.
Hawaii, Trust for Public Land acquire former Dole land for $15M
Pacific Business News | Posted on October 29, 2018The state of Hawaii and the Trust for Public Land have closed on the acquisition of 2,882 acres of forest and fallow lands near the Helemano Military Reservation in Central Oahu from the Dole Food Co. The $15.16 million purchase price was funded by a half dozen public and private sources: $1.5 million from the Hawaii State Legacy Land Conservation Fund; $5 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Legacy Program; $2 million from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Habitat Conservation Plan; $400,00 from the Pittman-Robertson Fund; $2.75 million from Kawailoa Wind LLC; and $3.5 million from the U.S. Navy REPI Program.The state Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of Forestry and Wildlife plans to create a plan for recreational opportunities on the land, which is outside of Whitmore Village in Wahiawa, and well as forest restoration, water source protection and native species habitat improvement.
Innovative plan to combine housing, farmland nears vote
Daily Democrat | Posted on October 29, 2018In a first for the Bay Area, developers hoping to break ground on a new housing complex next year are wooing potential residents by offering a quirky but increasingly popular perk. It’s not a golf course, health club or even a pet spa — the big draw will be a farm, and access to all the tomatoes, zucchini and kale you can eat. The “Agrihood” development plan heading to the Santa Clara City Council for a vote as early as next month calls for 361 homes and a small farm to be built on vacant land across the street from Westfield Valley Fair and down the road from Santana Row, near the San Jose border. If the council approves the proposal, it would introduce the Bay Area to a new trend already taking the national real estate world by storm.
Privatized Medicaid's latest target: New transportation charges are leaving disabled Iowans in the lurch
Des Moines Register | Posted on October 25, 2018Life for many disabled Iowans now features fewer outings, longer commute times and tighter living arrangements as a result of a state Medicaid policy change that affects their transportation to jobs and day services, a Des Moines Register investigation has found. The findings come less than a year after the Iowa Department of Human Services replaced a longtime "waiver" program used to pay for these transportation services. The change rolled the transportation payments into a new "tier rate" system that is supposed to be revenue neutral.But some companies and groups that provide services to disabled Iowans contend the new structure has cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars inrevenue, forcing them to take drastic measures that affect services to Medicaid recipients.The new tier rate payments have also hit some of Iowa’s public transportation agencies, raising the prospect of higher taxes.The results intensify anxieties and other challenges that people with disabilities sometimes face, parents and service providers said.
USDA provides basic goods and services for rural residents
Ag Policy | Posted on October 25, 2018In many ways the programs of the USDA serve as a validation of the list of basic goods and services set forth by Reinert. In his discussion of the merits of providing unrestricted cash transfers directly to people for the purchase of food compared to providing conditional cash transfers that set restrictions on the items that can be purchased we found Reinert speaking directly to most of us.He writes, “[A] way of enjoying oneself is to purchase things other than food even when your diet is far less than ideal. These could include televisions, festivals, videogame parlors, and much more. It is not that the poor are stupid in this regard. It is just that the poor are very much like the nonpoor in their behaviors. Indeed, the pursuit of something tasty is a part of what drives the obesity rates in both rich and poor countries.” How many of us have to say, “guilty as charged”?He then discusses policy interventions that have been shown to be useful including “pregnant mothers and their infants…. Evidence suggests that programs that improve the nutrition for these individuals have positive repercussions for for both health and education throughout the children’s lives.”While there are many who believe that American farmers will play a significant role in reducing the number of people around the world who suffer from significant undernutrition, the picture is more nuanced than that. It is clear that exports are important to the financial health of the US farm sector, but the solution to world hunger goes beyond the corn, wheat, and soybeans produced on US farms.
Ohio SARL member working on Ohio school funding fix
The Columbus Dispatch | Posted on October 25, 2018Ohio’s lowest-performing districts, with a performance index score under 70, had eight times as many low-income students on average as districts with scores over 100. Low income is defined as “economically disadvantaged” students with family income below 185 percent of the federal poverty level — $38,443 for a family of three. “There is stuff we know to do, and it takes money,” Fleeter said, pointing to universal preschool, summer programs and extended school days. “We need to get outside the box that school is six hours a day for 180 days of the year and it starts when you turn 5. If we keep trying that, we should not be surprised when, year after year, we find this (achievement gap).”But undertaking such a substantive revamp in most districts likely means a change in the way Ohio funds schools. An informal workgroup of school superintendents and treasurers, led by Reps. Bob Cupp, R-Lima, and John Patterson, D-Jefferson, has been meeting for nearly a year trying to craft changes to the state funding formula.The group plans to roll out recommendations in late November, in time for consideration in the next two-year budget.Asked what the major problem is with the current formula, developed by Gov. John Kasich and modified by lawmakers over six years, Cupp said, “What isn’t the problem with it?”“This is a recession-era formula when the legislature was struggling to figure out how to keep things going with a lot less money,” Cupp said. “It’s sort of been patched ever since. It’s almost more patch than formula.” Cupp and Patterson agree that a main flaw is base funding that isn’t tied to anything. Kasich never tried to determine the cost of an education, arguing that there was no magic number.
Tornadoes are spinning up farther east in US, study finds
ABC | Posted on October 25, 2018Over the past few decades tornadoes have been shifting — decreasing in Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas but spinning up more in states along the Mississippi River and farther east, a new study shows. Scientists aren't quite certain why. Tornado activity is increasing most in Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa and parts of Ohio and Michigan, according to a study in Wednesday's journal Climate and Atmospheric Science. There has been a slight decrease in the Great Plains, with the biggest drop in central and eastern Texas. Even with the decline, Texas still gets the most tornadoes of any state.The shift could be deadly because the area with increasing tornado activity is bigger and home to more people, said study lead author Victor Gensini, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Northern Illinois University. Also more people live in vulnerable mobile homes and tornadoes are more likely to happen at night in those places, he said.