The Daily Yonder has been documenting how the manufacturing sector in the U.S. collapsed during this recession — especially in rural counties in the Carolinas and Georgia. The Washington Post reports this morning that the blame for the 15% unemployment around Hickory, North Carolina, is due to globalization. Peter Whoriskey reports: "The region has lost more of its jobs to international competition than just about anywhere else in the nation, according to federal trade-assistance statistics, as textile mills have closed, furniture factories have dwindled and even the fiber-optic plants have undergone mass layoffs."
The federal remedy for jobs lost to global trade is retraining. But the Post finds that people can't afford to go to class. They have mouths to feed and insurance bills to be paid. One woman who lost her job in a furniture factory went back to school to learn how to work in a doctor's office. She lost her house and her health insurance. (See a good slide show on this.)
Free trade advocates say that as unprofitable businesses close due to competition from low-wage countries, workers will shift to more productive activities. The Post finds that reality is having a hard time catching up to theory. "The people in the think tanks keep saying we are going to become -- what's the term? -- an 'information and services' economy," said Allan Mackie, manager of the North Carolina Employment Security Commission office. "That doesn't seem to be working out too good."
Just what did Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota have in mind when he insisted that the health care reform bill in Congress contain provisions for medical co-ops? Chuck Haga of the Grand Forks Herald writes that it is the Wilson Health Planning Cooperative now forming in an 11-county region of western North Dakota (scene above).
The co-op started in 2002 as residents looked at ways to reduce poverty in the area. “We were a little startled to see how direct the connections were — how poor health leads to poverty, and how poverty leads to poor health," one organizer told Haga. The co-op is named for a family doctor who serviced the area for more than half a century. Dr. Herbert Wilson is on the board of the co-op and he describes a careful process of organization that included 10 open meetings in the region. Haga wrote the organizers learned that people "want the cooperative to be local and self-governing, available to all, affordable and offering high quality care. They want it to cover a broad range of health services, from preventive care to family medicine to hospice care. And they want a diverse makeup to their cooperative, pulling private insurers, the Veterans Administration, the Indian Health Service and other interests together, which they believe would provide efficiencies, cost savings and easier accessibility."
The co-op has designed a "Wilson health card" bearing a picture of the doctor and is now trying to see how it can fit in with federal legislation.
We know that rural kids are more apt to join the military than kids in the cities. Where there is more opportunity (more jobs or better access to higher education), young people are less likely to join the armed forces. But how many young men and women really have the opportunity to join the military? Only one out of four, we learned this week. Three out of four young Americans (age 17 to 24) are ineligible to serve in the nation's military. 75 percent. The name of the report documenting this figure is "Ready, Willing, and Unable to Serve."
Here's the rundown on why three out of four young people aren't fit to join the military: One out of four young Americans lacks a high school diploma. If you drop out of school, you don't qualify. One in ten young Americans have a prior conviction for a felony or a misdemeanor serious enough to disqualify them from service. Twenty-seven percent of young Americans are too overweight to join the military. (In Pennsylvania, the percentage of overweight kids doubled between '87 and '07.)
There are other reasons kids don't qualify. They may have bad eyes or asthma or ADHD or drug problems. So when you get down to it, only 2 out of 10 young people even qualify for service — and another 5 percent are close enough to get a waiver.
The Hill reports that the tussle over Google Voice continues. Google Voice gives people the chance to claim one number (from Google); Google then directs phone calls coming to that number to land lines or mobile phones. With Google Voice, you can have one phone number (the one from Google) that will be forwarded to any kind of phone you might have. Trouble is, Google doesn't serve all phones. In particular, Google has cut out numbers in rural areas served by companies Google believes charge exorbitant access fees.
This has caused a stir in Washington, D.C., and The Hill reports that "(p)ressure is growing on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to come down on tech giant Google for blocking access to certain telephone numbers with its Google Voice service....Google admits that it is blocking some numbers to rural areas with high connection fees, including adult chat lines and some free conference calls."
The system for assigning rates is complicated. Google says it's not subject to FCC regulation since it is an Internet-based phone system. The FCC is studying that one. Phone conferencing companies direct calls to rural areas where they can share in the higher fees. (The Hill tells us that the Obama campaign used these conferencing services extensively during the '08 campaign.) But blanket blocks of regions affect the local rural user along with the conference call providers. We thought this was getting clear up, but it remains a royal mess.
Dairy farmers in Hungary placed the severed heads of 12 cows in front of the nation's Agriculture Ministry Thursday as part of what is a worldwide protest against low prices for milk producers. The farmers also dumped milk on the street and were promptly charged with defacing a public space. Farmers in the European Union, as in the rest of the world, are selling milk for considerably less than what it costs to produce.
These kinds of protests and fights are happening all over the world, including Tasmania. Here's a story from this week about a Pennsylvania family facing low milk prices. Dairy herd buyouts have been held to try to reduce the herd in the U.S. in order to reduce milk supply. “The past year has been the most difficult since I began farming in 1973,” said Paul Toft, a Rice Lake, Wis., dairy farmer and president of the Associated Milk Producers Inc. “Some say these times rival those of the Great Depression.”
What's bad for the producer on the farm, however, is good for the processor. Dean Foods Co. announced this week that its third quarter net income jumped 32% as the cost of milk declined. The company, the nation's largest dairy processor, increased its profit estimate for the full year. Meanwhile, the U.S. Justice Department is looking into claims by U.S. farmers that a lack of competition in the milk market is keeping prices low.
BioFuels and Energy | Environment | Growth and Development
The recession is putting the squeeze on rural public transportation.
Job losses are increasing the number of rural people in Georgia who want to use public transportation, according to the Associated Press. But the economy is also making it harder for local governments to pay for transportation systems.
The main source of funding for rural "dial-a-ride" programs is the Federal Transit Administration. This funding has increased in the last three years. But local governments in Georgia are having a hard time coming up with the remaining funds to keep their systems running.
"The recession is making riders out of laid off workers who never depended on public transportation before, but now need it for everything from a doctor's visit to a job interview," reports the AP.
" 'They may have a car, but they just don't have the gas money,,' said [Southwest Georgia Regional Commission director Dan] Bollinger, who's seen ridership go up roughly 15 percent since the recession started."