Bernie Has Another Plank For The Most Phenomenal Platform Anyone Has Ever Run On-- High Speed Internet For All

In the 1920s, conservatives were suspicious of-- and hysterical about-- rural electrification proposals... you know, "Socialism!!!" So President Franklin Roosevelt had to get the ball rolling with an executive order (May 11, 1935). At the time, just 3% of farms and ranches were electrified. A year later, Congress passed the Rural Electrification Act which was bitterly opposed by the same kind of corporate Republicans who oppose all progress that aims to make the lives of working class Americans better today. The legislation was bipartisan and bicameral-- drafted by Senator George Norris (R-NE) and Congressman Sam Rayburn (D-TX). But, for working on behalf of his rural constituents, Norris was viciously attacked by reactionary Republicans. Pro-Nazi fascist Republican Henry Ford, for example called Norris a "socialist" for supporting public electric power through the 1933 Tennessee Valley Authority Act and the Rural Electrification Administration, and successfully led a movement to force Norris out the Republican Party. In 1936, Norris ran-- and won-- as an independent New Dealer.

Little known fact: In 1962, raving right-wing lunatic Ronald Reagan was fired from his job as the long time host of the hugely popular TV series, General Electric Theater because he kept giving speeches attacking the TVA as one of the problems of "big government." At that time the TVA was one of the biggest customers in the world of General Electric's turbines. In any case, much of the work that the Rural Electrification Administration did in homes 7 and 8 decades ago, is still in existence today, although much of it has been augmented to support a greater number and variety of appliances in rural homes. There were many reasons Goldwater lost his bid for the presidency in 1964 but one was his call for the U.S. government to sell the TVA. In fact. the two states whose economies were most impacted by the TVA, Tennessee and Kentucky-- blood red today-- voted against Goldwater by huge margins. LBJ won Tennessee 55.50% to 44.49% and Kentucky went blue 64.01% to 35.65%.

Today, as Bernie explained, "high-speed internet is central to the basic functions of families, students, and businesses. Small businesses often cannot exist without it. Access to health care often depends on it. Yet across the country, huge swaths of the population lack access to an internet connection or cannot afford the options available. Millions lack any internet provider in their area and tens of millions are trapped with only one option. High prices keep internet out of reach for working families in both rural and urban areas." Here's his point and why those is a campaign issue-- for him, though not for any of the other candidates:

High-speed internet service must be treated as the new electricity-- a public utility that everyone deserves as a basic human right. And getting online at home, at school, or at work shouldn’t involve long waits, frustrating phone calls, and complex contracts and fees meant to trap and trick consumers. It should just work.

The internet as we know it was developed by taxpayer-funded research, using taxpayer-funded grants in taxpayer-funded labs. Our tax dollars built the internet and access to it should be a public good for all, not another price gouging profit machine for Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon.

Internet, telecom, and cable monopolies exploit their dominant market power to gouge consumers and lobby government at all levels to keep out competition. And they don’t provide service to anyone who can’t afford it, or install it in areas where it won’t make them as much money as their shareholders demand.

Their greed must end. Verizon made more than $45 billion in profits over the last two years, and last year their CEO took home more than $22 million in compensation. Comcast made more than $34 billion over the last two years and paid their CEO more than $35 million in 2018. AT&T took $3 billion from Trump’s tax cut and cut 23,000 jobs while their CEO pocketed $29 million last year. With no incentive to innovate or invest, these conglomerates charge sky-high internet prices to reap profits from consumers, and they collect government subsidies to provide service to rural households while still leaving millions of Americans unconnected.

It’s time to take this critical 21st century utility out of the hands of monopolies and conglomerates and bring it to the people while creating good-paying, union jobs at the same time. This is not a radical idea. Cities across the country deliver municipality-owned, high-speed internet to their residents, from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Lafayette, Louisiana.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt promised to deliver electricity to every home in America in 1935, a time when 90 percent of rural households lacked it. Ten years later, his promise was largely fulfilled, transforming the standard of living for millions of Americans. Farmers could finally refrigerate milk. We already know how to provide affordable, high-speed internet, but conglomerates continue to monopolize the industry and provide the country with inadequate coverage and service. Bernie fought against this monopolization in 1996, when legislation passed into law that gave free reign to monopolize markets and gouge consumers. Enough is enough. When Bernie is president, every American household will have affordable, high-speed internet by the end of his first term. This investment will provide every community the internet they need for their homes, educational systems, small businesses, health clinics, and more.

The geographic disparities of internet access are stark: in rural communities, more than 31 percent of Americans still lack access to what the Trump FCC defines as broadband. In urban areas, low-income communities and communities of color disproportionately lack access to broadband and millions more can’t afford to subscribe to broadband services. The United States ranks just tenth of 22 in a comparison with European countries in broadband deployment.

The situation is even worse for under-resourced groups, communities of color, Native Americans, and people with disabilities. White, educated households are more likely to have broadband internet than households in communities of color. More than 80 percent of white households have home internet, compared to only 70 percent of Latino households and 68 percent of Black households. The FCC has reported that less than half of rural tribal areas have access to high-speed internet. Roughly one in four people with disabilities say they do not use the internet, and people with disabilities are 20 percent less likely to have broadband. We must end these disparities by connecting every household in America to high-speed internet, regardless of their income or zip code.

Municipalities across the country running their own internet services have proved they can deliver high-quality service at a fraction of the price of established monopolies. Cities can run their own networks just like a water or electric utility or build out an open access network to allow multiple providers to compete on price and service, rather than one or two conglomerates gouging customers and setting their own prices. Bernie believes it’s time to stop relying on profit-focused corporations to get to universal broadband. Bernie will provide the necessary funding for states, cities, and co-ops to build out their own broadband networks, and ensure all households are connected by the end of his first term.

This is what Bernie is promising to do when he replaces Trump in 2021:

• Deliver access to high-speed broadband internet to everyone in the United States by building out the necessary resilient, modern infrastructure.
• Provide $150 billion through the Green New Deal in infrastructure grants and technical assistance for municipalities and/or states to build publicly owned and democratically controlled, co-operative, or open access broadband networks.

• Condition grants on strong labor, wage and sourcing standards to ensure that federal funding goes toward creating good-paying union jobs and ensure all funded projects cannot subcontract work to evade labor law through the Workplace Democracy Plan.
• Condition grants on universal service, provisioning minimum speeds, privacy standards and affordability
• Reform the Universal Service Fund and establish dedicated funding from general revenue to the existing programs, ending regressive contributions from providers are passed onto consumers.
• Establish a dedicated, accelerated last-mile fund through the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utility Service to provide capital funding to connect all remote rural households and businesses and upgrade outdated technology and infrastructure, prioritizing funding for existing co-ops and small rural utilities.
• Set aside $7.5 billion of this funding to expand high-speed broadband in Indian Country and fully resource the FCC’s Office of Native Affairs and Policy.

• Preempt the 19 state laws, largely written and lobbied for by internet service provider monopolies, that limit or bar municipal and publicly-owned broadband.
• Ensure all public housing provides free broadband services to residents.
• Ensure people with disabilities have full access to the internet.

• Aggressively enforce the Americans with Disabilities Act to ensure the accessibility of the Internet, cloud-based applications, and internet-connected devices.
• Ensure full Section 508 compliance, including making sure government agencies can receive ASL video calls from deaf people.
• Ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
• Develop regulations to expand the availability and quality of closed captioning and audio description on internet platforms.
• Reinforce and expand the national and state equipment distribution programs for people with disabilities.
• Reinforce and expand the availability and quality of accessible modern telecom services to ensure everyone who needs these services receives them.

• Expand the E-Rate and Rural Health Support programs to ensure all schools, libraries, hospitals and other essential community facilities are connected equitably and affordably and provide dedicated funding to ensure these facilities on Tribal Lands are connected.

Nor is this all Bernie is determined to do along these lines. Costs too high. "The problem goes beyond a lack of basic access to internet services," he wrote. "Access to high-speed internet means nothing if you cannot afford your bill. Microsoft found an estimated 163 million people in this country might not currently use the internet at minimum broadband speeds. That’s because the internet in this country costs too damn much. American consumers who are connected are forced to pay more for less. The United States ranks 10th of 28 countries in average broadband speeds and 18th out of 23 countries in fixed broadband prices, charging double the prices of. Only 54 percent of households with incomes below $20,000 have home internet, compared to nearly 90 percent of households with incomes above $100,000. Affordability and digital literacy are major barriers to internet usage for low-income households and seniors. The internet was invented in America. We should be the world leader in providing fast, affordable service. We must also invest in digital adoption and literacy, ensuring when affordable service is provided, all can fully utilize the benefits. Large internet service providers have enjoyed government funding, protection from competition, and light regulation while gouging customers with some of the highest prices for service in the world. Bernie will regulate these providers like a utility. The FCC will review prices and regulate rates where necessary, ensuring areas without competition aren’t able to run up prices. We will also require providers to offer a basic plan for a regulated rate to all customers, ensuring everyone will be able to affordably connect to the internet."

Bernie has been very clear that he intends to break up and regulate internet and cable monopolies. He wrote that "Telecom and cable monopolies exploit their dominant market power to gouge consumers and lobby government at all levels to keep out competition. Just four companies control nearly two-thirds of the entire market. Prices are as much as 25 percent higher than they would be in a competitive broadband market. Large ISP monopolies report inaccurate or overstated coverage information, obscure their prices, and often don’t deliver promised speeds." And by the way, that ActBlue thermometer on the right is a way you can contribute to Bernie's campaign and make sure all these proposals and promises come to fruition. I can guarantee you Status Quo Joe or Trump will never deal with any of them.

Bernie foresaw what deregulation and consolidation of cable giants would do to consumers. He was one of just a handful of Congressmembers to vote against the 1996 Telecommunications Act, arguing against the bill on the House floor:

“Mr. Chairman, this telecommunications bill cripples consumer protections and should be soundly rejected. It is being touted as pro-consumer when, in reality, it will cause inflated rates and will limit consumer choice. It is touted as pro-competition when it actually promotes mergers and the concentration of power.”

This legislation set the groundwork for the light touch regulation and monopolization of the broadband market that we see today. We will break these monopolies up and closely regulate them to ensure they are providing consumers with acceptable service, and eliminate hidden fees, surprise bills, and other consumer-gouging practices.

What's he going to do about it? First off, "Use existing antitrust authority to break up internet service provider and cable monopolies and bar service providers from also providing content and unwind anticompetitive vertical conglomerates." He also intends to Classify broadband providers as common carriers under Title II and reinstate net neutrality regulations while working with Congress to codify net neutrality protections into law to prevent a future FCC from repealing them once again. He promises to appoint members of the FCC who will use Title II authority to promote competition, choice, and affordability for broadband service and he will require price transparency, advertised speed accuracy, and granular service data for large, private broadband providers, while eliminating hidden fees, including surprise billing, and require internet and cable providers to clearly state the cost of service, ban unexpected rate increases, and end service termination fees.

He also intends to build resilient communications networks as part of his infrastructure plan for the country. "Our outdated and dangerous national infrastructure is not ready to withstand impacts like floods, hurricanes, or wildfires," he wrote. "When extreme weather events hit, communities can be left without the life-saving communications tools and information they need... Internet access and communications infrastructure are critical to the decade of the Green New Deal, a ten-year, nationwide mobilization centered around justice and equity during which climate change will be factored into virtually every area of policy. With our $150 billion investment in resilient, affordable, publicly owned broadband infrastructure, we willI ensure that communities stay connected during natural disasters. This communications infrastructure will ensure first responders and communities are ready to deal with the worst climate emergencies."

Milwaukie Mayor Mark Gamba is running for a seat to represent a large and largely rural Oregon congressional district in the heads of very reactionary Blue Dog Kurt Schrader who can be counted on to not support Bernie's initiatives. Gamba told us that he has "long believed that high speed internet should be a public utility similar to other necessities like water and sewer. It has been on my to-do list as a mayor, but since that list is long and intense, we’ve had to prioritize issues like climate change, safe routes to school and affordable housing. In our region, an even smaller city than Milwaukie, Sandy Oregon, did choose to roll out gigabit service to their residents who didn’t have any high-speed access. It turns out that they’ve been able to provide better service than what the rest of us experience from Comcast, at half the price. The main reason we haven’t done it is the upfront expense for building out the system. The U.S. government could easily create a zero-interest loan process that helped cities and counties with that initial investment and be paid back within a decade or so. I totally agree with Senator Sanders that we need to break the death grip that the telecom giants have on this critical piece of infrastructure and make sure that every family has fast internet access so that parents can start a business or apply for a job and kids have the opportunity to succeed on their homework which, more and more depends on internet access. As a member of congress I would work to make sure that the rural and low income areas of America were prioritized in this rollout."

Jon Hoadley is a Kalamazoo area state legislator running for Congress against reactionary Trumpist Fred Upton. "Districts like mine in southwest Michigan," he told us this morning, "need high speed rural broadband access now. When we have some of our neighbors who can't get online quickly and easily, and even some neighbors who can't reliable cell phone service, we are limiting people's freedom and opportunities. Big telecom companies aren't going to be jumping in to help any time soon. If we want thriving rural communities, we need to invest in rural communities with bold ideas that face these challenges head on."

This morning, two California progressive candidates, for whom-- and for whose districts' residents-- rural broadband is an important issue, sent us statements of their own visions. Audrey Denney is running in the far northeast largely rural corner of the state. "Lack of broadband internet and cell service in large areas of the North State," she told us, "inhibit access to public safety resources, education, services, and economic opportunities. Investment in improving our communications networks will revitalize our rural economy by helping local businesses prosper and encouraging economic investment in the north state. Improving access to phone and internet will also help all people access the resources, knowledge, and skills they need to improve their livelihoods and quality of life."

Kim Williams, a former diplomat under Obama, wrote that when she meets with constituents "we frequently talk about how this district can look dramatically different in a few years or how it could look exactly the same. This resonates with many people because so many things have remained stagnant. And while there are many parts of California that are thriving, the Central Valley is not. We desperately need policies that can rebuild communities from the ground up and acknowledge every basic need wealthier Americans take for granted. And we need the might of the federal government to do this. Most of our local electeds have remained laser focused on pleasing a handful of wealthy campaign donors when we've needed a government that can lift up everyone. Universal access to high speed internet would do just that. It would ensure everyone could access the doctor when they needed it and not weeks later. It would ensure our workforce (one third of which do not have a high school degree) could skill up for the changing job market, and it would open up remote jobs to thousands of people across the Valley. In short, access to the internet would be life changing for hundreds of thousands of people in my district."


 

Conservatives Are Stomping Out Family Farms-- And Not Just Republican Conservatives Either

You know what's bipartisan in DC? Agricultural policy-- and it sucks, for farmers, for rural communities and for consumers. Jeff Hauser and Eleanor Eagan, reporting for Washington Monthly, have no doubt that the Trump Regime is up to no good when it comes to family farms, but they point out that it isn't just Trump and the Republicans. "The administration is letting agribusiness run amok, they wrote. But, they ask, where is the congressional oversight?

Collin Peterson is one of the most conservative, Republican-like Democrats-- an extreme right Blue Dog in a Trumpist district-- in Congress. Right up against the Dakotas-- from the border of Manitoba across from Kittson County, down to Pipestone County in the south-- his vast rural district has a PVI of R+12, the reddest district held by any Democrat in the House. And he holds it by playing ball with the GOP. Trump beat Hillary by over 20 points in the district, 61.8% to 31.0%. Ironically, while Trump swept MN-07, Bernie did better than Hillary-- and everyone else-- on caucus day in 2016.

• Bernie- 6,608
• Ted Cruz- 4,326
• Hillary- 3,852
• Señor Trumpanzee- 3,401

Voters wanted change-- and they knew who was offering it for real.

Last year Amy Klobuchar did well in MN-07 but neither Tina Smith, also running for the Senate, nor Tim Walz, the Democrats' successful gubernatorial candidate, did. Collin Peterson won again, though-- 146,672 (52.1%) to 134,668 (47.9%). In 2016 Peterson beat the same GOP opponent, Dave Hughes by about the same margin, having raised $1,201,913 compared to Hughes' $19,836. Much of Peterson's big fundraising advantage cames, as it always does, from agribusiness. In 2018 Peterson raised $1,425,449 (and was forced to spend more than he raised) but Hughes raised much more than he had in 2016-- $232,724. It will be a miracle if Peterson survives next year. There are 5 Republicans competing to take him on and two of them, Noel Collins (a self-funder) and Michelle Fischbach (the party favorite) have raised6 figures. Hughes is giving it another shot but isn't raising significant money. There's also a Democrat primarying Collins, Stephen Emery but he's not raising any money and he's actually challenging Peterson from the right as a Pelosi lapdog!

Here's Emery's schpiel:

He has presided over the rise of the mega corporate farm and multi-national agriculture corporation and demise of our rural communities and family farms.

He voted to allow illegal immigrants to vote in our elections!

He says he’s the most bi-partisan member of Congress, but he votes with Nancy Pelsosi almost all of the time and gives his money to extremely liberal causes that oppose the issues he says he supports.

Nancy Pelosi effectively is the Representative for the Minnesota Seventh Congressional District. The first thing Collin Peterson does after he is elected is to vote for Nancy Pelosi. He helps put her in charge of the machinery of Congress. He knows that much of what occurs there is procedural and through committees, so the leader wields incredible power. She has a say as to who serves on which committee, and how, and if, bills move through the House. Furthermore, he knows that Congress works essentially through a two party system, and they tend to vote in groups, so what the leader pushes to a large measure determines what the result will be.

So, it doesn’t matter how he votes on any particular bill, because he votes “yes” on Nancy Pelosi’s initiatives when he voted for her to lead the Democrats in Congress, and that is the vote that matters. Has his vote against a Pelosi initiative ever meant the difference of whether it passes? I don’t think so, and so it is always a safe, meaningless vote-- except for his re-electability.

So, regardless of how Collin Peterson otherwise may vote, a vote for Collin Peterson is a vote for Nancy Pelosi and gun control;

A vote for Collin Peterson is a vote for the Nancy Pelosi and Obamacare and poorer medical care;

A vote for Collin Peterson is a vote for Nancy Pelosi and sodomy and biological males in women’s showers and bathrooms;

A vote for Collin Peterson is a vote for Nancy Pelosi and Islam and Muslims and illegal aliens sweeping across the nation and voting in our elections! The rise of the Islamist has occurred on his watch and he hasn’t done anything to address it!;

A vote for Collin Peterson is a vote for the Nancy Pelosi and more and more in-your-face control by the United Nations over our lives;

A vote for Collin Peterson is a vote for Nancy Pelosi and extreme environmentalism.

A vote for Collin Peterson is a vote for Nancy Pelosi and Planned Parenthood and the butchering of babies and the sale of baby parts;

A vote for Collin Peterson is a vote for Nancy Pelosi and mega corporate farming and disenfranchising our children from remaining on the land and continuing farming which is the most common form of free enterprise;

A vote for Collin Peterson is a vote for Nancy Pelosi and more and more welfare that the nation can’t support and that isn’t good for the welfare recipient or the taxpayer, and a complete collapse of our economy due to run-away debt;

A vote for Collin Peterson is a vote for Nancy Pelosi and this massive tax and spend program that is wrapped around this lie called man-made global warming.

We need different, and far better, representation in Washington, D.C.

The people who established this nation intended for a continual rotation of citizens for elective positions, not career politicians like Collin Peterson. Let’s value private enterprise and personal responsibility. Let’s spend within our means and not create more debt for our children and grandchildren.

Most of it's a bunch of crazy Republican talking points-- except for the first complaint: "He has presided over the rise of the mega corporate farm and multi-national agriculture corporation and demise of our rural communities and family farms." There is where he has a valid point.

As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, told Wisconsin dairy farmers that "In America, the big get bigger and the small go out. I don’t think in America we, for any small business, we have a guaranteed income or guaranteed profitability." In other words, wrote Hauser and Eagan, "he was telling the farmers: you’re probably screwed and there’s nothing you can do about it."

Contrary to Perdue’s claims, the deaths of small farms are not a result of natural forces. They are a consequence of explicit policy choices that have allowed for the rampant consolidation and disinvestment that are crushing rural communities. Only two decades ago, there were 600 companies that sold seed. Today, there are only four. It’s no wonder that the cost of seeds and plant corn has risen 329 percent in that time period, with similar increases for other crops.

Perdue hasn’t just failed to recognize the root causes of farmers’ pain; he has actively aided the forces responsible for it. From his first days in office, he has turned the full power of the USDA against farmers and rural communities on behalf of Big Agriculture, betraying one of the constituencies most vital to Trump’s 2016 win.

None of this should surprise anyone. What should be genuinely shocking, however, is that Congressman Collin Peterson, a Democrat from Minnesota and the chair of the House Agriculture Committee, has been practically silent about these attacks. Over the past nine months, he has only convened one full committee hearing. And while his panel heard testimony from Perdue in February, Peterson has yet to call him back despite his committing numerous transgressions since, including his continued efforts to impose work requirements on access to food stamps and pressing ahead to relocate the department’s research wing out of D.C.

Peterson, who declined our request for comment, has failed to fulfill his obligation to protect farmers and rural communities. That is not only bad on the substance, but it is a missed opportunity for Democrats to win back support among American farmers, who overwhelmingly pulled the lever for Trump in 2016.

In recent years, consolidated agribusinesses have translated their rising profits into formidable political power. They have successfully weakened or killed many measures that would have limited their control over farmers’ lives and livelihoods, including fighting laws that would give farmers the right to repair their own equipment, something that overzealous copyright protections have prevented them from doing. When these and other nasty practices get too much attention, Big Ag wields its considerable weight to silence critics, whether that means getting a newspaper cartoonist fired or suing the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to close a public comment period on a proposed merger.

Over the past few decades, Democrats have too often either supported the policies that got us here, or fallen short in resisting them. In 2008, Barack Obama made fighting consolidation a feature of his agricultural policy platform. But once in power, he failed to act decisively on those promises. His administration hesitated to enact proposed regulations that would have made it easier for contract farmers to sue packing and processing companies for unfair practices. Then, it found itself unable to move forward once Republicans took the House in 2010.

As with most things, however, the Trump administration has taken a bad problem and made it worse. Earlier this year, the Department of Justice approved a merger between two agricultural industry giants, Monsanto and Bayer, allowing for the creation of a new behemoth. And those Obama-era contracting rules? They were eventually approved in 2016, but Perdue promptly scrapped them after taking power. Worse yet, Perdue’s USDA has walked back enforcement of many of the remaining rules to protect contract farmers.

This is all without mentioning what’s at the forefront of people’s minds when they think about Trump’s impact on farmers: trade policy. Yet as these examples should make clear, the harm this administration is inflicting on farmers goes well beyond trade.

Unfortunately, House Democrats have done little to draw attention to Trump’s deleterious agricultural policies When they do respond by holding a hearing, like over the decision to move the USDA’s Economic Research Service to Kansas City, they fail to confront those responsible for their actions, or take definitive actions to stop them.

Meanwhile, in the same time span that Peterson only convened one full committee hearing, Agriculture’s six subcommittees have held a combined 19 hearings, seven of which involved testimony from USDA officials. The Committee has issued zero subpoenas to corporate or governmental actors.

Peterson should reverse course and start from the top. The USDA is a big department with a diverse set of important responsibilities, ranging from protecting farming and rural economies, to ensuring food safety and administering the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

...Democrats need to perform meaningful oversight of the Trump administration’s assault on American farmers. Impeachment doesn’t obviate the need for skeptical oversight. It underscores it. Oversight is, put simply, a basic fulfillment of Congress’ governing obligations. It can uncover abuse, create pressure for change, and facilitate the development of much needed policy alternatives. And, as an added bonus, the political upside seems clear.

This strategy might seem somewhat unorthodox. It contravenes the gospel that Democrats can only win agricultural districts by espousing a quiet, inoffensive centrism. But that would cede control of the political debate to Trump. If Democrats only play on the president’s terms, the conversation will always shift away from the real issue.

Democrats must therefore redefine the debate on agriculture policy through rigorous oversight. In rural America, they have to demonstrate their willingness to take on political corruption of all shades, and to challenge corporate America’s chokehold over the political process.

Yet Democrats have been surprisingly unwilling to take on one of the most unifying issues across the electorate: how the system is rigged to hurt ordinary people and boost big corporations.

Trump has created an opportunity for Democrats to take up this message in virtually every area of policy, but now especially with farmers. House Democrats have a unique opening to prove to rural voters that they are serious about taking on structural inequities. All they have to do is highlight and push back against the administration’s efforts to enrich corporations at the expense of small farmers. In other words, they have to simply do their jobs.

J.D. Scholten, who the day after Perdue's talk with the Wisconsin day farmers, termed his comments "a middle finger to family farmers," is running for Congress in Iowa's 4th district, the only one still in GOP hands, the only one held by a white nationalist (Steve King). King was kicked off the House Agriculture Committee by Paul Ryan for his repeated inflammatory racist comments. No one doubts that on the first day of Scholten's appearance as a member of Congress, Pelosi will make sure IA-04 is represented on that committee again. "American farmers are struggling to get by," he told me yesterday, "forced to work one, two, or more jobs off the farm to make ends meet. We, the Democratic Party, are supposed to be the party of the working class-- we’re supposed to be voice of the voiceless, the champion for those who have been left behind. As corporations further consolidate and control the markets, the Democratic Party has a responsibility to speak out and fight for workers. This administration has manipulated the trade war for the gain of Trump’s donors, abused the RFS to the benefit of big oil, dismantled the USDA, has hurt worker safety, and much more-- but we’ve given rural America no viable alternative. It’s past time for Democrats to show up: to prove that we’re trustworthy, honest and willing to fight for working people. Only then, can we elect a fighter who is willing to stand for everyday people rather than someone who can max out on a donation check."

The gospel that Democrats can only win agricultural districts by espousing a quiet, inoffensive centrism? Not J.D. Scholten. Take a look at Bernie's rural development agenda. That's about as far as you can get from inoffensive centrism. But Peterson's congressional district wasn't the only rural district where Bernie trounced Hillary.

Take the vast rural district in northeast California (CA-01). There are 11 counties. Last year, corporate Democrat Dianne Feinstein lost every one of them. Gavin Newsom, also a corporatist, lost 10 of the 11. Bernie did a lot better in 2016-- and Audrey Denney, a progressive running on much of Bernie's populist program won the biggest county in the district, Butte, and well as Nevada County. Bernie won 9 of the 11 counties and won the mostly rural and small town congressional district convincingly. Here were Bernie's numbers:

• Butte- 58.9%
• Shasta- 50.0%
• Nevada- 59.8%
• Placer- 42.0%
• Tehama- 49.6%
• Siskiyou- 58.0%
• Plumas- 53.7%
• Lassen- 50.8%
• Modoc- 50.7%
• Sierra- 55.8%
• Glenn- 48.8%

Audrey Denney is taking on Trump enabler Doug LaMalfa again this cycle. She told us that "the Trump Administration policies are directly hurting farmers all over the country. According to the American Farm Bureau, farm bankruptcy filings for 2019 through June were up 13% from 2018 and loan delinquency rates are on the rise. North State farmers are asking for trade policies that expand markets and immigration reform that helps them get the labor they need. Congressman LaMalfa-- a farmer himself-- has failed to be an advocate for the industry he represents. I’ve worked in agriculture education my entire career and can’t wait to fight for North State farmers and ranchers when they send me to DC... Every year it becomes harder and harder for farmer and ranchers to make their work pencil. Tariffs are adding increasing pressure on farmers’ already razor thin profit margins-- add this to an inability to find and retain skilled labor-- and many North State farmers are really hurting. Every multi-generational family famers’ nightmare is being the generation that loses the farm. My family lived that reality with the 2008 recession-- this is a personal issue for me."





Kathy Ellis is running in one of the reddest rural districts in America, located in the southeast corner of Missouri. Farmers and the small towns that depend on agriculture to sustain them are hurting there. "Agribusiness has taken over rural communities like mine," she told us today. "Between climate change damaging crops and the impact of Trump's tariffs, farmers are left without options other than to sell to Agribusiness Companies. It takes away local control of these farms and it damages our local economy. And to make matters worse, our current representative not only doesn't stop this, he also takes thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from these companies. He's not working on behalf of farmers. He's working on behalf of Big Agriculture, and it must stop."

Progressive North Carolina pastor Jason Butler looks at the problem beyond mere congressional policy. "Perception," he said, "is reality and the reality is: DC Democrats don’t really seem to care about the rural community. If they did-- as this article points out-- they’d step up and do something. Trump has created incredible openings in the rural community through damaging trade wars and damaging farming policies-- but corporate Democrats aren’t countering it. Instead, we too, seem bent on blaming the rural community for electing and sustaining Trump. On one hand, we are telling the rural community that we (Democrats) will help you more, but on the other hand we are blaming them for our current situation. No one wants to be part of a group that looks down on them-- even if they will help them more. I think the Democrats' problem goes much deeper than farming policy-- it goes into the reality that we don’t appreciate the rural American experience. We used to-- but we don’t anymore. And while Republican policy does not help them, and even hurts them-- they value (or pretend to value) rural life and rural values. And at the end of the day, all of us want to belong to a group of people that value us and our experience. Winning the trust of the rural community won’t be easy, and will take some time-- but here is where we should start-- places like this: making sure we stand up for farmers-- big and small, making sure we are boldly pushing policies that sustain and empower rural life, and holding this administration accountable for its lack of rural support."

How Desperate Are Trump Voters? They Have Rejected Education, Community... Even God

The Chosen One by Nancy Ohanian

When I was growing up, California was a swing state (as was Utah). New York, Illinois and New Jersey leaned Democratic... but not dependably so. The two bluest states in the country were West Virginia and Arkansas, sensibly so since they were two of the poorest states. Things have changed, drastically. This was Trump's percentage in those states in 2016-- along with their median household incomes

• California- 31.62% ($67,169)
• New York- 36.52% ($62,765)
• Illinois- 38.76% ($61,229)
• New Jersey- 41.00% ($76,475)
• West Virginia- 68.50% ($44,061)
• Arkansas- 60.57% ($43,813)

Generally speaking, the richest and most educated states vote blue and the poorest and least educated states vote red. There are 10 states where the median household income is less than $50,000 and 9 of them are dependably red. There are 7 states where the median household income is more than $70,000 and 6 of them are dependably blue. Almost all of these states have switched party allegiance in recent decades.

Monica Potts is a writer (the American Prospect, the New Republic, The Nation and Washington Monthly) who specializes in poverty and economic opportunity and won a Sidney Award for her portrait of poverty and enterprise in Appalachia. She's writing a book about impoverished rural women in her native Arkansas now but took time out to pen an op-ed tangential to the subject for the New York Times this weekend, In The Land Of Self-Defeat. In Van Buren County, where she's working, Trump won 72% of the vote. Last year, as the nation as a whole reacted against Trump's first two years, Van Buren County gave Republican far right gubernatorial candidate Asa Hutchinson 78.4% of the vote. The 2nd congressional district nearly replaced Republican French Hill with a Democrat, Hill only took 52.1% districtwide. Van Buren County, though gave Hill a landslide and performed for him as an R+47 county. (Pulaski County-- Little Rock-- in the same district, performed as a D+21 county.) Potts wrote that most people in the county think the current national sentiment to impeach Trump is a big waste of taxpayer dollars, an attitude that reflects "a worldview that is becoming ever more deeply ingrained in the white people who remain in rural America-- Washington politicians are spending money that they shouldn’t be. In 2016, shortly after Mr. Trump’s victory, Katherine J. Cramer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, summed up the attitudes she observed after years of studying rural Americans: 'The way these folks described the world to me, their basic concern was that people like them, in places like theirs, were overlooked and disrespected,' she wrote in Vox, explaining that her subjects considered 'racial minorities on welfare' as well as 'lazy urban professionals' working desk jobs to be undeserving of state and federal dollars. People like my neighbors hate that the government is spending money on those who don’t look like them and don’t live like them-- but what I’ve learned since I came home is that they remain opposed even when they themselves stand to benefit."

She wrote that people in the county people think life there "has taken a turn for the worse. What’s also true, though, is that many here seem determined to get rid of the last institutions trying to help them, to keep people with educations out, and to retreat from community life and concentrate on taking care of themselves and their own families. It’s an attitude that is against taxes, immigrants and government, but also against helping your neighbor." This helps explain how white evangelicals-- mostly very poorly educated-- have massively and unambiguously turned away from the message of Jesus-- once an organizing principle for their lives-- and whole-heartedly embraced the message of Satan/Trump.

Most Americans live in cities, but our political system gives rural areas like Van Buren outsize voting power. My time here makes me believe that the impeachment scandal will not hurt Mr. Trump-- and that Democrats who promise to make the lives of people like my neighbors better might actually help him.

I realized this after a fight over, of all things, our local library.

In April, a local man who operates the Facebook group, “Van Buren County Today Unfiltered,” posted the agenda for a coming meeting of the Quorum Court, the county’s governing body. The library board wanted to increase the pay it could offer a new head librarian, who would be combining her new job with an older one, to $25 an hour.

Only about 2,500 people live in my hometown. The library serves the entire county, which has an estimated 16,600 people, a marked decline from the population at the last census in 2010. The library has historically provided a variety of services for this community. It has offered summer reading camps for children and services like high-speed internet, sewing classes and academic help. I grew up going to the library and visited it often when I returned. It was always busy. I thought people would be supportive.

Instead, they started a fight. The battle began on the Facebook post, which had 240 comments by the end. The first comment came from Amie Hamilton, who reiterated her point when I interviewed her several months later. “If you want to make $25 an hour, please go to a city that can afford it,” she wrote. “We the people are not here to pay your excessive salaries through taxation or in any other way.”

There was general agreement among the Facebook commenters that no one in the area was paid that much-- the librarian’s wages would have worked out to be about $42,200 a year-- and the people who do actually earn incomes that are similar-- teachers and many county officials-- largely remained quiet. (Clinton has a median income of $34,764 and a poverty rate of 22.6 percent.) When a few of us, including me, pointed out that the candidate for the library job had a master’s degree, more people commented on the uselessness of education. “Call me narrow-minded but I’ve never understood why a librarian needs a four-year degree,” someone wrote. “We were taught Dewey decimal system in grade school. Never sounded like anything too tough.”

I watched the fight unfold with a sense of sadness, anger and frustration. I started arguing. It didn’t work. The pay request was pulled from the Quorum Court’s agenda.

I didn’t realize it at first, but the fight over the library was rolled up into a bigger one about the library building, and an even bigger fight than that, about the county government, what it should pay for, and how and whether people should be taxed at all. The library fight was, itself, a fight over the future of rural America, what it meant to choose to live in a county like mine, what my neighbors were willing to do for one another, what they were willing to sacrifice to foster a sense of community here.

The answer was, for the most part, not very much.

A 2016 analysis by National Public Radio found that as counties become more rural, they tend to become more Republican. Completely rural counties went for Mr. Trump by 70.6 percent over all, which makes my county politically average-- Van Buren gave Mr. Trump 73 percent of its vote. Rural America is not a monolith, but a majority of rural counties fit perfectly into Mr. Trump’s preferred demographics: They are largely white (96.2 percent in Van Buren), and rates of educational attainment are low.

People are leaving rural areas for cities because that’s where the jobs are. According to one analysis, between 2008, during the Great Recession, and 2017, the latest year for which data is available, 99 percent of the job and population growth occurred in counties with at least one city of 50,000 people or more or in counties directly adjacent to such cities. It’s hard to generalize what’s happening to rural counties, but many are faced with a shrinking property tax base and a drop in economic activity, which also decreases sales tax revenues.

Many rural counties are also experiencing declines in whatever industries were once the major employers. In Appalachia, this is coal; in much of the Midwest, it is heavy manufacturing; and in my county, and many other counties, it’s natural gas and other extractive industries.

This part of Arkansas sits on the Fayetteville Shale, which brought in natural gas exploration in the early 2000s. For about a decade, the gas companies paid local taxes on their property, equipment and the money they made from extracting natural gas, and landowners paid property taxes on the royalties they earned. It was a boom. Many people at the time, here and elsewhere, expected that the money would last longer than it did.

Instead, the price of natural gas plummeted in 2009 and profits declined. Production slowed. One of the biggest natural gas companies in the area, Houston-based Southwestern Energy, stopped paying taxes to the counties here, arguing that the rates were unfair. The company and five Arkansas counties, including mine, are still locked in litigation over some of the money it owes (it recently paid a portion of it).

Van Buren’s County’s chief executive, Dale James, told me that county revenues had declined by at least 20 percent from when gas production was at its height in 2008. The county budget is now just over $11 million, including revenue from local taxes and state and federal grants.

When local economies are flagging, state governments don’t step in to help as much as they once did. The Pew Charitable Trust found that state aid to local governments fell by 5.3 percent during the recession’s lowest point, in fiscal year 2013, and it still is below what it was before the recession. On top of that, 45 states restrict the way local governments can collect property taxes on their citizens in some way: In Arkansas, property and sales tax increases, the main source of revenue for many local governments, have to be approved by voters.

It means many county governments are getting less money on several fronts. A report from the National Association of Counties from 2016 was titled, “Doing More With Less.” It’s the new normal.

Local budgets pay for the infrastructure and institutions people deal with every day-- schools, roads, water, trash collection, libraries and animal shelters. Cuts to those services are felt in a visceral way.

The fight over the pay for the new head librarian had a larger context: The library moved into a new building, with new services, in 2016. Construction began during the natural gas boom years, and ended after the bust, just as the county budget was being squeezed and services were being cut.

During the boom, the new building had seemed necessary, but with the revenue decreases, the county knew it was going to have a hard time paying the $2.1 million still owed on it. (Disclosure: My mother was on the library board when some of the decisions about the new building were made.)

The library made its own budget cuts, but the savings weren’t enough to cover the shortfall in paying for the building, and there was a real danger of the library closing, leaving its new, hulking brick building empty. The people who didn’t frequent the library argued that the community didn’t really need it anymore, anyway. After all, if you have internet, you can get whatever you want in a day.

Such was the situation when the pay raise showed up on the Quorum Court agenda. Why give one person a raise when the county was slashing its budget, when we were going without so much else? The head librarian candidate, Andrea Singleton, eventually took the job at the old salary, just over $19 an hour, although at first the fight made her upset enough to consider leaving.

“It was enough to make me want to run away,” Ms. Singleton, who had been on the library’s staff for four years when she was offered the promotion, told me. “But I got over it.”

When I spoke to other county residents, many thought all of the budget cuts were a sad but necessary correction to the county’s previously profligate ways.

Ms. Hamilton, the Facebook commenter, told me that the voters fixed the county’s problems by electing Republicans to countywide offices in 2018, including Mr. James, who replaced a Democrat who’d held the office for four terms. “Some people are more fiscally responsible than others,” she said.

Ms. Hamilton, who is 52, had moved to the county during the natural gas boom, in 2008, and continued working with that industry even after it left. She commutes each week to work in the Midland-Odessa area of Texas. She noted that Clinton is a small town and simply couldn’t afford the luxury of government services. “If you’re looking for a handout, this is not the place; we can’t support that,” Ms. Hamilton said.

Mr. Widener, 50, has lived in the county on and off for 18 years, and was born in the nearby town of Conway, home to the University of Central Arkansas. He commutes there for work in the university’s information technology department. He told me the idea of paying the librarian $25 an hour was “typical government waste.” He added, “It’s the same thing in Washington.”

The typical private-sector wage in Van Buren, $10 to $13 an hour, was right for the county, many people said. Anything more than that was wasteful, or evidence of government corruption.

Almost everyone I spoke with feels that the county overspent during the gas boom years, and that the bill is coming due. “We got wasteful and stupid, and now we have to go back to common sense,” Corrine Weatherly, who owns a dress- and costume-making shop, Sew What, told me. Ms. Weatherly also runs the county fair, and so she shows up to almost every Quorum Court meeting.

This worldview will continue to affect national elections. The most dominant news source here is Fox News, which I think helps perpetuate these attitudes. There’s another element, too: For decades, the dominant conservative theory of politics is that government should be run like a business, lean and efficient, and one of the biggest private employers here is Walmart, where Mr. James was working when he was elected.

There’s a prevailing sense of scarcity-- it’s easy for people who have lived much of their lives in a place where $25 an hour seems like a high salary to believe there just isn’t enough money to go around. The government, here and elsewhere, just can’t afford to help anyone, people told me. The attitude extends to national issues, like immigration. Ms. Hamilton told me she’d witnessed, in Texas, a hospital being practically bankrupted by the cost of caring for immigrants and said, “I don’t want my tax dollars to be used to pay for people that are coming here just to sit on a government ticket.” Mr. Widener, who described himself as “more libertarian” than anything else, told me his heart goes out to migrant children who are held in detention centers at the border, but he blames the parents who brought them to this country.

Where I see needless cruelty, my neighbors see necessary reality.

The people left in rural areas are more and more conservative, and convinced that the only way to get things done is to do them yourself. Especially as services have disappeared, they are more resentful about having to pay taxes, even ones that might restore those services.

And many of those who want to live in a place with better schools, better roads and bigger public libraries have taken Ms. Hamilton’s suggestion-- they’ve moved to places that can afford to offer them. This includes many of my peers from high school who left for college or jobs and permanently settled in bigger, wealthier cities and towns around the region.

Over the summer, after the uproar about Ms. Singleton’s pay, library supporters gathered signatures for a special election that would have slightly increased the amount of county property taxes collected for the library, helping it pay off the new building and stave off closing altogether. It set off a new furor, even though the increase was estimated to cost about $20 a year for properties assessed at $100,000, and many people have properties valued at much less than that.

...[P]eople didn’t want to pay for something they didn’t think they would use. I suspect that many residents are willing to pay for some institutions they see as necessary, like the sheriff’s department, but libraries, symbols of public education and public discourse, are more easily sacrificed.

The library tax vote was quickly scrapped: Instead, Mr. James has suggested extending a 1 percent sales tax that went into place in 2001 to help pay for a new hospital building. Residents are due to vote on the idea in March.

Many other counties have turned to sales taxes as property taxes dwindle: It means that people who stop to shop when they’re passing through pay it as well, but it’s also a tax that tends to fall harder on lower-income households. It is also likely to be more expensive for some residents than a property tax increase would have been, but it will be paid in small amounts over time at the grocery store and Walmart, and voters are less likely to notice it.

If the tax extension passes, it’s estimated to pay off the library debt in about a year. But it delays a reckoning on whether and how the people who live here should contribute to the well-being of the county’s infrastructure and services.

A considerable part of rural America is shrinking, and, for some, this means it’s time to go into retreat. Rather than pitching in to maintain what they have, people are willing to go it alone, to devote all their resources to their own homes and their own families.

It makes me wonder if appeals from Democratic candidates still hoping to win Trump voters over by offering them more federal services will work. Many of the Democratic front-runners have released plans that call for more federal tax investment in rural infrastructure. Mr. Widener told me he had watched some of the Democratic debates, and his reaction was that everything the candidates proposed was “going to cost me money.”

Economic appeals are not going to sway any Trump voters, who view anyone who is trying to increase government spending, especially to help other people, with disdain, even if it ultimately helps them, too. And Trump voters are carrying the day here in Van Buren County. They see Mr. Trump’s slashing of the national safety net and withdrawal from the international stage as necessities-- these things reflect their own impulse writ large.

They believe every tax dollar spent now is wasteful and foolish and they will have to pay for it later. It is as if there will be a nationwide scramble to cover the shortfall just as there was here with the library. As long as Democrats make promises to make their lives better with free college and Medicare for all sound like they include government spending, these voters will turn to Trump again-- and it won’t matter how many scandals he’s been tarnished by.

Will it matter that Trump-- and the Republican Party-- destroy Medicare and Social Security? Will it matter that their voters' life expectancy falls and that their relatives and friends continue to be strung out on opioids? Trump voters hate-- everything, including their own lives. I guess our only hope is that there are never more of them than there are of us.

Montana state Rep. Tom Winter won his legislative seat in a rural district west of Missoula. It's a district that voted for Trump by an 11 point margin and then turned around and elected Winter, who ran on a progressive/populist platform-- not on a package of GOP-lite positions. Today he's running for Montana's massive at-large House seat and he doesn't think Potts' experience of Van Buren County, Arkansas is applicable to rural farmers and ranchers and small town residents in states like Montana. "The only 'self defeat' I’ve seen," he told us this morning, "is watching the Democratic Party shoot itself in the foot as it tries to win rural voters. A small town in the Ozarks has nothing to do with a ranching community on the Rocky Mountain Front. Allowing a 240 person Facebook thread to speak for 60 million Americans spread over the entire country denies countless communities a voice, and denies the agency of the various Native Americans, communities of color, and underserved communities across the rural West any voice at all. As a Democrat representing a rural district I cannot stress this enough: We will only win in rural communities if we respect rural voters. It’s not that difficult."

This morning, John Pavlovitz wrote that he feels sorry for white Evangelicals and fundamentalist Christians. "It must be awful to go through life terrified; to believe that you are perpetually in danger, to always be threatened by encroaching predators lurking in the shadows, around corners, beneath the bed, and at the border. What a draining experience it has to be, walking through every day looking over your shoulder, certain that attack is inevitable and that you are soon to be overtaken.  I feel sorry for these people, because I know they can’t understand or reflect the compassionate, expansive love of Jesus, having been weaned since birth on a tiny, fragile faith made entirely out of fear... Their religion is a monster."

Yes, I feel sorry for white Evangelicals-- but more than that, I feel sorry for the rest of us.

I keep waiting for so many of these professed people of god to act as if they believe that god is bigger than their fears.

May more white Christians in America come to believe that the sky is not falling, because they know the One who holds up the sky.

And may they stop being so very afraid, for their sake-- and the sake of the disparate, vulnerable, hurting human beings that they are becoming monsters to.