{"id":6978,"date":"2012-12-09T01:22:12","date_gmt":"2012-12-09T06:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=6978"},"modified":"2012-12-09T09:30:47","modified_gmt":"2012-12-09T14:30:47","slug":"top-obama-official-rural-america-becoming-less-and-less-relevant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2012\/12\/09\/top-obama-official-rural-america-becoming-less-and-less-relevant\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Obama official: Rural America “becoming less and less relevant”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack (Photo: USDA)<\/p><\/div>\n

Politico is reporting that US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack got pretty intense<\/a> at a gathering of farm belt leaders, telling them that small town America needs a wake-up call.<\/p>\n

“It’s time for us to have an adult conversation with folks in rural America,” Vilsack, a Democrat, said in a speech at a forum sponsored by the Farm Journal. “It’s time for a different thought process here, in my view.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The kicker?\u00a0 Vilsack, the former governor of Iowa, pointed to the “fact that rural America with a shrinking population is becoming less and less relevant to the politics of this country, and we had better recognize that and we better begin to reverse it.”<\/p>\n

Small town counties across the US voted overwhelmingly Republican in 2012, with the Democratic vote in that party of the electorate collapsing from 2008 levels.<\/a><\/p>\n

Yet Barack Obama swept back to power, riding a wave of support in urban and suburban communities where most Americans now live.<\/p>\n

According to Politico, rural Americans accounted for just 14% of the total vote.\u00a0 But Vilsack’s talk wasn’t just about demographics and population trends.<\/p>\n

Vilsack also chided farmers and small-town leaders for focusing on what he portrayed as red-herring issues.<\/p>\n

“We need a proactive message, not a reactive message,” Vilsack said. “How are you going to encourage young people to want to be involved in rural America or farming if you don’t have a proactive message? Because you are competing against the world now.”<\/p>\n

Farmers and small town leaders aren’t used to this kind of rhetoric, but this may be more harbinger than outburst.<\/p>\n

As the nation becomes more and more urban — a trend that is continuing without pause — finding ways to communicate across cultural, geographic, and party lines will likely become more and more crucial for rural folks.<\/p>\n

This also isn’t entirely about politics, or farming.\u00a0 This morning, the Sunday edition of the Washington Post<\/a> has a profile of New Castle, Pennsylvania, a small rust belt town that has fallen into generational poverty.<\/p>\n

Her New Castle was the one that existed now: white, working class, with poverty that had deepened into the second and third generations.<\/p>\n

Nearly three-fourths of the students in Tabi\u2019s school qualified for free or reduced-price lunches, and one-third of New Castle families with children younger than 18 had incomes beneath the poverty level.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The main source in the Post’s devastating article concludes wearily, “This town is dragging everyone down.”<\/p>\n

These portrayals are painful, but maybe it’s not a bad thing for rural Americans — whose world has been wrapped in mythology and bromides for generations — to grapple with some home truths.<\/p>\n

Something went wrong a long time ago and in most places it’s not getting better.\u00a0 Now that the potboiler of an election is over, I wonder if it’s possible to have an honest conversation about that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Politico is reporting that US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack got pretty intense at a gathering […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[159,7136,7137],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6978"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6978"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6980,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6978\/revisions\/6980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}