Silo accidents claim young lives

The New York Times yesterday ran a front-page feature on silo accidents in the United States.  An excerpt from John M. Broder's story follows:

Even as the rate of serious injury and fatalities on American farms has fallen, the number of workers dying by entrapment in grain bins and silos has remained stubbornly steady. The annual number of such accidents rose throughout the past decade, reaching a peak of at least 26 deaths in 2010, before dropping somewhat since.

Silos teeming with corn, wheat or soybeans become death traps when grain cascades out of control, asphyxiating or crushing their victims.  (A visual depicting the process is here).  Broder notes that 80 farmworkers--14 of them teenage boys--have died in silo accidents since 2007.  About a fifth of silo accidents involve workers under the age of 20.

Experts say the vast majority of these deaths are preventable.  The accidents occur when grain in silos "cascades out of control" while workers are in the silos to dislodge grain from the sides.  When the grain cascades down, the worker may be trapped--and crushed and asphyxiated.

One cause of the rise deaths, Broder notes, is the rise in the volume of corn being produced and stored to meet global demands for food, animal feed, and even ethanol.  

The deaths also reveal "continuing flaws in the enforcement of worker safety laws and weaknesses in rules meant to protect" young farmworkers.   The Labor Department last year proposed regulations that would increase protections for these young workers, but even those regulations--which the Obama administration pulled back from--would not have protected child and teenage workers on family farms and small operations, which is where 70% of grain entrapment accidents occur.  

An earlier post about the U.S. Labor Department's proposal, which was subsequently withdrawn, is here.  A New York Times op-ed about them is here.   

Romney courts rural voters; geographical strategies appears increasingly critical in presidential contest

On Saturday, the New York Times ran a story titled "In Virginia, Romney Scours Coal Country for Edge over Obama," with the dateline, Appalachia, Virginia, population 1,839. But Michael Shear's story is about more than the Romney campaign's efforts in Virginia, amidst the mostly rural voters of the Ninth Congressional District. It is also about the candidates' efforts to attract working class voters and small business owners in various swing states. An excerpt follows:

The battle playing out in Virginia has echoes across the battleground states, where the final days of the presidential campaign have become a test of geographical strategies and an all-important focus on motivation, intensity and turnout. Republicans are pushing hard in suburban Denver and central Florida to appeal to Hispanic small business owners. Mr. Obama’s campaign is probing for white male voters around Toledo, where there are major auto plants that benefited from the auto bailout.

Speaking of geography, another NYT story this week-end focuses on the respective campaign's strategies, which often focus on the county level of the swing states.

Later, Shear turns his focus back to Virginia, explaining that Romney hopes his "appeal in sparsely populated coal country" can balance out the greater number of liberal votes in metropolitan northern Virginia.  Romney is playing up the perception that Obama declared a "war on coal," which you can read more about here and here.  Shear also writes colorfully of "self-described hillbillies" in southwest Virginia, few of whom, he reports, are undecided. 

 

And Shear quotes Dave Saunders, "a veteran Democratic strategist who lives in that region":

Three things are sacred in Southwest Virginia--the Holy Bible, moonshine and coal.  That's all I got to say.  [The Romney-Ryan ticket] will get big numbers in the Ninth.  No question at all. 

Recent polls assessing the vote across the rural-urban axis are available at the Daily Yonder, here and here.  The show Romney with a widening lead among likely voters from rural parts of swing states.

Law and Order in the Ozarks (Part XCVIII): Assault, sex offenses adjudicated

The October 24, 2012 issue of the Newton County Times compiles criminal cases recently adjudicated in the county's Circuit Court.  These include:

• Ira Gentry, age 36, was charged with aggravated assault, a class D felony, battery in the third degree, a class A misdemeanor and second degree assault on a family or household, a class B felony and as a habitual offender following a disturbance at a Western Grove residence in March 2011.  Gentry allegedly brandished a knife at his victims "after punching one of them in the jaw and forehead, [p]unching another person at the scene and then going to the residence next door and punching his girlfriend."  Gentry pleaded guilty to two counts of assault in the first degree, a class A misdemeanor.  Other charges were amended and dismissed.  The court sentenced Gentry to a year of probation and fined him $1000 in costs and fees.  He is required to attend an anger management program and an outpatient drug program. 
• Lee Hankins, 41, was charged with sexual assault in the second degree, a class B felony, after he allegedly touched the breasts of an 11-year-old girl and placed her hand on his penis.  Hankins was reportedly a friend of the girl's family.  The prosecutor reduced the original charge to sexual assault in the fourth degree, a class A misdemeanor.  The sentence imposed was a year of probation and a fine of $1500.  He has been ordered to have no future contact with the victim or her family.
• Joshua Barbee, 32, was charged with distributing, possession or viewing child pornography, a Class C felony.  In a plea agreement, Barbee agreed to plead no contest, and he was sentenced to four years of probation.  he was also ordered to pay the mandatory sex offender registration fee of $250 and other costs totaling $1325.  
• Kerry Woods, 47, was charged with non-support for a period starting Oct. 22, 2006 and continuing through August 31, 2010.  He allegedly owed between $2500 and $19,000 for failing to support his son.  In a plea agreement, Woods was sentenced to six years probation and one year to be served in the Regional Correction Facility. He must pay restitution of $7,206.87, as well as other court costs and fees. He is also required to make one monthly payment of $200 which shall be used to satisfy fines and costs in both cases.  This is an interesting financial arrangement because the suggestion is that he will have to pay only $200, but perhaps the reporter meant to write $200/month.  
• Laura Nadine Sickler, 54, was charged with residential burglary, a class B felony.  She pleaded guilty to criminal trespass, a Class B misdemeanor, and was credited with 26 days served in jail and placed on a year of probation.  Sickler has agreed to testify against any co-defendants and to have no further contact with the victims of the case.  

In other news, two men were killed in an off-road accident on a Polaris RZR "side-by-side utility vehicle" on Forest Service Road No. 1310 in neighboring Pope County.  

Two hikers, University of Arkansas students, were located by a search party organized by the Sheriff's Office on Oct. 16 and 17.  The students "had been at a concert with friends in Fayetteville, but went to Newton County looking for waterfalls."  Their friends in Fayetteville reported them missing. They were found "tired, hungry, thirsty and a little scratched up," but otherwise "not hurt."  

Ozark Opportunities, Inc., distributed USDA donated foods via the Newton County Health Unit at 5-6 West Court Street.  The foods included UHT milk, mix fruit, potatoes, spaghetti sauce, kidney beans, and rotini pasta. 

Manitoba town offers land for C$10/lot

NPR reported yesterday about Reston, Manitoba's offer. Reston is located 45 miles north of North Dakota.  The town hopes the offer will draw "new blood to the area." According to the story, "[i]nterest is rolling in from [both] sides of the border."  NPR hosts Melissa Block and Audie Cornish interviewed Tanis Chalmers, economic development officer for Pipestone, the municipality that oversees Reston.   Chalmers reports that she's received 800 inquiries so far regarding the 13 plots of land available.  

As for the town's amenities, Chalmers lists a grocery store, pharmacy, lumber yard, credit union, nine-hole golf course, an arena with curling surface, and the Reston Rockets, the local baseball team.

As for the $10 price, it's actually a bit more complicated than that.  A $1000 deposit is required, but if you build on the property within a year, you get $990 back.

The story doesn't indicate how Reston is advertising the offer.

Montana's "castle" doctrine attracts controversy following a death in Flathead County

Dan Healy reports in today's New York Times about a September 22 death in Kalispell, Montana that has generated new controversy there regarding the trend to enhance self-defense rights further with what is sometimes called the "castle doctrine"--the long-held Anglo-American idea that a man's home is his castle.  The Flathead County Attorney is declining to press charges against the shooter  because the man he shot and killed was in the shooter's garage--albeit unarmed--at the time.  Here's an excerpt from Healy's front-page story that explains the legal backdrop:

In 2009, Montana joined more than 20 other states in passing broad self-defense measures backed by the National Rifle Association and other gun-rights groups. Under the law, a person can brandish a gun to ward off a threat. An individual does not have to flee or call the police before engaging in self-defense. 

For criminal trials in which a defendant claims self-defense, the legislation flips the burden of proof, putting the onus on prosecutors to discredit those claims. 

“It changed things here in Montana,” said Leo Gallagher, president of the Montana County Attorneys Association, which joined associations of sheriffs and police chiefs to oppose the law. “For any sort of personal affront, you’re permitted to threaten the person with a gun.”

The Flathead County Attorney recently explained his decision not to prosecute with a four-page letter that included this statement, which referred to the two men by their first names:

Given his reasonable belief that he was about to be assaulted, Brice's use of deadly force against Dan was justified.

Healy's story does not specify what facts the attorney cited to support the conclusion that the shooter's belief was reasonable, though we are told that the decedent had gone to the shooter's house looking for the decedent's wife, who was romantically involved with the shooter.  To me, that alone does not establish the shooter's reasonable belief that an unarmed man is a threat to him.  

The local newspaper, The Daily Inter-Lake, opined in a recent editorial that the "community has not been well-served by either the law or the legal process in this case."  It calls on Montana's legislature to re-consider the state's stand-your-ground law.  As for the reference to "legal process," it criticizes the County Attorney's delay in releasing its statement, and the need to better explain the law to a "curious public."  

Notable deaths in South Dakota

Two men from very different segments of South Dakota society died this week. Yet, different as their respective milieux were, both men were rebels of a sort.

Russell Means, a member of the Lakota and leader in the American Indian movement died yesterday, just a few days after the family of Senator George McGovern, the Democratic nominee for President in 1972, announced his death in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Read the NYT coverage of Means' death here, of McGovern's death here.

The New York Times headline for McGovern's obituary was "A Prairie Liberal, Trounced but Never Silenced." It recounts his life with frequent references to his roots in South Dakota, including this paragraph:

A slender, soft-spoken minister’s son newly elected to Congress — his father was a Republican — Mr. McGovern went to Washington as a 34-year-old former college history teacher and decorated bomber pilot in World War II. He thought of himself as a son of the prairie as well, with a fittingly flat, somewhat nasal voice and a brand of politics traceable to the Midwestern progressivism of the late 19th century.

Elsewhere the obituary, by David Rosenbaum, quotes extensively from a 2005 interview with McGovern:

I always thought of myself as a good old South Dakota boy who grew up here on the prairie. My dad was a Methodist minister. I went off to war. I have been married to the same woman forever. I’m what a normal, healthy, ideal American should be like.

But we probably didn’t work enough on cultivating that image. ... We were more interested in ending the war in Vietnam and getting people out of poverty and being fair to women and minorities and saving the environment.

It was an issue-oriented campaign, and we should have paid more attention to image.

***

I don’t think the American people had a clear picture of either Nixon or me. I think they thought that Nixon was a strong, decisive, tough-minded guy, and that I was an idealist and antiwar guy who might not attach enough significance to the security of the country.

The truth is, I was the guy with the war record, and my opposition to Vietnam was because I was interested in the nation’s well-being.

The story also discusses McGovern's early years, as well as his early leadership in South Dakota politics for the Democratic party. McGovern was born in Avon, South Dakota, now a town of about 600, in 1922. His family moved to Mitchell, South Dakota when McGovern was six years old. McGovern's father, a Methodist minister and Republican, was a strict disciplinarian who tried to prevent his four children from playing sports and going to the cinema.

After the war, McGovern earned graduate degrees in history from Northwestern University, eventually becoming a professor at Dakota Wesleyan, his alma mater. But he soon left that job to become executive secretary of the state's Democratic Party, "almost single-handedly reviv[ing] a moribund operation in a heavily Republican state."

Month after month, he drove across South Dakota in a beat-up sedan, making friends and setting up county organizations. In 1956, gaining the support of farmers who had become New Deal Democrats during the Depression, he was elected to Congress himself, defeating an overconfident incumbent Republican.

McGovern thus became the first Democratic congressman from South Dakota in more than 20 years. He remained a standard-bearer for liberal causes his entire life, with a particular focus on food assistance for the poor.

Russell Means was a South Dakota renegade of a different type. Here's the lede from the New York Times obituary of Means, who died at the age of 72 of esophageal cancer:

Russell C. Means, the charismatic Oglala Sioux who helped revive the warrior image of the American Indian in the 1970s with guerrilla-tactic protests that called attention to the nation’s history of injustices against its indigenous peoples, died on Monday at his ranch in Porcupine, S.D., on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

* * *

He styled himself a throwback to ancestors who resisted the westward expansion of the American frontier. With theatrical protests that brought national attention to poverty and discrimination suffered by his people, he became arguably the nation’s best-known Indian since Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.

An editorial in today's paper, The Seige of Wounded Knee, includes this paragraph about the significance of Russell Means' life and legacy:

The country is still good at ignoring Indians, but for a time Mr. Means and the American Indian Movement punctured that invisibility. By raising hell for 71 days in one of the most remote corners of the continent, on behalf of an abused and forgotten people, he and his allies captured the attention of the world. “It was pretty much all over three-and-a-half years after Alcatraz,” wrote Paul Chaat Smith, an American Indian writer and associate curator at the National Museum of the American Indian, “when exhausted, hungry rebels signed an agreement that ended the Wounded Knee occupation. There were other actions and protests, but none came close to capturing the imagination of the Indian world or challenging American power.”

Here's to the memories of two very courageous South Dakotans, even if Means might not have wanted to think of himself as such (a South Dakotan, that is).

Federal funds to provide water, sanitation infrastructure in rural Alaska

NPR reported a few days ago on a $29 million grant from the USDA which will be used to bring running water and flush toilets to sixteen remote Alaskan communities.  The places that will get the funding and new infrastructure are mostly native villages, and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium will oversee the program.   Matt Dixon, who oversees that program, describes in great detail the remoteness of these communities:

You know, if you're not from Alaska, they're really hard to describe.  Alaskan villages are very, very remote.  There's no road access, and most are located either on the coast or on a river.  So during the summer months, you can get there via boat or barge if you want to move heavy equipment in.  But in general, you're going to fly to these communities.  Some of them as far as three to 400 miles form what most of us would consider a metropolitan area, and they vary in size, anywhere from about 100 people to about 1,200 folks.  

Dixon then goes on to describe--in equally great detail--how the residents of these places currently get water (melt it in the winter; carry it from a river or collect rain run-off from roof at other times) and how they dispose of their human waste (a so-called honey bucket that must be hand carried to a lagoon).  

The new sanitation infrastructure will include a water treatment facility and a waste treatment facility at each of these 16 locations.  Though the building season in Alaska is short, Dixon estimates the new facilities will be in place by late 2014.

Service on village councils proves deadly in rural Kashmir

This story in today's New York Times tells a tale of death in the Indian state of Kashmir.  For more than three decades, Jim Yardley reports, villages in this tinderbox region had no local government councils, or gram panchayats.  But last year, in the face of threats of violence, "rural Kashmiris turned out in huge numbers" to elect these local councils "in what became a victory for grass-roots democracy in a blood-soaked land." The newly elected councils set about to undertake "long-neglected development projects," such as basic sanitation infrastructure.  In recent weeks, however, several panchayat leaders have been killed, and posters urging council members to resign have appeared in some villages.  Many elected leaders have in fact resigned, and several of the panchayats have ceased to operate.  Yardley quotes a village leader, Mohammad Altaf Malik, speculating on who or what is behind the killings:

There are forces that don't want to see the panchayats succeed.  The panchayat elections created tremendous hope among the people.  Now that hope is slowly diminishing.  

Yardley's story provides this additional context:

Kashmir is the stubborn, unsolved riddle of South Asia, a mostly Muslim region of blue skies and snow-capped Himalayan peaks that once witnessed a bloody insurgency and is still claimed by both India and Pakistan, even as some Kashmiris aspire to outright independence.

Some Kashmiri militant groups sought a boycott of the elections last year, but about 80% of voters nevertheless participated, making this aspect of Kashmir look more like the rest of India--at least for a time.

Panchayats have long existed elsewhere in India, but the absence of the system in Kashmir has meant that political power and patronage remained with state legislators and block-level administrators.  The panchayats shook that political structure, especially when their elected leaders--known as sarpanches--began complaining that the established order was not devolving power.  

Yardley quotes Omar Abdullah, the state's chief minister, who explains the tensions between different levels of government:

Let's understand that you have not had a functioning panchayat system here for more than three decades.  So an entire generation of political and administrative leadership has grown up without having to work with this group of elected representatives.  Clearly, they would much rather than deal with them. 

"Small-town case" becomes "statewide cause"

That headline borrows from a quote in yesterday's New York Times coverage of the religion-and-education controversy brewing in Kountze, Texas, population 2,115.  Last month, school officials prohibited the cheerleaders from displaying banners quoting Bible verses at the beginning of football games.  A group of fifteen cheerleaders and their parents then sued the district, claiming that the ban violated their free speech rights.  A state judge granted a temporary restraining order against enforcement of the ban, thereby permitting the cheerleaders to continue to display the banners at games.      That restraining order expires today, when the judge will consider whether to grant a temporary injunction against enforcement of the ban.  Earlier coverage of the matter is here and here.

Here's an excerpt from yesterday's story, which highlights how state officials have become involved in the matter:

[Governor Rick] Perry was joined at the Capitol here on Wednesday by the attorney general, Greg Abbott, who said the [school] district's action against the students was improper.  He argued tha thte banners were protected by a state law that requires school districts to treat student expression of religious views in the same manner as secular views.  That law, signed by Mr. Perry in 2007, is called the Religious Viewpoint Antidiscrimination Act.  

The school district banned the signs, it says, based on a 2000 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, which held that student-led prayers at high school football games were unconstitutional.

The story quotes Perry:

We're a nation that's built on the concept of free expression of ideas.  ... We're also a culture built upon the concept that the original law is God's law, outlined in the Ten Commandments.  If you think about it, the Kountze cheerleaders simply wanted to call attention to their faith and to their Lord.

The story describes Perry and Abbott as appearing at a press conference in front of a banner that read, "If God is for us, who will be against us."  I believe that paraphrases a verse from the Bible.  Nevertheless, Perry assured reporters that he would be as supportive of the cheerleaders if they were quoting the Koran or Confucius.

Although Kountze is characterized as a "small town," and it is in fact "rural" as that term is defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, it is part of the Beaumont Metropolitan Area.  Especially interesting in light of this current controversy is that, according to Wikipedia, the city elected the nation's first Muslim mayor, in 1991.

Fracking, photographed

The New York Times ran this multimedia feature a few days ago.

Last ditch effort to stop the Keystone XL in east Texas

Dan Frosh reported in the New York Times a few days ago on efforts to stop the southern part of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline from proceeding through the northeast corner of Wood County Texas.  There, disgruntled landowners and outside activists such as actor Darryl Hannah have protested and sought to physically block the work of laying the pipeline.  A number of them are camped out in a web of tree houses.  The story's dateline is Winnsboro, Texas, population 3,584, and some excerpts from it follow:

Here among the woods and farmland, what might be one of the last pitched battles over the Keystone XL oil pipeline has been unfolding for weeks now, since construction of the controversial project's southern leg began in August.  

Frosh quotes Ron Siefert, a spokesman for the Tar Sands Blockade, environmental activists who are behind the resistance in Winnsboro and who assert that the oil sands crude to be carried in the pipeline is especially toxic.

Initially, a lot of the environmental movement on a national scale had kind of written this fight off. ...  But we awakened folks from that slumber.  I think now there's an understanding that people are not going to give this up.

One Wood County landowner, 62-year-old Susan Scott, regrets having granted TransCanada a right-of-way through her 60 acres.  She said she didn't know the type of oil that would be carried by the pipeline when she took $22,000 from TransCanada.  Scott has since buried the money in a fruit jar on her property, saying she doesn't care if it rots.  Scott also maintains that she granted the right-of-way because the feared a lawsuit if she held out.  Now, Scott fears she is "guilty of destroying [her] farm."

Another landowner, David Daniel, also granted an easement to TransCanada but then refused to recognize it.  TransCanada sued Daniel, and he has since settled with the company and asked the protestors to leave his property.  But, Siefert, the spokesman for Tar Sands Blockade, responds:

It's actually out of respect for David Daniel that we stay. ... I stand by the fact that protecting his forest is the best thing for him, the best thing for the community, the best thing for the Planet Earth.  

Earlier stories about the Keystone XL are here and here.