Liking the idea of liking the countryside

“It’s very pretty and suits urban people who don’t particularly like the countryside but like the idea of liking it,” James Hanning, a co-author of “Cameron: Practically a Conservative,” said of the Cotswolds, the hills that include Chipping Norton.

That quote is from Amy Chozick's piece in today's New York Times about Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire, the area that includes David Cameron's constituency in Witney.  Chozick begins her piece, which appears in the Fashion & Style section, with this:

The power centers of British politics and media may reside in London, but their tentacles extend to a tiny working-class market town with rows of glistening stone buildings, 17th-century pubs and a medieval church. 

This politically conservative Tory stronghold in rural Oxfordshire, with its green hills dotted with sheep and cottages with slate roofs, is in some ways London’s amped-up version of the Hamptons — if President Obama, David Axelrod and Rupert Murdochwere neighbors and went horseback riding and ate suppers together.

Chozick also quotes Alastair Campbell, communications director for former (Labour Party) Prime Minister Tony Blair:

If you go to Chipping Norton, there are farm laborers and miners. But if you really breathe in the essence of the place, it’s what you imagine David Cameron being.

I don't think of the Hamptons as rural, but this story reminds me of the ways in which rich Americans consume the countryside--at least certain amenity-rich segments of it--as in New England and the West.  They seem often to be attracted to a faux rural, one with picturesque main streets associated with rural gentrification .... but without, ahem, some of the downsides of agriculture and "unenlightened" neighbors.  I am reminded of this quote from a 1991 Maryland case, County Commissioners of Carroll County v. Zent:

Circumstances which are accepted as natural and normal incidents of a rural society by those who are nurtured by an agrarian environment do not always match the expectations of bucolic life anticipated by suburbanites as they move out to the countryside. While new residents may well expect, and accept, vistas of fields of waving grain, pastural [sic] scenes of dairy cattle on the hillside and the rustic ambiance of the pond and wetlands area in the meadows, they sometimes belatedly discover that the plow precedes the grain, manure accompanies the cattle, mosquitoes infest the ponds, and the products of the fields and animal husbandry must go to market.

587 A2d 1205 (Md. Ct. of Special Appeals 1991).  At issue in the case was rural residents’ operation of a junkyard, contrary to zoning laws, which the court held legal as a long-standing, non-conforming use.

This set who "like the idea of liking the countryside" have been called "nouveaux rustiques" by Brian Donahue (2001).  They also remind me of the work of Greg Fulkerson and colleagues at SUNY Oneonta who have written of the rural simulacra, using nearby Cooperstown, New York as an illustration.  See more here and here.

CAFO approved after use of dodgy notice procedure

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the State of Arkansas's approval of a CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation) in the Buffalo National River watershed--an approval that came after notice of the permit application was made only in the state-wide paper, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, but not in either the Newton County Times or the Harrison Daily Times, the latter two papers having far greater circulation in the relevant area:  Newton County.

I have since had an opportunity to review the relevant Arkansas law on notice.  Arkansas Code Section   8-4-203, under the Water and Air Pollution Control Act and labeled "Permits generally."  It states in relevant part:

(d)(1) When an application for the issuance of a new permit or a major modification of an existing permit is filed with the department, the department shall cause notice of the application to be published in a newspaper of general circulation in the county in which the proposed facility is to be located.

While I have been unable to find any case interpreting "newspaper of general circulation in the county," a Westlaw search of Arkansas case law reveals that many sections of the Arkansas Code use similar language regarding necessary notice, whether the issue is selling foreclosed property or the annexation of land into a city.  Regarding the latter, the relevant statute, Arkansas Code Section 19-101, prescribes the following notice after a city votes to annex land:    

and thereupon the petitioners or their agent shall cause a notice to be published in some newspaper of general circulation in the county, not less than three (3) consecutive weeks; and, if there be no newspaper of general circulation in the county, a notice shall be posted at some public place within the limits of said proposed incorporated town for at least three (3) weeks before the time of such hearing which notice shall contain the substance of said petition, and state the time and place appointed for the hearing thereof.’

This law provides an alternative for the situation when there is no newspaper of general circulation in a county:  another form of local notice. Just holding out the very possibility that there might be no such newspaper of general circulation in a county implies that a statewide newspaper, such as the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, will not satisfy the requirement of a newspaper of general circulation in a county.   This is because it is extremely unlikely that there would be no such state newspaper to satisfy the requirement of a "newspaper of general circulation in the county," if in fact a statewide newspaper would do the trick.  Further, the statute is instructive regarding what notice is adequate if that newspaper of general circulation is lacking:  the notice must be posted "at some public place within the limits of said proposed incorporated town."  In other words, notice must be local. Posting the notice in Little Rock, for example, would not be sufficient when the land being annexed is in Crossett.  (See City of Crossett v. Anthony, 250 Ark. 660 (1971)).  In a 2001 case, notice regarding a proposed annexation was provided under an apparent successor to Section 19-101, Arkansas Code Section 14-40-601 et seq.  That notice, related to property in Crittenden County, was provided in the local West Memphis-based Evening Times, not in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.  (City of Marion v. Guaranty Loan and Real Estate Co., 75 Ark. App. 427 (2001)).

In the foreclosure context, Arkansas Code Section 18-49-104 (Supp. 1997) stipulates:  

(c)(1) The mortgagee, trustee, or vendor shall publish a notice of the sale in a newspaper published and having a general circulation in the county in which the property is situated or, if this is not available, then in a newspaper of general statewide daily publication one (1) time.

This statute also suggests that notice in a newspaper "having general circulation the county" requires notice in a local paper.  After all, it contrasts the "newspaper published and having a general circulation in the county" with a less desirable option if such a paper is not available:  "a newspaper of general statewide daily publication."  The latter would be the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.  

All of these statutes refer to "newspaper of general circulation in the county," stipulating "county" and thereby implying that notice in a statewide newspaper is not adequate. Whether read individually or collectively, these provisions suggest that the Arkansas environment code notice provision required meaningful notice in Newton County, to Newton County residents.  Surely no in the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality in Little Rock thought notice in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette would be meaningful or effective.    

Meanwhile, I would love to see the Newton County circulation stats on the Newton County Times vs. the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.  Those challenging the CAFO permit for the Big Creek hog farm need to track down that information.  They also need to think carefully about the purpose of the notice provision:  presumably to provide notice to those who have a more direct stake in the process and its outcome.

I close with some other data about Newton County, to paint a picture of the socio-economic milieu where this is happening because I think that milieu sheds light on who these people are, as well as their sources of news and information.  Newton County is a persistent poverty county in the Arkansas Ozarks, with a population of about 8,000 and a poverty rate of 21.6%.  The median household income there is just under $30K, and the median value of an owner-occupied home is about $76,000.  Jobs are scarce, to say the least. 

News out of "rural" states

I have often objected to media labeling entire states "rural," but I couldn't help think in those terms upon seeing several recent news reports out of the Dakotas and Arkansas.  State legislatures in all of the states are making decisions that reflect what might be commonly thought of as "rural culture." Specifically, I am thinking about stasis, religion, and guns.

Both North Dakota and Arkansas have recently passed extremely restrictive abortion laws--laws that almost certainly run afoul of the U. S. Constitution.  In the case of North Dakota, which passed its law just yesterday, the law could ban abortions after just six weeks of gestation.  The law bans abortions after a fetal heart beat is detectable, and that mark is at about six weeks if a vaginal ultrasound is used.  To avoid the controversy related to the timing of fetal heartbeat, the new Arkansas law bans abortions after the 12-week mark and does not reference fetal heartbeat.  As for the South Dakota law, that state legislature recently authorized school employees to have guns, though the ultimate decision is left to the school district.

The NYTimes articles reporting on these laws tend to invoke rural culture in explaining their passage.  Regarding the South Dakota law, John Eligon writes:

South Dakota is a state with deep roots in hunting, where children start learning how to shoot BB guns when they are 8, skeet shoot with shotguns by age 14 and enter target shooting contests with .22-caliber semiautomatic rifles. 

“Our kids start hunting here when they’re preteens,” said Kevin Jensen, who supports the bill and is the vice president of the Canton School Board in South Dakota. “We know guns. We respect guns.”

The story about the Arkansas abortion law, which had been in the news for weeks when it finally passed, in part because the governor kept using his veto to stop it, has focused a great deal on the role of religion.  Here's an excerpt on the most recent story, focusing on Jason Rapert, the bill's sponsor:

Mr. Rapert, who runs an investment firm and a Christian missionary society, preached at local churches before the election, sometimes entertaining worshipers by playing “Amazing Grace” on his fiddle.

An earlier story about the Arkansas law closed with this, focusing on how these developments make Arkansas look on the national stage:

“It sets Arkansas back several decades in the eyes of the nation and the world,” said Rita Sklar, director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas. “It shows an utter disregard for women and their ability to make important personal decisions about their own reproductive health.”

 The story about the North Dakota law does not mention rural culture, but it does note how limited access to abortion already is in the state:

In 2011, according to state data, 1,247 abortions were performed in North Dakota. If the ban becomes law, more than 75 percent of the procedures could be outlawed, according to Elizabeth Nash, a state issues manager with the Guttmacher Institute in Washington, a research group that supports abortion rights.

I have done extensive analysis of abortion access in rural places here, also critiquing how the U.S. Supreme Court has viewed rural women in relation to abortion access.

For the record, using the U.S. Census Bureau definition, 45% of North Dakota's population is rural, while the figure for South Dakota is 48%, and the figure for Arkansas is 46%.

Small state=rural state?

Adam Liptak's lengthy feature in yesterday's New York Times is headlined "Smaller States Find Outsize Clout Growing in the Senate," but I'm not sure the story is really "news."  It's more of an update on the long-time argument that the structure of the U.S. Senate and the Electoral College give small states--a/k/a rural states, too much power.  Here are some relevant quotes:  

Behind the growth of the [small-state] advantage is an increase in population gap between large and small states, with large states adding many more people than small ones in the last half-century. There is a widening demographic split, too, with the larger states becoming more urban and liberal, and the smaller ones remaining rural and conservative, which lends a new significance to the disparity in their political power.

* * *

Beyond influencing government spending, these shifts generally benefit conservative causes and hurt liberal ones. When small states block or shape legislation backed by senators representing a majority of Americans, most of the senators on the winning side tend to be Republicans, because Republicans disproportionately live in small states and Democrats, especially African-Americans and Latinos, are more likely to live in large states like California, New York, Florida and Illinois. Among the nation’s five smallest states, only Vermont tilts liberal, while Alaska, Wyoming and the Dakotas have each voted Republican in every presidential electionsince 1968.

Liptak, in addition to discussing current proposals to curb small-state power, quotes Chief Justice Earl Warren's decision in Reynolds v. Sims (1964):

Legislators represent people, not trees or acres.  Legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests.

In that decision, the Court rejected Alabama's argument that state senators, like federal ones, could represent geographic areas with varying population sizes.  

Here is a link to a terrific graphic depicting the small-state advantage. 

 

Roadkill consumption laws as a reflection of rural culture

"Doubling back for roadkill" was the headline of a New York Times editorial this past week-end.  It began:

Squirrel gravy is such a delicacy in Appalachia that there is a RoadKill Cook-off each year in the hollows of West Virginia. Lawmakers in Montana get the drift. The lower house of the Montana Legislature recently approved a measure that would allow citizens to salvage fresh roadkill and take it home for dinner.

The editors go on to explain that the Montana vote was 95-to-3.  If the Montana senate agrees, Montana will join five other states (Florida, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois and West Virginia) which permit the salvaging of roadkill under relevant health and safety regulations.  The editorial features some rich detail, including this quote from the Montana state trooper/legislator, Steve Lavin, who introduced the bill:

There's a lot of good meat being wasted out there.  

The editorial estimates that 6,000 deer were killed by vehicles in Montana (not to mention about 500 elk, moose, antelope, bears and mountain lions) in 2011, and it ends with this blurb about a Durango, Colorado "lawyer, hunter and roadkill connoisseur," Matt Kenna, who spoke to Bloomberg News for their recent story about these roadkill laws. Kenna says he  

carries game-dressing equipment in his car and takes home about $1,800 worth of fresh meat each year. His favorite roadside treat, he said, is elk steak marinated in Italian dressing.

The Bloomberg story, which is quite lengthy and detailed, notes that, in many states--even where the practice of salvaging road kill is not legally sanctioned--law enforcement officers often invite food banks to pick up the animals if, that is, they don't offer it to the folks who turned it into roadkill.   

I'm not clear on the extent to which the Times editors are poking fun at the practice of salvaging roadkill, but another roadkill story from 1999, dateline Nashville, Tennessee, played up the laws' potential for humor. The story, "Statehouse Journal; A Road-Kill Proposal is Food for Jokesters" begins:

If only the bill had contained the word ''deer,'' then perhaps the possum jokes could have been stopped flat. If the bill had just made it clear that someone who hits a deer on the highway can take home the carcass and eat it, then maybe Tennessee would have been spared all the raccoon cookbooks, the dead-skunk songs, the bumper stickers, the sniggering headlines, the laughter that has lighted up the Legislature for the last few weeks. 

But no. With an unerring genius for the kind of thing that makes many Tennesseans squirm, the author of the bill decided to phrase it this way: ''Wild animals accidentally killed by a motor vehicle may be possessed by any person for personal use and consumption.''

Sarcasm or the lack thereof aside, one thing seems clear from this week-end's editorial:  Saturday must have been a very slow news day.  

Call for Papers: ClassCrits VI

The 2013 ClassCrits meeting will be at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, November 15-16. The deadline for abstracts and panel proposals is fast approaching: March 20, 2013.

The call follows, and you can get more details here. Send proposals to classcrits@gmail.com.

The theme of this year’s workshop--the sixth meeting of ClassCrits--is debt, austerity and the possibilities of the political. The economic crisis of 2008 was a referendum on the failures of deregulation and neoliberal ideology all over the world. Far from being a sophisticated mechanism to absorb and diffuse systemic economic risk, the crisis exposed a fragile global financial system characterized by dysfunctional imbalances of increasingly precarious and largely unregulated risk societies. In the United States, the social contract of class mobility and the “American Dream” financed with “easy” credit was exposed as an empty promise. In the European context, the sovereign debt crisis resulted in the imposition of draconian austerity measures in several nation-states, like Greece, undermining social safety nets and wage structures, rupturing traditional alliances, and driving down individual standards of living. At the same time, the Occupy Movement—and similar movements across the globe—refocused attention on socio-economic inequality for the first time in decades. The old ways of seeing things proved inadequate for framing the changing realities of the new post-recession world. But whatever the initial shock to the social order, political and financial elites everywhere have since doubled down on the failed neoliberal project with a mania for balancing budgets in the name of discredited austerity policies which have only accelerated neoliberalism’s upward transfer and concentration of wealth and intensified the class stratification in contemporary global societies. Stuck in the grip of austerity groupthink and faced with nation states captured by elite interests─a trend only made worse in the United States by Citizens United─any movement forward will require creatively leveraging national political and legal systems as instruments for progressive economic change and deleveraging social class divides. 

What are the possibilities and alternatives for a genuinely progressive economic project in an age of resurgent neoliberal policies and politics, worldwide shifts in population and demographics, and hegemonic economics? How can we address the challenges of our age including, but not limited to: globalization; shifting power relationships between the developed world and formerly “third world” countries; massive intergenerational and upward transfers of wealth; abject poverty; staggering debt; wage stagnation; a declining middle class; an increasingly dysfunctional food system; and environmental and climate risks that will require concerted national and international efforts. Stuck in Forward? Debt, Austerity and the Possibilities of the Political will address these questions by bringing together scholars, economists, activists, policymakers, and others to critically examine and take stock of who wins, who loses, how the law facilitates the hierarchical and spatial distribution of winners and losers, and how we may use law and politics to develop both real and utopian interstitial spaces of classlessness within the new post-recession global order.

State and fed officials tangle over industrial hog farm in Buffalo National River watershed

In August, 2012, the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) approved a 670-acre, 6,500 hog farm along a tributary of Big Creek, just five miles from the Buffalo National River (BNR)--and it did so without input from the National Park Service.  Now, according to the Feb. 27, 2013, issue of the Newton County Times, the Park Service has joined local conservation groups in objecting to the corporate farm, which is locally owned but will operate under a contract with Cargill.

Big Creek Valley, Newton County, Arkansas, area
of proposed industrial farm.  April, 2011.

Officials with the National Park Service say they didn't learn about the plan until after the permit was issued last August.  The Times quotes Buffalo National River superintendent Kevin Cheri,

We are key stakeholders in any decision.  ... We didn't find out until the permit had been taken out and a loan given for the farming operation. ... Why didn't they notify the first national river about this?  We're only five miles from the facility.  

Cheri reported that his agency learned of the proposed farm when local property owners and members of the Ozark Society asked his office about it.  The paper further quotes Cheri:

We're behind the curve and trying to get more information ... so we can articulate our concerns, and take it to the next level, if that is what is needed.  We want to be assured this is not going to cause any contamination of water and affect public health.

What I find shocking about how ADEQ handled this matter is that they published public notices of hearings about the farm only in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, in February and April of 2012.  ADEQ did not publish any notices in either the Newton County Times or the newspaper for neighboring Boone County.  I would guess that the number of Newton County residents who regularly read the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette is very low.  (See more about Newton County demographics here; 79% are high school graduates and only 12% have a bachelor's degree or more).  ADEQ reports that it held six public meetings received comments from 13 individuals, organizations and corporations.  It does not specify, however, whether any of those offering comment were residents of Newton County, or of neighboring Searcy County, which the Buffalo River runs through not far downstream from Big Creek.

The plan that ADEQ approved includes two "shallow-pit confinement barns" and "collecting states [sic] in two story ponds, then spreading it on a 670-acre farm." The Ozark Society, which reviewed the permit, reports that it approves "17 separate hog waste application fields, 11 of these [  ] adjacent to Big Creek."  The permit specifies:

a buffer zone of approximately 100 feet between Big Creek and the hog waste application fields.  The facility's treatment facility consists of in house shallow pits with a capacity of 759,542 gallons, a settling basin with capacity of 831,193 gallons and a holding pond with capacity of 1,904,730. 

This amounts to 2,090,181 gallons of manure, litter and wastewater generated per year.  This is approximately 5,727 gallons per day spread on fields (630.7 acres).  On average, 9.1 gallons per day would be spread on each acre or 75 pounds per day per acre. 

The permit does not allow discharge of the waste, but rather it must be applied to the owner's fields.  If an overflow occurs, the permittee must test the pond, but has 30 days in which to report the overflow and likely run-off.  All of the fields and facilities are above the 100 year flood level.  The fields will be used for hay and pasture.    

The permit states that "land application areas will receive application at rates consistent with infiltration capabilities of the native soil so that there is no runoff."

Buffalo National River near Ponca

The Ozark Society stated on its website that it "has no desire for this farmer to lose the right to develop his land" and noted that he has operated a successful hog farm near Jasper for a decade with no citations or permit violations.  Nevertheless, the Society asserted that "the water quality of our rivers is at stake" and that it ADEQ should have the "long-term goal" of "deny[ing] permits for any animal or poultry factory farms in the watersheds of major rivers and streams, especially the Buffalo National River, our first National River and a designated Extraordinary Resource Water stream." The website notes the "significant economic issue" given that the BNR "attracts more than a million visitors each year, contributing millions of dollars to the economy of Arkansas."

At the end of its story, the Newton County Times notes that one of the farm's co-owners and its vice president, Richard Campbell, is a justice of the peace/member of the Newton County Quorum Court (the Arkansas equivalent of a Board of Supervisors).  The Newton County Wildlife Association, which also opposes the factory farm, has suggested that the Quorum Court consider this controversy.

No timeline for the opening of the farm is indicated, though the story makes a mention of the farm seeking funding, presumably for start-up costs.

The feminization of farming

That is the title of Professor Olivier De Schutter's op-ed in the New York Times today, but it reminds me of another catchy (if depressing) phrase feminists coined a few decades ago:  the feminization of poverty.

As it turns out, De Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the the right to food, brings together issues of gender equality and food security in his op-ed in a way that shows the link of both to, you guessed it, poverty.  As most of us know, women are more likely than men to be living in poverty, wherever they are in the world.  Turns out, according to De Shutter, as women get more and more responsibility for growing food in the developing world--partly as a result of male migration for work--women's poverty and hunger, along with that of their families, is exacerbated, not eliminated.

Specifically, De Schutter discusses a report released today to the United Nations Human Rights Council in which he calls for a "comprehensive, rights-based approach focused on removing legal discrimination and on improving public services — child care, water supplies, sanitation and energy sources — to reduce the burden on women who farm."

Noting women's increasing roles "on the front lines of the fight to sustain family farms," De Schutter asserts that gender discrimination and stereotyping lead to pervasive discrimination against women, hindering their ability to overcome poverty and hunger.  Some manifestations of this discrimination "den[y] small-scale female farmers the same access men have to fertilizer, seeds, credit membership in cooperatives and unions, and technical assistance."  Just as problematic, if not more so according to De Schutter, are the burdens associated with traditional gender roles that leave women expected to do "unremunerated household chores like cooking, cleaning, fetching water, collecting firewood and caring for the very young and the elderly." De Schutter notes that these activities are the equivalent "to as much as 63 percent of gross domestic product in India and Tanzania," and that these endless tasks  keep women from having the time they need to "attend classes, travel to markets to sell produce or do other activities to improve their economic prospects."

De Schutter provides success stories from Bangladesh, the Philippines and China, all about programs that look at first blush unrelated to farming.  These programs have, among other things, provided obstetric and other health services, educated women about domestic violence, enhanced education for children, supplied clean water and latrines, and employed women on rural road maintenance crews.  Yet as apparently unrelated to farming as these programs are, all of these have had the knock on effect of enhancing women's farm productivity and helping to alleviate hunger.

De Schutter does not mention the role that CEDAW--which includes specific rights for rural women--can play in all of this, but that is a topic I have written about extensively here, here, and here.  This article is about empowerment of India's rural populations in particular.

Kudos to De Schutter--and the United Nations--for seeing food security as part of a much wider web that implicates women's and children's agency and well-being.  

Cross-posted to Agricultural Law Blog.

Medicaid expansion critical for rural Nebraskans

Before discussing the proposed legislation in Nebraska, it might help to know a little background regarding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (known better as the Affordable Care Act, ACA, or Obamacare).  The Affordable Care Act is a 700 page tomb that is unbearably difficult to understand. The subsequent litigation around it makes it even more difficult. Last year, the Supreme Court found most of the Affordable Care Act constitutional in the landmark case National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) v. Sebelius. Note that I said most of the ACA was upheld, not all. The intracies of the ruling confused even news organizations such as CNN and Fox.  The one portion of the health care reform was struck down was federal government’s role in cutting states’ Medicaid funds. Chief Justice John Roberts said as part of the 5-4 decision that states can't be penalized for refusing to join the law's expansion of Medicaid eligibility.  The federal government will initially cover all the expenses for the expanded coverage, until ultimately cutting back to 90 percent. The would mean states would have to cover the extra 10 percent. The ruling allows states to decline to do so.

Enter Nebraska legislation LB577. Nebraska lawmakers have proposed the legislation to expand Medicaid coverage as part of federal health care law.  The bill is said to extend coverage to more than 54,000 uninsured Nebraskans. Without the expansion, individuals who make too much to be covered by Medicaid, but cannot afford the insurance offered in the market place will be left out in the cold. However, that 10% additional cost is more than some Nebraskans are unwilling to take on. Governor Dave Heineman and other opponents have argued that the plan is simply unaffordable.

Expansion of Medicaid is crucial for rural Nebraskans. Nebraska’s rural counties have lower health insurance coverage rates than more urban counties for residents under 65 and most recent Census Bureau data show that Nebraska’s rural counties have a 15.5 percent uninsured rate, higher than any other county type in the state. As county population decreases uninsured rates increase. Counties with “high” uninsured rates (21 percent or greater) exist only in non-metropolitan (rural) Nebraska.

The bill is also important for the rural Nebraska’s health-care infrastructure. Medicaid is a crucial source of revenue for rural physicians, hospitals, and long-term care providers. But a rural health insurance market that leaves more rural people without insurance or without adequate insurance also leaves rural providers without payment for the services provided to many of their patient.

While the cost may be difficult in the short-term, it is likely to be cost-effective in the long term. After all, those individuals will continue to live in your state. As opposed to getting preventative care and managed care, they will getting sicker and ultimately increase the cost to manage their illness. Further, they are going to utilize emergency rooms, which are both costly and already overcrowded.   Either way, the state will have to pay for it. It is hard to see how a state would say thanks but no thanks to the Medicaid expansion option. Not only do you get a significant amount of federal aid, but you are able to help your residents live healthy lives, bolster medical infrastructure, minimize long-term costs, AND help vulnerable rural communities. It seems like a foolish option to leave on the table.

Bloody Sunday: the Supreme Court's ahistorical approach to voting rights

March 3rd marks the anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” the date in 1965 on which proponents of voting rights marched from Selma, Alabama towards Montgomery, in protest of the recent killing of a voting rights activist by an Alabama State Trooper. The marchers were then beaten and teargassed by police.

Five months later, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed. Section Five of the Act requires that states and some municipalities with a history of discrimination in voting rights get “pre-clearance” from the Department of Justice prior to enacting any change affecting citizens' voting rights. This means that potential infringement on minority’s voting rights are curbed before the harm occurs. The burden is on the state entity to disprove infringement, rather than on the individuals to seek remedy afterwards.

That section is now being challenged in the Supreme Court, in Shelby County v. Holder. To hear the conservative Justices question Donald Verrilli, the solicitor general defending the law in Wednesay’s oral arguments, Section 5 is archaic and discounts the progress made in the arena of racial justice. Although Congress reapproved this law in 2006, the conservative half (+1) of the Court pressed hard on what they saw as the inadequacy of the evidence supporting an ongoing need for this act.

In an editorial published today by Washington Post columnist George F. Will, a similar strain is heard: the election of Barack Obama and his capture of a larger percentage of the white vote than either John Kerry or Al Gore, plus the sheer number of black elected officials in Mississippi, tell the true story of racial equality in voting rights in this country. He scorns progressives for being "remarkably uninterested in progress" (citing Medicare as an example of a similar rigidity). Frank C. Ellis, attorney for Shelby County, has said: "I think we’ve proven that the south has changed. We’re not the same South we were in 1964; we don’t have the blatant discrimination that we had in 1964."

But the insistence that racial equality has rendered excessive Section Five’s dictate that the state, not individuals, bear the responsibility for disproving a presumption of racial impact of voting laws, is undermined by ample evidence: attempts to restrict the rights of minority voters have ramped up, not down, in recent years. The Brennan Center for Justice in 2012 released a large scale voting rights report detailing the disparate impact on minority groups by various states’ voter ID laws.

The voter ID laws require documents which one in ten eligible voters do not have. The Brennan Center’s report focuses on the prohibitive difficulty faced by voters in poor and rural (often both) areas in obtaining the required documents.

In the real world, poor voters find shuttered offices, long drives without cars, and with spotty or no bus service, and sometimes prohibitive costs. For these Americans, the promise of our democracy is tangibly distant. It can be measured in miles.

In Alabama, Mississippi and and Georgia, “in the areas with the greatest concentrations of rural black voters, no state driver’s license offices are open more than two days per week…. [M]any of these states’ part-time offices are located in the areas with the highest concentrations of black voters.” In Texas, areas “with high concentrations of Hispanic voters, [have] few or no ID-issuing offices.” All four of these states are currently subject to the pre-clearance requirement under the Voting Rights Act.



In Calera, Alabama (in Shelby County), Councilman Ernest Montgomery serves as the only black Council member. In recent years, he watched as the city of Calera redrew his district, severely reducing the black vote. Per Section 5, the DOJ intervened, the redistricting was blocked, and Councilman Montgomery was reelected. It has been pointed out in recent days, too, that the Hispanic population of Shelby County has increased by nearly 150% since the last Census.

To define the progress of voting rights through the narrow lens of the number of black officials, or the access to that office by a single black man, is to deny the adaptive skill of those seeking to suppress voting rights. Shelby County’s history makes its actions in the realm of voting rights presumptively suspect – and this should include the very legal challenge the Court now addresses. The hope of the petitioners in Shelby County v. Holder is to dismantle the most protective portion of the Act. The recent redistricting should not be divorced from the history of black voter suppression; and nor should Shelby County v. Holder be considered as apart from the recent slew of restrictive voter ID laws. It is another tactic in the larger battle, and should be treated skeptically.

Far-flung and near: the Arctic and climate change

In the last issue of the New York Review of Books, Ian Frazier reviews Subhankar Banerjee’s anthology Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point. Banerjee is a photographer and activist who has been recording the changing Arctic for the past decade or so.  Arctic Voices is an anthology composed of writing and photography documenting climate change and fossil fuel exploitation in the Arctic. 

The Arctic is a particular place of interest, because like the rural, it tends to exist outside of our everyday mainframe.  It seems that the Arctic is not only spatially isolated, but temporality is experienced differently as well, the lived experience there is appropriate for the longue duree.  NYRB contributor Ian Frazier quotes environmentalist and activist Bill McKibben describing the Arctic environment as nestled “deep in geological time.”

The Arctic is a site for exploitation of fossil fuels and rare minerals, and so, despite its far-flung positionality, the harms experienced by Arctic peoples directly implicates the larger political economy surrounding extractive industries and energy production.  The particular industry of resource extraction concerns all of us, the cost and question of energy pervades so much of our everyday life, and must be contended with, brought into our everyday consciousness. 

I have been thinking a lot about the Arctic. Not only do residents of the Arctic directly experience the negative externalities that coincide with fossil fuel and mineral extraction, the Arctic is now warming at twice the rate as the rest of the world. The paradox of the Arctic is this: due to their traditional lifeways, native Arctic communities  do not consume energy as ravenously as compared to the average city dweller, let's say, and so by extension, their carbon footprint is much lighter than modern societies.  And yet, and yet, they are experiencing warming at twice the rate as the rest of the world. 

In the age of climate change where it is difficult to experience the “impact” of climate change as specific discrete events, despite Hurricane Sandy, despite record droughts, despite 2012 being the hottest year in US history, despite warnings from some of the leading scientists of our time that going forward with the regulatory status quo will quite literally lead to apocalyptic disaster, we must cast our attention to the most far-flung, least considered spaces.  Because there, in the Arctic, for example, we witness the most rapid effects of climate change occurring in real time, with real consequences, and real harms, to the most vulnerable populations. 

Kivalina v. ExxonMobil, a case recently decided before the Ninth Circuit, articulates the harm experienced by a traditional Inupiat village located on the tip of a barrier reef on the Chukchi Sea in Alaska.  Due to increasing coastal erosion and melting sea ice, the Native Village of Kivalina will have to be relocated from their ancestral home at the cost of anywhere between $95 million to $400 million. The language of law is instructive.  The Government Accountability Office calls it relocation.  The Ninth Circuit ruled that Kivalina’s claim is precluded by federal regulatory displacement of common law claims.  I like this word displacement, some ironic catachresis. It highlights the disjuncture, this gap between legal language and the descriptive language of what is actually occurring in Kivalina: because common law claims are being displaced by federal regulations, the residents of Kivalina’s actual physical displacement from their land cannot be redressed by the court. 

Consider some other descriptive possibilities: rootshock and genocide.  I have been thinking a lot about the Arctic.  Give a thing a name and find the law to let the narrative develop or give a thing a name and find the law to squash it.  Welcome to the Anthropocene age, welcome to climate change and the law.