Dems can stand up for rural America , it's past time they learned how.

[MissMarple]

The Secretary of Agriculture should not promote corporate agribusiness interests over those of family farmers. Ann Veneman and now the potential new appointee Mike Johanns, governor of Nebraska, care little for the economic problems facing family farmers and thus the viability of small town America. There are many issues that resonate with rural families and businesses. Aside from agribusiness and trade issues, a superWalMart hurts business in rural towns for miles around it. Finding ways for local businessmen to overcome and work around the walmartization of rural America is important issue. Local economies are dying and the towns are dying with them. Internet access is unreliable and and further hinders development.

The Democratic Party needs to better understand rural America. Trade policy, protection of family farmers, rural development and maintaining a valued quality of life are important issues that the Republican Party have not been able address in their rush to benefit corporate America.

This article in The Nation makes cogent points. And William Jennings Bryant may have got it right in 1896 when he urged the party to embrace rural America.

http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/index.mhtml?bid=1&pid=2052

"Most national Democrats -- and let's start this list with the name "John Kerry" -- evidence little or no understanding of the fundamental economic concerns facing rural regions. That lack of awareness often leads them to miss opportunities to challenge the wrongheaded agenda of corporate agribusiness and the industry's allies in Washington.


Johanns was an aggressive supporter of the 2002 farm bill, which continued the misguided practice of directing substantial portions of U.S. farm-support spending into the treasuries of the largest agribusiness conglomerates and factory-farm operations. "This farm bill continues to tap taxpayers' hard earned money to keep the farm economy limping along while the giant food processors and exporters reap cheap commodities to expand their control of the world's food supply," says George Naylor, president of the National Family Farm Coalition.

* As governor, Johanns initiated what Nebraska farm advocates saw as an attempt to gut I-300, the state's 23-year-old ban on corporations owning farmland or engaging in agricultural activity in the state. Johanns's push for a review of I-300 drew harsh criticism from family-farm advocates last year. "There seems to be no useful purpose in modifying Initiative 300 unless the purpose is to subject Initiative 300 to legal attack," argued Robert Broom, an attorney who successfully defended I-300 from constitutional challenge in federal trials. Under heavy pressure from rural voters, Nebraska legislators declined to give Johanns the authority to establish a task force that many expected to attack I-300.
...

"Ah, my friends," Bryan told the Democratic National Convention of 1896, " we say not one word against those who live upon the Atlantic coast, but the hardy pioneers who have braved all the dangers of the wilderness, who have made the desert to blossom as the rose -- the pioneers away out there , who rear their children near to Nature's heart, where they can mingle their voices with the voices of the birds -- out there where they have erected schoolhouses for the education of their young, churches where they praise their Creator, and cemeteries where rest the ashes of their dead -- these people, we say, are as deserving of the consideration of our party as any people in this country. It is for these that we speak."