For every federal agency, establish state liaisons to specific groups in a state. For example, the Department of Agriculture meeds one or more liaisons to farmers—not the big agribusiness operations that actually hurt family farmers—to learn their challenges and to craft policies that better address their concerns. I confess that I don’t know whether federal agencies already have such liaisons, but if they’re Trump appointees they’re useless. I can give an example from my own family of how big businesses hurt farmers. Seeds have been genetically modified so that farmers cannot save the seeds from a crop and reuse them for the next season. They must purchase new seeds each season, adding to their costs. And the seeds are not guaranteed. So if a local seed supplier holds over seeds from one year to the next and those seeds fail, the farmer is out the cost.
And we need to continue to focus on healthcare. Farmers have to buy their own, as do owners and employees of small businesses. We need special liaisons to small business owners, many of whom vote for Republicans because they believe their taxes will be lower.
A second way to help rural areas is to look at how to protect their local or regional hospitals. Hundreds of such hospitals have been closed because they failed to make the kinda of profits demanded by private equity investors.
Another way to help rural community is to take the billions of dollars we now use to subsidize the fossil fuel industry and use it to give incentives to alternative energy manufacturers to locate in smaller communities. It’s all about jobs and helping them keep their kids from moving to the cities for work. The coal miners in Kentucky and West Virginia cannot afford to move to West Texas for oil jobs (not that any are available now), but they could keep their homes with work in a solar panel manufacturer in their community. I think this is already part of Biden’s plan, though I don’t know whether the focus is on smaller rural areas.
We need to address immigration, though this has always been the third rail of US politics. First is to give the DACA kids a path to citizenship. Second is to find a way for people who have worked here for decades to work toward citizenship or to have legal status to work without fear of deportation. This one will be tough because it will enrage lots of people. Next is to look at US aid to countries like El Salvador, and Honduras to increase the effectiveness of programs that encourage industry, job training, and honesty. Gang control will also be a big issue in these countries if we don’t want hundreds of thousands of migrants at our borders. I’m not against immigration, but the pace needs to be one where the numbers can be assimilated.
We need to focus on opportunity and not social issues. If we counter Republican propaganda about back violence and same-sex marriage and abortion with messaging about job creation and wage increases, we’ll be more successful.
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