April is a time to celebrate flowers and lovers, New Rural Virginia readers. And what better evidence of both then the two Rappahannock county dogwoods in the photo above. Look closely and you will see that they are intertwined for life in a (dare we say loving?) embrace. Could we all be so lucky…

Yesterday — tax filing day — was also a day to celebrate — if, that is, you are one of the 25 richest Americans. That is the day when the ultra-rich can celebrate the fact that, while the rest of us are paying an effective tax rate of 10% or more on our modest incomes, their average tax rate is a mere 3.4%. On billions of dollars of income!

And the fact that the ultra rich pay so little, dear readers, is one reason why we keep underfunding education for our young people - which is one of our topics in today’s Our Take section. Specifically, we explore the question: why is our self-proclaimed “education” governor not pushing to use the state’s budget surplus to support our chronically underfunded community college system? Other articles explore:

—the major USDA 2023 budget increase the Biden administration has proposed (in stark contrast to his predecessor’s repeated attempts to slash USDA’s budget), and

—the reasons for the ridiculously high prices for insulin that Americans pay (with sadly fatal consequences in some cases). And ask why so many Republican congressmen recently voted against the Affordable Insulin Act, which would have put an end to insulin price-gouging by a few bad actors in the pharmaceutical industry.

Speaking of education, our local Over the Fence interview this month is with RCPS and Roanoke College graduate Emily Pierce. She talks about the challenging trade-off for young people who must balance their educational dreams and the heavy burden of educational debt.

In our Around the Commonwealth section, we link to a great podcast by southwest Virginia’s Anthony Flaccavento on bridging the urban-rural divide, and take note of Representative Bob Good’s strange refusal to support a bipartisan resolution supporting NATO.

And In Other News, we highlight articles on the problems facing large-scale solar installations in rural areas, on the Biden administration’s battle against wage-fixing collusion by big business, on how the new No Surprises Act will hopefully protect rural communities from devastating price-gouging by air ambulance services, and why the media isn’t telling the great story on employment numbers.

Last but hardly least, we salute the incredible bravery, and mourn the appalling losses, of the Ukrainian people. Want to help? This month we include a link to the International Medical Corps, an amazing non-profit that is getting urgently needed medical supplies to Ukrainian hospitals. (IMC’s Ukraine work was recently featured on 60 Minutes.) Read more and donate here.

So it’s a full issue! Happy reading. Is there a topic you would like to hear more about in future newsletters? Just click here to leave us a message. And, if you have not already, please  subscribe!

New Rural VA’s April Take:

A Chat Over the Fence with Emily Piercy

Editor’s note: The high cost of education — and the very complicated risk/reward calculations that young people must make when judging whether to take on large amounts of educational debt — are a challenge not just for individuals but for their communities. As recent Rappahannock County Public Schools and Roanoke College graduate Emily Pearcy explains here, the problem of college debt is not so much the initial amount but the fact that interest charges can push the actual debt burden much higher over time.

 New Rural Virginia:  Tell us a bit about yourself… where did you grow up in the county, where did you go to school?  Emily: I grew up in Castleton. I graduated from Rappahannock County High School in 2013 and received my BA in sociology with a concentration in anthropology from Roanoke College in 2017. My sociology degree is extremely applicable to many different fields and my education has given me a lot of confidence in terms of working in my profession. 

Do you think Rappahannock high school prepared you for your next choices?  Emily: Yes! Specifically, because of Jason Gochenour, the RCHS guidance counselor at the time. In addition, the AP courses really prepared me for college-level work and I would highly recommend them to anyone thinking about a four-year program.

What drew you to Roanoke college as opposed to community college?  Emily: I wanted a four-year college experience, away from my hometown. Community college is a phenomenal option, and might even have been a more financially responsible choice. Although I could have saved money going the community college route, however, I don’t regret my decision to attend a four-year school. I received a well-rounded young-adult experience in which I learned, not only academic material, but also life lessons and social skills, and how to really be responsible and accountable for my life and choices. 

Read more here

Podcast with Anthony Flaccavento, of the Rural-Urban Bridge Initiative, Everywhere Radio, March 17, 2022. It isn’t often we recommend a podcast, but this one with Anthony Flaccavento, a farmer and rural development thinker living in southwest Virginia, is worth a listen. Anthony has thought long and hard about how to bridge the growing divide between rural and urban communities.

Representative Good votes against a pro-NATO resolution to strengthen democracy, Dogwood, April 7, 2022. On April 5, the US House took up a vote on a bipartisan bill calling upon the US government to “uphold the founding democratic principles of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and establish a Center for Democratic Resilience within the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Representative Good was among a small group to vote no.

U.S. solar production stalled by protest movements in rural communities, Reuters special report, April 11, 2022. Solar currently makes up 3% of U.S. electricity supply and could reach 45% by 2050. To get there, however, the U.S. solar industry needs a land area twice the size of Massachusetts. And not any land will do, either. It needs to be flat, dry, sunny, and near transmission infrastructure that will transport its power to market. As solar developers propose new, often sprawling projects, however, activist groups are organizing to block them and often succeeding. They cite reasons ranging from aesthetics that would harm property values to fears about health and safety, and loss of arable land, farm culture, or wildlife habitat. And it is working. For New Rural Virgina’s take on why we need a new, rural-friendly approach to solar development, read more here.

Biden Administration goes after business collusion to suppress wages, New York Times, April 14, 2022. Antitrust suits have long been part of the federal government’s arsenal to keep corporations from colluding or combining in ways that raise prices and hurt the consumer. Now the government is deploying the same weapon in another cause: protecting workers’ pay. “Labor market collusion dots the entirety of the U.S. economy,” said Doha Mekki, principal deputy assistant attorney general in the department’s antitrust division. “We’ve seen it in sectors across the board.” Read more here.

Will the No Surprises Act protect rural residents from air ambulance company price-gouging? Every year, more than 550,000 patients in the United States use air ambulance services. With more than 75% of air ambulance trips made out-of-network, over 400,000 people are likely to receive surprise medical bills annually, often to the tune of $20,000 or more. That’s not an accident - in recent years, private equity firms have bought up air ambulance services, jacked up prices, and then maneuvered to make their claims “out of network” for insurance claims, thus allowing them to maximize their income. Rural residents around the country have naturally suffered the most. Congress, however, is changing things for the better. Read more here.

The media is failing the public on the good news about jobs, Washington Post, Margaret Sullivan, April 10, 2022. “The unemployment rate is at an encouragingly low point. Less than 4 percent of the labor force is actively seeking work. And the latest monthly Labor Department report showed another healthy spike in the number of new jobs — they’ve been steadily on the rise for many months in a row. But if you ask regular Americans about the jobs climate, a surprising number of them seem to think the opposite is true. This lack of knowledge matters.” Read more here.