The Washington Post op-ed by Virginia Delegate for Culpeper Nick Freitas and Jacob Fish, deputy director of Americans for Prosperity-Virginia sounded innocuous enough.  Virginia parents, it argued, deserved K-12 education choices other than our public schools.  So why not offer them “education savings accounts” (ESAs) – a way to stash money away, tax-free, that they would then be free to spend any way they chose, as long as it is (ever so loosely) connected to their children’s K-12 education.  Education, the op-ed went on, shouldn’t be “one size fits all”.  Seems reasonable enough – on the surface.

 But let’s dig a little deeper.  Americans for Prosperity claims to be a grass-roots organization – but in reality it is a vehicle for channeling millions of dollars from the mega-billionaire Koch brothers to their pet causes.  They are famous (or infamous) for fighting against laws and services that help average Americans (like health care and labor unions) -- and for lower taxes (so that billionaires can amass even more wealth). 

 It turns out that ESAs (as distinguished from the older 529 plans which can only be used for post-secondary study) are the new darling of the radical right.  Why?  Because they are the perfect tool to defund public school education and direct those monies toward private and religious schools that operate with no real oversight.  This is part of a national strategy. As shown by reporting by the non-profit online paper In These Times, radical right groups are trying to pass ESAs in more than a dozen states. 

 Of course, taxpayers who are putting money into ESAs will be even less likely to vote to fund public school budgets – and as under-funded public schools crumble, parents’ demands for more ESAs will only grow.  That self-reinforcing cycle will keep taxes low – especially for the billionaires funding this effort.  Finally, failing public schools will create new opportunities for for-profit schools, such as those backed by billionaires like Trump’s former education secretary Betsy DeVos.

New Rural Virginia asked Patricia Underwood, a Rappahannock-based artist, several of whose works and exhibitions have focused on historical and cultural portrayal of women and women’s rights, for her response to the recently released draft opinion suggesting the Supreme Court will overturn Roe vs Wade.

By Patricia Underwood

It is shocking but not surprising that those states with the most restrictive reproductive rights also have the highest rates of infant and maternal mortality, much lower access to affordable health insurance for women, and greater disparity between women’s pay and men’s.

I have always had a heightened sense of human rights and fairness, especially for women. I am aware that in their lifetime, 1 in 4 women in the U.S can expect to be raped, and many do not have an option to do something about it.

Men are not forced to have vasectomies against their will, and are not subjected to a gauntlet of screaming prolife activists if they decide to get one. What I am advocating for is a level playing field.

Pfizer’s anti-Covid drug Paxlovid is the treatment of choice for patients at risk of covid complications, according to multiple recent studies. The pill was shown to reduce hospitalization by a remarkable 85% when started within 5 days of the onset of symptoms. Two other drugs, from Merck and Gilead were given somewhat weaker but favorable recommendations.

And what about Ivermectin, the veterinary deworming drug widely touted by Trump supporters and still being prescribed by a few doctors in the area? It was not even mentioned. In fact, more than 30 clinical trials of over 10,000 COVID-19 patients have shown that Ivermectin not only failed to reduce mortality but could cause serious side effects. As a result, the FDA does not approve it to treat Covid.

What if you or a loved one needs a treatment of Paxlovid?  The Biden White House has implemented a number of initiatives to get more of it into pharmacies nationwide.  You will, however, need a doctor’s prescription.

One other problem is that neither Covid-related testing nor the doctor’s visit are still free if you don’t have insurance.  That’s because Republicans in Congress have refused to add new funding for the government’s COVID response, including funding that had been paying for the uninsured.

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 (RCPS) 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.

New Rural Virginia readers may recall that Glenn Youngkin campaigned to be our “education governor”. Well, on April 14th, the Governor went on CNBC to announce that, thanks to the economic recovery (and, dare we say, the sound economic stewardship of his predecessor), Virginia’s revenues had risen 22% in March and the state treasury was $2.4 billion ahead of this time last year! What a nice house-warming present to an incoming governor!

And what did the governor suggest that Virginia do with that surplus? Use it to fulfill his pledge to be the education governor? Not so much. Instead, he and Republican legislators are pushing for $5 billion in… tax cuts.

Of course, we all love tax cuts. But if you are the education governor, why not see this surplus as an opportunity to make up for decades of state under-funding of education -- and specifically of our community college system?

Virginia ranks near the bottom of the country in per-student state support of community colleges, according to multiple studies. That’s thousands of dollars per student less than the national average and even neighboring states like West Virginia and North Carolina.

Of the nearly 40 million people who have diabetes in America, 25% or 7.4 million need to take insulin regularly… for the rest of their lives… or they die… and the manufacturers know this.

Combine this vital urgency to access insulin, with its high price, with health insurance that is unaffordable to many, and the very high obesity rate in America that spawns particularly high rates of diabetes, and you have a recipe for disaster. Don’t take our word for it. Read the link below from the Proceeds of the Mayo Clinic, one of the most authoritative medical institutions in the world. Here is a story the review author tells of a typical diabetic patient that encapsulates the issue:

“Alec Smith was 23 when he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. He worked as a restaurant manager in Minnesota. At age 26, he could no longer stay on his mother’s health care insurance plan and needed to find his own coverage. On June 1, 2017, he was on his own. The insurance available to him came with a $7600 deductible and a monthly premium of approximately $440. Because he could not afford this, Alec decided to temporarily forego insurance coverage and purchase insulin with cash.

Unfortunately for him, the cash price of insulin was far beyond his means. He decided to try and ration the amount of insulin he took till he had enough savings to purchase insurance. Sadly, on June 27, 2017, he was found dead in his apartment of diabetic ketoacidosis.”

Rural communities take notice: the Biden administration’s 2023 budget proposal requests a 12% increase in discretionary funding for the Department of Agriculture. A major target for increased spending is research to advance the competitiveness of US agriculture. Another is to strengthen the enforcement of rules to ensure fairness in livestock markets and reduce market monopolies. This includes strengthening oversight of livestock and poultry markets under the Packers and Stockyards Act.

How do the Biden budget proposals compare with that of his predecessor? It turns out, according to the Daily Yonder, that Trump in fact tried every year of his administration to slash USDA budgets across the board, including the critical agriculture research that the Biden administration is proposing to increase. That led the National Farmers’ Union to blast “the Trump budget proposals, with NFU President Roger Johnson writing, “It’s time the president’s policy proposals and rhetoric acknowledge the financial pain in farm country.”

Few people in Rappahannock County can speak as authoritatively about the effects of inflation on the business of farming and food processing these days than Henry B. “H.B.” Wood. A tenth-generation descendant of one of the oldest apple-growing families in the county, H.B. now runs Harris Hollow Foods LLC, a national supplier of fruit products. In the past two years of the Covid pandemic, supply chain problems have wreaked havoc.

“Basically, we’re sales agents for processors of agricultural products, primarily fruit,” he says of his staff of seven based in Little Washington. They source their produce from Mexico, the U.S., and Canada—apples, berries, exotic mangos, passionfruit and melon, and veggies like carrots and rhubarb—all preserved and packaged as juices, purees, in sugar, or flash-frozen.

“I grew up in it in Rappahannock. We were raising apples and peaches. There was a strong fresh market. Then South Carolina, Washington state came in, growing gorgeous fruit.” Concentrated juices began to come in from China and Europe. Labor costs increased. The family land on Red Oak Mountain in Woodville was relatively hard to farm.

“Dad said, I’m ripping it out and you got to go do something else.”

Our collective pocketbooks are feeling the pinch of gasoline prices now well over $4 per gallon. If your car has a 20-gallon tank, that fill-up will cost you upwards of $80! Ouch! What happened? Not surprisingly, the blame game has already started. And also not surprisingly, the finger-pointing is more about politics than reality.

Certain politicians and pundits are eager to convince us that this is all the fault of the Biden administration – it only it had approved the Keystone pipeline and granted new drilling permits on federal land, our problems would be solved. That sounds simple enough. But is it true? Here are two problems with that argument: first, the Keystone pipeline would mainly have sent existing oil production elsewhere, not produced new oil. Second, as the linked CNBC article reports, big oil firms right now aren’t drilling on land where they already have permits! In short, neither of these two proposals would have done anything to stop the jump in our gasoline prices.

So what’s really going on? The reality is that big oil companies have not been investing in new production for a long time. Remember the Trump administration’s huge corporate tax cut in 2017 – the one that Trump promised would lead to a major increase in corporate investment? It sure didn’t turn out that way in the oil industry. In fact, this year the seven largest oil companies will spend a near record $90 billion on… stock buybacks and increased dividend payments. That’s where Trump’s big tax cut went - into the pockets of large shareholders. And what about new production? When prices were at record lows, oil companies stopped investing. As the CEO of Hess Oil was quoted in the linked Bloomberg article, “We’ve had five years of under-investment and we’re paying for it now.”

As prices of most goods and services keep increasing, U.S. companies are sitting on “a record $7 trillion in cash, up 33% from pre-Covid levels” – this according to a reliable business source, Bank of America’s global investment advisory arm. Inflation may have some of its roots in pent up demand bouncing back so quickly as the global pandemic lockdown has eased, with the resulting supply chain issues. But the data is clear, corporations are benefiting mightily while the average citizen struggles. 

The report states that “these cash balances grew at the fastest pace in two decades” during the pandemic. It is hard not to see the connection. Are corporations profiteering from the pandemic, even as they have received massive Republican-driven tax cuts and government stimulus help?

And what have they done with this money? Did they invest in new businesses? In better pay? In lowering their costs? Again, from the same reliable business source, much of it has gone primarily to buying up other companies, and to rewarding their shareholders with bigger dividend payments and stock buy backs (more on that in another article in this newsletter).