Sorry in advance for the long diary... This is a subject that is near and dear to my heart and has a complicated history.
Since the days of Reagan and before that, the Republicans, sensing an opportunity, have been courting the rural voter. The math of the electoral college evolved early in our existence as a Republic to PROTECT the farmer and agriculture from large urban centers was just too appealing to the Republican party who have created narrative after narrative about their love for small town America.
The reality is far far different....
Small-town America has almost from the beginning depended on Agriculture, Trade, Mining, Timber or Livestock. In early days, even the fur trade figured prominently into the economies of small towns. As America has changed, so has the lot of the small town. Nothing has put more pressure on small town industries than Corporatization and Consolidation.
Small-town America's primarily agrarian, small business or "company town" history has been under seige for over 60 years by the same people who are using it to define themselves in the Fall elections in 2008 - The republican party - how is this true?
Think about it -
Towns that grew up as trade outposts along the railroads found themselves bypassed by interstate highways in the 1950 under Eisenhower.
Small town shops and businesses who were doing just fine woke up one day to see a Wal-Mart and a Costco go in just down the road..
Relaxation of import duties on imported timber put tens of thousands of loggers and mill workers out of business...
The same is probably true for steel mills and mining. We continued to hear through the 80's that US businesses could "no longer compete," and we all stood by to watch the Reagan Administration dismember the protections on those industries that allowed them to essentially shut down and board up small-town America.
Family Farms fell one after another, being replaced by Agribusiness....
What is left of America's Small Town is mostly just a shell of it's former self.
But the history here goes back much further:
In encouraging the federal reserve to open up the money supply and standing idly by while the marketplace became wildly overspeculated in the late 1920's the Hoover Adminstration essentially did the bidding of large banks who saw an opportunity in the inevitable market correction that was to come. And come it did. Main St. suddenly saw an unprecedented loss of privately held banks and businesses that loaned money. Those that survived were generally bought by larger banks.
"From Agriculture to Agribusiness" The Eisenhower Legacy (From www.columban.com)
In 1956, an article appeared in the Harvard Business Review which was destined to have a profound impact on how food is produced globally today. The author, John Davis, who later became Secretary for Agriculture in the Eisenhower Administration wrote that "the only way to solve the so-called farm problem, once and for all, and avoid cumbersome government programs, is to progress from agriculture to agribusiness".
and it goes on to say....
Even in the United States the situations for farmers is far from rosy. The farming population has dropped from 6.8 million people in 1935 to 1.9 million in 1995. This is less than the total prison population in the US. In the heartland State of Nebraska many farmers are mortgaging their land to survive. Suicide is now the leading cause of death among US farmers. It is three times the national average
Oh -yes, there's also this:
The transition has been facilitated with credit from financial institution. Paying the interest on this money and replacing machinery to meet each new phase in the farm technology revolution has ensured that farmers are sucked deeper and deeper into reliance on cash crop agriculture no matter what its impact is on the local social, cultural and physical environment.
The Reagan years:
Nothing since the Great Depression had such a profound effect on the family farmer than did the Reagan Administration. When Ronald Reagan cut farm subsidies and eased restrictions on imported produce, the impact to the family farmer was profound.
In 1986, the Harvard Crimson described the "the most devastativng year for farmers since the Great Depression" First year Law Student Harry R. Bader may have made the most prophetic statement of all when he said that
the current policy is encouraging the "destruction of a culture" because it facilitates the expansion of corporate farming at the expense of family farming.
The statistics for 1986 alone were astonishing:
The number of farm foreclosures will rise to 100,000 this year as a result of farmers' decreasing incomes and their subsequent inability to repay loans, said symposium organizer Harry R. Bader, a first-year law student. This crisis will cause almost half of America's 2.3 million farmers to lose their land, making 1986 "the worst year since the Great Depression," he said.
What we see now is the legacy of the Reagan Revolution - many, many fewer family farms and large agribusiness interests that are very powerful in Washington.
Outsourcing or Relocation of Main St.....
Many small towns grew up around Timber industries, Mining operations, Manufacturing, Steel or other Metal foundries. Another legacy of "deregulation" and "globalization" which we know to be the mantras of the Conservative Right take on several faces on Main St:
- Safety problems placed profits over people, and the inevitable struggle between Unions and Management
- Non-sustainable mining or timber harvesting practices. In other words, "Play out the resource, and move on," with no regard to the people or towns you leave behind.
- Competition from other Global Mega corporations made many local industries non-competitive. Again, the relaxation of import duties hastened this process many times over.
Again - we see that it was largely CONSERVATIVE, FREE MARKET policies that hit Main St. hardest.
The Wal-Mart effect: Big Box v. Main St
Think about the businesses that keep a small community in vibrant. What has not been affected by large corporate interests who come in to small towns and supplant existing family-run businesses? General stores, hardware stores, small butcher shops, bicycle stores, small family run clothing stores - all have watched in horror as big-box stores appeared in their communities and destroyed just about every small sole-proprieter business that there was.
While it's not per-se the fault of the Republicans that this happened, it's also safe to say that the climate of consolidation and the Republican administrations' friendliness to mega-corporations, and the desire of small-town America to recover some of the jobs lost
While some studies have shown a modest increase in overall retail employment after a Wal-Mart moves in to a small community, others have shown it declining. There are those who argue that the loss of wages is offset by the reduction in prices.
But unemployment is unemployment, and having a retail job at a big box store does not ease the sting of losing a famiy business.
Wars and Military Service - The insult to injury
Perhaps the only "escape" from a town where jobs are few and far between is Military service. According to the BBC
About a fifth of the more than 3,200 US troops who have died in Iraq are from towns with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants
No shelter from the storm:
Rural America has not escaped the foreclosure crisis as well. The Housing Assistance Council’s newsletter "Rural Voices" tells a sobering story about rural homeowners in various states (including Ohio). Please take a minute to look at the amazing graphic on page 8, that shows the spots in Rural America where there are a high percentage of "High-Cost" loans. Alaska, Texas and parts of the South and Midwest seem hardest hit as you will see.
Again in this foreclosure crisis, we will see the small town proprieter or farmer disproportionately affected by the actions of a few mega-rich corporations.
....Actions that were made possible by the policies of a REPUBLICAN Adminstration.
Now who hates Small Town America?
We can discuss what I feel is the failure of the Democrats (with some exceptions) to address the problems of Main St. with consistent policies.
We have also let the Right re-define what's left of Main St. to suit their needs.
I grew up in a small town that became overrun during the Silicon Valley explosion. I moved to another small town and am watching much the same thing take hold here.
I, and my fellow Democrats love our small towns and fight hard for them. It is discouraging to see Republicans "brand" themselves as Sarah Palin did as "Small town" people when it is the policies and philosophies of the Republican Right that has served to do the MOST damage to Small Towns in the past Century.
This is a battle for hearts and minds fellow Democrats - We need to realize that there are Americans in Small Towns who are trying to be heard. They are being spoken to by the Sarah Palins' of the world who are more interested in the trappings of small-town life than they are actually creating policies to help these folks.
This is a chance for us to redefine ourselves.