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| MARCH 2005 |
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National
Grange Applauds House-Senate Effort on ESA Reform
On February 10, 2005,
a joint press conference was held by House Resources Committee Chair Richard Pombo,
Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, and Water
Chair Lincoln Chafee, U.S. Rep. Greg Walden and U.S. Senator Mike Crapo to announce
that they will work in close coordination on the ESA reform. The National Grange
applauds this effort as the unprecedented launch of a House-Senate partnership
to improve and update the ESA.
The ESA has failed to conserve endangered and threatened animals and plants as
intended and has violated the rights of individuals, particularly property rights.
The National Grange has long championed reforming the Endangered Species Act and
it remains one of the top legislative priorities. The National Grange has supported
amendments to the ESA to justify all ESA management decisions through sound science
and to balance all decisions to list a species as endangered against the economic
health of a community. "The Endangered Species Act is one of our most important laws and Congress will
soon begin seeing proposals concerning it," said Senator Crapo. " We have agreed
to work together with bill sponsors and I am determined to achieve this ESA improvement
with bipartisan support for a consistent approach in both chambers. Our goal is
to strengthen the ESA by improving habitat conservation and recovery, providing
more and better incentives, and enhancing the role of states where appropriate.
Overall, we believe the ESA can be less contentious and more effective." There
is no specific legislative language yet, but general goals seem to be agreed among
the House-Senate leaders including increased involvement by states, more incentives
for private landowners, and strengthening scientific reviews before species are
listed. In
the 108th Congress, two ESA reform bills were approved by the House Resources
Committee - the Critical Habitat Reform Act and the Sound Science for Endangered
Species Act Planning Act. They were designed to compensate private landowners
for their voluntary conservation efforts and require peer-reviewed science as
basis for ESA decisions. The National Grange hopes the newly activated House-Senate
partnership to bring about a comprehensive ESA reform bill immediately in the
109th Congress. top Grange
Broadband Project Discussed at the APT Policy Forum
Mr. Don Whiting, the
Washington State Grange's technology project coordinator, recently joined the
panel discussion on innovative applications of telecommunications technologies
at the Alliance for Public Technology (APT)'s Annual Policy Forum and Awards Luncheon
on February 11, 2005 at the National Press Club in Washington DC. The Alliance
for Public Technology is a non-profit membership organization founded in 1989
to foster public policy that ensures access to advanced technologies and communications
services for all Americans. APT promotes this mission through research, professional
analysis, publications and educational conferences on the challenges facing telecommunications
policies at the federal, state and local levels and the impacts of these policies
on consumer access to advanced telecommunications technologies. National Grange
Legislative Director Leroy Watson serves on the board of directors and the executive
committee of APT, representing the interests of rural Americans within the organization.
On
that educational panel entitled "Case Studies: Transforming Lives Through Broadband,"
Whiting presented the Washington State Grange's innovative rural broadband access
project to a national audience for the first time. Whiting told the conference
how the project was planned, designed and implemented to demonstrate how rural
communities could gain cost effective public access to high speed Internet broadband
services using traditional land based broadband suppliers as well as state of
the art satellite receivers. He explained that the three-year project, funded
with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Washington State Grange,
local Granges and other community telephone providers, currently supports 15 local
sites with two to four public access computers at each site, mostly in Grange
halls. Demonstration sites were selected on the basis of their remote geography
and the commitment of local volunteers to be trained to provide technical support
for other members of their rural community with general Internet service, state
of the art applications software and tutorials and training to utilize this new
technology. Whiting
noted that a major challenge for equal access to high-speed Internet technologies
was the fact that only seven of the proposed demonstration sites had access to
traditional land based broadband Internet service via a phone or cable company.
To bring the promise and benefit of high-speed Internet access to the other rural
communities participating in the demonstration project, Whiting explained that
the Grange had to employ innovative thinking "When the Grange needed a broadband
service for those sites," Whiting told the audience, "we had to break through
two persistent myths: 1. If you do not have DSL or cable, you are out of luck.
2. Rural areas can't get broadband access unless government forces carriers to
provide service everywhere." Whiting
explained the Grange broke through these myths by employing and installing mid-band
satellite receivers at these remote sites that could be managed and maintained
by the local volunteer coordinators. The satellite based broadband systems were
slightly slower than DSL or cable but were a significant upgrade from the 56k
(or less) dial up telephone Internet service that was available in those communities
before then. Whiting cited numerous examples of how these communities were making
practical use of this technology: local businesses that were saving 1-3 hours
per day and more reliable service than the dial-up system. The satellite broadband
services are helping rural communities have better access to weather, crop and
market information. Whiting concluded that this demonstration project shows that
small rural communities can bring the benefits of 21st Century broadband technology
to some of the most remote areas of the nation, especially if community service
organizations, such as Granges, can participate in facilitating the process.  | | (From
left: Don Whiting (WA State Grange), Bill Steel (President, National Grange) and
Leroy Watson (Legislative Director, National Grange) |
"Don
Whiting's presentation before the Alliance for Public Technology's Annual Policy
Forum in Washington, DC this year was a major eye opener for the Congressional
staffers, Federal Communications Commission officials, state public utility commissioners,
officials of major telecommunications companies and representatives for consumer
advocates who attended the conference," said National Grange President Bill Steel.
"Instead of looking at rural America as 'falling behind' urban and suburban areas
in adoption of advanced telecommunications technologies, the Washington State
Grange Technology Demonstration Project lays out a blueprint on how innovative
thinking and vibrant local communities can leapfrog over the limitations of traditional
telecommunications technologies to bring the benefits of advanced telecommunications
services to the most remote communities of our nation. A century ago, the Grange
was the national leader in securing Rural Free Delivery Mail for rural America.
Today, the Washington State Grange has demonstrated that that leadership role
has been passed to our generation to develop policies and programs that will bring
state of the art high-speed broadband Internet access to all of our rural communities," concluded Steel. top Splenda's
Advertising Campaign Confuses Consumers
 On
February 14, the National Grange joined other agricultural and consumer organizations
in a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. to raise concern
with the advertising and marketing practices of Splenda, an artificial sweetener.
Splenda is not natural sugar. It is made in a chemical plant, not by nature in
a sugar cane or sugar beet field. However, Splenda claims that it is "Made from
Sugar, So it Tastes Like Sugar." "Splenda's
marketing techniques are unfair to farmers and the entire agricultural industry,"
said Richard Weiss, chief operating officer of the National Grange in the press
conference. "When farmers have to compete against chemistry pretending to be natural,
it puts them at a disadvantage that affects their ability to provide quality products
for consumers." Speaking for the "rest of agriculture," Weiss said that if left
unchecked, Splenda's marketing claims would set a precedent affecting all of agriculture.
"Next it will be made from corn to taste like corn or made from beef to taste
like beef." To
further reiterate its concern, the National Grange filed a letter of complaint
with the Honorable Deborah Platt Majoras, Chairman of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. "The National Grange requests that the Federal Trade Commission open an investigation
into Johnson & Johnson's marketing and advertising practices for the artificial
sweetener Splenda (sucralose) in order to determine if any of their advertising
claims are deceptive or misleading to consumers," the letter said. top Rising
Natural Gas Prices Concerns Farmers
With the natural gas supply and demand
crisis growing, on February 4, the National Grange joined with the other 28 members
of the Ag Energy Alliance in submitting testimony to the President's Council on
Environmental Quality to stress the impact of high natural gas prices on farmers
and rural Americans. The farm sector requires considerable amounts of natural
gas as a primary feedstock for fertilizer, as well as an energy source for food
processing, irrigation, crop drying and heating farm buildings and homes. The
most intensive use of natural gas by farmers is in the production of nitrogen
fertilizer, which is used on virtually every crop produced in this country and
climbing natural gas prices have caused domestic nitrogen fertilizer producers
to severely cut back production. According to the National Corn Growers Association,
of the 16.5 million tons of nitrogen capacity that existed in the U.S. prior to
2000, almost 20 percent has been closed permanently. Another 25 percent is at
risk of closing within the next two years. "The
American farmer's ability to be efficient and environmentally friendly faces a
looming crisis because of current public policies that artificially create demand
for certain energy resources, like natural gas, while restricting access to supply
sources," the coalition groups stated in the testimony. To balance the limited
supply of, and rising demand for, natural gas, they urged federal agencies to
take action to ensure that the necessary liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal
facilities are sited, built and operated in a safe, cost effective and expeditious
manner. "The agricultural community can produce an abundant, affordable and healthy
food supply, but we need Congress and the Administration to produce the kind of
policies that will enable access to the cost competitive resources needed to accomplish
this," said the Ag groups. top
National
Grange Opposes Level 3's Petition For Escaping Access Charges
On February
15, the National Grange joined the Alliance for Public Technology and the Communications
Workers of America in a coalition letter asking the FCC (Federal Communications
Commission) to deny Level 3 Communications' petition for forbearance from selected
interstate access charge rules. In the telephone industry, access charges are
the payments that one phone company makes to another phone company on behalf of
their customers to use each other's facilities and lines in order to complete
phone calls. Access charges generally are applied as compensation between phone
companies when a customer of phone company A makes a call to a customer of phone
company B. When the customer of Company B returns the call to the customer of
company A, the financial compensation between the two phone companies flows the
other way. Access charges per telephone call are generally very, very small but
can add up to significant amounts of revenue over the billions of phone calls
made every day. Access charges between phone companies is regulated by the Federal
Communications Commission. Level
3 Communications uses a new kind of phone technology called Voice over Internet
Protocol (or VoIP). Even though the technology is different the service to the
customer is exactly the same as traditional phone service. Customers using VoIP
technology can make and receive calls from customers that have traditional phone
service with out any difference in quality of service. However, because the VoIP
technology is technically different than traditional telephone technology, Level
3 is arguing that they should be exempt from FCC regulations regarding paying
or receiving reasonable compensation for access to other phone companies' networks
and customers. The National Grange strongly disagrees. "Access
charges currently provide a substantial portion of the revenues of many local
carriers, especially those serving rural communities. If long-distance carriers
are exempted from paying access charges for the use of local networks simply because
they utilize IP-based technologies instead of circuit switched networks, then
local carriers may not have sufficient revenues to support their local facilities," the letter said. The shortage of access revenues for rural carriers will weaken
their ability to create broadband networks and to provide affordable telephone
service. Furthermore,
the National Grange believes the challenges to the current inter-carrier compensation
regime should be resolved in a comprehensive fashion. Granting Level 3's petition
many months in advance of resolving the broader inter-carrier issues will exacerbate
the regulatory disparities that result from purely technological distinctions
under the current structure, which is likely to accelerate the shift of traffic
to VoIP based technologies and weaken traditional phone companies that serve rural
areas. top
National
Grange Responds to the President's Social Security Plan
In a letter sent
to President George W. Bush to commend him on the policy goals he outlined in
his 2005
State of the Union Address, the National Grange expressed its support for
many of the basic principles the President laid out about the Social Security
reform such as:
--"We must ensure that lower-income Americans get the help they need to have dignity
and peace of mind in their retirement."
--"We must make sure any changes in
the system are gradual, so that younger workers have years to prepare and plan
for their future."
--"We must make Social Security permanently sound."
--"We
must guarantee no change for those 55 years or older (born before 1950)."
The
letter also articulated the Grange's policy positions regarding the detailed direction
of the reform, which were endorsed by grassroots delegates to the 138th Annual
Convention of the National Grange: -
The National Grange supports allowing individuals to invest a percentage of their
payroll taxes in an individual account. Individual account options should be chosen
by the government to avoid confusion. No more than 2.2% of the value of the entire
Social Security Trust Fund should be allowed to be invested in the stock market
at any one time.
-
The
National Grange endorses the present computation formula that is used to derive
Social Security benefits. We urge that all future individual minimum benefits
must be guaranteed no matter whether or not beneficiaries elected to participate
in individual Social Security investment accounts.
-
The
National Grange requests that the public be provided with explicit and concise
information well in advance concerning any major changes in the Social Security
system.
-
The
National Grange supports removing all Social Security "Earning Limits" for individuals.
-
The National
Grange favors making all Social Security benefits free from federal personal income
taxes.
-
The
National Grange supports reform to expedite the application for and processing
of Social Security Disability benefits. We further urge that terminally ill persons
be permitted to apply for Social Security Disability benefits upon diagnosis of
their terminal illness and the application process be completed within four months
of the initial application.
Rural
Americans are more likely to rely on Social Security for their retirement income
than any other groups of Americans and the way of its reform is always one of
the Grange's priority concerns. The Grange is looking forward to working with
Bush administration to strengthen our Social Security system in ways to meet the
needs of rural Americans. top
2005 National Grange Legislative Policy Book Now Available
The 2005 Legislative Policy Book is now available from the National Grange
office. The book contains over 1,000 National Grange official legislative policies,
Blueprint for Rural America 2005 and an expanded grassroots education and training
manual, Action 2005. Grange members interested in receiving a free copy of the
2005 Legislative Policy Book should send their name, address, email address and
their Grange name and number to Chil-Sook Hwang at chwang@nationalgrange.org
by fax at 202-347-1091 or at 1-888-4Grange ext. 109. top 2005
Legislative Fly-In Coming Up
The 2005 National Grange Legislative Fly-In
will take place from March 14 through March 15, in Washington DC. Over the years,
the Fly-In has provided Grangers with the unique opportunity to participate in
the democratic process in our nation's capital. State Granges in North Carolina,
Pennsylvania and Massachusetts are organizing special bus groups to attend 2005
Fly-In and it will result in the biggest Fly-In ever this year.
The 2005 Fly-In agenda includes informative workshops, congressional visits, and
effective networking opportunities with Grange political activists from across
the nation. Scheduled to coincide with the early stage of the 109th Congress,
2005 Fly In will help place issues of concern to Grange members across the country
on the policy agenda of Congress and the executive agencies of government as they
begin the new legislative season.
top National
Grange Urges Congress to Reauthorize the "County Payments" Law
The National
Grange urges Congress to reauthorize the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination
Act of 2000 for an additional seven years. In 2000, Congress approved the Act
(PL
106-393) to provide a six-year safety net for counties that historically rely
on timber receipts as a source of revenue. With the decline of logging on national
forests, and a corresponding drop in their revenue, rural counties had sought
funding from the federal government. The PL 106-393 restored programs for students
in rural public schools and prevented the closure of numerous isolated rural schools.
It also restored rural forest county roads and created forest health improvement
projects on National Forests. Set
to expire at the end of this year, the National Grange calls on Congress to continue
the successful "county payments" law. Fortunately a group of both sides of Congress
has already joined together to work for the reauthorization. The companion bills
have early congressional support from regions across the nation. To see the text
of legislation click: Secure
Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Reauthorization Act of 2005.
The
legacy of PL 106-393 over the last few years is positive and substantial. The
law should be extended to continue to benefit the forest counties, their schools,
and continue to contribute to improving the health of National Forests.
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