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”We send our kids home with food in their backpacks on the weekends because we know they don’t have much at home,” said Sharon Manson, a school-board member in the county’s biggest city, Waverly. “We still have people with dirt floors and no technology.
Obama and Romney Are Ignoring America’s Hardest-Hit Places
Despite the troubled economy, neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney has visited 99 of the 100 counties with the highest unemployment rates. Blame the modern campaign.
(via nationaljournal)
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The company says its pre-registration model helps it keep construction costs down by only bringing the service to areas showing demand … To pre-register, residents needed to be willing to pony up $10. They also needed a credit or debit card, a Google Wallet account, and a Gmail account, which are harder to come by if you never had internet access in the first place.
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“The challenging part is there has been a digital divide before Google got here. They didn’t create this,” Chambers says. “But in their attempt to bridge it, they may end up widening it.” (via Google Fiber Could Exacerbate Kansas City’s Digital Divide | Wired Business | Wired.com)
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Missouri ‘Right To Pray’ Amendment Allows Students To Reject School Assignments That ‘Violate His Or Her Religious Beliefs’
But critics are skeptical. A New York Times editorial notes that the clause will “create confusion and wreak havoc in classrooms” by giving students the power to refuse completing or participating in any assignments that they claim violates their religious beliefs. It permits students who believe in creationism, for instance, to decline any assignments on evolution.
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The move in Missouri is in part seen as one of several pieces of state legislation nationwide that allows for more room for religion and intelligent design in public schools.
(Source: The Huffington Post)
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Iowa is an ironic place; I don’t know of any other state where so many people leave but remain loyal. One particularly smart friend who abandoned it for Seattle referred to it as “an example of what a few quiet, smart people can do when they’re left to their own devices”. Other reviews are always similarly glowing.
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Third-party presidential and vice presidential candidates won't appear on Oklahoma ballot
If only they had asked for ID or identified as black; then there would be talk of disenfranchisement.
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“These poor, dense and unincorporated communities on county land – which uniformly lack some combination of sewer systems, clean drinking water, sidewalks, streetlights and storm drains – have been the victim of years of government neglect. ” (via Neglected for decades, unincorporated communities lack basic public services | California Watch)
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Fairs, Like Crops, Are Drooping With the Heat
Across the nation’s middle, it is fair season — the time of year when rural life is on proud display, generations of farm families gather and deep-fried foods are guiltless. But at county and state fairs across corn country this year, the most widespread drought since the 1950s is also evident. While the fairs are soldiering on, dousing themselves in Lemon Shake-Ups and Midwestern resolve, the hot, dry, endless summer has seeped into even the cheeriest, oldest tradition.
(Source: The New York Times)
