Small rural and urban wireless carriers join forces to compete with AT&T and Verizon's near-duopoly

Urban and rural wireless carriers are banding together to take on the two largest carriers in the U.S., AT&T and Verizon. The Rural Cellular Association, a Washington lobbying group, is rebranding itself as the Competitive Carrier Association as more small urban, regional and smaller national carriers join the organization.

"AT&T and Verizon Wireless have gotten so big so fast," CEO Steven Berry told Marguerite Reardon of CNET. "The newly branded organization reflects the policy issues that have developed as the market has turned into a duopoly. Whether they are rural carriers or bigger nationwide carriers, they all share some of the same policy concerns around spectrum allocation, data roaming, and device interoperability."

AT&T and Verizon "have managed to gobble up nearly every tier-two carrier that had been operating," Reardon reports. The two companies control more than 70 percent of the wireless market, reporting a combined 216.5 million subscribers at the end of the second quarter of 2012, more than the combined total number of subscribers from Sprint, T-Mobile and every other competitive carrier in the U.S. Smaller carriers are primarily concerned about the control the big two have over the wireless spectrum, roaming arrangements and device interoperability. (Read more)

Obama silent on guns, but NRA still calls him foe; here's a handy guide to guns and gun control

UPDATE: Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute, who has owned guns since he was 13 and growing up in Kentucky, tells us "What journalists need to know about guns and gun control."

Gun enthusiasts across the country seem to fear what President Obama might do to their Second Amendment rights if re-elected, despite the fact that he's done very little to inhibit their right to bear arms, Darren Samuelsohn of Politico reports in a story published before this morning's movie-theater shooting just outside Denver in which 12 people were killed.

Obama hasn't pushed an assault-weapons ban or tried to force background checks on people who buy guns from unlicensed dealers at gun shows. He's barely mentioned anything about restricting gun use, even after then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot last year in Arizona and has made no such suggestion in the wake of the killings in Aurora, Colo., today.

Still, the National Rifle Association distrusts the president, Samuelsohn reports. The group has allotted $40 million to help defeat him in the November election, continues to claim he would "gut the Second Amendment" in his second term and rallies its members to keep believing that. Samuelsohn also reports that gun and ammunition sales are again on the rise, as they were immediately after Obama took office. The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun-industry trade group, has said sales are rising because gun owners are afraid weapons won't be available if Obama is reelected.

The NRA seems to be exploiting the sensibilities of rural people in its attack ads, as Samuelsohn reports: "In 2008, the NRA went after Obama with a $15 million ad campaign aimed at gun enthusiasts in a dozen swing states, plus $25 million more for member communications about the election. A similar plan for the next four months is expected to revive Obama’s 2008 comment at a supposedly private fund-raiser that when Americans in rural and poor parts of the country "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion." (Read more)

House plan to cut GMO crop oversight rings alarms

"An array of consumer and environmental organizations and individuals are ringing alarm bells over moves they say will eradicate badly needed safety checks on crops genetically modified to withstand herbicides, pests and pesticides," Charles Abbott and Carey Gilliam of Reuters report. "The measures could speed the path to market for big biotech companies like Monsanto and Dow Chemical that make billions of dollars from genetically altered corn, soybeans, cotton and other crops."

"They are trying to change the rules," Center for Food Safety lawyer George Kimbrell, who has lawsuits pending against government regulators for failing to follow the law in approving certain biotech crops, told the wire service. "It is to the detriment of good governance, farmers and to the environment."

Abbott and Gilliam note that the House could take up a measure that would allow biotech crops to be planted even if courts rule they were approved illegally. That could happen as early as next week. Opponents call it the "Monsanto Rider" because Monsanto's genetically altered alfalfa and sugar beets have been subject to court challenges for illegal regulatory approvals.

Last week 40 food businesses, retailers, family farmers and others sent a protest letter to House Agriculture Committee leaders "calling on them to strike pro-biotech provisions added to the draft of the Farm Bill," Reuters notes. "The measures followed several court rulings that regulators did not follow legal requirements in approving some biotech crops, and would nullify just such legal requirements in the future. Environmental hazards associated with biotech crops, including the rapid rise of 'superweeds' that cannot be killed with traditional herbicides, would not have to be taken under consideration by regulators in new approvals, the critics say." (Read more)

Farm Bill and much of rural policy controlled by House committee amendments

Forget the title of the bill Congress passes, Bill Bishop at the Daily Yonder writes. Instead, "check out the amendments -- especially when it comes to bills that come out of the House. Over the last several months, we've seen an increasing number of very important decisions in federal policy being made through amendments to bills in the House of Representatives. Many of these affect rural businesses, people and communities in ways that spell the difference between life and death." For instance, last year the House passed a bill that provided money for agriculture, rural development and the Food and Drug Administration. But it also affected how cattle were sold at auction. Or, just this last week, deep inside a 165-page bill designed to fund the Labor Department, there's language that bars the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration from implementing or enforcing new rules aimed at reducing the exposure of miners to the coal dust that causes black-lung disease. (Photo: House Agriculture Committee Room)

Now, Bishop warns, the House Agriculture Committee has approved a new Farm Bill and "they are at it again" with their amendments. "Just a few dozen House members are telling the USDA to accept genetically engineered crops quickly. Just 30-odd members of the House Agriculture Committee are re-writing rules governing food labeling and the contracts made between poultry growers and the few companies that control the chicken business. All it takes is an interested representative and the entire direction of federal policy can be changed in the blink of an amendment." (Read more)

Experts and observers question growth of food stamps, say it's fueled partly by corporate interests

While members of the U.S. House begin debate about whether or not to cut funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) as part of its version of the 2012 Farm Bill, at least one large and powerful group has a vested interest in its continued growth: corporations that make or sell junk food.

Brad Tuttle of Time reports that corporations including Pepsi, Kraft Foods, Coca-Cola and the Corn Refiners of America are likely most interested in continued expansion of SNAP because all have lobbied Congress and/or various states to make sure SNAP recipients have full freedom to decide how to spend SNAP money, including unlimited purchase of soda and junk food. "The idea that the food stamp program is essentially a corporate subsidy sounds like it could have been cooked up by the Tea Party or a libertarian, anti-tax group. But this argument has lately coming from very different quarters," Tuttle reports.

Michelle Simon, a public-health expert and leader of watchdog group Eat Drink Politics, has said "SNAP represents the largest, most overlooked corporate subsidy" in the 2012 Farm Bill. She concluded last month in a report that big bank J.P. Morgan Chase benefits from SNAP just as much as big food corporations because it gets tens of millions a year from states in exchange for operating SNAP electronic benefits transfer cards. New York University nutrition professor Marion Nestle told the San Francisco Chronicle that it's "time to consider the idea of limits" for SNAP recipients. USA Today's editorial board has also condemned the growth of SNAP as being politically motivated.