Morning keynote speaker Rex Nelson, who is the alternate Federal Co-chair of the Delta Regional Authority, delivered a lively, tough love talk this morning at the 10th Annual Rural Telecommunications Congress. Nelson said that too many rural communities have economic development programs that are "stuck in the fifties and sixties," with strategies that amount to little more than trying to sell "pastures....with water and sewer."
Nelson calls for programs similar to the ones undertaken in the first half of the twentieth century, when state and Federal officials invested heavily in essential infrastructure like roads and levees. Nelson drew heavily on the history of the Mississippi River region and the profound effect that levees had on taming the river, controlling flooding, and thereby enabling more stable local economies all up and down the river.
Today, Nelson said that telecom is an essential infrastructure for rural region that is the only hope of holding back "...a flood of poverty, poor health, and despair."