Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 111
A former Nebraska state senator, once again, is calling on the United States to do more to help Ukraine win its war with Russia. Tom Brewer, who served in the Legislature from 2017 to 2025 and earned two Purple Hearts during 36 years in the military, recently made his eighth trip to the front in Ukraine. The trips have been part of Brewer's personal crusade to show support for that war-torn country, and to help Americans realize that stopping Russia from overtaking Ukraine is a stand for...
When did dinosaurs and aliens become Christmas decorations? I ask because I'm kind of stunned (my natural condition) at some of the strange, weird and downright odd things you see in people's yards this time of year. A lime-green Santa-saurus in our neighborhood caught my eye, and somewhere, I've seen a Santa alien wishing "humans" a Merry Christmas. Just today, I drove by a place that featured an inflatable Santa riding a motorboat in the front yard. (Maybe I missed a line in " 'Twas a Night...
No matter your opinion of immigrants, I think we can agree on one thing – having a federal detention center in Nebraska is not a good look for our state. The opening of the “Cornhusker Clink” illustrates that Nebraska is in full-throated agreement with the roundup and deportation of those who came to our country in search of a better life but in violation of immigration rules. There’s growing opposition to the sometimes brutal roundups organized by mask-wearing agents of the Trump Adminis...
So much for cutting federal spending. Just recently, President Trump announced a new $12 billion payout to American farmers. It's not a reward for great work – farmers produced another record crop this year. No, it's a bailout for a failed tariff war with China, that largest customer for our agricultural crops. President Trump loves tariffs, no doubt about that, despite the fact that when you place an additional tax on foreign goods, it gets passed on eventually to us at the cash register. B...
If you're like me, you probably have tuned in the latest, excellent documentary by Ken Burns, "The American Revolution." If there was only one reason to donate to public television, it would be to help Burns produce more historical documentaries like "The American Revolution," and those on the Civil War, baseball and country music. There is nothing more interesting on TV, if you ask me. Personally, on PBS, I'm also a big fan of "Frontline" and the excellent reporting it provides. Plus, I'm a...
I like to drive, and Nebraska gives you plenty of opportunities. The state's best road trip might be up the old Oregon Trail, past Chimney Rock to Scotts Bluff. Scenic. Historic. In the fall, you can't beat wandering the hills around Indian Cave State Park. Driving along Highway 12 from Ponca to Niobrara is a close second. Colors galore. The Sand Hills are beautiful in spring, with wildflowers blooming. And you can't beat driving through the Pine Ridge after a fresh snow – as long as it's not bl...
There's an old saying about government – "it's not that 'what is said isn't so,' it's what is so isn't said." So that means that someone – maybe a state auditor, maybe a whistleblower, but often a news reporter – needs to dig in and find out what is really happening with our tax dollars and state policies. That's why it was so disgusting to read recently about our "Secretary of War's" crackdown on access by reporters to the Pentagon. Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News weekend host, is the U.S....
As I sit down to write this column, my tomatoes have finally met with a hard freeze and the cannas we plant in the local park are giving up their red-topped glory. It was one, long fall in my section of southeast Nebraska, with lots of warm days and only recently, a couple of cold snaps. After a killing frost finally arrived here, temperatures in mid-November again rebounded into the 60s and lower 70s. It all makes you wonder: what is going on? The recent update of the State Climate Assessment g...
There's a game of musical chairs going on at the State Capitol, and who gets a chair is in question. Last week, former State Sen. Tom Briese of Albion announced his resignation as State Treasurer. It's not often that someone gives up such a politically safe constitutional office to go back to the farm; usually, it's to take a better job. I think back to 2001 when then-State Treasurer Dave Heineman gave up that job to be appointed lieutenant governor under then Gov. Mike Johanns after Johann's...
There's an old saying about government – "what is said isn't so, it's what is so isn't said." So that means that someone – maybe a state auditor, maybe a whistleblower, but often a news reporter – needs to dig in and find out what is really happening with our tax dollars. That's why it was so disgusting to read recently about our "Secretary of War's" crackdown on access by reporters to the Pentagon. Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News weekend host, is the U.S. Secretary of Defense. And it's his opin...
None of us like paying taxes. But even the Bible says we're supposed to ("Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's" is how I remember it). Anyway, I about fell out of my chair the other day when reading a probing article by the Lincoln Journal-Star's Andrew Wegley about the state's lackadaisical collection of taxes. When I pay my taxes, I'm expecting everyone else to do the same. But that's not happening in Nebraska (really it never has) but the number of tax scofflaws is growing. The story detailed... Full story
A state senator – who will remain unnamed – once told me that "we're all mammals" in reference to a sex scandal at the State Capitol. Another senator had been caught using a state computer to, shall we say, do something naughty while watching a woman do something naughty online. That comment, I suppose, referred to our human frailties and that we can fail to resist temptation and do the inappropriate and even the illegal. Gotta say, after thinking about the "mammals" comment later, I won...
We live in a world where having adequate high-speed internet service is not just a luxury, but a necessity. With proper broadband, you can use a computer to run a business, manage a good website, work remotely and operate the new generation of precision agriculture equipment. But here’s the problem – it’s expensive to hook up every home, farm and ranch to the best service, which is generally agreed to be fiber optic cables. When it came to electricity, the nation opted for a federal loan progr...
"You should be allowed to say outrageous things." "There's ugly speech. There's gross speech. There's evil speech. And all of it is protected by the First Amendment." Both of the above quotes are attributable to Charlie Kirk, a political activist, media personality and evangelical Christian who was recently murdered, allegedly by a young man angered by Kirk's views on homosexuality and gender transitions. It was a sickening crime, witnessed by hundreds of students attending a Kirk event at a Uta...
Alarm bells are sounding over the lack of robust job growth in the state's two largest cities. A recent study commissioned by the Omaha-based Aksarben Foundation indicated that job growth in Omaha and Lincoln lagged behind its peer cities, such as Sioux Falls, Des Moines and Oklahoma City. An analysis by old buddy Henry Cordes in the Omaha World-Herald found that the number of jobs in Nebraska's top cities grew by 0.3% and 0.4%, respectively, from 2020-24. That's quite a bit less than the 1.8%...
Brace yourself Nebraskans for another year without meaningful property tax relief. That's because the "One Big Beautiful Bill" means that Nebraska will have to do without about $216 million in state income tax revenue over the next two years, and $406 million less over the next four years. That's a Big Gulp of funding for a state budget that lawmakers had already cut by nearly $400 million to balance the state budget. As you recall, during the last session of the Nebraska Legislature,...
Over the years, I covered more than one effort by the Nebraska Legislature to redraw the boundaries of districts for state legislators and U.S. congressional representatives, among others, due to shifts in the state's population. Those efforts, according to the State Constitution, always follow the latest U.S. Census, which happens at the beginning of each decade. There's a lot of data to pour through, and the process, in my opinion, becomes the most partisan exercise in the mostly nonpartisan...
eek, I ran into a few Husker ex-pats. All commented on how great the summer weather was in the mountains. No corn sweat! No 100 degree days! Not one former Husker mentioned high property taxes – which blamed by several politicians as the reason people move from the state. But I digress. We probably need to discuss the latest move to vilify and punish hard-working immigrants in our own backyard. We're talking about the "Cornhusker Clink," the takeover of a state prison camp in McCook by the f...
Gov. Pillen and state lawmakers are taking another run at reducing the much despised, high property taxes in our state, this time via a commission on reforming the way we fund K-12 schools. You gotta admire the governor for keeping on trying. It was one of his top campaign pledges – to cut property taxes. But, we seem to have gotten deeper cuts in state income taxes in recent years than real property tax relief. I know, I’m veering off track. Back to property taxes. “Reforming” the way we fund...
Forgive me if I'm feeling a little confused (regular readers of this column will probably say "what's new?") but aren't we in a national debt crisis? Our national debt has ballooned to nearly $37 trillion dollars in recent years, thanks in large part to spending during the COVID-19 pandemic to assure that businesses didn't close and workers could still feed their families and pay the bills. The debt is why, supposedly, that we allowed a team of 20-somethings with no government experience called...
Anymore, having high-speed internet at your home, farm or business has become as important as having electricity. You run a business and have a website? You need high-speed internet. You use precision ag? You need high-speed internet. You wanna be examined by a doctor via video over the internet, something called "tele-health?" You need high-speed internet. You like playing video games or downloading movies? High-speed internet makes that all better. And just like electricity, it's been hard to...
This is probably speaking to the choir because if you're reading this, you already believe that maintaining a healthy media – with fact-checking editors instead of conspiracy spreading folks in pajama pants – is really important. It's even more important now because there's so much misinformation out there, and so much wrong information, mostly spread on social media. Recently, Congress – including every member of the Nebraska delegation – voted to claw back $1.1 billion in allocations over tw...
We appear to be done bombing Iran, and to be back to helping Ukraine repeal invaders from Russia. Plus, it looks like the trade war we started is going to raise our cost of buying coffee from Brazil and beer from Mexico. Great, huh? So maybe it's time to talk about something really important – corn sweat. We're entering the peak of corn sweat season, when the thick, green fields of corn that blanket eastern and central Nebraska start to emit their highest levels of moisture. It's called "evapotr...
Well, it's that time of year – when the corn is rising in the fields, the calves are fattening on the pastures, and politicians aplenty are announcing their candidacy for elected office. Those announcements seem to come earlier than ever, as do the negative campaign ads. The next election is the primary in 2026, about a year away. But unfortunately, it's not too early to send out some mud-slinging ads condemning so-and-so for doing something horrible, like once traveling to China, or having s...
There's some good news and plenty of bad news for Nebraska's rural hospitals. Just recently, state officials cheered the announcement that the federal government had approved the state's application to join a program, already involving 44 other states, that would provide an additional $1 billion to the state's hospitals and nursing facilities. But, at the same time, there's concern that President Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" will severely cut the federal funding for Medicaid, which is a major...
