Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
Sorted by date Results 1 - 15 of 15
Jeffrey P. Gold, M.D., was formally installed, Sept. 5, as the ninth president of the University of Nebraska System during an academic ceremony in Lincoln. The event marked exactly 10 years to the day and hour from his year as chancellor of the University of Nebraska Medical Center in 2014 and exactly five years from his year as chancellor of the University of Nebraska at Omaha in 2019. It was also the first time a presidential investiture was held at the Nebraska State Capitol. "The ceremony...
This month is Renewable Fuels Month in Nebraska. It’s a chance for us all to celebrate the hardworking farmers, ranchers and producers, who help fuel the world from right here at home. But it’s also a reminder that while Nebraska is leading America’s energy revolution today, we have a lot of work to do if we want to deliver more of our homegrown fuel in the years to come. There’s no better example of this next chapter, or of what Nebraska needs to do to help write it, than one of this year’s hottest topics: sustainable aviation fuel. SAF is on...
When Janneken Smucker, professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania, was researching quilt making using the Library of Congress’s resources, she came across hoards of quilt-making photos from the early 1930s. This seemed out of the norm to Smucker, a lifelong quilt maker and researcher. Upon further digging, Smucker learned quilts were integral to the federal government’s New Deal strategy to mend the country’s economy and morale during the Great Depression. This discovery started a yearslong research and curatorial process, resulting i...
A Nebraska family has plowed more than $1.6 million into the Lincoln mayor's race, an unprecedented sum and latest burst in a multi-year deluge that, at the federal level, rivals the political spending by a famed Las Vegas casino magnate and a Silicon Valley titan. It's not the Nebraska family you think. It's the Peed family and its business, Sandhills Global – not the Ricketts family – that have eclipsed all other donors while trying to help former State Sen. Suzanne Geist, a Republican, ous...
Antelope County Commissioners listened to comments from opponents of a proposed carbon-capture pipeline earlier this month. Jane Kleeb, founder of Bold Nebraska, was scheduled to meet with Holt County Supervisors, Feb. 16, but a Central Nebraska snowstorm kept her from making the trek from her home in Hastings to O'Neill. Before Antelope County leaders, Kleeb outlined her organization's fight against the Keystone XL pipeline and how she worked with area landowners to protect property rights. She...
The new governor says his proposed tax cuts are historic. Critics say they are not sustainable. Rookie mistake by the pig farmer politician who is backed by his Republican party and most of the 32 Republicans in the Nebraska Legislature. Maybe it’s all of them, I haven’t taken a poll. Somebody forgot to explain to Governor Jim Pillen that the $1.9 billion excess funds he claims will make all this work are “projected” to be in the state coffers. That means the so-called strong tax receipt...
This spring we celebrated 7,200 new graduates of the University of Nebraska – new Husker, Maverick, Loper and UNMC alumni who are future leaders of our state. It’s one of my favorite times of year. Commencement brings to life the fundamental reason why public higher education exists: To create opportunities for students to build a better future for themselves and the world around them. Each graduating class of the University of Nebraska transforms our state in ways that are impossible to qua...
After existing for 42 years, Holt County's comprehensive plan will be updated. But, a proposed 18-month moratorium on industrial pipelines, wind and solar power, will not be in effect while updates take place. Supervisors voted 6-0, Wednesday, March 16, to deny the moratorium, following a public hearing in O'Neill. The moratorium request came from the county's planning and zoning commision, which voted 6-2 in favor of the moratorium, March 7, following a two-hour public hearing. At that time, la...
A handful of Holt County residents shared concerns about a proposed CO2 pipeline with supervisors during Holt County's Dec. 30 meeting. Diana Steskal, of Atkinson, said landowners are asking supervisors to research pipelines and Summit Carbon Solutions before making any decisions. "We'd like the supervisors to ask the Summit company for an open public meeting, to inform the citizens about the pipeline and let the citizens ask questions," Steskal said. Construction practices, land reclamation,...
Governor’s Misinformation Campaign on ‘30 x 30 Plan’ To the editor: Not long ago the secretary of agriculture announced a bold initiative that would cut the environmental footprint of US agriculture in half by the year 2050. The date was Feb. 20, 2020. The cabinet official was the Trump administration’s Sonny Perdue. Governor Pete Ricketts had little, if anything, to say about the ambitious “New Innovation Initiative for USDA” at the time, even though its objectives included radical goals for “conserving sensitive and marginal lands to enha...
TC Energy terminated its project along the proposed 1,200-mile Keystone XL route, last Wednesday. The company suspended construction in January after President Biden revoked a presidential permit to cross the US - Canada border. Approximately 300 miles of the $8 billion project was completed. The pipeline would have carried tarsands from Alberta to refineries along the Gulf Coast in Texas. Pipeline opponents in the Cornhusker state expressed concerns that any leak along the route would damage...
Two major pieces of legislation that would have provided property tax relief were defeated this past week. Generally, I am supportive of proposals that attempt to lower property taxes. LR 11, introduced by Bayard Senator Steve Erdman, is a constitutional amendment proposing to replace all taxation with a consumption tax on the purchase of services and new goods. Nebraska residents would no longer pay property taxes, income taxes, sales and use taxes, inheritance taxes, or estate taxes. LR 11...
American playwright Arthur Miller wrote, “A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.” What happens when a newspaper quits talking? One community in Nebraska is discovering the effect of no longer having a local newspaper. When Coleridge residents received the Jan. 1 edition of the Coleridge Blade, a bold hammer headline stretched across the top of the page: Final edition. The paper, published for 131 years, was part of the Northeast Nebraska News Company, which owns new...
Three Holt County supervisors agreed, when the leaders met at the courthouse in O’Neill last Thursday, to serve on a committee to look for ways to improve efficiency within the road department. Road superintendent Gary Connot described several recent issues he attributed to lack of training, oversight and accountability. “I personally think we have got to get more oversight, more practical training and more instructions to our motorgrader operators,” he said. “We had a guy this last summer – we had the best set of roads in the county – in a per...
In "An Enigmatic Escape: A Trilogy," Dan Groat writes, "The bones of the oak tree that had stood by the spring branch during my youth were scattered about the ground, pieces of the skeleton of a majestic life that had passed while I was growing up and old." I know how he feels. For the first time in my life, the giant bur oak tree in the backyard of my great-grandparents, then grandparents, then parents and now sister's house, in Tilden, no longer shoots toward the heavens. Saturday, family memb...
