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Home - News
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Up Front: The DREAM Remains - |
A dozen Californian students stopped in Nebraska’s capitol city, July 15, to urge Sens. Ben Nelson and Mike Johanns to support legislation to give legal status to undocumented people who complete two years of college or military service. Members of the “The Dream is Coming Caravan” met with the senators’ staffs and attended a rally hosted by Nebraska Appleseed while on their way to Washington D.C for a national DREAM Act rally from July 19-21.
The DREAM Act has been introduced since 2001, but failed to move through Congress. Nelson and Johanns both oppose the idea. Nelson said in 2007 that it was a piecemeal approach to immigration reform. He wanted more focus on border security. Johanns said this path to citizenship would be unfair to those who wait years to legally enter the United States. |
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News Hound - |
Suttle presents 2011 budget
Faced with a projected $33.5 million shortfall, Mayor Jim Suttle called his 2011 budget “both a comprehensive solution to our financial dilemma and a strategy for financial recovery,” during Tuesday’s City Council meeting.
The proposed $675 million budget includes increased wheel and property taxes and a new restaurant tax that would raise an estimated $44 million in revenue. The council will hold a public hearing for the proposed budget Aug. 10 at 7 p.m.
New police contract revealed Mayor Suttle’s proposed contract with the Omaha Police Union would end end spiking, and would eventually solve a half-billion dollar unfunded pension liability, he says. The contract, which City Councilman Franklin Thomas made public against Suttle’s wishes, would cut pension benefits for police officers for the first time in 30 years.
New hires and 48 new officers would receive a pension based on a base pay. Officers would contribute more to the pension fund, while the city would pay an extra $12.5 million this year. That number would increase by $500,000 each year until 2013. Officers would have to serve for five more years — until age 50 — to receive their full pension. New hires would have to stay on the force until age 55.
The council will vote on the contract July 27.
Abortion law stopped
Planned Parenthood won the first battle against the State of Nebraska over an abortion law — but the war isn’t over. A federal judge ordered an injunction July 14 on the state law that requires mental health screenings for women considering abortions.
Planned Parenthood of the Heartland President and CEO Jill June said the next step is a hearing to determine whether the injunction will be made permanent. That hearing is not yet scheduled yet, but June believes it will come before the year’s end. |
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Party Hopping - |
Richard Carter’s alternating political convictions
By Hilary Stohs-Krause
Richard Carter went from Iraq and Afghanistan veteran and underdog Democratic candidate who opposed the war and Rep. Lee Terry in both rhetoric and action, to working for the 2nd District Republican in about a year and a half.
Critics say Carter, now chair of Terry’s 2010 reelection campaign, realized he had no future in the Democratic Party after losing the 2008 primary to Jim Esch with only 19.5 percent of the vote. Terry won the general election with 52.2 percent of the vote to Esch’s 47.8 percent — Terry’s closest election since he became a congressman in 1998.
“A couple of years ago [Carter] was calling for universal health care. He clearly has had quite the change of heart since then,” said Ian Russell, campaign manager for Nebraska Legislator Tom White, Terry’s 2010 opponent. “That’s certainly not what Terry is advocating now.
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Up Front - |
One Fremont — two communities
A Fremont resident declared, “The enemy is here,” and started counting off how many Latinos were in the room when members of the One Fremont-One Future campaign walked into the Fremont City Council meeting July 6, said group organizer Kristin Ostrum. It was the first council meeting since the special election June 21, when citizens voted for a city ordinance that would make it illegal to rent or lease property to undocumented immigrants. One Fremont-One Future is a citizens group that opposes the law.
Other ugly scenes at the meeting included a man telling a Latino woman that she wasn’t welcome, Ostrum said. The woman replied that she was a U.S. citizen, but the man ordered her to go back to Mexico. |
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Up Front - |
Rallying for hemp, immigration reform and white nationalism
The U.S. Constitution might be the perfect paper from which to roll a joint. The founding fathers wrote the document on hemp, according to Bill Hawkins of HEMP Nebraska. The grassroots organization, which aims to repeal cannabis laws, held a rally outside the state's capital on Monday. The event came one week before Nebraska's Board of Pharmacy will discuss medical marijuana. But it was sparsely attended -only about 18 people were there about 15 minutes into the event. |
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Boiling Water - |
Republican officials talk tea
By Sean McCarthy
The Tea Party is a movement--not a party, said a man named Jim, who wouldn't give his last name because he said he's involved in upcoming legislative campaigns.
"It's an umbrella," he said.
Some attendees nevertheless felt left out in the rain at Saturday's Independence Day Tea Party rally at Walnut Grove. More than 400 people attended the event at the public park at about 150th and Q. The event was sponsored by conservative organizations including: The Heritage Foundation; National Write Your Congressman; Americans For Prosperity; Oath Keepers; and Sarpy County's wing of Glenn Beck's 9/12 Project. |
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OP/ED: Conor Gets Mad - |
Today I feel ashamed to be a Nebraskan. After Monday's vote (June 21) in Fremont it is clear that many people of this state wish to position us alongside Arizona as a beacon of intolerance and bigotry. Such positioning will hurt every Nebraskan in the long run. The new ordinance - which bans the harboring, hiring of and renting to undocumented immigrants - is unenforceable, economically wasteful and as the wave of impending lawsuits will prove, unconstitutional. More importantly, it is morally wrong. |
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The News Hound - |
Planned Parenthood: No so fast, abortion law
Planned Parenthood Federation of America has filed a lawsuit to challenge the Nebraska law that would force doctors to screen patients to determine whether they were pressured into having an abortion. The organization says doctors would not be able to meet the requirements specified by the law, which was passed in April and would go into effect July 15. |
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The Jump - |
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Best as I can remember, sometime in early 2005, my then-editor (as well as friend and fellow University of Nebraska J-School alum) Andrew Norman mentioned that he thought our sports coverage needed a little kick in the pants. The Jump you've been reading for the past few years is that kick, and this is the last Jump from me that you'll read. |
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Kill Shot - |
Nightclub argument ends deadly
by Rob McLean
The weapon laying near the dead man’s hand was only a CO2-powered pellet gun.
José Barrera told The Reader about the events that proceeded the shooting death of his brother, Abel Barrera-Siguenza, 22, by the hand of an off-duty Omaha police officer early Monday morning, June 21, outside a popular South Omaha nightclub. |
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Up Front - |
Laying pipe across ‘The Good Life’
The pipeline would transport 500,000 barrels of crude oil a day from tar sands in Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast in Texas. It would run over the Ogallala aquifer — one of the largest aquifers in the world — and through the Nebraska Sandhills, an area routinely plagued by soil erosion. And, despite concerns raised by farmers, landowners and environmentalists, construction of this 1,700 mile-long pipeline — 3 feet in diameter and buried 4 feet deep — could start as early as the first part of next year. |
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Newshound - |
Author of Fremont ordinance may represent the city
Kris Kobach, architect of the recently-passed Fremont immigration law, has offered to defend the city in court for free, according to the Fremont Tribune.
The law, which passed by ballot measure on June 21, bars landlords from renting to undocumented workers and prevents employers from hiring them. Similar laws in Texas and Pennsylvania town are currently held up in court on grounds of being unconstitutional. Hazleton, Pa., has spent more than $5 million defending its law, while Farmers Branch, Texas, has spent around $3.2 million. Kobach helped write both measures. |
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The Jump - |
Find a die-hard baseball fan and you’re likely to find someone with a personality quirk or three. They might collect baseball cards or bobble heads. Maybe it’s game-used bats and balls or jerseys. Perhaps it’s a mix of all of the above. Deep down in most baseball geeks, however, is a deep appreciation for the game. An unquenchable thirst for nostalgia and yesterday. Before Astroturf, pitch counts and the designated hitter changed the game. |
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A Vote for Fear - |
Rhetoric heats up after town passes Arizona-style immigration law
by Rob McLean
Voters in Fremont passed a city ordinance Monday that would ban illegal immigrants from renting or leasing property. The town joins Hazelton, Pa., and Farmers Branch, Texas, which passed similar laws in 2006 that have yet to be enforced and remain tied up in courts. The towns have spent, collectively, more than $8 million to defend their laws. |
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Upfront - |
ES&S machines questioned in strange S.C. election
In South Carolina, the ultimate dark horse won the Democratic primary for the Senate seat held by Republican Jim DeMint June 8. Alvin Greene has no website, is unemployed and lives with his father. Before the fall’s general election, he might also serve time for a felony obscenity charge for allegedly showing a University of South Carolina freshman pornographic images before propositioning her. |
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The Newshound - |
Politics
Terrys win war with a good ol’ fashion book banning
Millard Public Schools has shelved The Down-To-Earth Guide to Global Warming until its authors and publishers make “a key correction,” according to Nebraskawatchdog.org. If teachers do use the text, however, they are to inform students of “both sides” of the global warming’s debate. The text’s removal comes after Rep. Lee Terry’s 12-year-old son, a student in the MPS system, received the book as a non-fiction reading assignment. Robyn Terry, the congressman’s wife, told Nebraska Watchdog, global warming is “highly debatable as to whether it is fact, theory or down right fiction.” |
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Singing Loudly - |
Legendary environmentalist Bill McKibben to lead Union Pacific Protest
by John Wenz
There’s that number — 350 parts per million. Beyond that limit of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, global temperatures will rise and begin to melt important Antarctica and Greenland ice shelves, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Rising sea levels will create unstable weather patterns and invade shorelines worldwide.
We’re at 392 parts per million.
In some ways, that’s Bill McKibben’s number. His organization, 350.org, is a global titan in the fight against climate change. He was one of the first people to present climate research to the public. A series of his New Yorker articles were serialized in The End of Nature in 1989. Like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring before it, the book was an abrupt call to ecological arms, informing people of the potential devastation caused by industrial pollution.
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Up Front - |
Nebraska political prisoner files appeal
Edward Poindexter, a former Black Panther currently serving a life sentence for the 1970 bombing death of an Omaha police officer, has filed an appeal with the U.S. District Court in Lincoln.
At the heart of the petition is a 911 call that summoned officers to the abandoned house where Officer Larry Minard was killed when a dynamite-laden suitcase exploded. That 911 call was withheld from trial — and may have thrown into doubt a key witness for the prosecution, Duane Peak. Peak’s testimony — that he was the one who called 911 on orders from Rice and Poindexter — was integral to the prosecution of Poindexter and co-defendant David Rice. A 2005 analysis of the tape found that the voice did not match that of Peak.
Since their conviction, Rice and Poindexter have steadfastly maintained their innocence. Amnesty International currently lists them as political prisoners. Poindexter’s attorney, Robert Bartle, did not respond to requests for comment by press time. |
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Gateway City - |
New report outlines immigrants’ contributions to Omaha Metro
by Jill K. Bruckner
Omaha is a new gateway city for immigrants, said Jason Marczak, senior editor of Americas Quarterly and policy director at Americas Society and Council of the Americas. The organization recently published a paper detailing the positive contributions made and challenges faced by Omaha’s growing Latinos population.
The city’s Latino population grew 338 percent from 1990 to 2008, Marczak said. The city’s overall foreign-born population increased 234 percent. Such growth could translate into economic opportunities if community and civic leaders embrace the influx of immigrants, the report said.
“Omaha’s Hispanic community — like in other new gateway cities — is integrating and moving up the socioeconomic ladder,” Marczak said. “But a key challenge is for the overall levers of power in the city to embrace this growing population and recognize that it’s going to be a large part of the city’s future competitiveness. Latino integration is not a South Omaha issue, but rather an Omaha issue. As in past waves of immigrants, this population will increasingly move beyond South Omaha and become part of more neighborhoods across the city.” |
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Closing Time - |
Council prepares to vote on bar hours extension in Omaha
by Jesse D. Stanek
There are two primary ways to cross the Missouri River from Omaha into Council Bluffs: the Dodge St. to Broadway access and I-80 East. On any given night, but especially Saturday and Sunday between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m., both see their share of Omaha bar patrons crossing state lines to purchase more alcohol in Iowa, whose bars stay open till 2 a.m. Now, with an ordinance before the Omaha City Council allowing bars to stay open until 2 a.m., the city has a chance to keep that revenue west of the Missouri River, and also accommodate its younger generations.
“Well, I think it’s the right thing to do and I think it fits the times,” Mayor Jim Suttle said in an interview with The Reader. “And the big thing with me is we need to be paying attention to and accommodating the social clocks of the different generations that are in our city.”
“I learned a lot when we put together the music venue ordinance a couple of years ago,” Suttle continued. “And so, basically, if you just ask the question of each generation ‘When do you start your Friday/Saturday social evening?’ people my age are going to say, ‘Well, 6 o’clock.’ ‘’What time do you quit, go home?’ ‘Well, 10:30/11.’ If you ask the under-40 generation that same question you’re going to hear a different answer, that they start more like 8, 9, 10 o’clock and end at 3 or 4 a.m.” |
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