Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
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May is budget month for the State of Nebraska in the Unicameral Legislature. The main budget for the year will add up to $10.7 billion. The Legislature has been busy debating four primary budget bills, so today I would like to tell you about a few items in the budget that will benefit Western Nebraska. Fort Robinson is first on the list. Fort Robinson stands to receive $20 million dollars to be used for improvements to the fort. $2 million has been designated to memorialize the all-Black...
SIDNEY – "With great power – comes great responsibility," Uncle Ben said to Peter Parker, aka Spiderman. There's a fine line between being a good steward of news and holding the powers that be accountable – and becoming a vigilante. When heated and even passionate opinion becomes an ego-driven fact, you have now crossed the line; sprinkle in a little bit of anger and/or fear and now you've become a vigilante. Newspapers are held responsible according to extremely high standards set natio...
I often regaled my family with stories of my childhood in Alaska as we sat around the table after dinner. I remember getting up early that morning long ago... "Put the cooler in the trunk" Dad said. Excited by the prospect of my first hunting trip, I played pack mule, lugging equipment to Uncle Norman's vehicle. Norman teased, "Think you'll be able to bring down a moose with your popgun?" I grinned and kept loading. On my 10th birthday I received a .22 cal. single-shot bolt-action rifle. I knew...
"Seek the Lord all you meek of the earth, who have upheld His justice. Seek righteousness, seek humility, that you will be hidden [in the day of trouble]. Zephaniah 2:3. Does this not highlight "Seek, first, the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you." Matthew 6:33? Of course! Does prayer change things? Prayer is a spirit-to-Spirit exercise; a communion with God. Prayer changes the hearts of men. Men change natural circumstances accordingly. Genesis 1. Attitude, based on...
Ronald Reagan won the 1980 election because of his upbeat creed, his optimism, and his sunny disposition, an attitude that contrasted to Jimmy Carter's beat-down-but-struggling talk. Reagan told the American people, "America's best days are ahead of us," and they believed him. Jimmy Carter talked about a National Malaise, ways to cut the deficit, and how to get hostages out of Iran. The American people were aghast. Warren Buffett says, "For 240 years, it has been a terrible mistake to bet...
Public officials talking about hiring hitmen to take out the publisher and reporter of a newspaper seems like something from a tense, blockbuster thriller rather than reality. Yet, in rural Oklahoma, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) is currently investigating such a discussion. The McCurtain County Gazette is like most small-town newspapers. It’s family owned and operated, doesn’t have a website or digital version of its newspaper and stands as watchdog for the community. This responsibility, it seems, is what put the publisher, Bru...
Last week we began debating budget bills in the Nebraska State Legislature. One of those bills, LB 818, appropriates $574 million for construction of the Perkins County Canal Project. That canal would deliver 1000 cubic feet of water per second (cfs) to Nebraska. Funding for the Perkins County Canal became the subject of a three-hour floor debate after Omaha Sen. John Cavanaugh introduced an amendment to reduce the funding to $449 million. According to Sen. Cavanaugh Nebraska would be better...
"A good name is better to be chosen than great riches; by humility and honor of the LORD are riches and honor and [eternal] life." Proverbs 22:1, 4 The Bible declares, Jeremiah 29:11, that when God has a job to be done, He has a baby born! We know their names even: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. Moses, David, Daniel, Jesus, Peter, James, John and Paul – even you, even me. Father never changes. We are given a journey of preparation and spiritual growth to arrive at the crucial moment when we m...
This year's legislative session has been unlike any other. Because a small group of State Senators decided to filibuster every bill, it has affected the way we do business this year at the State Capitol in Lincoln. In the Army soldiers are taught to improvise in order to solve difficult problems when under fire by the enemy. In the State Legislature, legislators sometimes have to use rules they are not ordinarily accustomed to using in order to get the business of the State done, and that is pre...
This week, I signed LB77 Constitutional Carry into Nebraska law. This bill fulfills the promise I made to voters to uphold our Second Amendment rights and the ability of all law-abiding Nebraskans to defend themselves. This law also affirms the rights promised by the Nebraska and United State constitutions. Article 1, Section 1, of the Nebraska Constitution states, "All persons are by nature free and independent, and have certain inherent and inalienable rights; among these are life, liberty,...
Last week, the U.S. Senate passed my resolution protecting truckers and consumers. The legislation would overturn a Biden administration rule that makes emissions standards stricter for heavy-duty vehicles like trucks. This aggressive rule, released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), would force truckers to purchase new, expensive equipment to abide by a radical climate agenda - which would burden our economy as a whole. The EPA's own economic analysis found that the emissions...
My first venture into the business world was in the summer of 1957 as an 8 year old. Dad brought home an old rusty platen press from the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. I can't properly describe a platen press. It was foot treadle powered and hand fed. You can find pictures of them on the web. The pressman (me) stands in front of the press, grabs a big flywheel on the left side of the press and gives it a hard pull. This puts it into motion. The next step is to take a sheet of paper, slip it into...
Father God, in His simplicity, has ordained "As long as the earth remains, seed, time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer and daylight shall not cease." Genesis 8:22. Harvesting means taking seed out of the barn, planting at the correct time, cultivating, fertilizing and applying the sickle! Man has his part (Mark 4:26-29) and Father's recipe works on time, every time. Unfortunately, many approach seed sowing, both spiritual and natural, as an intellectual exercise. Prayer is made,...
This past week I listened to Craig Wortmann's book, What's Your Story: Using Stories to Ignite Performance and Be More Successful. Craig encourages readers to place their stories into a matrix of sixteen cells, four columns by four rows. He identifies four columns, top to bottom: success, failure, fun, and legends. A success story is how a project succeeded. A failure story is how a project failed. A fun story is a joke. A legend story is a once-upon-a-time story, that of a hero. The idea of a m...
Last week the Nebraska State Legislature began debate on LB 562, which is the priority bill of Sen. Myron Dorn of Adams, NE. LB 562 is the Adopt the E-15 Access Standard Act. The bill requires gasoline filling stations to offer E-15 gasoline at half of their pumps within five years and offers grants to filling stations to upgrade their pumps to accommodate E-15 gasoline. E-15 gasoline is a mixture of gasoline and ethanol where the percentage of ethanol in the blend never exceeds 15 percent. The...
"Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Out of the good treasure of his heart a man brings forth good things ... for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned." Matthew 12:34-37 Words are spiritual containers with an expected end, Genesis 1. Words contain blessing or cursing depending on our attitude when we speak. We can sow (speak) mercy, forgiveness, hope, enthusiasm, or choose to gripe and complain. A thought sows an action, an action (saying...
“(3) Any county, city, or village ordinance, permit, or regulation in violation of subsection (2) of this section is declared to be null and void.” This is part of the language in a new piece of legislation currently working its way through to the governor’s desk in Lincoln. This language intentionally nullifies our ability to govern at a county and city level and simply pass the power to a state level to legislate more laws in Lincoln that we then must live by on a day-to-day basis. The subject of the new law is something I actually suppo...
Last week the Nebraska State Legislature advanced LB 626, which is commonly known as the Nebraska Heartbeat Act. This bill would limit most abortions to the sixth week of pregnancy when heartbeats are normally detected within developing babies. The primary intention of the bill is to put strict limitations on abortions which are performed for the convenience of the mother, rather than for medical reasons. On January 6, 2023 Medical News Today, published an article entitled, "When does a fetus...
You don't know what's in the indictment. That was the line that progressives repeatedly threw at conservatives dubious about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's case over the last couple of weeks. Well, we've seen the unsealed indictment, and we still don't know the other crime besides falsifying business records that's being alleged, because Bragg didn't specify it in a shocking prosecutorial failure and abuse of the process. What will be the new talking point? You don't know what Bragg...
Plans and dreams – starting in childhood and lasting through all our lives we dream and make plans. In grade school I dreamed about being the best artist in my class. Didn't happen and I'm still a lousy artist. When I got into high school I dreamed about becoming the star basketball player and being on the honor roll, too. Made honor roll in my junior and senior years, but I couldn't dribble worth an "expletive deleted". I dreamed of going to college and being #1 on the dean's list, then a...
"Certain Greeks came up to the feast and said to Phillip, "'Sir, we would see Jesus.' [When Jesus was told] He said, 'Most assuredly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, when it dies it produces much grain ... For this purpose, I have come to this hour.'" John 12:21-24. Father announces a resurrection, a glorifying of Jesus, a harvest on Heaven's Faith Seed, bringing many sons to Glory. Hebrews 2:9, 10. Father's Voice was heard as thunder! Jesus' death on the...
William Shakespeare was born close to April 23, 1564, in Stratford-on-the-Avon, in England, 100 miles northwest of London. Roger Williams was born either as early as December of 1603, or as late as April 5, 1604, in Smithfield, a section of London. Shakespeare's father, John, was a glover in Stratford-on-the-Avon, in that he stitched gloves out of animal skins. Williams's father, James, bought, sold, and traded textiles. Shakespeare became a famous playwright in London at the Globe Theater, but...
Last week, I spoke on the Senate floor to fight a blatant power grab by the federal government. The Senate considered a resolution attempting to block the "Waters of the United States" (WOTUS) rule from President Biden's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This rule would change the definition of navigable waters to include things like roadside ditches, puddles on construction sites, and farm ponds. Think about that – President Biden's EPA and his Army Corps of Engineers apparently believe t...
Property tax relief has always been my number one priority in the State Legislature. Last Friday the State Legislature began debate on the Revenue Committee's primary property tax relief bill for 2023. Although LB 243 was introduced by Sen. Tom Briese of Albion, the Revenue Committee adopted his bill as a committee priority bill and amended several other bills into it, including one of my bills. So, today I would like to tell you about what the Legislature is currently doing to provide all...
We are going to look back years from now and wonder how we failed young girls so badly. Between social media and fashionable gender theories, we are making teenage girls depressed, anxious, and trans. In a Substack essay the other day, a mother wrote of her daughter: "She was among the last of her small group of biologically female friends to socially transition. It was mid-pandemic, and she spent most of her time with her best friend, who had, unbeknownst to me, shown her hours upon end of...
