Bulletin
League of Women Voters
of Greater Omaha
1941 South 42
Street, Suite 501
Omaha, NE 68105-2945
Phone: 402-344-3701
League of Women
Voters of Greater Omaha April, 2007
A non-partisan political organization open to all citizens 18
years of age or older Volume 49 No. 10
Annual Meeting,
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Field Club of Omaha
3615 Woolworth Avenue
9:15 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Luncheon and Program 11:30
a.m.
State Senators Brad Ashford
and Pete Pirsch
“Perspectives from the
Legislature”
Reservation
deadline Monday, April 16.
See page 9
League of Women Voters of Nebraska
25th Biennial State Convention
“Learning from Yesterday for a Better Tomorrow”
Saturday- April 28, 2007 – 11 am to 3 pm
Hillcrest Country Club – 9401 East O
Street - Lincoln, Nebraska
Registration and Luncheon Fee - $30.00
Luncheon with special guest
"Lavinia Dock", public health nurse, nurse
leader/writer/historian, social activist, labor organizer and suffragist (played by Beth F.)
Breakout Sessions:
"Water Issues Update" with Ann Salomon Bleed,
Director of Department of Natural Resources)
"Medicaid/Medicare - New Freedom Initiative - What
does it mean?" With Jonah D. (LWVNE Director - Health Care)
"Membership Recruitment Initiative" with
Barbara R. (LWVGO)
Send reservations and payment by April 23, 2007
to LWVNE, 140 N 8th Street, Suite 215, Lincoln, NE 68508
Make checks payable to LWVNE
CALENDAR OF EVENTS
Tuesday, March 27, 7:00
p.m., Milo Bail Student Center, UNO, Nebraska Judicial Networking Coalition
final lecture "Civil Rights and the Courts.” See page 3.
Thursday, April 12, 9:30
a.m., League office. LWVGO board
meeting. All members welcome.
Sunday, April 15, 1:00
p.m.-6:00 p.m., UNO: Peace and Justice
Expo.
Tuesday, April 17, 7:00
p.m., Reading Resource Group. See page
2.
Saturday, April 21, 9:15
a.m., Field Club of Omaha, 3615 Woolworth Ave.:
Annual meeting. See above and
page 9.
Saturday, April 28, 11 a.m.
to 3 p.m.,
Hillcrest Country Club, 9401 East O St., Lincoln: LWVNE state convention. See above.
Thursday, October 11, Thompson Alumni Center,
UNO: Running and Winning program. See page 3.
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE, March 2007
After returning from Southern
California and 60-degree weather, I am having a little adjustment to 6” of
snow; I thought Spring was here (the sky looks like
early Spring) but remember that Spring is a cold season. Warm weather is coming….some time!
Thank you to:
*
Barbara R., Pat G., and Polly G. for planning the Making
Democracy Award last month. They put in a lot of time and effort in the
preparation and planning the inaugural Award; it was a huge success;
*
Belinda G. and Rita S. for planning the March General Meeting,
and to Bev T. for her presentation on the City County
Merger.
The Get Out The Vote
Committee is beginning to plan for our elections in 2008. There will be plenty of opportunity for
members to get involved. Watch future Bulletins
for activities in which you may want to participate.
Mark your calendar now for
the Annual Meeting, April 21, 2007.
Barbara
CITY-COUNTY MERGER MEETING
by Bev T.
The discussion at the LWVGO
March general meeting was illuminating for our understanding of the City of
Omaha/Douglas County merger issue. State Law, generally known as LB142,
passed in 2001, established authorization to create municipal counties; that
is, the City of Omaha and Douglas County could merge or consolidate into one
structure for our local government. Is that a desirable goal for our
community? Some say that it would be good for economic development
because the combined population would place Omaha higher in a rank of large
cities, thereby attracting business. Others note that studies of other
consolidated cities and counties have mixed results, that cost saving
generally does not occur, and efficiency and accountability vary.
Currently, Omaha and
Douglas County use a functional merger method to save money and increase
efficiency. Examples are the 911
Emergency Service System and the Departments of Parks, Purchasing, and
Personnel. These mergers have come about through Interlocal
Agreements, which are contracts or agreements between or among two or more
governmental units for the purpose of performing services.
The Omaha League will
continue to monitor merger proposals and legislation that relates to mergers.
*
READING RESOURCE GROUP
When: Tuesday, April 17, 2007, 7:00 p.m.
Where: (NO MEETING ON MARCH 21--CANCELLED)
Discussion will be on the
first half of the book “The Broken Branch—How Congress is Failing America and
How to Get it Back on Track” by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein—Chapters
1 through 4, Pages 1 through 140.
We welcome new readers.
DONORS TO LWVGO
EDUCATION FUND
September 2006
through February 14, 2007
List removed
from web copy.
RUNNING AND WINNING UPDATE
During the election season
last year you may have heard about the dismal voting records of young women.
A point was made that women of any age often hesitate to vote when
they don't feel educated enough about issues or candidates. That doesn't
seem to be a deterrent for most men, for whatever reason. Another reason
young women don't vote is because they believe politics is a dirty
business, and anyone who participates is not to be trusted.
With our Running and
Winning workshop we plan to address both of these realities.
The teen girls who participate will be genuinely surprised at how nice the
women politicians are, and they will learn a lot about at least
one issue and use that knowledge to plan a campaign and write a speech.
We think it's going to be a
memorable--maybe even a life-changing--day for the 40 or so girls who will
be involved in this workshop. Please let me know if you'd like to help.
Linda D.
Tuesday, March 27, 7 PM
Robert M Spires Rights and
Responsibilities Lecture Series
Panel of Speakers from
Omaha and Lincoln will discuss
Civil Rights and the Courts
UNO Milo Bail Student
Center
Dodge Room A
Plan to arrive early as
parking is difficult
For more information contact Jonah M D.
NATURAL RESOURCE COLUMN
FEBRUARY 2007
SENATOR DON PREISTER
The 100th Legislature convened on January 3rd
this year with a freshmen class of 22 new senators. I have been really pleased and impressed with
the new class who are committed to public service and eager to carry out their
duties as newly elected senators. I am
particularly delighted that 4 of the freshmen senators are working with a group
of us who have put together a package of renewable energy and energy efficiency
legislation, and in fact, these 4 freshmen have introduced 5 of the 10
renewable energy and energy efficiency bills that are currently pending before
the legislature. It's time for Nebraska
to realize it's wind energy potential and to develop
Nebraska's wind energy so that it not only takes advantage of the health and
environmental benefits, but also brings economic benefits to rural Nebraska.
I want to give you a little background on what
is happening in Nebraska on renewable energy.
In the past 3 years citizen and farm organizations have stepped up their
efforts to encourage the development of wind energy. A new citizen renewable energy group was
formed last year called the Nebraska Renewable Energy Association. Their mission is to provide information,
resources and training needed to assist Nebraskans regarding renewable energy
and their personal energy future. The NREA's President, Robert Byrnes, conducts a great deal of
public education throughout the state in schools, town hall meetings, and at
conferences. Their web site is: www.nebraskarea.org
In addition, the Nebraska Farmers Union and
Center for Rural Affairs have increased their efforts to create rural economic
development through the creation of farmer-owned wind energy farms using the
Minnesota model known as C-BED which stands for Community Based Energy
Development. Under this C-BED model the
farmers are the entrepreneurs - the owners - rather than just renters of their
land for the placement of wind turbines.
These are exciting citizen and community-based
efforts to move Nebraska forward in the development of wind energy in
partnership with Nebraska's public power system. However, Nebraska is at a cross roads. It is no secret that private developers are
talking with landowners across the state and buying up wind rights. Private developers have long recognized the
tremendous potential for wind development in Nebraska and they are becoming more bold in their efforts to develop wind in Nebraska. We can no longer afford to ignore private
developers' interest in Nebraska which threatens our public power system which
has worked so well for all of us for over 70 years.
Over the past 14 years my office has
consistently received several calls a month from citizens throughout the state
interested in developing wind energy in Nebraska. Today, I receive several calls and e-mails a day from citizens interested in wind energy
development. Nebraskans are calling to
voice their support for wind energy, and with their support they are voicing
frustration with public power wanting to know why Nebraska has not developed
this tremendous resource. It is clear
that Nebraska's citizens are far ahead of our public power policy-makers in
their knowledge of, and support for, wind energy as a clean, abundant,
sustainable, natural energy resource.
The good news is that we have a wonderful
package of energy-related bills that have been introduced for consideration
this year. Here is a brief summary of
the legislation. All bills are still in
committee so calls to the committee members are very important:
LB 9 (Preister) provides an energy
conservation income tax credit for homeowners and businesses; credit would be
allowed for 25% of the cost of energy conservation installation or improvement
with a cap of $500 in each tax year.
LB 652 (White) requires an energy audit to be
conducted on all public buildings. All
political subdivisions would have to conduct an energy audit on each of its
buildings and report its findings to the legislature by December 31, 2007.
LB 444 (Stuthman) and LB 648 (Preister) The bills
have identical provisions in them that would expand the renewable energy sales
tax credit that was created last year.
Both bills remove the 1 megawatt cap minimum size facility so the tax
credit would be available to ALL size generating facilities - which means it
would include the smaller size generating facilities that were previously
excluded. My bill also expands the
funding for the sales tax incentive from $400,000 to $750,000. C-BED projects are not eligible for this
sales tax incentive. The other section in my bill - LB 648 - Creates a sales
tax exemption on wind turbines purchased by Community-Based Energy Development
(C-BED) projects
LB 629 (Dierks) creates the Rural C-BED
Project Act with a goal of stimulating rural economic development; C-BED projects
are defined by their local ownership and a limited percentage of individual
ownership in a C-BED project.
LB 672 (Lathrop) creates a very narrow exception
to public power's eminent domain authority for the establishment of
Community-Based Energy Development Projects (C-BED);
LB 579 (Louden) net-billing
legislation introduced on behalf of the Rural Electric Association. It allows the utility to assess all costs to
the customer-generator and requires a number of safety code compliance and
inspections. It is my belief that the
imposition of these costs to customer-generators results in net-burdening.
LB 581 (Preister)
establishes requirements for 1:1 offset at retail rate for energy fed into grid
and taken off the grid by a customer-generator using a renewable energy
facility; It prohibits additional costs to be assessed by the utility onto the
customer-generator; establishes safety codes which the customer-generator must
meet.
Senator Louden and I
are working together to craft a compromise net-metering bill that I hope will
be beneficial to the development of renewable energy generation.
LB 412 (McGill) establishes a renewable
portfolio standard which has proven to be the most powerful policy tool in
stimulating development of wind energy in the 23 states that have adopted this
legislation. The RPS would require
utilities to develop 10% of their electric energy generation from renewable
energy resources by 2019.
LB 705 (Dierks)
expands from 10 MW to 25 MW renewable energy projects that are not required to
meet the “least cost” requirement for approval by the Power Review Board for
construction of new generation facilities.
This is a critical time for Nebraska's energy
future and the future of public power.
We have an obligation to keep our energy generation sources locally
owned and an excellent opportunity to move Nebraska forward in its efforts to
harvest our vast renewable energy resources.
It's not a question of “if” but rather “who” will be the ones to move
Nebraska to this goal.
Please contact my office at (402-471-2710) if
you have any questions and talk with either me or Kate Allen, my Legislative
Aide.
Phone:
471-2710; E-mail: dpreister@leg.ne.gov or kallen@leg.ne.gov
NOTE: The
Unicameral's web site address has changed. It is now:
www.NebraskaLegislature.gov
Krusing the Capitol, 2007, Week 10, March 10, 2007
From Senator Lowen Kruse
A bit of humor. Several weeks ago a
representative of a group showed two of us senators a trade magazine article
praising us for advocating for the “Underserved.” We were to expect an Underserved Award. These are gracious people and our pictures
are there, but speed reading made it look like an “undeserved” award. Which of course is sometimes the case. At any rate, nothing happened, undeserved or
otherwise.
I am deeply troubled with the heavy racist
overtones of the Hispanic tension. There
are death threats, assaults and of course angry rhetoric. Many persons with Latino appearance have been
killed, and in retaliation, others are killed.
The KKK is some parts of the south is growing
as members restate the discredited White Supremacy claims. The whole challenge of Mexican and Guatemalan
persons who cross the border illegally is laid on anyone who looks Latino.
I get many emails with unreasonable expressions
of anger. Senator Aguilar, Grand Island,
is one of hundreds of Nebraskans who have been angrily told to “Go back where
you came from.” Ray smiles, says he
really likes Grand Island, and is always glad to go back there. It is an uneducated attack, which causes
great pain and carries genuine threat in our communities. I have been in South Omaha as persons waving
American flags (!) shouted across the street that the Hispanics with whom I was
standing were criminals by speaking with persons who were Spanish. All of us were U. S. citizens.
These racial attacks are not new.
Irish, Germans, Swedes, Polish, Mormons, Italian Catholics -- have been
told to go back to where they came from.
In Omaha in 1909, citizens even rounded up Greeks and successfully drove
all of them out of town. Or into hiding. For a while. Indians
enjoy some humor by broadening the “Go back” command to all of us. There was a major move to apply this to
Africans, even though it was the majority who had brought them. Where Blacks became the majority, fear
increased, and with fear more mayhem.
I get too much email in which writers accuse
Hispanics of being criminals, of taking jobs, of overloading welfare and of
sneaking into our educational system.
Well, first, most Hispanics are citizens. Some have been here for generations. Second, we cannot 'un-citizen' a person born
here, as some want us to do with babies.
It is the U. S. constitution that declares them to be citizens, as it
does for me. I was a baby here.
Third, those who entered illegally break no law
by living here. Local officers can not
arrest and charge them. If residents
have not been judged in court they are not criminals. Fourth, the Nebraska constitution requires us
to educate every resident. It does not
say “except those who do not speak English”
(which would have blocked my Dad) or except those who are retarded, or
whose parents broke the law, or who are disliked by their neighbors.
I hear the silliness that pioneers all wanted to
learn English. My great grandparents
were here for fifty years, were loyal Americans, and helped build the
frontier. Granddad even laid tracks for
that first transcontinental railroad.
Neither spoke English, nor did they feel any need to, nor did their community
or church feel they needed to. Whole
towns were settled in Nebraska with the agreement that English was
optional. Çurrently,
we have sixty languages spoken by Omaha school children, who do want to learn
English.
Angry people make all Hispanics the enemy, and
all persons who are here illegally to be Hispanics. We have about 12 million residents in the U.
S. who are not here legally. We assume
about 5 million did NOT cross the border illegally. Most came to study and few are from
Mexico. Many are guest workers who did
not go home. We have 50,000 Irish here
illegally, but we do not worry about that since we no longer can identify the
Irish by their appearance. (Early settlers
could.) It was and is a racial-type
response to the confused situation created by our own laws.
Those who came to study can not get a Social
Security number, so in Nebraska they cannot get a license to drive. They do drive, especially if they get a job
after their time is out. We would like
to offer driving certificates, which would allow us to check for English
competency (street signs) and would put more pressure on them to drive
responsibly. But that is labelled helping “Hispanic” criminals.
Strangely, the IRS will issue workers a number
so their tax withholding can be sent in.
With several years of records showing steady paying of taxes, the person
here illegally can apply for a green card, which is permanent worker
residency. Imagine! Back door, but legal. In Omaha, a legal resident applied for his
wife to join him from Mexico. The
application was approved, but she cannot come for six years. Huh?
We deport parents and do not look for children, leaving kids to become
wards of the state. We surround these
persons with our craziness in law, and wonder why they look for a way around.
If you were a pregnant woman in a family
desperately poor, in any country offering no hope of having enough food, and
without hope for health for your baby, would you slip through customs at some
port in order to get to a hospital where they, by law, must deliver your baby
and thereby give it citizenship in a more hopeful country? I cannot imagine a mother who would not do
that if she could.
We are approaching a racial war, fed partly by
persons do not know who is who, what is being done and the large number of
countries involved. They can spot a
Latino person by looks and that is enough to get emotions going.
In none of this do I discount the huge problem
we have and the strain on our taxes. I
do not justify crossing a border illegally, though I certainly do understand
why a parent would do so to get bread for his children. I am told the amount of money sent home to
Mexico is greater than that country's entire income from oil production.
Quite simply, we must step back, take a deep
breath, deal with our challenges, get our government to a rational worker
program, and quit beating up persons who did not create our system.
Let Spring come!!! Lowen
Editor’s note: Lowen Kruse sends
out “Krusin’ the Capitol” by email every week that
the Nebraska Legislature is in session.
If you’d like to be on my forward list, send an email request to (Address removed from web copy.). (Lowen and Ruth are LWVGO members.)
Vision is not enough, it must be combined with venture. It is not
enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the
stairs. -- Vaclav
The ultimate measure of a
man is not where he stands in moments of
comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times
of challenge
and controversy.
-- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
MEMBERSHIP
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Also, please send Hedy your original
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LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS OF
GREATER OMAHA
MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION
Name
______________________________________________________________________
Address
__________________________________City___________State
_____ ZIP _______
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____________________________Work phone ___________________________
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____Single member, $60 ___Family membership, $90 ___Additional contribution $_____
Please make your checks
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League of Women Voters of Greater Omaha
1941
S. 42nd Street, Suite 501
LINCOLN STATE BOARD MEETING, March 17, 2007
submitted by Virginia B., State Liaison
Sherry M. gave us the
Treasurer’s report. Some questions and explanations were asked and
answered, and it was accepted.
Lois P. presented a written
HAVA report and some explanations. Linda D.’s
idea for an '800 number' [toll free], which provided voter education/election
information to all Nebraskans, proved to be very successful and will be an
excellent guide for the future. Karen K. was the instigator in preparing
a press release for early voting stories, and
that was used throughout the state very effectively.
Lois P. stated that the LWVNE website will be kept active with money
from the HAVA grant money till Spring 2007, and Peggy A.'s
Ex-Felon grant money will pick up the funding at that point. The cost for the website is $450 per year,
and both English and Spanish information is provided.
Lois also reported that she
continues doing voter education presentations, as do others throughout the
state leagues. Lois and Maura H. met with Neal Erickson [of Secretary of
State Gale's office] in December and gave him a summary of the HAVA
efforts and expenses. Additional work on general voter education
continues, and Mr. Erickson suggested that LWVNE reapply for HAVA Grant funds. Additional projects will be presented at the
annual meeting on April 28, 2007.
Sherry M. {Nomination
Committee] presented a list of nominees for the state offices, and that will be
presented at the State meeting. Of note to LWVGO members, our own Peggy A.
will be nominated for State President. HOORAY for the
State. As for the LWVGO, we will just wait & see.
In regard to Corrections
activity we were told to watch State Bill #535, which creates a Juvenile
Legal Services division. Peggy A. pointed out that it is an important
bill in accordance with our league priorities.
The subject of the Women's
Commission was discussed briefly, and all agreed that we support their
efforts. However additional work must be done in that area.
Perhaps the biggest news
was that Sandy P. will be moving to Chadron,
Nebraska--very soon--and therefore must resign as State President. This
will be a very big loss to the state league, but I'm sure it will be a great
opportunity for Sandy. We all wish her good luck and our best wishes…!!
In addition, the position
of Secretary in the state office will be open about the end of May 2007. Trish has given notice that she wants to
'move on'. If anyone has any suggestions or ideas in regard to this part-time
position, please let the state office know.
The next State Board
meeting will be held sometime in July, 2007.
"Beware the leader who
bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor,
for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword." Julius Caesar