Letters, 6/30: Nebraska's Hall of Shame

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We have a Hall of Fame in our Nebraska State Capitol.  

Now it is time for Nebraska to establish a Hall of Shame. I will recommend the first three candidates.

My candidate for number three is Charles Starkweather. He killed a Lincoln service station attendant Dec. 1, 1957. He then went on a spree, killing nine other Nebraskans and one man in Wyoming. Nebraskans panicked with fear, locking themselves in their own homes. Starkweather was electrocuted in the Nebraska electric chair on June 25, 1959.

Her sadistic abuse gives Annie Cook a number two rating. Cook received a flat fee from the county for housing and feeding each person who stayed on her farm (closed in 1934) near North Platte. She confined several old men in one room, fed them starvation rations, let them wallow in poor hygiene and pocketed most of the money as profit. She harshly supervised the workers in her beet field with a whip. She helped to distribute drugs and housed prostitutes. Her life is described in “Evil Obsession: The Annie Cook Story.”  

My candidate for number one is Dick Cheney from Lincoln. As U.S. vice president, he lied about the need to go to war in Iraq, which persuaded citizens that the United States had to go to war. He stated emphatically that Iraq had massive destructive weapons when he knew the U.S. State Department told him they did not. Because of Dick Cheney’s leadership, more than 4,000 American soldiers have died in Iraq. He condones torture, ridicules global warming, opposes alternative energy and does not take due process rights or international law seriously. He ignores public opinion and has greatly contributed to the loss of U.S. credibility in world affairs. Cheney has abused the power of his office and acted subversive to the U.S. Constitution. He has disgraced himself from the honor of being a hometown boy.

Don Tilley, Lincoln

Slow pace Founders’ intent

Why do Americans revere the Constitution and revile the Congress? Americans become angry when they view petty bickering, posturing and protracted stalemate preventing the people’s business.

In Congress, the founding fathers intentionally did not create a heavenly choir, but instead a slow-moving, and at times, slow-witted, instrument of grudging change.

They feared rapid change ignited by hotheaded herd mentality, driven by opportunists with hidden agendas. Thomas Jefferson used the analogy of a hot cup of tea being cooled in a saucer to reflect the cooling of legislation as it moved from House to Senate.

James Madison warned against factions like the organized groups we now call political parties. Perhaps he anticipated the yelping howls of special interests.

The House of Representatives has 435 members with majority party power concentrated at the top. The Constitution requires all spending and taxing bills to begin here.

The Senate has 100 members, power is more evenly distributed, and most importantly, the minority party has the power to filibuster. Under rules accepted by both parties, 60 votes are required to stop a filibuster. Because one party rarely musters 60 votes, legislation dies or compromise occurs.

Ironically, large segments of the American public give lip service to democracy but oppose compromise. Our Constitution was based on a bundle of compromises, but on contemporary issues, this is viewed as heresy or “selling out.”

The president may vilify the Congress, particularly when controlled by the other party. He can demonize Congress for moving at a snail’s pace while his own party drags its feet. He can veto bills passed without veto-proof majorities and then criticize Congress for doing nothing.

Massive reforms to address huge budget deficits, protracted wars, unfunded mandates, Social Security, Medicare, trade deficits, credit crisis, energy policy, environmental concerns and tax reform are not likely to happen unless one party controls the presidency and the Congress with filibuster-proof majorities. And this also may pose grave dangers and unintended consequences.

Roger L. Green, Scottsbluff

Initiative for insurance

When I graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln this spring, I had many “real life” fears. Where would I work? Where would I live? How would I pay my loans back?

One aspect of graduating never really crossed my mind, though, and that was being taken off my parent’s health insurance. As a twentysomething male, I generally feel pretty invincible, so the insurance didn’t seem like a big loss to me … until I actually needed it. Then, I had big problems on my hands.

I realized I was one of the millions of uninsured citizens across the country. It’s not only the elderly or the poor or the single-parent families, but it’s also people like me, a recent graduate, who can’t afford health care. I also realized how quickly health care expenses can rise. Washington, with its partisan gridlock, didn’t seem to have the help for me.

When I started working at AARP Nebraska as a summer intern, I didn’t feel like I had many benefits to gain other than a paycheck. My friends generally seemed confused when I began working for an organization whose membership begins at 50; it just seemed a little odd. Yet, I became involved in a movement that impacts more than AARP members; it affects the millions of uninsured citizens like me. It’s called Divided We Fail.

Divided We Fail is a nonpartisan initiative devoted to promoting affordable, quality health care to all Americans. We need to elect officials who will put aside partisan differences and make meaningful commitments to fixing the broken health care system. Candidates owe us action, answers and accountability, and they must commit to delivering long-term, lasting solutions if elected.

Michael Dozler, Lincoln

Save our water resources

I am troubled to learn in the June 16 column “Lobbying can be a wise use of tax dollars” by Mike Clements that the Lower Republican Natural Resources District is using our tax money to lobby our state senators.

Clements wrote his column as a response to the Lincoln Journal Star June 8 editorial entitled: “Taxpayers shouldn’t pay to lobby government.”

In this case, the Lower Republican Natural Resources District is using our tax money to pay a lobbyist to influence proposed legislation that would let natural resource districts, which are heavily represented by irrigators, make their own rules on the use of groundwater.

It is my belief that irrigators in the state of Nebraska already have more than their share of water. In fact, 94.4 percent of Nebraska’s groundwater extractions (averaging some 7,420 million gallons per day) were being used by 2006 for irrigation by a group of users (17,000) representing only about 1 percent of the state’s population.

We taxpayers of Nebraska will probably be paying Kansas millions of dollars because Nebraska has not provided Kansas’ legal share of the water from the Republican River basin.

Water is a finite resource. We Nebraskans must look at the needs of the total basin, not just at the special needs of the irrigators in the Lower Republican Natural Resources District. I do not want them using my tax dollars to hire someone to plead the irrigators’ side of the story to our many new senators.

I hope the Legislature reduces the budget for the Lower Republican Natural Resources District by the $40,650 spent on a lobbyist in 2007 and hires a staff person for the Legislature who can educate the senators on the larger picture on water issues of all of our major river basins, including the Missouri, the Niobrara, the Platte and the Republican rivers.

Linda R. Brown, Lincoln