Omaha World-Herald. May 1, 2016
VA hospital bill needed.
Several Midlands congressmen have a bipartisan good idea. They are pushing a bill to enable construction of a new veterans’ medical facility in Omaha.
The facility would be adjacent to the Department of Veterans Affairs’ aging hospital at 42nd Street and Woolworth Avenue. It would give 175,000 Nebraska and Iowa vets a place to obtain services such as primary health care, mental health care and ambulatory surgery, says Rep. Brad Ashford, D-Neb., who’s sponsoring the bill.
The legislation is needed so the VA could enter into a public-private partnership to plan, design and build new facilities for use by the VA. It also would allow the VA to accept private donations of money and buildings. VA Secretary Robert McDonald has said the Omaha project could serve as a model for other cities.
Ashford’s co-sponsors - Reps. Jeff Fortenberry and Adrian Smith, R-Neb.; David Young, R-Iowa; and Tim Walz, D-Minn. - know this is needed.
Now Congress needs to make it happen.___
McCook Daily Gazette . April 28, 2016
Bison assuming rightful place as American symbol.
The suggestion by East Coast scholars Frank and Deborah Popper that the Plains be turned back into a “Buffalo Commons” raised the hackles of Southwest Nebraska residents, to the point that an annual event was named the Buffalo Commons Storytelling Festival in defiance.
But that doesn’t mean we have anything against the buffalo - more properly the American bison, Bison bison. McCook High School’s mascot, after all, is the Bison.
Regional Editor Connie Jo Discoe said it “just seemed natural” to see a small herd of bison turned into a pasture near Hugh Butler Lake. “They are where they should be.”
In doing so, Darrell Meister has picked up a torch carried by Charles Jesse “Buffalo” Jones, an explorer, big-game hunter and first game warden of Yellowstone Park, who was instrumental in saving the animal from extinction. Perhaps we should call the McCook native and Honolulu resident “Bison” Meister?
Thus, it’s gratifying to see that the American bison is on its way to joining the bald eagle as an official national symbol, expected to be named the official mammal of the United States through the National Bison Legacy Act, passed by the House on Wednesday and expected to clear the Senate any day.
It was a rare, bipartisan success, thanks to a coalition of conservationists, ranchers and tribal groups such as the InterTribal Buffalo Council, which said it wants to “restore bison to Indian nations in a manner that is compatible with their spiritual and cultural beliefs and practices.”
Bison once roamed the entire North American continent, and began to decline in numbes when Native Americans obtained horses and rifles from Europeans.
That decline accelerated toward disaster with westward expansion, when it became official U.S. government policy to extinguish the herds as a way to subdue the Indian tribes.
“I would not seriously regret the total disappearance of the buffalo from our western plains, in its effect upon the Indians,” wrote Secretary of the Interior Columbus Delano in 1873.
With the help of frontiersmen like North Platte’s William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, they very nearly succeeded.
Only a few dozen in Yellowstone and a thousand or so privately owned animals survived, including herds owned by Buffalo Jones in Kansas and Southwest Nebraska.
William Hornaday, Theodore Roosevelt and others took up the cause, making the killing of bison a crime in 1894 and sending 15 bison from the Bronx Zoo to a reserve in Oklahoma.
Herds have since grown to include animals in every state, including some 51,000 animals managed by media mogul Ted Turner’s Turner Enterprises on two million acres in Nebraska, Kansas, Montana, New Mexico, South Dakota and Argentina.
Like the bald eagle, another creature brought back from the brink of extinction, the bison is assuming its rightful place as an important symbol of the American spirit.___
Lincoln Journal Star. April 27, 2016
Lead contamination still lingers.
The cleanup of soil contaminated with lead in the North Bottoms is taking a long time, but at least it’s progressing.
Property owners in the area should make sure they are in line for remediation paid for by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. This is a worthwhile and proper use of tax dollars; it will benefit the neighborhood and the community at large.
The contaminated area is near the former site of the Northwestern Metal Co., which ran a smelting operation from 1918 to 1961 near Memorial Stadium. Lead particles in the smoke billowing from the plant’s smokestacks dropped to the ground, accumulating over time to unsafe levels.
The plant moved to another location in the late 1960s and discontinued its smelting operation in 1972.
The danger left behind by what some call “ghost factories” was forgotten until environmental scientist William Eckel published an article about them in the American Journal of Public Health and the USA Today newspaper followed up in 2012.
That prompted the state Department of Environmental Quality to test soil in the area. Almost half the homes tested initially had lead levels higher than 400 parts per million, which has been deemed by experts to be an unacceptable health risk.
About 70 property owners were invited to an informational meeting in 2013, but so far only about 35 have agreed to let their soil be tested. Initially some property owners were suspicious that the testing was part of a plot to reduce property values so a developer could build new housing for students at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Hopefully those fears have been put to rest.
There’s no doubt that lead is dangerous if ingested. The science is clear and undisputed. It’s particularly dangerous to children, who tend to get dirty. Ingesting lead can decrease intelligence, cause behavior problems and slow growth.
Lead binds tightly to soil and can linger for decades.
Remediation will be done at no cost to property owners, according to Chris Whitley of EPA Region 7.
Usually about one to two feet of contaminated soil is excavated. Clean soil is brought in to replace it. The EPA will also put new sod down or hydro-seed the area.
The EPA occasionally is targeted by critics who claim that its activities are too intrusive or the embodiment of the “nanny state.”
The criticisms don’t apply to cleanup of lead-contaminated soil. The sooner the EPA and property owners get the lead out, the better.___
Kearney Hub . April 28, 2016
They swear their loyalty, seek better lives in U.S.
Almost 60 immigrants recited their oaths as U.S. citizens this afternoon at The Archway. These new citizens arrived in the United States from five continents, and almost all of them came seeking peace, safety and opportunity.
Today’s naturalization ceremony climaxed a years-long journey to legally become citizens. Having left their native countries, the immigrants then navigated the maze of hearings, appointments, documentation and expenses set out for them by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Today, they recited the “Pledge of Allegiance” for the first time as naturalized U.S. citizens, exhaled a collective sigh of relief, and declared, “I am a U.S. citizen!”
If that sounds cliché, it’s because thousands of immigrants repeat it each year. The joy they feel in achieving citizenship should remind Americans that our country is one of the world’s best places to build a new life. People who are oppressed, fearful and hopeless seek liberty, safety and opportunity in the United States.
To understand why so many people risk so much to come here, consider these recent headlines from a handful of the 25 nations represented at today’s ceremony:
- China: Workers face loss of their jobs as the global economy slows and Chinese factories close, move or restructure
- Somalia: A militant anti-government group claims responsibility for a suicide bomb that kills nine and wounds 10 people in a cafe
- Philippines: Peace efforts in the south are derailed and the odds of violence and renewed conflict in the city of Mindanao have increased
- Benin: Formerly known as the Slave Coast, the African nation’s economy is severely underdeveloped and corruption is rife
- Cuba: The flow of migrants out of the Communist nation has jumped 80 percent as U.S. President Obama seeks to normalize relations with the island
- El Salvador: The murder rate is 20 times higher than the U.S. Violent muggings, home invasions and extortion claim thousands of lives
We Americans might complain about problems in our country, but to people living where violence, suppression, torture, instability and poverty are the norm, the U.S. looks pretty good.
Today our great nation welcomes 60 new citizens. We should draw inspiration from their faith in the U.S. and work together as Americans to ensure we remain a beacon of hope.___
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