By Shelli Dawdy
In a very bizarre twist to end this week, I discovered that two seemingly unrelated areas of concern and interest have converged.
Immediately following the election, there were two announcements regarding Nebraska’s Senate seat currently held by Ben Nelson, whose term expires in 2012. Governor Heineman announced that he will not be running for the seat, but Attorney General Jon Bruning announced he has formed an exploratory committee. Feedback I have received to date regarding this very early announcement has not been positive. Preliminarily, the negative reactions are based on concerns that the candidate field on the Republican side is now limited to one. Limited government Nebraskans are growing weary of what they perceive as business as usual in this regard. They want choices and they want to make up their own minds.
While I urged initially, on basic principle that it is worthwhile to “shop around” for many people this was not at all necessary; the discontent has grown louder in the space of a week.
The second issue that has been a focus this week is the announcement by Lincoln Mayor Chris Beutler pertaining to a methane gas recapture project that included a bizarre promise of future earnings for the City from carbon credits. (Click here and here to read prior articles.) The whole subject leads to a closer look at the Mayor’s “Cleaner Greener Lincoln” initiative, which has several troubling aspects.
There is one aspect in particular where one finds that the two separate concerns of the week come together. A visit to the Cleaner Greener Lincoln initiative page on the City’s website reveals that there are two funding sources for Chris Beutler’s pet project – federal stimulus dollars (another subject all its own) and $50,000 from Attorney General Jon Bruning’s office.
Of course, this odd convergence just presents more questions…what is the State’s Attorney General doing giving that kind of money to a City project, particularly one of this kind? From where did the money originate and who authorized the expenditure?
The whole thing is rather inexplicable, not only in regards to the funds and how the decision was made. It is politically confusing as well. Just how limited government, Constitutional, and conservative can our Attorney General be if he is supporting this initiative?
This information has already begun circulating throughout Nebraska – before posting it here, I forwarded this image to friends in the Omaha area and people are surprised and upset and it is being forward out wider from them. I don’t think they are overreacting.
We’re doing our best to track down all of this information and we will report further here as we are able.
Click the link to visit the Cleaner Greener website, or anywhere on the image below.
A close up of the highlighted text:
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