Here is a friendly reminder that Omaha Green Drinks will be taking place this upcoming Wednesday, May 24, at 5:30 p.m. at Whole Foods Market, 10020 Regency Pkwy, Omaha.
Carpool, cycle, walk, or ride the bus! This is a great way to network, inspire, share ideas, and catch up with other “Green” people!
From the Green Party U.S.:
The Green Party supports single-payer universal health care and preventive care for all. We believe that health care is a right, not a privilege.
Our current health care system lets tens of thousands of people die each year by excluding them from adequate care, while its exorbitant costs are crippling our economy. The United States is the only industrialized nation in the world without a national health care system.
Under a universal, comprehensive, national single-payer health care system, the administrative waste of private insurance corporations would be redirected to patient care. If the United States were to shift to a system of universal coverage and a single payer plan, as in Canada and many European countries, the savings in administrative costs would be more than enough to offset the cost of additional care. Expenses for businesses currently providing coverage would be reduced, while state and local governments would pay less because they would receive reimbursement for services provided to the previously uninsured, and because public programs would cease to be the “dumping ground” for high-risk patients and those rejected by health maintenance organizations (HMOs) when they become disabled and unemployed. In addition, people would gain the peace of mind in knowing that they have health care they need. No longer would people have to worry about the prospect of financial ruin if they become seriously ill, are laid off their jobs, or are injured in an accident.
From BOLD Nebraska:
The Nebraska Public Service Commission has not yet announced any additional public meetings on the Keystone XL pipeline route other than Wednesday, May 3, in York at the Holthus Convention Center. So this is your next opportunity to make your voice heard on KXL. Speakers are limited to five minutes; first-come, first-serve.
(The formal intervenor hearings Aug. 7-11 in Lincoln are also expected to include an opportunity for public testimony, at the end of the week).
From the Lincoln Journal Star:
More than 200 protesters gathered Saturday morning to voice their concerns about climate change and its lack of acceptance by the public and elected officials.
Participants marched from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Student Union to the State Capitol before gathering at The Bourbon Theatre. The event was one of more than 300 satellite marches across the globe.
John Atkeison, the lead organizer of the Lincoln march, said the protest was meant to get the attention of more than just elected officials.
“The main motivating force for dealing with change is at the grass roots,” he said. “The politicians that are in power now don’t address the problem. They’ve been doing little or nothing about it.”
From Open Sky Policy Institute:
LB 461, the tax-cut package put forth by the Revenue Committee, is first and foremost an income tax cut for wealthy Nebraskans and the proposal does little to truly address property tax relief. In fact, LB 461 is fundamentally flawed in a way that makes it more likely to exacerbate, not help, Nebraska’s reliance on property taxes to fund K-12 education. Furthermore, some Nebraskans would actually pay more in overall taxes under LB 461.
From the Omaha World-Herald:
Frank LaMere finally got the decision he’s been waiting for.
For two decades, he’s called for an end to alcohol sales in Whiteclay, Nebraska, due to the dreadful consequences.
On Wednesday, a state liquor board voted 3-0 to end the long-controversial beer sales in Whiteclay, an unincorporated village known as the “Skid Row of the Plains” that sells millions of cans of beer each year to residents of the officially dry Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
“I think today that the Oglala Lakota people won. I think Nebraskans won. We’ll be better for it in this state,” said LaMere, a Native American activist from South Sioux City.
Tax March: Demanding the release of President Trump’s tax returns.
Lincoln Tax March
Omaha Tax March
March for Science: Supporting the scientific method and evidence-based policies.
March for Science – Lincoln
March for Science – Omaha
March for Science, Climate, and Social Justice – Hastings
People’s Climate March: Standing up for the climate, for jobs, and for justice.
People’s Climate March, Lincoln
People’s Climate March, Omaha
2016 Green Party Vice Presidential Candidate Ajamu Baraka has accepted our invitation to speak at the Omaha event, starting at noon. The march will start at 2 p.m.
From 350.org:
In Nebraska, there is still no permitted route for Keystone. Eighty-five landowners are refusing to give up their land to make way for the pipeline, and thousands more people are rallying to deny TransCanada their Nebraska permit for Keystone XL. They’re asking pipeline fighters from across the United States to support these efforts by submitting comments to Nebraska’s Public Service Commission urging them to include climate in their assessment and oppose the permit.
If built, this pipeline would poison our climate, air, water, land and communities, and violate Indigenous rights. Take action now to urge the Nebraska Public Service Commission to consider climate in their assessment of whether Keystone XL is in the public interest and to deny the permit for the project.
From the Columbus Telegram:
National environmental groups and the company seeking to build the Keystone XL pipeline fired separate legal volleys Thursday over the contentious project.
Environmental groups — including one that got its start in Nebraska — made good on a promise to file a lawsuit seeking to reverse President Donald Trump’s green-lighting of the Keystone XL project.
Meanwhile, TransCanada filed a motion with the Nebraska Public Service Commission urging it to reject 56 people and groups seeking intervener status in the review of the Keystone XL route through the Cornhusker state, including the Nebraska Ponca and Yankton Sioux tribes and environmental and public-health advocacy groups.
More than 100 people and organizations, including more than 90 landowners and three labor unions, have petitioned to intervene, which would allow them to file legal briefs, cross-examine witnesses and present formal arguments to the PSC alongside TransCanada’s attorneys.
From the Lincoln Journal Star:
Nebraska corn farmer Art Tanderup was just about to head to his workshop Friday morning to overhaul his 30-year-old field sprayer in preparation for spring planting when his phone rang.
President Donald Trump had granted a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, the voice on the line said.
Pipeline manufacturer TransCanada wants to plant a half-mile of the crude-oil pipe across a field where Tanderup and wife Helen have planted red, blue, white and speckled corn sacred to the Ponca Tribe, part of their ongoing protest of the project.
While Tanderup knew it was coming, Trump’s official reversal of former President Barack Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL struck a sour note.
“We’re quite disappointed,” Tanderup said. “Now we’re looking what we can do to stop it, and obviously that is through the Nebraska Public Service Commission.”