| MAP | 2.7 | 2010/03/20 01:11:30 | 42.831 | -99.787 | 5.0 | NEBRASKA |
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| Location | 42.831°N, 99.787°W |
| Depth | 5 km (3.1 miles) set by location program |
| Region | NEBRASKA |
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(IRS Report) The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation
http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2008/476/032/2008-476032365-0504ffe4-F.pdf
Top Contributors Ben Nelson
Contributor Total ... Indivs ... PACs
Berkshire Hathaway $75,550 $63,050 $12,500
Level 3 Communications $66,750 $51,750 $15,000
Union Pacific Corp $65,950 $37,950 $28,000
Blue Cross/Blue Shield $64,523 $18,650 $45,873
AT&T Inc $49,750 $11,750 $38,000
Nebraska Beef $49,400 $49,400 $0
NelNet Inc $49,100 $34,100 $15,000
Mutual of Omaha $48,100 $26,100 $22,000
Citigroup Inc $45,450 $16,950 $28,500
Werner Enterprises $42,550 $23,550 $19,000
ConAgra Foods $37,700 $7,700 $30,000
Omaha Steaks $36,100 $36,100 $0
National Assn of Letter Carriers $36,000 $0 $36,000
Prudential Financial $35,500 $24,000 $11,500
Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance $35,450 $450 $35,000
Archer Daniels Midland $34,000 $2,000 $32,000
Deloitte & Touche $33,800 $12,800 $21,000
Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp $32,900 $9,900 $23,000
Liberty Mutual Insurance $32,500 $4,000 $28,500
Credit Union National Assn $31,390 $950 $30,440
Here are the e-mail addresses for the senate staff of Nebraska's Ben Nelson. He's the one selling out on the healthcare bill by getting the other states to pay for Nebraskans' exemption. Some of you might like to let the senator know how you feel.
<christiana_gallagher@bennelson.senate.gov>, <Dayle_Williamson@bennelson.senate.gov>, <JosephProcaccini@cox.net>, <Kate_Howard@bennelson.senate.gov>, <Melanie_Rogge@bennelson.senate.gov>,
<senator@bennelson.senate.gov>, <Tim_Becker@bennelson.senate.gov>
December 17, 2009
If you happened to slip the word "missile" into your Web search for details about Wednesday's earthquake near Auburn, perhaps you came upon a tale of an intercepted Russian cruise missile, trained on Offutt Air Force Base, that exploded in the Nebraska sky at roughly the same time the ground began to shake.
Perhaps you noticed the 742-word story at www.whatdoesitmean.com quoted a Nebraska State Patrol trooper, Jerry Chab, who reportedly saw a fireball in the sky -- a fireball also seen from Oklahoma to Missouri -- at, coincidentally, the same time as the earthquake.
"Other reports from Nebraska further confirm Officer Chab's description of the downing of this nuclear armed cruise missile with the United States Geological Service," the whatdoesitmean.com story reads.
So, is the story a hoax? A sliver of insight into a diabolical cover-up? A little of this and a little of that?
This much is certain: Chab is a real Nebraska trooper, said spokeswoman Deb Collins.
He's also an amateur astronomer with a night job that takes him into the countryside, Collins said.
At about 9 p.m. Wednesday -- the earthquake was reported at 8:53 p.m., centered just north-northwest of Auburn -- he was in his cruiser west of Table Rock at the intersection of Nebraska Highways 4 and 50.
As windows rattled about 30 miles north-northeast of him, Chab saw a spectacle in the sky.
Chab e-mailed his observations to spaceweather.com, said Tony Phillips, the site operator.
"It flashed for approximately two seconds and was followed by sonic booms and ground shaking, which prompted many calls by the public to law enforcement in a three-county wide area," Chab was quoted as saying.
"If the earthquake is confirmed, as it appears to be, I think we have the most cosmic of coincidences: a large fireball around the same time of an earthquake," Chab told spaceweather. "I'm simply amazed."
Chab had the day off Thursday and declined interviews through Collins.
But he talked to Collins to set the record straight -- including the fact he never mentioned anything about a cruise missile. (Neither did spaceweather.com.)
But some Web sites don't particularly care. The quotes were referenced in the whatdoesitmean.com story about missiles and particle beams.
And just like that, the minor earthquake near Auburn became something of a far greater, or at least far stranger, magnitude.
December 17, 2009The group of 20, all Republicans, today called for a hearing in a letter to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., and the committee's top Republican Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
The text of the letter states:
It has been reported that the Obama Administration threatened the closure of a U.S. military installation for political purposes, thereby bringing into question the integrity of the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process. The BRAC process was established to remove political influence so that the decision to close or not to close a military installation could be based upon military utility.Weekly Standard columnist Michael Goldfarb was among those raising the issue in a post in which he said: "According to a Senate aide, the White House is now threatening to put Nebraska's Offutt Air Force Base on the BRAC list if Nelson doesn't fall into line" on health-care reform.Specifically, various media reports have stated that the Obama Administration would put Offutt AFB in southeastern Nebraska on a future BRAC list because of a vote on healthcare reform. While we recognize the importance of Offutt AFB as the headquarters of U.S. Strategic Command and the approximately 10,000 individuals that work there, we feel that this installation should remain open or be closed on its own merits.
Therefore, we respectfully ask that a hearing be held as to whether the BRAC process has been compromised. We do not want to see the name of a base from our state on a BRAC list and think it has been put there to settle partisan scores. We also do not want our bases to be more vulnerable to closure because political arm-twisting has taken another installation off the table. National security not partisanship should determine how BRAC decisions are made.
Both the White House and Nelson are denying any such threat ever existed.
"This rumor is absolutely false, as the people spreading it well know," said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. "This is nothing but a cynical, crass political game that is designed to maintain the status quo. Let's be clear: the people spreading these falsehoods think nothing is wrong with a system under which families and businesses continue to bear the brunt of skyrocketing costs, insurance companies are allowed to discriminate and drop at will, and thousands of Americans lose their coverage every single day."
Despite the denials, some WND readers have expressed outrage if a threat were indeed made.
"It is time for some spines on the Hill to impeach Obama and charge him with treason," said reader Tom Bender.
"This is simply amazing that we the people are permitting this type of politics in our country," noted another, Mike Kovach. "Not that this hasn't been done before, but this administration is on a course to destroy our nation. I am beginning to wonder why there has not been calls of subversion, treason and sedition against this administration. I'm am a Democrat and I would like to see all of those in cohorts with this administration put in jail and charged accordingly."
The Republicans signing the letter were Sens. John Ensign of Nevada, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, John Thune of South Dakota, Jim Bunning of Kentucky, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker of Tennessee, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Kit Bond of Missouri, Michael Enzi of Wyoming, George LeMieux of Florida, Pat Roberts of Kansas, David Vitter of Louisiana, Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker of Mississipi, John Cornyn of Texas, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, Mike Johanns of Nebraska, Bob Bennett of Utah, Johnny Isakson of Georgia and Chuck Grassley of Iowa.
| MAG | UTC DATE-TIME y/m/d h:m:s | LAT deg | LON deg | DEPTH km | Region | |
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| MAP | 3.5 | 2009/12/17 02:53:42 | 40.410 | -95.853 | 5.0 | NEBRASKA |
| Magnitude | 3.5 |
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| Date-Time |
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| Location | 40.410°N, 95.853°W |
| Depth | 5 km (3.1 miles) set by location program |
| Region | NEBRASKA |
| Distances |
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| Location Uncertainty | horizontal +/- 11.3 km (7.0 miles); depth fixed by location program |
| Parameters | NST= 15, Nph= 15, Dmin=159.3 km, Rmss=1.39 sec, Gp=104°, M-type="Nuttli" surface wave magnitude (mbLg), Version=6 |
| Source |
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| Event ID | us2009qhaf |
The "all natural" promotion of the product means the cows get no hormone injections to boost their milk production and no antibiotics in their feed.
HALLAM, NEBRASKA - Dec 12, 2009 - The management at Prairieland Dairy feeds its 1,500 cows distillers' grain from the Adams ethanol plant, leftover cereal mix from US Foods in Lincoln and something called "spent brewers grain" from the microbrewery operation at Lazlo's Brewery and Grill.
They make compost for springtime gardeners and all-natural eggnog for Christmas. They use odorless, tasteless seaweed as the binding agent in their chocolate milk. The cows move back and forth through a tunnel under the road.
And if seemingly endless innovation goes according to plan, Prairieland is on its way to selling every drop of the 12,000 gallons of milk it produces a day near Firth into the Lincoln market.
"Right now we're focused on Lincoln," said marketing director Terry Landes. "And if we could be Lincoln's hometown dairy, we'd be fine."
In their first year of processing and direct marketing, sales already have reached 6,000 gallons a week.
"We go in every day with the attitude it's going to happen," Landes said of the longer-term goal.
This isn't the first time the dairy plant 14 miles away at Hallam has been a launching pad for big dreams.
In 2006, smaller dairy farmers and business partners Rex DeFrain of Fairbury and Jerry Bond of Avoca carved out some space in the dairy section in Lincoln stores from the same processing point, using glass bottles for eye appeal and flavors as exotic as root beer.
It all came apart in 2008, largely because of their inability to find other farmers willing to break ranks with the Dairy Farmers of America cooperative and sell milk to their Legacy Dairy to keep up with demand.
Prairieland, formed earlier from dairy farms at Firth, Beatrice and Falls City, acquired the plant from the bank a year ago.
"All the milk comes from our farm," Landes said. "That's our approach."
Rather than trying to pry producers out of the DFA hierarchy, they remain in the DFA supply line themselves and buy back part of their own milk for the Hallam plant.
"It's a bit of an insurance policy," Landes said of the continuing DFA association.
But so far, there's nothing to suggest that the boom phase at Prairieland is about to go bust.
"The last three months, we've doubled every month," Landes said.
The product selection, all sold under the Prairieland label, is built around white and chocolate milk, cream and half-and-half. And the stores on the delivery list include such familiar names as Russ's, Hy-Vee and Ideal.
The "all natural" promotion of the product means the cows get no hormone injections to boost their milk production and no antibiotics in their feed.
The local origin of the milk supply is also a big selling point.
A Prairieland brochure features a woman in 1950-style attire working on her milk mustache and seemingly pondering the question printed just above her: "Do you know where your milk comes from?"
For all their innovative zeal, Prairieland partners would like to take their customers back to the days when the answer to that question was a lot clearer.
The idea of local food is no longer just a fad, Landes said. "We're beyond the fad standard. It's a fad like the Internet is a fad."
http://www.journalstar.com/business/local/article_e7880564-e6be-11de-98a7-001cc4c03286.html
http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/30/cities-affordable-cheap-lifestyle-real-estate-housing-foreclosures_chart.html?partner=yahoore
NORTH PLATTE -- A heavy, wet snow is knocking down tree branches and knocking out power to some parts of southern Nebraska.
An outage was reported on Thursday morning in the southwest Nebraska towns of Maywood and Curtis in Frontier County. Linda Werkmeister with Curtis Light and Water says about 400 customers total in the two towns lost power about 5:30 a.m. She says it was restored a little after 9 a.m.
The Frontier County Sheriff says roads in the area are treacherous. To the north in Lincoln County, about 12 inches of snow were reported southwest of Brady.
Snowfall ranged from 2 to 4 inches in and around North Platte, with 7 inches reported south of town. A winter weather advisory remains posted for much of southwest and central Nebraska.
October 21, 2009 - Nebraska, meanwhile, continues to possesses one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country because of its diversified economy, said Catherine Lang, Nebraska's labor commissioner. North and South Dakota are the only states with lower unemployment.
"We have always been in a better position than many other states," Lang said. "We certainly have felt this economic downturn later and probably less severely than in some states that have been affected by a particular industry."
Lang said the number of job seekers seems to be decreasing in the state while some new jobs are being created. Education and health services companies added 1,147 jobs last month, but that was the only private sector with a net increase.
State figures show that Nebraska's estimated seasonally adjusted labor force in September was 981,626. Of them, 47,801 were listed as unemployed, which is 1,356 lower than August but still 13,611 higher than in September 2008.
The state says the only labor markets where the unemployment rate increased last month were Columbus and North Platte. The rate was flat in Grand Island and Lexington, and it fell everywhere else.
Omaha's estimated unemployment rate dipped to 4.8 percent in September from a revised 5 percent in August. The rate was 3.5 percent in September 2008.
For Lincoln, September's estimated unemployment rate fell to 4.2 percent from a revised 4.4 percent in August. A year ago, the unemployment rate was 3 percent.
Monday, October 19, 2009 6:00 pmAnother whistleblower's lawsuit filed against Nelnet accuses the Lincoln-based student loan company of conspiring with banking giants Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase to get as much money from federal student loan programs as they could by misleading borrowers and offering inducements that violated federal rules.
Nelnet spokesman Ben Kiser called the lawsuit frivolous.
"We take our role as a lender very seriously and are confident our business practices have complied with the (federal) Higher Education Act," said Kiser.
Originally filed in 2007, the lawsuit was unsealed last week in U.S. District Court in Omaha, after the federal government chose not to intervene on its own behalf in the case.
That means the filer, former Nelnet employee Rudy Vigil, is suing on his own to get triple damages as a whistleblower for himself and the government.
The lawsuit lists Vigil as living in Colorado, but he could not be located. His lawyer, Tim Matusheski, could not be reached at a Mississippi phone number. And another lawyer of record, Scott Peters in Council Bluffs, Iowa, also couldn't be reached.
The lawsuit doesn't estimate damages in one sum, but they are presumed to be more than $1 billion.
This lawsuit is similar to one filed two years ago in Maryland by former U.S. Department of Education researcher Jon Oberg, and unsealed earlier this year, but it attacks Nelnet in a different way and accuses two of the world's biggest financial institutions - with vastly deeper pockets - of joining Nelnet in what the suit describes as illegal activities.
A JPMorgan Chase spokeswoman and a Citigroup spokesman had no comment on the litigation.
Both lawsuits are filed under the federal False Claims Act, which allows whistleblowers to seek recovery for the government and themselves from companies accused of defrauding the government.
Vigil's lawsuit says Nelnet, acting on behalf of Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, applied for federal interest-rate subsidies, student-loan default claims and "special allowance payments" for those lenders.
By doing so, the lawsuit says, the three businesses violated federal law by falsely representing that Nelnet had not offered illegal inducements to encourage people to apply for loans, or by advertising falsely.
In 2005, the lawsuit says, Nelnet, JPMorgan and Citigroup entered a credit agreement providing $500 million to Nelnet from a consortium of big banks, $120 million from JPMorgan and Citigroup.
"This war chest of credit promised by JPMorgan and Citigroup to Nelnet was created ... to pay for Nelnet's liabilities arising from its non-compliance with laws, regulations and orders of any court or administrative agency that were present upon entry of the credit agreement," the lawsuit says.
So Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, as JP Morgan's successor, are liable for its agent Nelnet's false claims, according to the lawsuit's rationale, because Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase ratified or authorized illegal acts by Nelnet.
Lenders like those big banks used companies like Nelnet to make claims, the lawsuit said, so they could conceal their identity as the lender or to take advantage of Nelnet's exceptional status with the Department of Education.
"There was a single plan for Nelnet, JP Morgan and Citigroup to obtain payment of U.S. money by presenting as many (Federal Family Educational Loan Program) claims as possible," the lawsuit said.
Oberg's suit seeks the return of about $1 billion in the "special allowance payments" wrongfully obtained under a federal subsidy program by Nelnet and by other student loan companies, also named in Oberg's suit.
The allowance payments guaranteed a 9.5 percent return on a limited class of student loans. It was created in the 1980s to ensure low-cost loans when the economy was souring and interest rates were high.
It was largely phased out in 1993, but companies found a loophole that allowed them to expand the loans receiving the subsidy by recycling older loans and packaging them with newer ones.
Nelnet acknowledged using the loophole, and the department's inspector general recommended the company repay the federal government $278 million.
Instead, Nelnet and the Education Department reached a settlement in January 2007 that allowed the lender to keep the $278 million. Nelnet agreed to stop using the subsidy, giving up as much as $882 million in future profits.
Nelnet's response to the Oberg lawsuit was that the matter was settled with the federal government so the lawsuit is moot.
Vigil's lawsuit aims more at Nelnet's relationship with borrowers and colleges and at the pockets of Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase.
It says Nelnet directed Vigil and other employees to mislead borrowers.
Identified in the lawsuit as a full-time telemarketer for Nelnet from 2003 through 2004, Vigil's job was to encourage students to consolidate their student loans for Nelnet.
According to the lawsuit, loan advisers like Vigil were instructed to mislead potential customers into thinking consolidations could be done only in the first six months after graduation.
Nelnet's Web site also misled consumers into thinking they could save thousands of dollars in payments by consolidating with Nelnet, the lawsuit said.
"Individuals who consolidate their student loans with Nelnet, however, end up paying more interest over the life of their loans and make payments for longer periods of time," the lawsuit said.
Nelnet also made fraudulent and misleading statements on its Web site by telling consumers consolidating with Nelnet entitled them to a six-month payment forbearance, the suit alleges.
It also claims Nelnet offered illegal inducements through its marketing relationships with schools and college alumni associations.
Nelnet said it ended those associations in 2007.
"The institutions received prohibited inducements and incentives in return for steering students to Nelnet's exit-counseling software and website, because Nelnet, on its website, undertakes, free of charge to the institution, the instituiton's regulatory duty to conduct exit counseling," the lawsuit said.
Vigil and his lawyers seek three times actual damages, unestimated by the lawsuit, plus thousands of dollars for each example of a false claim, plus attorneys' fees.
Nelnet had about 800 people working in Lincoln as of June.
The company remains one of four chosen by the Obama administration to service student loans the president hopes will be made entirely through the government, and not by private companies like Nelnet, pending changes in law.
Reach Richard Piersol at 473-7241 or at dpiersol@journalstar.com.
Record Cold temps in Idaho threaten potato crops...Yankton Daily Press - 9 hours agoThe National Weather Service said snowfall of up to 5 inches was possible late Sunday and early today throughout the region, with the chances for the ..
Chicago Tribune - 1 hour agoThe National Weather Service reports record cold high temperatures were set in four cities on Sunday. Des Moines reached only 41 degrees, breaking the ...
Billings Gazette - 1 hour agoArctic temperatures are on an unusual record-breaking run in southern Montana and northern Wyoming that is making this the coldest start for October ever. ...
Daily Inter Lake - 7 hours agoThe 6-degree reading at 7:10 am Sunday obliterated a 22-year-old record. Before that, the coldest Oct. 11 temperature recorded here was 20 degrees in 1987. ...Western MT cold breaks records Montana's News Station
Published Saturday October 10, 2009
DES MOINES (AP) — Bin-busting harvests of corn and soybeans may do little to help farmers already struggling with low prices and high production costs, a farm economist said Friday after the latest crop projections were released.
The Washington-based National Agricultural Statistics Service is forecasting the second-largest corn harvest on record and a record soybean harvest.
Neither comes as a surprise, because more acres were planted this year, and earlier forecasts also had predicted a strong crop, said Lance Honig, chief of the crops branch of the National Agricultural Statistics Service, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Corn production is estimated at 13 billion bushels, up 8 percent from 2008. If that holds true, it will be second only to 2007, when 13.04 billion bushels were harvested.
Gary Schnitkey, a farm economist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said record production usually results in farmers getting lower prices for their crops.
“This year, we’re actually looking at pretty low incomes for farmers — not only with the fall of commodity prices, which began last year at this time, but at the same time the costs farmers have had to pay have been high, particularly fertilizer,” Schniktey said.
But the prospect of lower corn prices shouldn’t send consumers scurrying to the store in hopes of getting a break on their box of corn flakes, Schnitkey said.
“For the consumer, it doesn’t mean a lot,” he said. “A lot of agricultural products, the amount in a certain product is very small.
“It’s a big deal to producers, but by the time it reaches the end consumer, it has less of an impact.”
The beneficiaries of a giant crop are usually food processors and grain elevators, “because they’re running more product through,” he said.
He also said consumers overseas benefit, because other countries can import U.S. grain for a lower price.
Yields per acre are forecast to average a record 164.2 bushels this year, up more than 10 bushels from 2008.
Corn is grown in nearly every state, but the top five producers are, in order: Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Minnesota and Indiana.
A record harvest of 3.25 billion bushels is forecast for soybeans, up 10 percent from 2008.
Yields are expected to average 42.4 bushels per acre, the third-highest on record. The top corn states are also the biggest producers of soybeans.
Farmers say the challenge now is to bring the record crop in from fields drenched by rain, delaying the harvest.
TOKYO — Japan has suspended beef shipments from an American meat-packing plant after finding cattle parts banned under an agreement to prevent the spread of mad cow disease, the agriculture ministry said Saturday.
Japanese quarantine inspectors found bovine spinal columns in one of 732 boxes sent by Tyson Fresh Meats, Inc., which arrived in Japan last month, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said in a statement. The box contained 35 pounds (16 kilograms) of chilled short loin with spinal bones.
The suspension only affects Tyson's factory in Nebraska, one of 46 meat-packing plants approved to export beef to Japan.
The Japanese ministry also asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate how the box containing the banned parts ended up in Japan.
Japan banned all U.S. beef imports in 2003 after the first case of mad cow disease was discovered in the United States. Japan resumed buying American beef in 2006 after a bilateral trade agreement setting new safety standards.
Mad cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is a degenerative nerve disease in cattle. In humans, eating meat products contaminated with the illness is linked to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare and fatal malady.
Under the bilateral trade agreement, U.S. exporters must remove spinal columns, brain tissue and other parts considered linked to the mad cow disease. U.S. beef shipments to Japan must also come only from cattle age 20 months or younger, which are believed to pose less of a risk.
Washington has repeatedly criticized Japan for its tough import restrictions, which authorities say have no scientific basis.
U.S. officials have urged Japan to allow imports of beef from cattle aged up to 30 months, a widely used safety standard elsewhere.
