Governor Ricketts has been engaging in more and more outrageous behavior lately – declaring Nebraska a 2A Sanctuary State while refusing to give sanctuary to migrant children, making a big deal about appearing on Ben Shapiro’s show to talk about guns, claiming weed will make you kill your kids, and so on and so forth. The reason he is doing this is because he wants to distract from his many failures as a Governor. We decided to list some of those many, many failures just so people know what we should be talking about instead of Pete’s distractions.
1.Mead
First up is the environmental disaster in Mead caused by AltEn and the failure of any Nebraska agency to regulate the poison they know AltEn has been sitting on for years. Millions of bees have been killed by this poison; the residents of Mead (and their animals) are suffering ill health; the cattle on the feedlot that is located on the same land as the AltEn poison factory are grazing on the poisoned land and drinking the poison water and yet are still being slaughtered and sold for human consumption. Worst of all, the drinking water for 60 million people is sitting in the two aquifers right under all this poison. This is Nebraska’s Flint, and nobody at the state is raising a finger to do anything about it. Watch this heartbreaking video to get the Indigenous insight on this disaster that has poisoned their sacred lands.
2. St. Francis
Next up is the scam artists at St Francis Ministries who spent $80,000 on Cubs tickets while claiming they had no money to take care of the kids because WHOOPSIES, they “accidentally” underbid the contract by $147 million. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together should have known this was an obvious scam, or worse. (Why anyone trusts religious institutions to take care of kids when the whole religion thing is basically a huge pedophile/extortion ring is beyond me, but I digress). When Senator Machaela Cavanaugh proposed a committee to look into this fuckery, the committee was approved but Senator Cavanaugh was refused a seat on the committee. Instead, at least one Senator who voted against the committee was granted a seat. Four of the Senators who were placed on the committee received money from Ricketts. His desperation in this case is particularly thick, so I’m sure the details are even more sordid than we suspect.
3. “Accounting Errors” the Size of Nebraska’s Entire Agricultural Production
Next up we have Pete’s Golden Boy Jason Jackson, who, in one of the many roles he was appointed to by Ricketts, made $21 billion worth of accounting errors that were discovered after a *partial* audit, so it was certainly actually much more. Has anyone even heard a peep about this since it was first reported on back in December? The news didn’t even bother to point out that it was Jason Jackson who was in charge of these many errors as Director of Administrative Services. Meanwhile earlier this week, Sarpy County Treasurer Brian Zuger was ousted from office after a measly $12 million in errors. What gives?
4. Civil Liberties Failure
Pete has also refused access to his pressers to the reporters at NOISE, which reports to and from the Black communities in North Omaha, claiming they are not “real press” and saying he won’t allow anyone with an “agenda” in the room, which is hilarious coming from a guy who will go on FOX at the drop of a hat and who sat down to talk with Ben Shapiro FFS. This denial of access caused even the OWH and LJS to write a joint editorial calling the move “crass politics contrary to the First Amendment”.
5. Police Accountability Failure
Another area where oversight is lacking is, of course, with the police. Per the Firearms in Nebraska 2020 Report put together by Melody Vaccaro of Nebraskans Against Gun Violence: “Under Nebraska State Statue 42-930, law enforcement agencies have been required to submit domestic violence reports to the Nebraska Crime Commission every month for over 20 years. However, between 2016-2019, 52 law enforcement agencies, including the Omaha Police Department, are in violation of state law for failure to report domestic violence data. 15 agencies did not provide data for all 12 months.” You can access the full report here.
Of course we also have the prison crisis, his disastrous handling of the pandemic, his blatant racism, misogyny, and inability to give a fuck about anyone but himself, and countless other reasons he should have been run out of the state years ago. Next time he does something ridiculous like require every Nebraskan to eat two ounces of beef at every meal or make Nebraska a Bald Sanctuary State or outlaw high school dances or whatever, just remember what he is trying to distract you from.
