Gov. Dave Heinemen (R), however, seems to believe that the poor aren’t doing their part in his state. Despite saying his “highest priority” was “tax relief for Nebraska’s hard-working, middle class taxpayer,” Heinemen used his State of the State speech to unveil a tax proposal that would do next to nothing to help Nebraska’s poorest residents while providing sizable tax breaks to the rich, Citizens for Tax Justice found:

In his recent State of the State speech, Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman unveiled his three-pronged tax reduction proposal: income tax rate reductions and broadening of income tax brackets, a reduction in the corporate income tax rate, and complete elimination of the inheritance tax. [...]

Nebraska’s tax structure is already regressive and asks more of lower income families than better off families…The Governor’s proposal does nothing to reduce property taxes, does little to assist the lowest income Nebraskans, and would actually make this disparity worse.

As CTJ notes, Heinemen’s proposal wouldn’t replace the $40 million generated by the inheritance tax, just a year after his last budget eliminated state aid to local governments. In Omaha, the county board passed a resolution opposing Heinemen’s plan because it would “force” them to raise property taxes, thereby increasing the tax burden on lower- and middle-class Nebraskans.

Reducing the income tax rate, meanwhile, would have a similar effect, forcing the state to rely even more heavily on regressive property taxes instead of the more progressive income tax structure.

Nebraska Sen. Beau McCoy

Nebraska state Sen. Beau McCoy (NP) has introduced a bill (LB 912) that would prevent municipalities across the state from creating any nondiscrimination protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity:

MCCOY: It just merely says that if we’re going to change the protected classes … we need to come to the Capitol to do it so that it’s consistent across the state. If it’s the right thing to do, it ought to be the right thing to do border-to-border, not just in one city or municipality. Nebraskans want uniformity. If it’s discrimination in Omaha, why wouldn’t it be the same in Scottsbluff, Gering, Kearney, Grand Island, you name it?

McCoy’s duplicitous interest in “uniformity” ignores that his bill mirrors a Tennessee law passed last year that specifically targeted the LGBT community for discrimination. In fact, the anti-LGBT Family Action Council of Tennessee (FACT) scripted the debate on that bill by cloaking its biased impact with economic rhetoric. The law’s passage invalidated LGBT protections that had recently been passed in Nashville.

If McCoy truly wanted consistent nondiscrimination policies across the state of Nebraska, he would propose a bill that protected sexual orientation and gender identity for the entire state. That he’s seeking to prevent such protections demonstrates his commitment to making sure LGBT people’s identities are enough to disqualify them from employment. (HT: Aksarbent.)

But Inside Climate News reports that before a new route can be set, DEQ and TransCanada need a memorandum from the State Department that outlines the agency’s involvement in the process, which could slow the process while they wait on it:

TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard said the company conducted some aerial flyovers in early December, along with on-the-ground surveys on public roads. “[But] we’re not really in the full-blown field stage yet,” he said. “We have to have that memorandum of understanding … there’s just been too many surprises. We don’t want to look at potential routes if we don’t understand the process.”

DEQ spokesman Brian McManus said the State Department is working with the DEQ to draft the memorandum, but he does not know when it will be finalized. [...]

McManus said his agency will proceed with the reroute regardless of what happens in Washington, D.C.

“We’re just carrying out the role that was described to us by the Nebraska legislature,” he said. “We’ll deal with the federal [implications] in late February, depending on what decisions are made.”

Before Republicans attached the Keystone rider to the payroll tax cut, Obama had pushed back making a decision on the pipeline so that the State Department could consider alternate routes and other impacts. The pipeline would carry 830,000 gallons of heavy crude oil from the Canadian tar sands to the Gulf Coast, and despite lofty claims about the jobs the pipeline will create, the Keystone XL project is unlikely to be a job creator.

Nebraska rancher Randy Thompson, Keystone XL opponent.

However, Gingrich dismissed the will of the people of Nebraska, attacking President Obama for threatening a veto of the Republican Keystone XL poison pill in the payroll tax cut bill:

The president of the United States cannot figure out that it is — I’m using mild words here — utterly irrational to say, “I am going to veto a middle-class tax cut to protect left-wing environmental extremists in San Francisco,” so that we’re going to kill American jobs, weaken American energy, make us more vulnerable to the Iranians, and do it in a way that makes no sense to any normal rational American.

Watch it:

The farmers and ranchers of Nebraska who stood up to the foreign tar sands company TransCanada might not agree that their opposition to unlimited foreign oil greed means they aren’t a “normal rational American.”

In fact, it’s the decision to rush Keystone XL that Nebraskans think is “utterly irrational.” “We do not even have a new route out of the Sandhills yet, and they want to rush the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline,” said Bruce Boettcher, landowner and rancher in the Sandhills, in a statement to ThinkProgress Green. “It makes absolutely no sense.”

“Not only will this pipeline risk jobs of our farmers and ranchers, it is built as an export pipe sending tarsands to Latin America and Asia. If Newt wants a real education on this issue, we invite him to work just one day on a ranch in the Sandhills,” Nebraska activist Jane Kleeb tells ThinkProgress Green.

– Karl Singer

[T]he [Republican state central] committee approved a resolution that would deny party support to any Republican state senator who fails to support legislation returning Nebraska to a winner-take-all presidential electoral vote system.

An ancillary effect of that action, primarily designed to wipe out any Democratic opportunity to pick up the 2nd Congressional District electoral vote for the second presidential election in a row, could be depression of Democratic activity in the Omaha district to [Sen. Ben] Nelson’s disadvantage.

As a matter of electoral fairness, there is no reason why Nebraska should use a different system than any other state — and, indeed, it would undermine the legitimacy of a second Obama term if the only reason Obama won reelection was a bizarre quirk in one state’s law. Nevertheless, the timing of the Nebraska GOP’s decision to eliminate this quirk before a hotly contested election suggests that it has little to do with preserving the legitimacy of 2012′s winner and everything to do with manipulating the state’s law to the GOP’s advantage.

Moreover, the GOP’s plan to make a solid red state a winner-take-all state stands in stark contrast to their plan to force blue Pennsylvania to give away as many of a dozen of its electoral votes to whoever wins the Republican presidential primary. As Alexander Burns explains, “a voter could be forgiven for thinking lawmakers are trying to tinker with the rules of the 2012 race for purely partisan reasons.”

Stacy Thompson, a Minnesota-based consultant, working to create a pro-Keystone XL pipeline "grassroots" group in Nebraska

To counteract the broad opposition to the pipeline, oil lobbyists have paid special attention to Nebraska. As ThinkProgress reported, the American Petroleum Institute, an oil lobbying federation that counts many foreign oil companies as paying members, has set up fake citizens groups to support the pipeline (a version for Nebraska, called the “Nebraska Energy Forum,” can be found here). Now, the U.S. Chamber, a lobbying association funded by oil companies and other fossil fuel polluters, has announced its own astroturf effort in Nebraska:

LINCOLN — The U.S. Chamber’s Institute for 21st Century Energy and key Nebraska business leaders today launched the “Partnership to Fuel America,” (www.fuelingus.org) in Nebraska, a major new initiative designed to build a stronger foundation for the U.S. – Canadian energy relationship. [...]

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the world’s largest business federation representing the interests of more than 3 million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions, as well as state and local chambers and industry associations.

The press release for “Partnership to Fuel America” is filled with falsehoods. For one thing, the Chamber has already admitted that its claim of representing 3 million businesses is a lie. Second, the new group isn’t even managed from Lincoln, Nebraska. In fact, ThinkProgress has learned that the group is orchestrated by a Minnesota-based lobbying firm called Public Affairs Company. A call to the firm confirmed that Stacy Thompson, a Minneapolis-based Republican consultant, is really behind the Nebraska pipeline fake citizens group. Moreover, though the release claims the pipeline will help the local economy, a single spill could forever doom Nebraska’s agricultural industry by poisoning the water supply.

Backlash to the pipeline is growing every day. Conservative Gov. Dave Heineman (R-NE) even fired of a letter on Aug. 31 to administration officials broadcasting his opposition to the current plan. Reacting to a groundswell of opposition, Heineman, ordinarily no friend of the environmental movement, stated blunted: “I am opposed to the proposed route of this pipeline … 254 miles of the pipeline would come through Nebraska and be situated directly over the Ogallala Aquifer.” Gov. Peter Shumlin (D-VT) and former Vice President Al Gore have also spoken out against the pipeline. But when even a conservative Republican governor leans against the pipeline, it’s no wonder oil companies are working to make multiple political groups to give the appearance of public support for the project.

– 2000: 70 percent voted in favor of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, 30 percent opposed

– 2009 World-Herald Poll: 66 percent of Omahans favored legal recognition for gay couples — 34 percent supporting gay marriage, 32 percent favoring civil unions

– 2011 Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research poll: 51 percent opposed gay marriage, 42 percent favored it

It turns out that many of their worst fears have come true. The Lincoln Journal Star reports that preventing undocumented women from accessing prenatal care assistance has had “dramatic effects”:

The elimination one year ago of Medicaid funding for prenatal care for about 1,600 low-income women has had dramatic effects, doctors and health clinic administrators reported Wednesday. At least five babies have died. Women are traveling 155 miles to get prenatal care. Babies have been delivered at clinics, in ambulances and hospital emergency rooms. [...]

Andrea Skolkin, chief executive officer of One World Community Health Centers in Omaha, said that in the past year, only about half of uninsured women are receiving any prenatal care. The health center has more premature births to uninsured women, compared to insured women. Uninsured mothers were twice as likely to deliver through cesarean section, which is more expensive. [...] Four infants died in utero at the Columbus health center, she said. In the previous seven years, the clinic had never had an in utero death.

Nebraska state Sen. Kathy Campbell (R) has introduced a bill that would reinstate the prenatal care. “We need to be pro-life from cradle to grave, to err on the side of compassion and stay grounded in family values,” stated the Rev. Howard Dotson of Omaha’s Westminster Presbyterian Church who testified in support of the bill.

However, opposition to Campbell’s bill is largely ideological. “Our position is that we shouldn’t be spending any money for people who are here illegally,” stated Vivianne Chaumont, director of the state’s Medicaid division who testified in opposition to the bill. Dr. Caron Gray, from Creighton University Medical Center and clinics called Chaumont out, stating, “We can sit here and talk about costs as much as we would like, but I think we really need to be honest about what this is truly about … political beliefs and standing on what to do with immigration.”

Meanwhile, while Nebraska is forcing some women to watch their babies die due to lack of prenatal care assistance, another woman also had to experience the same “torture” because the state would not allow her to terminate her pregnancy even after doctors told her that her child would not live.

Very curious account of a Nebraska Tea Party:

Hundreds of Nebraskans chanted no taxation without representation in protest of increased government spending spawned by the stimulus bill at the state capitol Saturday

The tea party style protest is intended to mimic Revolutionary War era protests where citizens believed they were being unfairly taxed.

Here in Washington DC, your humble blogger and about 600,000 other people are living and paying taxes to a United States government that does not allow us to elect representatives to congress. Whether you think that’s fair or not, what we’re doing is paying taxes without representation. The 1.8 million Nebraskans are very much represented in congress. There’s Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, Rep. Lee Terry, and Rep. Adrian M. Smith in the House of Represenatives along with Senators Ben Nelson and Mike Johanns. Indeed, with a mere 0.6 percent of the nation’s population, Nebraska gets to elect fully 2 percent of the Senators. If anything, Nebraskans have taxation with overrepresentation.