Something enormous is about to happen.

It just might signal the end of the long-running conflict between Kansas and Nebraska over water in the Republican River.

Four natural resource districts in southwest Nebraska plan to buy the 19,400-acre Lincoln Farm south of North Platte, which has 15,000 acres of irrigated farmland.

Then they’ll convert the acres that had been irrigated with center pivots back to un-irrigated ranchland. They’ll keep the irrigation wells in place, however, and connect them to pipelines to tributaries of the Republican River.

Then, in years when Mother Nature does not supply enough rain to meet the needs of Nebraska irrigators and the state’s agreement with Kansas, the districts will turn on the pumps and pour water into the Republican River.

The concept is similar to an earlier $12 million-$15 million project nearing construction in Dundy County in which 3,000 acres of irrigated farmland was converted to dryland. The irrigation wells on the land now stand ready to pump as much as 10,000 acre-feet into the Republican River during a dry year.

The newly announced plan to purchase Lincoln farm has the potential to supply as much as 45,000 acre-feet of water during a dry year, according to Nate Jenkins, spokesman for the Upper Republican Natural Resource District in Imperial

The largest shortfall in the amount of water that Nebraska has agreed to leave in the river was about 40,000 acre feet, Jenkins said.

The other three natural resource districts involved are the Middle Republican at Curtis, the Lower Republican at Alma and the Twin Platte at North Platte. The district’s plan to purchase the land with a 20-year bond that will be repaid by an occupation tax on irrigated land.

If successful, the plan means that other irrigators in the affected basins no longer will have to worry about losing their livelihood.

The success of the solution, obviously, depends on rainfall amounts and stream flows staying at historical levels. If climate change leads to a reduction in Nebraska, the plan could be inadequate.

But on the basis of historical conditions, the plan looks like a major step toward Nebraska’s goal of equalizing usage with natural replenishment.

The districts took on the mammoth project on short notice when the Lincoln Farm came on the market. The districts should be applauded for acting quickly, digging into their own pockets to solve the problem and, especially, thinking big.

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Kearney Hub. Oct. 28, 2012.

Women’s vote could decide who wins Nov. 6

Contraception, health care and equal pay are issues that usually resonate among female voters, but will they be as important as unemployment and the economy when U.S. women cast their votes for president on Nov. 6?

That’s the big question as Democrats and Republicans place their final bets heading into the home stretch of what appears to be a neck-and-neck race for the White House.

Whether Barack Obama wins will hinge on his ability to outpoll Mitt Romney by a double-digit margin among women because Romney is solidly favored among male voters.

History shows how important the female vote has been. Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1996 with a 16-point advantage among female voters. Obama’s lead four years ago was 13 points.

Democrats who did not fare as well with women were clobbered. Al Gore lost in 2000 with a margin of 11 points, and John Kerry lost four years later when he managed only a 3-point edge.

Throughout the 2012 campaign, Republicans have placed their hopes for unseating Obama on the economy. High unemployment, inflation and a drop in income among middle-class Americans are powerful reasons to consider a change in the White House.

Republicans believe women might be less prone to vote for the candidate who seems more in tune with their issues because those issues don’t seem as important if you can’t find work. That fact hits home more in modern America, where more and more women are the primary breadwinners in their homes.

Banking on economic issues might not be enough for Republicans, however. The GOP has been set back, as a whole, because two candidates have made ignorant comments about rape. Those gaffes certainly leave at least some women believing that, when it comes to contraception, health care, equal pay and other issues of importance to female voters, Republicans just don’t get it.

Despite such setbacks, Romney has overcome the general negative image that followed him into the presidential debates. Women now look upon the top Republican candidate more favorably and are listening to his message about the struggling economy.

Obama is countering by mentioning female relatives at every chance. He’s reminding voters about his mother’s battles with insurance companies and his dream of unlimited opportunities for his daughters.

The result of these vigorous efforts to court female voters? We won’t know until Election Day. Pollsters tell us the presidential race is extremely close.

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McCook Daily Gazette. Oct. 26, 2012.

With tight election looming, no shortage of reminders every vote counts

Freeman Clark was on his deathbed.

We don’t know for sure what his ailment was, but the year was 1844, and it could have been any number of things.

Perhaps even Freeman wasn’t sure just how sick he was, but he knew one thing for sure, he had to get to the county seat of Switzerland County, Indiana, to vote for his friend, David Kelso, for state senator.

You see, Freeman Clark owed his life to Kelso, who had defended him in a murder trial years before, winning an acquittal.

So Freeman begged his sons to carry him to the county seat so he could cast his vote. His insistence finally cost him his life, as he died on his way back home, but Kelso won the election — by one vote.

When Kelso got to the Indiana statehouse, he found himself in the Democratic majority of one, controlling the Indiana senate.

He couldn’t agree with his party, however, which was planning to nominate for U.S. Senate — it was state senators’ job in those days — a man who promised to vote against the annexation of Texas if elected to the U.S. Senate.

Kelso refused to vote for the party’s choice, however, and threatened to vote with the Whigs if the Democratic Party didn’t vote for the alternative candidate he proposed, Edward A. Hannigan.

The Democrats caved in, electing Hannigan by one vote — Kelso’s.

The next year, Texas was admitted to the union as a state by one vote — that of Edward A. Hannigan of Indiana.

Thus, Texas owed its statehood to one ailing Indiana man.

Of course, those are only a few examples of instances where one vote changed the course of history.

A few notable others:

— On Nov. 8, 1923, members of a newly formed political party elected, by one vote, an ex-soldier named Adolf Hitler to become the Nazi Party leader.

— In 1941, the Selective Service Act (draft) was saved by a one-vote margin, just weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

— In 1948, if Thomas E. Dewey had gotten one vote more in each Ohio and California precinct, the election would have been thrown into the U.S. House of Representatives, where Dewey had more support than his opponent, incumbent Harry Truman. As Dewey was expected to win by a landslide, many Republicans stayed home and Truman was sent back to the White House with 51.5 percent of the electorate vote.

— In 1960, if just one vote per precinct in Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey and Texas would have changed, Richard Nixon would have been elected president instead of John F. Kennedy.

In more recent terms, most of us remember that the Affordable Care Act — more commonly called Obamacare, even by the president himself — passed in the U.S. Senate by one vote, attributed to Sen. Ben Nelson of McCook.

With most national polls showing President Obama and Mitt Romney in a dead heat, now is not the time for voters to sit out the election. Let’s hope the election turns out to be a decisive decision for whomever wins, giving him a mandate and setting the course of the nation for the coming years.

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The Grand Island Independent. Oct. 25, 2012.

The nation needs those who can reach consensus

In less than two weeks the elections will be over, and those sent to the United States Senate and House of Representatives will breathe a collective sigh of relief. and read of yet another poll describing the public’s disgust with the performance of our national legislature. The negative polls are the result of Congress’s failure to effectively address major problems facing the nation.

Economic policies, tax reform, entitlements, medical care, social security, immigration. the list of unresolved matters seems to stretch on and on. All have important structural issues that must be addressed. Those who represent us acknowledge the seriousness of the situation, but year after year they fail to come to any conclusions.

There are many obstacles to agreement. Representatives have different views about how the federal government should deal with each issue, and the sheer magnitude of these challenges makes them extraordinarily difficult to work out. Emotions often outweigh reason. Still, a very necessary ingredient for reaching agreement among competing opinions has been missing in recent years: the willingness to compromise.

For many in Congress, the ability to reach consensus has become a lost art. They won the support of narrow groups of constituents by making promises such as “I’ll never vote for higher taxes,” or “I’ll always support your special interest.” They haven’t left themselves any room to negotiate, which should be the primary reason why we sent them to Washington in the first place.

It hasn’t always been this way. The presidencies of Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Regan and Bill Clinton were marked by numerous examples of both parties working to arrive at consensus. Neither side abandoned fundamental principles, but both sought areas of common agreement. They understood there were instances in which it was impossible to get 100% of what was desired, so they compromised for the good of the nation.

The public understands this, and it is the reason why so many people are dissatisfied with the current Congress. While holding to deep-seated principles, ordinary people know that compromise is essential for a well-ordered society. They do this in their families, in the workplace, and at play.

When national matters are at stake, pressures are high and compromise is difficult. On November 6, we hope voters will send to Congress men and women who are up to the task.