NEBRASKA BLUE

Good ol Mikey…

Job Shopper…. who finishes little, and leaves other people to clean up his messes..

Here’s some things everyone would do well to remember about what Mike DOES and disregard what he says…

Nebraska Governor Mike Johanns, who the president has named to replace Venemen, has a troubling track record of taking the side of agribusiness over that of working farmers. To wit:

Johanns has been a wild-eyed advocate for free-trade initiatives, particularly the granting of permanent most-favored nation trading status to China. In less than a decade, as the free-trade agenda has been implemented, America’s traditional advantage in agricultural trade has dropped by 61.6 percent. “This is a man-made catastrophe, an economic disaster,” Nebraska Farmers Union President John Hansen says of the current free-trade regimen. “Through conscious policy we are outsourcing food production.”

Johanns was an aggressive supporter of the 2002 farm bill, which continued the misguided practice of directing substantial portions of U.S. farm-support spending into the treasuries of the largest agribusiness conglomerates and factory-farm operations. “This farm bill continues to tap taxpayers’ hard earned money to keep the farm economy limping along while the giant food processors and exporters reap cheap commodities to expand their control of the world’s food supply,” says George Naylor, president of the National Family Farm Coalition.

As governor, Johanns initiated what Nebraska farm advocates saw as an attempt to gut I-300, the state’s 23-year-old ban on corporations owning farmland or engaging in agricultural activity in the state. Johanns’s push for a review of I-300 drew harsh criticism from family-farm advocates last year. “There seems to be no useful purpose in modifying Initiative 300 unless the purpose is to subject Initiative 300 to legal attack,” argued Robert Broom, an attorney who successfully defended I-300 from constitutional challenge in federal trials. Under heavy pressure from rural voters, Nebraska legislators declined to give Johanns the authority to establish a task force that many expected to attack I-300.

http://www.alternet.org/election04/20698/?page=entire

When you look at the economy today, you can thank the folks just like Mike, that got us here.

Because when push comes to shove, Mike supports big business over Nebraska farm families
every time.

And giving this guy yet another stepping stone job to represent us in the US Senate is
not what this state needs right now.

UPDATE

One of many things I personnally remember about former Governor Johanns is that when my unit came home from our Deployment to Bosnia in Sept 1999, Senator Bob Kerrey and Congressman Doug Bereuter were standing at the bottom of the steps of the plane and they personally shook the hand of every soldier in the unit and welcomed them home. Many other local and State Dignitaries attended, but our Governor Mike Johanns? Well he sent an assistant to do the job for him.

Since 2001 I have been to many send off and welcome home events for Nebraska Army National Guard soldiers, to help see friends off, or welcome them home and at most of them Governor Johanns was a no show, (during his time as Governor) just like when I came home.