Stories from Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Do you realize that the new health care law is projected to actually reduce the budget deficit? It's true. It will reduce the deficit not by reducing benefits but by reducing the growth in Medicare spending by doing such things as cutting overpayments to Medicare Advantage...

As our country works hard to pull itself out of a recession, Washington should be focused on policies that support economic growth and job creation. Yet at this crucial moment, small businesses are growing increasingly agitated over a tax filing requirement in the new health care law that will actually inhibit job growth and bury businesses in a new mound of paperwork. ...

May 15, 1928-Aug. 1, 2010 WAUNETA, Nebraska -- William Keith Kerchal, 82, died Sunday (Aug. 1, 2010) at the Heritage of Wauneta Nursing Home after a lingering illness. He was born May 15, 1928, to Joseph I. Kerchal and Olga C. (Vlasin) Kerchal on the family farm 13 miles north of Wauneta. Je received his early education at the "brick school" north of his home, and graduated from Wauneta High School in 1945...

Comments presented to McCook City Council by Jerie Quinty, Aug. 3, 2010. City Manager, Mayor and City Council Members: On behalf of Tea Party Patriots SWNEB, I come before this body to give observations of and objections against the Preliminary Budget Proposal for 2010-11...

McCOOK, Nebraska -- Two of the three male offenders who walked away from the Nebraska Department of Corrections Work Ethic Camp in McCook Dec. 31, 2009, should have left their socks on. Three days after the McCook Police Department received a Jan. 1, 2010, call to Centennial Pork on U.S. Highway 83 for a reported burglary of the business, officers received reports that employees had discovered a cache in the cedar trees north of the building...

McCOOK, Nebraska -- Red Willow County, Nebraska, commissioners have received confirmation that the county's "McCook West" paving project will be a normal federal aid project -- the county will be responsible for 20 percent of construction costs -- and not a 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act federal stimulus project...

CURTIS, Nebraska -- The Middle Republican Natural Resources District board of directors split the vote 6-5 narrowly approving "option 3" of a new integrated management plan during its monthly meeting at Curtis, Monday evening. The IMP, developed by the state with the assistance of the board, had strong support both for and against...

McCOOK, Nebraska -- The second of two dogs involved in a vicious attackon an elderly McCook man was walking near the fairgrounds in May has been ordered destroyed. 29-year-old Jennifer S. Kallsen of McCook, owner of the Rottweiler, was subsequently found guilty of Vicious Dog at Large and fined $500 by Judge Anne Paine...

McCOOK, Nebraska -- The City Council acknowledged a proposed 4.5 percent city-wide wage increase was the result of an "accounting error" and debated what the wage increase actually should be during Monday's semi-monthly meeting at Memorial Auditorium...

Mother Nature's providing plenty of free fish bait -- millions and millions of young crickets were clinging to exterior walls of McCook, Nebraska, businesses and homes this morning. Exterminator Dennis McFarland of McCook said he's been noticing an increase in crickets for the past couple weeks, and he blames it on a combination of moisture and heat. ...

Adam Wolford of McCook, Nebraska, drives his Percheron mare "Ellen" around the show ring during the cart division of the Red Willow County fair draft horse show Sunday afternoon. Also competing in the cart class were Paul and Pat Schaffert of Indianola, Nebraska. A parade of horse-drawn implements, carts and wagons preceded the horse show and friendly competition of moving and stacking bales of hay and hauling water...

We should still be able to fix our own car or take it to our local mechanic.

Martha Lunken is an active member of the Federal Aviation Administration, a part of the United States Department of Transportation. The FAA is charged with regulating and encouraging civil aviation in the United States. Martha gives checkrides in the DC-3. She also writes with dry humor and elan a monthly column in Flying magazine. Her latest "DC-3, A Real Man's Airplane."...

More than 50 runners and walkers helped support the McCook High School cross-country teams in the 2010 New Balance McCook Bison 5K Challenge. The 5K race was held Saturday, July 31, on city streets near the Red Willow County Fairgrounds in the northwest part of McCook. The event was held in conjunction with the 2010 Red Willow County Fair and sponsored by Brown Shoe Fit Co. in downtown McCook...