During the bulk of my military career, the holiday season and summer vacation breaks would find my late first wife and our kids hopping in the car and driving back to Michigan, where both sets of grandparents lived. Not surprisingly, most of those trips took us across the width of Nebraska, a state that to many might be the ultimate flyover state. But I will argue if you keep your eyes open and your mind curious, Nebraska has a remarkable set of things to see and to learn about. Sadly, one recent addition to the Nebraska narrative is heartlessness, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

My regular reader (Hi, Jeff!) will recall I am a great fan of the Out West Roundup section of Colorado Politics. In that section, you will find news and updates on western states you likely wouldn’t see anywhere else. For example, the current edition notes that in Wyoming, where I spent five years at the beginning of my Air Force career, a citizen-led effort to cut property taxes by half failed to get the required number of voter signatures submitted by the deadline for such petitions. Note there was no plan on what half of governance would be cut, only that the proposed law would just slash of property taxes by half. That is a type of “feel good” legislation that actually presents a tremendous threat to the act of governing, so it’s a good thing the guy circulating the petitions hadn’t read the rules and didn’t know about the deadline.

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But let’s get back to Nebraska, shall we? Did you know Kool-Aid was invented in Hastings, Nebraska back in 1927? And did you know the nation’s largest indoor rainforest is in Omaha, as part of the remarkable Henry Doorly Zoo? How about the fact that the state, which has no coastline and no oceanfront property, nonetheless has a lighthouse? Yup, it does.

But the Out West Roundup also let me know that, sadly, Nebraska is home to perhaps the most heartless of the GOP anti-government folks that make up much of the state government.

I’m a great believer in people being able to choose their own religious faith or no faith at all, and everything in between. But I’m guessing Nebraska’s governor, a former hog farmer and veterinarian named Jim Pillen, who was elected back in 2022 on a platform of smaller government, fewer mandates and lower taxes — a typical if specific-free plan for governing — claims to be a good Christian. He’s also rich, apparently.

So, it might come as a surprise to some this Nebraska governor initially rejected $18 million in free federal funding to feed kids in Nebraska over summer breaks when school lunches are not available. He spurned the money, stating, “I don’t believe in welfare.” Yup, the governor, whose wealth is estimated by various sources to be between $50 million and $250 million, thinks food for kids in the summer is something to oppose, because, I dunno, freedom?

If there was ever an issue on which I believed we as Americans could agree it would be that kids should have food to eat. We can argue about lots of things, but surely we all agree feeding children should be a top priority?

Well, not if you think welfare is evil. Those kids shouldn’t have gotten themselves born if they didn’t have enough food in their future, right?

Well, I am happy to report even in the deep-red state of Nebraska, refusing free food aid for kids was a step too far for much of the other political (i.e. Republican) leadership in Nebraska. This week the governor reversed course and announced Nebraska would, after all, accept the federal funds for kid food. The governor said that he changed his mind after meeting with a group of Nebraska high school students, who, presumably, reminded Pillen they like to eat every day.

Oh, and while we are in Nebraska, home of the largest mammoth fossil ever found (see? I told you Nebraska was interesting), a state legislator, whose district has a very tight housing market, making it hard for people to find single-family homes, has proposed legislation that would ban corporations from buying such homes, unless the executives of said company actually live there. State Sen. Justin Wayne noted one Ohio company bought 150 single-family homes in North Omaha, greatly increasing the difficulty of “regular” families trying to find a house. Some 13% of single-family homes in Lincoln are also owned by corporations.

I confess, I’m sympathetic to this proposal, at least at first glance. Remarkably, in an era of lengthy legislation, Wayne’s bill is only one sentence long, and therefore lacks the specifics of how it would be implemented. And apparently, it is doomed to be forever tabled (ignored) by the Nebraska legislature’s Banking, Insurance and Commerce Committee, to which it was unfortunately referred for initial consideration. The bill will fail, but it raises interesting implications that might be more fully considered in another state’s less-red legislature.

And this brings our tour of Nebraska to an end. Should your travels take you to the east, I encourage you to drive nearly the full length of Interstate 80, and if you pop up to Cheyenne, you can drive the whole thing. Perhaps you will make the drive this summer and if you do, be sure to stop by Carhenge (worth a web search) and grab some food from Runza, a fast-food chain you will only find in the Cornhusker State.

And hopefully, given the governor’s switch to common sense, you won’t find any hungry kids.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.