Category Archives: Community

Coal-planning Cobb EMC board to meet

Cobb EMC to hold first member meeting since spate of legal problems.
Its current directors still want to build a coal plant in Ben Hill County.

Kim Isaza wrote for MDJonline.com today,

Sides set for first EMC meeting: Date set for Sept. 17, but Cobb Superior court judge must first grant approval



Pending approval from Judge Stephen Schuster, the first meeting of Cobb
EMC members in nearly three years will convene at 10:15 a.m. Sept. 17.

At that meeting, members will decide two issues: whether to allow voting
by mail-in ballots at future elections, and whether to amend the electric
cooperative’s bylaws to limit director compensation to a daily rate
while also prohibiting future directors from being paid retirement
benefits. Previously vested benefits would not be affected.

And look which one the directors really don’t like:

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Private prisons unaccountable —ACLU

Found on the
ACLU blog of rights.


Azadeh Shahshahani wrote for the AJC 11 June 2009,

Private prisons for immigrants lack accountability, oversight



On March 11, a 39-year-old man held in detention at the Stewart Detention
Center, a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in
southwest Georgia, died at a hospital in Columbus.

That’s in Lumpkin, west of Americus, south of Columbus.

To this day, the immediate cause of Roberto Martinez Medina’s death
remains unclear (a press release pronounced the cause of death as
“apparent natural causes”).



Last month, Leonard Odom, 37, died at the Wheeler County Correctional
Facility in south-central Georgia.

That’s in Alamo, GA, between Macon, Tifton, and Savannah.

Both facilities are operated by Corrections Corp. of America, which
has a contract with the Department of Homeland Security to operate the
Stewart center and one with the Georgia Department of Corrections to
operate the one in Wheeler County.

So, what happened?

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Why is Finland at the top of the world in education?

Attention to weak students.
Status and autonomy for teachers.
Educators running the show, not business people.
All this creates a real educated workforce.

Lynnell Hancock wrote for Smithsonian Magazine September 2011,
Why Are Finland’s Schools Successful?
Here’s a clue:



“Children from wealthy families with lots of education can be taught
by stupid teachers,” Louhivuori said, smiling. “We try to catch the
weak students. It’s deep in our thinking.”

So what do they do? Drill the weak students on test questions?
Nope:

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Atlanta’s T-SPLOST

Atlanta at least included some public transport in its T-SPLOST list,
although most of its list will more likely make problems worse for pedestrians.

Ariel Hart wrote for the AJC 15 August 2011,

Regional transportation list approved



If the projects are built, in just over a decade passengers could
be riding trains from Atlanta to Cobb County or to Emory University,
or traveling new, swifter ramps through the Ga. 400/I-285 interchange,
or finding countless arterial roads wider and less clogged, from Henry
County to Cherokee County and all points in between.

New swifter ramps! Countless arterial roads less clogged!
Well, except by

pedestrians trying to scurry through the faster traffic.

Why, in the second decade of the 21st century,
do we continue with a failed traffic model from the
middle of the 20th century?
Seems to me traffic safety should be
pertinent and should include pedestrians.
and instead of
more unsafe roads
making life unpleasant and unsafe for communities,
we could go for
roads that serve communities.

-jsq

Waycross animal shelter problems

A simpler kind of animal shelter problem, before and after.

Mike Morrison wrote for Jacksonville.com 4 August 2011,

14 dogs die from heatstroke at Waycross kennel; cooling fans pledged



The heat has killed dogs at the Waycross animal shelter because the
kennel isn’t wired to power fans, but a city official said Wednesday
that help is on the way.

Okefenokee Humane Society shelter manager Ben Hood said 14 dogs have
died of heatstroke in the past three months, including a 7-month-old
black Lab that died Wednesday.

“We’ve had record high temperatures this year,” Hood said, “but we
don’t have any fans in the kennel because we don’t have any electricity
out there.”

And on 10 August he wrote,

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30 jail deaths since 1994 to 2009 —George Boston Rhynes

Received today on Alabama
bishops criticize ALEC’s immigration law -jsq

Churches and pastors need to view this video and see about these
animals. That is since we read so much

information about the Animal
Shelter in our area about abused animals. What about these animals
and the thirty deaths that no elected official, church, human being or
orgnzations seem to care about.



Did you know that Valdosta-Lowndes County Jail is leading the State
of Georgia in Jail Deaths for whatever reason. Yet, no one is talking
about these people many of whom are military veterans that served their
nation. So where is the humanity to man?

Yes, we have had

30 jail deaths since 1994 to 2009
and not the
Lowndes County Attorney has put it in a letter in so many words

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Alabama bishops criticize ALEC’s immigration law

Some churches actually speak in public on what they profess to believe.

Campbell Robertson wrote for the New York Times 13 August 2011,

Bishops Criticize Tough Alabama Immigration Law





Josh Anderson for the New York Times

CULLMAN, Ala. —On a sofa in the hallway of his office here,

Mitchell Williams, the pastor of First United Methodist Church,
announced that he was going to
break the law. He is not the only church leader making such a declaration
these days.

Since June, when Gov. Robert Bentley, a Republican, signed an immigration
enforcement law called the toughest in the country by critics and
supporters alike, the opposition has been vocal and unceasing.

Thousands of protesters have marched. Anxious farmers

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Animal issues on facebook



For those who miss their regular daily diet of animal shelter issues,
Susan Leavens has started a facebook group called

Georgia’s Regulatory Animal Protection Division the truth behind them.

And who knows? Maybe soon we’ll hear results of

that investigation down at the sheriff’s office.
Or maybe Gary Black
will live up to his campaign promises.
Or maybe Lowndes County will let the Humane Society train animal control officers.
The more people ask for these things to happen, the more likely they will happen.

-jsq

NAACP paradigm shift

Why does it matter that the NAACP wants an end to the War on Drugs?

Leonard Pitts Jr. wrote for the Miami Herald 30 July 2011,

NAACP’s paradigm shift on ending the Drug War



Here’s why this matters. Or, more to the point, why it matters more than
if such a statement came from Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. The NAACP is
not just the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization. It
is also its most conservative.

Conservative as in:

…denoting a propensity toward caution and a distrust of the bold, the
risky, the new. And that’s the NAACP all over.



…there has always been something determinedly middle class and cautious
about the NAACP. This is the group whose then-leader, Roy Wilkins,
famously detested Martin Luther King for his street theatrics.

For that group, then, to demand an end to the Drug War represents a
monumental sea change.

How monumental?

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NAACP calls for end to War on Drugs

Nafari Vanaski, wrote for Gateway newspapers 18 August 2011,

NAACP calling for truce in nation’s drug war



If you grew up at the same time that I did, you’ll remember the “Just
Say No” anti-drug campaign that became popular in the mid-1980s and
early 1990s.

It manifested itself in many ways, from the posters and talks in class
to the “very special episodes” of shows such as “Blossom” and “The
Facts of Life,” where a character encounters a kid from the wrong side
of the tracks who is pressuring him or her to try drugs. Inevitably,
good prevailed and the druggie turned out to be from a broken family
and needed only a good face-to-face with Nancy Reagan, the driving
force behind the campaign, to overcome his addiction. (She appeared on
“Diff’rent Strokes,” and considering the real-life histories of Gary
Coleman, Todd Bridges and Dana Plato, she probably should have stuck
around for a five-episode story arc.)

“Just Say No” was part of the larger war on drugs the Nixon administration
declared in 1971. For grown-ups, that war symbolized a lot more than
sappy primetime television. Especially for black adults. For them, it
meant stricter laws for those found buying, selling and distributing
illegal drugs.

To that end, the NAACP took an interesting step at its national convention
last month. It approved a resolution to end the war on drugs because of
its devastating effect on the black community.

Interesting how the headline writer watered that down:
NAACP called

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