Campus authorities tried getting students to move away from the University
Center where
Governor Nathan Deal was having a luncheon.
The students stood their ground.
Here’s the video.
Protesting Gov. Nathan Deal at Valdosta State University (VSU), 16 September 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
The students had been standing on the sidewalk in front of the Continue reading
promoting Dr. Martin Luther King’s Dream with cuee’s mission.Voiced by Morgan Freeman. So we know CUEE is pouring money into their local disaster capitalism.
This is not sitting well with opponents of consolidation. Here’s JC Cunningham’s reaction:
I personally am not surprised by any tactics that Cuee uses in order to win on Nov. 8th. In the last 5 minutes I have received 3 phone calls and 6 emails. Each one asked me what was I going to do about it? After the last call I began to get a little upset, because I did not ask that person the same question. What are you going to do about this?Continue readingCuee and the Chamber will try and get away with
The Chamber’s Meet the Candidates Reception provides an opportunity for Chamber members to meet and hear from candidates running in the Nov. 8 general election. All Chamber members and guests are invited to attend this event at the Rainwater Conference Center. There is no cost to Chamber members to attend.Here’s the link to RSVP or if you need directions.
Here’s a list of who qualifed to run. As you can see, most local incumbents are running unopposed. Maybe they’ll show up anyway, and there are at least a few contested positions (Valdosta Mayor and Council At Large, Hahira Council 3, Dasher Post 3, and Lake Park Council At Large. This being an odd year, there are no county-wide posts up for election, but the municipal elections affect everyone around here, even people like me who do not live in any of the cities. Whether at this event or elsewhere, you may want to ask the candidates their platforms and positions on local issues.
Usually there’s also an AAUW Lowndes County Political Forum; I don’t know what’s up with that this year. Usually it’s immediately after the Chamber thing, and the AAUW Forum is open to all.
-jsq
What’s the Shock Doctrine?
It’s been around for a long time, but Naomi Klein researched it for
her book of the same name. It’s
“the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock”She was writing mostly about wars, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters. Locally here we haven’t had any of those. But we may be about to create a disaster, a shock, at the ballot box in November, if voters fall for the school “unification” snake oil.
What’s the next step after CUEE has accidentally revealed that Continue reading
Why the second thoughts? Continue readingIt was Dostoevsky who said: “The degree of civilisation in a society is revealed by entering its prisons.” But in contemporary Britain you don’t even need to do this, you can simply stand on a street corner and wait for the ghosts to come flitting past in order to appreciate its parlous condition.
We now have the highest prison population in Europe by a considerable measure, and following the recent riots there is no likelihood of it decreasing.
Of course, we aren’t quite at the levels enjoyed by our closest allies, those prime exponents of the civilising mission the United States, whose extensive gulag now houses, it is estimated, more African American men than were enslaved immediately prior to their Civil War – but we’re getting there.
Mayor Sonny Vickers said he thought it was important for children
and grandchildren and proper for the City Council to take a stand
against school consolidation, and City Manager Larry Hanson read
the statement (transcript appended).
For:
James Wright District 1 
Hoke Hampton District 3 
Alvin Payton District 4 Ben Norton At Large Didn’t Have to Vote: 
Sonny Vickers Mayor |
|---|
Against:
Robert Yost District 6 
Tim Carroll District 5 Missing: 
Deidra White District 2 |
|---|
That means Ben Norton changed his vote since since their last non-binding vote related to school consolidation. (Nonbinding because they didn’t have any authority to decide whether the referendum went on the ballot or not.) Council Deidra White of District 2 was absent throughout the meeting, which I find rather odd since she seemed quite aware when I spoke to her the previous day that this vote was going to occur. Back in August she voted against putting the referendum on the ballot. Yes, I know the motion was not exactly the same, so the votes are not exactly comparable. In any case, this time there was no tie and thus no need for the (new) mayor to break a tie.
Here’s the video:
Valdosta City Council voted to oppose school consolidationo
education, consolidation, resolution,
Regular Session, Valdosta City Council (VCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 6 October 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Here’s the statement transcribed as accurately as I could from the video: Continue reading
Continue readingWe would like to think that our community “leaders” are not full of pride and greed, but please listen closely:
Greed is an excessive desire to possess wealth or goods with the intention to keep it for one’s self. Greed is inappropriate expectation. However, greed is applied to a very excessive or rapacious desire and pursuit of wealth, status, and power. —Wikipedia
- The CUEE Board did NOT meet with both school boards prior to sending the petition around town.
- Troup County Schools have not met AYP in 8 years.
- Tennessee’s Hamilton County system, the entire district, is currently high priority. This means they have had two years of bad results. This is the school used in CUEE’s original study.
- CUEE’s expert Steve Prigohzy said,
"If you believe in the end that running one system is cheaper than running two school systems. If in the end you are going to cast a vote for a single system because you think it would save money, I wouldn’t cast my vote I do not think it will save money."- If consolidation passes, there will be only 7 Board Members representing almost 20,000 students.
But he doesn’t. Because that theory and those ideas did not hold up.The whole idea was could it help us with economic development in our community. At the same time could we increase student achievement. And could we save the taxpayers money.
Well, I’m here to tell you tonight that I was one of the board members… that if that theory and those ideas had held up after research and study, I would be supporting this idea.
He might have settled for something less than that: Continue reading
He took CUEE’s own figures for how much more consolidation would require
to be spent per each Valdosta City school student, and demonstrated that
not only would that require raising taxes for both Valdosta and Lowndes
County residents to near the state-capped maximum of 21 mils, but even
then there is no way enough tax revenue would be generated to pay for all
the things CUEE proposes to do after consolidation, and probably not even
enough taxes to continue employing all the teachers currently employed
by the two school systems. Oh, plus consolidation would lose state and
federal grant money by increasing the composite school system size, so the
local taxpayers would have to make up that slack, too.
Here are his slides.
Here is a playlist.
-jsq
Back
in 2009 we installed solar panels on our farm workshop.
At the time the closest certified solar installer I could find was in Marietta.
Four years ago there were 4 in the state.
now there are forty.
And that’s in a state that’s trailing
North Carolina
and even
New Jersey
in solar installations.
Also, I applied some weeks back for a USDA REAP grant for solar
for Okra Paradise Farms.
