At an event this afternoon at UT-San Antonio, Mayor Julian Castro
announced a suite of green energy projects that he said would position
San Antonio as the nation’s “recognized leader in clean energy technology”
and help fulfill his aggressive environmental goals.
Most notably, Castro and leaders from CPS Energy, the city-owned utility,
pledged to shut down one of its coal-fired power plants 15 years ahead
of schedule. By 2018, the city would mothball the 871-megawatt J.T. Deely
Power Plant — a bold move in a growing state that’s seemingly addicted
to coal.
The Department of Community Health (DCH), Healthcare Facility Regulation
Division (HFRD) invites you to attend a Town Hall Meeting on the topic,
“Establishing Meaningful Distinctions for Levels of Care in Licensed
Personal Care Homes, Assisted Living Communities and Nursing Homes”.
The Town Hall Meeting will be held in the DCH Board Room, 5th Floor,
2 Peachtree Street, NW on Wednesday, June 22, 2011 at 11:30 a.m.
The purpose of this Town Hall Meeting is to provide a forum where
interested consumers, providers, advocates, stakeholders and regulators
may discuss the topic informally. This informal dialogue will assist
the DCH in its development of proposed rules for personal care homes
and assisted living communities as a result of the passage of SB 178
which creates a licensure category called assisted living communities.
Of course, any rules that the DCH ultimately develops would be
taken through an informal rules advisory group process and the public
rule-making process. If you are unable to attend the Town Hall Meeting,
but would like to provide input on this topic, please feel free to send
your input electronically to DCH staff using the following email address:
sedoughe@dhr.state.ga.us.
That web page also includes some questions for which DCH wants public input.
Leigh Touchton, president of the Valdosta-Lowndes NAACP,
says the local and state NAACP are opposed to the biomass plant
because the community that is most affected is the minority community.
She referred to her previous presentation of a letter from
Dr. Robert D. Bullard.
She also brought up an incident with Brad Lofton and recommended
that VLCIA hire an executive director who wouldn’t act like that.
And she said she deals with VSEB all the time:
I’ve taken men through there, I’ve signed them up.
She referred to me when she said that, so what I said before
is appended after the video.
The health of the community is way more important than the job —Leigh Touchton
Regular Meeting, Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA),
Norman Bennett, Roy Copeland, Tom Call, Mary Gooding, Jerry Jennett chairman,
J. Stephen Gupton attorney, Allan Ricketts Acting Executive Director,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 17 May 2011.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
What I actually recommended regarding VSEB, in response to
a specific request from Leigh Touchton for recommendations,
was maybe schedule a meeting with Roy Copeland to talk about
VSEB and solar job opportunities:Continue reading →
… has made some courageous and profoundly
important recommendations in a report on how to bring more effective
control over the illicit drug trade. The commission includes the former
presidents or prime ministers of five countries, a former secretary
general of the United Nations, human rights leaders, and business and
government leaders, including Richard Branson, George P. Shultz and Paul
A. Volcker.
The report describes the total failure of the present global antidrug
effort, and in particular America’s “war on drugs,” which was
declared 40 years ago today. It notes that the global consumption of
opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5
percent from 1998 to 2008. Its primary recommendations are to substitute
treatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do no harm
to others, and to concentrate more coordinated international effort
on combating violent criminal organizations rather than nonviolent,
low-level offenders.
These recommendations are compatible with United States drug policy from
three decades ago. In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country
should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana,
with a full program of treatment for addicts. I also cautioned against
filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and
summarized by saying: “Penalties against possession of a drug should
not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.”
Imagine that!
A drug policy meant to address the problem.
From: “Jane Osborn”
Subject: Georgia Crisis Response system
Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2011 11:54:39 -0400
John, There was a Conversations that Matter group held here June 9th to
discuss the changes coming with the closing of the state hospitals as
it relates to persons with developmental disabilities. We had about 40
local people who were consumers, family members and some service
providers in addition to officials from the Region 4 office that covers
this area. The services for them will be drastically smaller than those
planned for persons with a diagnosis of mental illness, but this
training announcement has one session left in this area…June 28 in
Thomasville.
Scroll all the way to the bottom to find information for
the
Thomasville
event.
The one we had here was sponsored by the
Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities
and All About Developmental Disabilities, an Atlanta-based advocacy
group. One of the things we learned was that these Crisis Response
Systems supposedly have been in place since June 1, one based in
Valdosta and one in another part of the region. You can go to the
DBHDD website to see the counties included in our area.
The teams were
formed by contracting with organizations from California and Indiana
(instead
Karen Noll asked the VLCIA board to put a no-biomass clause
in any purchase agreement regarding the proposed biomass site.
She began with these words:
I’m Karen Noll.
I hope some of you already have seen my writing and
have read my letters to you in the past.
I’m obviously here on one issue.
I hope that in the future I can be talking to you about other issues.
But right now I’m talking to you about biomass.
And we celebrated that it was dead and it was gone and now it’s not.
Because we really don’t know … what the plan is.
Karen Noll made a pitch based partly on saving taxpayer money.
In addressing health concerns, she handed the board a letter from local doctor
Craig Bishop.
She handed the board a petition with “at least 700 signatures”
and she said for each signature there was probably at least one more
that didn’t sign.
Some of what she said appeared to be drawn from a letter
that is appended in this post after the video.
The state of Georgia is stopping admitting to state mental hospitals
people with developmental disabilities and is starting to move many people with
severe and persistent mental illness out of state hospitals into
the communities.
According to
DBHDD Summary of October 2010 Settlement
by Georgia Department of Behavioral Health & Developmental Disabilities,
Frank E. Shelp, M.D., M.P.H., Commissioner:
By July 1, 2011, Georgia will stop admitting to its state hospitals
people for whom the reason for admission would be a primary diagnosis of
a developmental disability, including Temporary and Immediate Care (TIC).
Enhanced community services will be provided for people whose primary
diagnosis is a developmental disability and who are either currently
hospitalized in state hospitals or who are at risk of hospitalization in
state hospitals. Those with forensic status may be included in the target
population if the relevant court finds community placement appropriate.
In all cases, the individuals served will be able to make an informed
choice about where they’d like to live. Unless they choose otherwise,
everyone in the target population will be served in their own homes
or the homes of their families and none will be served in a host home,
congregate living setting, skilled nursing facility, intermediate care
facility, or assisted living facility. All of the waiver participants
will receive support coordination.
Everybody from
Serpico
to
Richard Branson
and even the
U.S. Senate
says the War on Drugs has failed and we should stop locking up so many people.
Now physicians weigh in.
With 2.3 million people behind bars and an estimated 10 million Americans
cycling in and out of correctional facilities each year, the United States
is in the midst of an “epidemic of mass incarceration,” say researchers
from the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights, a collaboration
of The Miriam Hospital and Brown University.
In a Perspective article to appear in the June 2 issue of the New England
Journal of Medicine (NEJM), the authors argue that much of this epidemic
is due to inadequate treatment of addiction and mental illness in the
community, which they say can be linked to policy changes over the last
30 years, such as severe punishment for drug users as a result of the
nation’s “War on Drugs.”
“More than half of all inmates have a history of substance use and
dependence or mental illness, yet they are often released to the community
without health insurance or access to appropriate medical care and
treatment,” says Josiah D. Rich, M.D., M.P.H., director of the Center for
Prisoner Health and Human Rights, which is based at The Miriam Hospital.
“Sadly, without these linkages to transitional care in the community,
the majority of these individuals will re-enter the revolving door of
the criminal justice system, which already costs our county $50 billion
annually,” he adds.
Stop locking up drug users who harm no others,
legalize drugs starting with marijuana,
switch to health and treatment,
stop harrassing farmers,
abandon zero tolerance and invest instead in youth activities,
focus on reducing harm,
and do it now, so says a commission of business moguls, former heads of state,
financial professionals, writers, and activists.
Writes Douglas Stanglin today in USA TODAY,
“The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for
individuals and societies around the world,” says the Report of the
Global Commission on Drug Policy in its opening statement. “Fifty years
after the initiation of the U.N. Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs,
and 40 years after President Nixon launched the U.S. government’s war on
drugs, fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies
are urgently needed.”
According to whom?
The 19-member commission, a private venture chaired by ex-Brazilian
president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, includes George Schultz, President
Reagan’s Secretary of State; Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin
Group; former U.N. Secretary General Koffi Anna; George Papandreou,
prime minister of Greece; Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal
Reserve, and Javier Solana,former EU foreign minister.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that California must drastically
reduce its prison population to relieve severe overcrowding that has
exposed inmates to increased violence, disease and death.
We don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County.
Spend that tax money on education instead.
At an event this afternoon at UT-San Antonio, Mayor Julian Castro announced a suite of green energy projects that he said would position San Antonio as the nation’s “recognized leader in clean energy technology” and help fulfill his aggressive environmental goals.
