Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority, VLCIA, Open Records Request, Bobbi Anne Hancock asked Allan Ricketts why a bunch of agendas and minutes should cost $125.09? She received back this itemized invoice:
Apparently the lowest paid VLCIA employee who can convert documents to PDF is paid $24.23 an hour. According to Georgia Code 50-18-71: Continue reading
She goes on to mention CCA’s stock price has gone up by a factor of ten since 9/11.The big winner in the crackdown on the illegal immiggration has been the private prison industry. As Bloomberg Business Week reports in its latest issue, companies such as Corrections Corporation of America are making millions. In fact, CCA makes more money from detaining immigrants than it does from any single U.S. state.
The source of the money CCA and its investors and executives are making? Our tax dollars!
With all the additional jail time, misdemeanors, and felonies in new state laws such as Arizona’s, states could catch up with the feds in paying CCA through the nose!
-jsq
Presumably that would be the “Project Critical Path time-line is attached” that wasn’t actually attached to documents returned for an open records request of 17 February 2011. Hm, since VLCIA did supply such a document to the VDT, presumably it is now a VLCIA document subject to open records request, even though it was not what VLCIA told VDT it was.The reporter who conducted the interview with Industrial Authority Project Manager Allen Ricketts has been subsequently repeatedly contacted by Ricketts for what he deems “false reporting.” According to Ricketts, the timeline was never official and was only something the Industrial Authority threw together to appease the Times when given an official Open Records Request. Ricketts is apparently unaware that legally he cannot produce a document that does not exist to comply with said request. If he knowingly did so, as he now claims, that is a clear violation of the Open Records Act.
Back to the VDT editorial: Continue reading
Frank Serpico in his blog, 27 March 2007:
Serpico quoted in the website for the film he recommends:DAMAGE DONE
THE DRUG WAR ODYSSEY
THE FILM
THE COPS
THE FILM MAKERSAfter 30 years of drug war, illegal narcotics are decreasing in price, increasing in purity and demand continues to surge. The heroes of this film are veterans of the drug war and they urge us to consider ending drug prohibition. They have had a complete revolution in their thinking. Now they are working to end the War on Drugs. Find out what happened to change their minds.
“I think Prohibition is causing the public to lose their respect because they’re enforcing laws that basically aren’t hurting anybody. I think we have to stop the hypocrisy.”That website’s summary of the film: Continue reading
The High Court of Justice put an end to years of controversy Thursday by ruling that privately run prisons are unconstitutional.
Following the decision, the state is expected to have to pay hundreds of millions of shekels in compensation to a company that had already completed construction of the first private prison, near Be’er Sheva.
The panel of nine justices, presided over by Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch, ruled that for the state to transfer authority for managing the prison to a private contractor whose aim is monetary profit would severely violate the prisoners’ basic human rights to dignity and freedom.
-jsq
Investigators from the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office and Georgia Bureau of Investigation will travel to southwest Georgia Monday to survey jail conditions after the death of a local inmate.Hm, so GBI can investigate jail deaths!Fabian Avery III, 17, was found dead Friday in his cell at the Pelham Pre-Release Center, located about an hour north of Tallahassee, Fla.
An autopsy is scheduled for Monday, GBI spokesman John Bankhead told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Avery was one of several Fulton County inmates being held in Pelham to alleviate overcrowding in the Rice Street jail. Inmates from Gwinnett, Johns Creek and Sandy Springs are also housed there.
Agents from the Thomasville regional office of the GBI are investigating the death, Bankhead said.
-jsq
Particulate matter is a killer. We know it results in hundreds of thousands of deaths.
That matches some local concerns in Lowndes County.
How much of a killer? Continue reading
Look what else they mentioned: Continue readingA Georgia native with experience attracting industries and jobs to his home state has signed a three-year contract to lead the Myrtle Beach Regional Economic Development Corporation.
Doug Wendel, EDC board president, said the board voted unanimously Thursday afternoon to offer Brad Lofton the job. He will announce the change to his current employer, the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority, on Tuesday, Wendel said.
Lofton will begin work on the Grand Strand on April 15, bringing to an end the EDC’s search for a new chief executive, which began more than a year ago.
The EDC will pay Lofton about $121,000 a year to bring new industry and jobs to Horry County.
Now Wally was purchased with grant funds. Rudy was trained with grant funds. Our mobile command center was purchased with grant funds. Several other pieces of equipment for Police and Fire departments are purchased with grants. Now, there are those that scream and shake their fist at government to say, “Take no grants, for they are evil”.Continue reading
All these protesters were in favor of the groundbreaking today for the
Wiregrass Solar LLC plant, but they wanted to object to the
related biomass plant proposed for next door.
Here you can see Valdosta police saying they’re going have to
issue a summons to some protesters because they didn’t have a permit,
Valdosta Mayor Fretti saying the permit process is simple,
and Dr. Michael Noll president of Wiregrass Activists for Clean Energy (WACE)
explaining that they only heard of the event recently,
and besides he’d be happy to pick up a shovel and help with the
groundbreaking for the solar plant: