As a Commissioner said,
“It don’t pass the smell test”
that Sabal Trail already bought land for a compressor station
before they even filed for a formal permit.
A Commissioner said
“We have to be more aggressive.”
Well, then, time to
pass a land-user ordinance against pipelines!
Thanks to Jennifer Maloney, you can see for yourself Albany and
Dougherty County citizens and Commissioners
opposing the Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline
in
a community effort
at a Dougherty County Commission meeting 15 September 2014. Continue reading
Category Archives: Law
Lula Smart acquitted on all counts: Quitman 10 vindicated
Lula Smart cleared by a jury in third trial.
Third strike by the prosecutors: they’re out!
Will they stop wasting our taxpayer dollars now?
Katheryn Hayes Tucker, Daily Report, 17 September 2014, Acquittal in Trial Over Absentee Ballots,
Lula Mary Smart was acquitted on 19 felony charges of voting irregularities Wednesday following a month-long trial in Brooks County Superior Court in South Georgia.
Continue reading
Demanding the state PUC get a friendly judge: a best practice for utilities?
A utility didn’t stop at blowing up a Calfornia neighborhood,
it also demanded the Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) get a favorable judge
for that 2010 San Bruno natural gas pipe explosion.
The CPUC president’s chief of staff just last year wrote slides
praising his Legacy as Best Practices.
Does that legacy include suborning justice?
He’s still there, although she was fired, and three PG&E executives
“ended their employment”.
How many other PG&E and other utility executives and CPUC and other
state regulators follow those same Best Practices?
Ellen Knickmeyer, Associated Press, 15 September 2014, PG&E Officials Removed for Improper Communications,
Four senior officials with Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and the state commission regulating it were removed or resigned over emails released Monday showing the utility and state regulators appeared to negotiate which judge would be assigned to hear one of the utility’s rate cases.
The emails show the commission ultimately assigned to the case a judge for whom PG&E had expressed a preference, rather than another judge who PG&E said “has a history of being very hard on us.”
Also Monday, California Public Utilities Commission president Michael Peevey, who was included Continue reading
Resignation, subpoenas, criminal charges: DeKalb County Commission corruption
Sometimes it doesn’t just look like they have something to hide: the FBI found some of what the DeKalb County Commmission was hiding, and one criminally-charged Commissioner promises to sing about the others, while 62 vendors and all the other sitting Commissioners are being investigated. No local elected body around here could have such problems, right?
The DeKalb FBI corruption investigation apparently started with news stories in the AJC. Coincidentally, here’s the board packet for tonight’s Lowndes County Commission meeting that it took an open records request for LAKE to get so you can see it.
20 February 2013, Fireworks erupt in court over DeKalb corruption case, by Jodie Fleischer for WSB-TV,
Only Channel 2’s Jodie Fleischer was there as a judge lashed out at prosecutors who want the public to see a secret corruption report.
The special grand jury investigating DeKalb County corruption Continue reading
FCC net neutrality written comment period closes Tuesday
Want to continue to see this and other blogs, local newspapers, YouTube, and all the other Internet sources of information that are not owned by the six companies that own 90% of U.S. media?
Then you want the FCC to continue net neutrality,
and you have until Tuesday to send written comments.
EFF has provided this handy form: Dear FCC. Please go there and comment. You’ll thank yourself later.
-jsq
PS: This is what I wrote. Continue reading
Fracking panel report –Cape Breton University, Nova Scotia
A reader wondered how Nova Scotia’s fracking ban would result in safer oil and gas company drilling operations instead of just balkanizing the world into fracking permitted and prohibited zones. Actually, Energy Minister Andrew Younger said:
“This way, people will know before it’s allowed — if it’s ever allowed — there will be a full debate in the Legislature.”
And the panel report that was the proximate cause of the ban, by the Nova Scotia Hydraulic Fracturing review, led by President Dr. David Wheeler, explicitly is for: Continue reading
Nova Scotia banned fracking; will southeast U.S. ban fracked methane pipelines?
Yesterday
Nova Scotia announced a ban on fracking.
Will local or state governments in the southeast, now threatened
by the Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline,
ban such pipelines?
Especially since FERC has now directed Sabal Trail to examine
routes through Americus, Cordele, Ashburn, Tifton, Adel, Valdosta, and even Thomasville,
in addition
to the ones it already proposed through Dougherty, Colquitt, Brooks, and Lowndes Counties?
Sierra Club Canada wrote about public meetings in its Media Release of 28 August 2014, Government of Nova Scotia Needs to Ban Fracking,
“Public meetings held by the panel were attended by an overwhelming majority of well-informed citizens who had deep concerns about fracking,” according to [Gretchen] Fitzgerald, “Those concerns should be met with the type of leadership they deserve: an immediate, legally binding ban.”
And the Nova Scotia government listened. Bruce Erskine wrote for The Herald Business 3 September 2014, Nova Scotia to ban fracking, posting a video in which you can hear Energy Minister Andrew Younger say: Continue reading
Nydia Tisdale’s video of being arrested for videoing a public event
Quitman 10+2 third trial
“Thank you for not plea bargaining” said George Boston Rhynes
starting his series of videos on the ongoing third trial of
Lula Smart of the Quitman 10+2.
No newspapers, radio, or TV reporters at this trial
about voters’ rights.
But George is there.
Nydia Tisdale’s offense: she sat in the front row
Landowner Johnny Burt’s excuse for having Nydia Tisdale ejected
from an event advertised as a public campaign rally:
“She promptly sat down on the front row on the end where she would be right in their face and was making everybody uncomfortable.”
Shades of Ashley Paulk’s excuse for wanting that illegal bill of attainder Continue reading