Category Archives: Military

Last call for Georgia redistricting comments

Jeanne Bonner wrote for GPB News 23 November 2011,

Redistricting Map Review Underway



Georgians have until Dec. 23 to comment on new state and congressional
district maps. The U.S. Department of Justice is in the midst of its 60
day-review of the maps. Voter advocate groups say this may be the last
chance to comment before the maps go into effect for a decade.

…

Elizabeth Poythress, president of the League of Women Voters of Georgia,
says the Justice Department is eager to receive citizen comment.

“We’re just encouraging people to take the advantage they have

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Mic check stops a police riot at UC Davis



By now you’ve probably seen the video of UC Davis police pepper spraying peaceful protesters who were simply sitting on the gorund.
But have you seen what happened next?
Police were forming up with weapons raised surrounded on three sides by protesters, when someone yelled “Mic check!”
Follow

this link.
Or, if you want to see it starting with the pepper spraying:

The one with the two pepper spray cans appears to be the same police
lieutenant who pepper sprayed the protesters.
As the protesters say through the human microphone that they are
willing to let the police just walk away, even after the police
had assaulted them with pepper spray,
that same lieutenant motions to the police, who lower their weapons
and back away.

Here’s

the police version of the incident:

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Lowndes County: commuter rail hub

Look at all those other railroads converging on Valdosta in



that GFRR project proposal map.
Valdosta is a historical rail hub for passenger traffic to Atlanta,
Savannah, Jacksonville, Orlando, Thomasville, Tallahasssee, and
beyond. All the tracks are still in place and still in use for freight.
With some rolling stock and a few deals with the railroads, Valdosta
and Lowndes County could become again a passenger rail hub with a mass
transit system for local commuting to jobs and for long distance travel.



Add

a bus system and local commuting becomes very practical.
People could take the train to town and catch a bus to work.
Many people could walk or take a bicycle to their work from the
train station.
This could work the other way around, too.
People could live in Valdosta and work in Ray City or Lakeland or
Hahira or Lake Park or Clyattville and not have to drive to get there.
That would save

a lot of wasted time and wasted fuel.

This kind of mass transit would attract the knowledge-based workers
we supposedly want around here.


Including jobs our high school and college graduates could take,
so they wouldn’t have to move elsewhere.

And upgrading the railroads, building stations, building
and refurbishing houses and apartments near the stations, etc.,
would employ a lot of construction workers;
probably as many as road projects and sprawling subdivision projects,
but without the sprawl.

-jsq

Georgia and Florida Railway (GFRR) – Valdosta to Willacoochee Rehabilitation $6.25 million T-SPLOST

Now here’s a T-SPLOST project I like:
upgrading the railroad that runs


from Valdosta to Moody AFB
and on to Ray City and Nashville in Berrien County,
and Willacoochee in Atkinson County.
This proposal is to aid freight, but with this upgrade to the track,
the same track would be even more readily usable for passenger rail.
That same track was used for passenger travel up into the 1950s.
My mother used to catch the train at Barretts (just north of Moody) to go visit her relatives in Pearson (a bit east of Willacoochee).

It’s true the project sheet talks about “potential customers in the region”:

This project will provide for more efficient train operations along
the rail corridor to accommodate the increase rail traffic serving the
existing and potential customers in the region.

However, rail promotes development in existing population
centers and at stations, unlike all along automobile roadways.

This project is also another example of how
the economic area of Moody AFB includes

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Jack Kingston has a green tongue —Gretchen Quarterman

VDT LTE today. -jsq

Georgia has gained enough population in the past ten years to add
a congressional seat. This means redrawing the Congressional


district lines not only to balance population, but to also add
another representative in Congress. Lowndes County has been split
between the first and second districts, and all spring rumors of
where we might end up were circulating. Eventually we saw a draft
map that had Lowndes completely in the 8th District,






Before

along with
other counties along Interstate 75. That map made some sense south of Macon.
Some communities of interest were preserved (most of the Lowndes-Valdosta
MPO was in the same district) and the hospitality corridor of I-75
was in one district, along with the rural farms that surround it.
Valdosta to Macon is easier to traverse than Valdosta to Savannah,
or Valdosta to Columbus.

But then Congressman Jack Kingston stuck out his green tongue.

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Private prisons considered harmful —Gretchen Quarterman to Jack Kingston

Gretchen Quarterman

3338 Country Club Road #L336

Valdosta GA 31605

26 August 2011
PDF

 

Hon. Jack Kingston

Member of Congress

First District of Georgia

 

Dear Mr. Kingston,



You

asked me last week in Tifton to provide you with evidence
that private prisons have fewer guards per prisoner than public
prisons.



Here is an example:

“The largest juvenile prison in the nation, Walnut Grove Youth
Correctional Facility houses 1,200 boys and young men, between the
ages of 13 and 22, and is run by a private contractor, the GEO Group
based in Boca Raton, FL. … State audits over the last several years
had already indicated the burgeoning problem. While it is recommended
at youth facilities to have an inmate-to-guard ratio of 10:1 or 12:1,
Walnut Grove had a ratio of 60:1.”



“When the Wolves Guard the Sheep,”
by Mariah Adin in Kids and Crime, 28 March 2011

It’s not just less staff, it’s less qualified staff:

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What it takes to run for Mayor of Valdosta

People ask me: what does it take to run for mayor of Valdosta?
A few qualifications, a few skills, and a vision would sure help.



Well, you have to qualify.
That costs
$750 down at the Board of Elections.

According to
the City of Valdosta’s website, there are a few other requirements:

Qualification Mayor.
To be eligible for election or appointment
and service as Mayor, a person must be a minimum of 21 years of
age, be a resident of the City of Valdosta for one year prior ro
the date of qualifying, and a registered and qualified voter of the
City of Valdosta at the time of qualifying.

Then you have to campaign and win.
Some people will doubtless spend a lot of money running for mayor.
However, some recent elections to Lowndes County Commission and
Valdosta Board of Education indicate

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Energy as a National Security Challenge —Col. Dan Nolan @ Solar Summit

In his morning keynote at the sold-out

Southern Solar Summit,
Col. Dan Nolan (U.S. Army ret.) asked the musical question:

“When did our Marines become Birkenstock-wearing tree huggers?”

This was after some Marines asked for solar power so they wouldn’t
have to haul fuel in long convoys, which were among the most dangerous missions.
Most of that fuel was going into very inefficient generators to run
very inefficient air conditioners in tents in the desert.
Dealing with that got the military thinking about energy security:
assured access to mission-critical energy.

Looking up, he asked:



“What is it we as a nation need to understand about our own energy security?”

He identified America’s strategic center of gravity as its economy.
It’s very resilient but has vulnerabilities open to attack.
So how do we secure those vulnerabilities?

The main vulnerabilities are:

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A real national strategy —Jim Dwyer



What say we make a real national security strategy,
one based on energy independence and a sustainable economy?

Jim Dwyer write 3 May 2011 in the NY Times,

A National Security Strategy That Doesn’t Focus on Threats

“Poorly fitted air conditioners cost New York City 130 to 180 million
dollars a year in extra energy consumption,” one of the strategists,
Capt. Wayne Porter of the Navy, said Tuesday. “They generate 370,525
extra tons of carbon dioxide.”

Suppose, he says, you fixed them. And then you got the 40 states
that waste the most electricity to match the 10 most efficient. The
likely benefits are no surprise — less foreign oil, cost savings,
job creation, decreased pollution.

Now follow that thread to

“A National Strategic Narrative,”
a paper
written by Captain Porter and Col. Mark Mykleby of the Marines, which
calls on the United States to see that it cannot continue to engage the
world primarily with military force, but must do so as a nation powered
by the strength of its educational system, social policies, international
development and diplomacy, and its commitment to sustainable practices
in energy and agriculture.

“We must recognize that security means more than defense,” they
write. After ending the 20th century as the world’s most powerful
country, “we failed to recognize that dominance, like fossil fuel,
is not a sustainable form of energy.”

An army without an economy defends nothing.

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