Tag Archives: Economy

Propaganda for charter school amendment 1 paid for by out-of-state donors

Who can afford to pay for these two glossy mailers pushing
the charter school amendment?
Who are GeorgiaHope2012.org and BrighterGeorgia.org, anyway?
Recipients of millions from Alice Walton and the Walton Family Foundation
to push a bill sponsored in the statehouse by ALEC’s “our state legislators”.
Will we believe Alice Walton and ALEC, or will we believe
our Georgia educators, who overwhelmingly

oppose Amendment 1?


Two glossy mailers pushing the charter school amendment

GeorgiaHope2012.org’s mailer (the big one) says in really light grey type:

Paid for by Families for Better Public Schools Edward Lindsey Chairman

We’ve heard of them before.
They raised

$486,750 by September, about 96% from outside Georgia,
including Alice Walton ($250,000),
K12 Inc. of Virginia ($100,000),
Charter Schools USA of Florida ($50,000),
J.C. Huizenga and National Heritage Academies Inc. of Michigan ($25,000 each).
Their spokesman Bert Brantley (who went to Lowndes County public schools)
claims

the bogus preamble
to the charter school amendment,
the one that uses ALEC
Family Trigger jargon
and asserts things that just aren’t in either of the authorizing bills;
he claims that preamble

is “factual”.
His previous PR campaign was pushing the T-SPLOST transportation tax
that failed by a landslide.

Families for Better Public Schools
is still playing the

charter school bait and switch in their mailer
by pretending Amendment 1 is needed for charter schools:


EVERY CHILD DESERVES A CHANCE!
VOTE YES!
for Public Charter Schools on November 6th.

We don’t need this amendment to create charter schools.
Any local school board can already do that.

BrighterGeorgia.org’s mailer (the smaller one)
says in grey on grey type:

Paid for by Georgia Charter Schools Association

GCSA got $700,000 from the Walton Family Foundation last year,
and is a member of

Continue reading →

WALB on Lowndes County Commission Chair candidates


Gretchen Quarterman billboard

WALB says we have a choice for Chairman of the Lowndes County Commission.

Lydia Jennings wrote for WALB yesterday,

Meet candidates vying for Lowndes Co. Commission Chairman,


Gretchen Quarterman
Bill Slaughter and Gretchen Quarterman are two very different
candidates. Both are running for Lowndes County Commission Chairman.
Slaughter is the CEO of Waller Heating and Air Conditioning and
Quarterman is a farmer and owner of Okra Paradise Farms.

“I’m very curious, I have a math and science background so I’m
always asking why do we do it this way, not just what do we do, but
why do we do it, what problem are we solving,” said Quarterman.

Continue reading →

LibertYOUtbreak @ LO 2012-10-27


Open, non-partisan forum
A local group, LibertYOUbreak, met at Valdosta High School Saturday
for a series of brief talks of opinion on issues by a variety of local people.

The first talk,
Why No on Amendment 1 by J.C. Cunningham for GA House District 175,
has already been posted separately.
Here’s

a video playlist for the rest.


LibertYOUtbreak

Talks, Liberty Outbreak (LO),

Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),

VHS PAC, Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 27 October 2012.

First they showed an animated movie,

The American Dream by the Provacateur Network,
which is mostly about money as debt.
As I remarked to one of the organizers afterwards,
that’s also the theme of

Debt: The First 5,000 Years,
by David Graeber, one of the founders of Occupy Wall Street
(here’s a

video interview with him,
and

a text interview).
The cartoon movie, while presenting that theme in some depth,
only briefly mentions Wall Street
and focuses on the Federal Reserve and an octopus-like long-lived financial
villain it calls Red Shield, which is English for Rothschild.
I find that last a bit far-fetched, not to say outdated,
considering that recent research shows that the real current
octopus-like set of interconnected corporations looks more

like this.
But then plenty of things were said in the recent local
political forums that I didn’t agree with, either.

-jsq

Why No on Amendment 1 —J.C. Cunningham for GA House District 175



J.C. Cunningham, running for state representative district 175,
reminded us all that the basic purpose of the Georgia state government
is to provide public education, according to its constitution,
and that local school boards already can and do approve charter schools.
He gave five reasons for voting No on Amendment 1:

  1. Because out-of-state corporations are paying for this campaign….
  2. It creates a new Atlanta-based government bureaucracy.
  3. The new commission will be filled by appointments done by politicians,
    not the citizens.
  4. Georgia already has 200 charter schools, and we’ve already proven the
    process works.
  5. A Yes vote would… cost us an additional $430 million
    while most of our schools are not open a full year as it is….

The only reasoning that I can tell you that proponents have been giving us
is school choice, and again,
they already have school choice;
we have school choice.
The only new things about Amendment 1 are higher cost
and unnecessary state bureaucracy….

Here’s

the video,
followed by a partial transcript.


Why No on Amendment 1 —J.C. Cunningham for GA House District 175

Talks, Liberty Outbreak (LO),

Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),

VHS PAC, Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 27 October 2012.

Partial transcript:

Continue reading →

Vote No on Amendment 2 —Charlie in Peach Pundit

Let's cut to the chase on what Charlie

wrote for Peach Pundit 18 Oct 2012:

Georgia needs significant ethics reforms. There needs to be greater
transparency for those who do business with the state. Trust must be
restored. Good governance must be demonstrated.

Paying slightly higher rates for a few more years is a small price
to pay to avoid giving away 20 year favors to today's patronage
class. Vote no on this amendment. That is the best way to save
Georgians money.

Georgia is the worst state for legislative corruption.
Do we want those legislators committing us financially
for 10 or 20 years?
If knowing

it's an ALEC bill wasn't enough for you, maybe this will be.
Vote No on amendment 2.

-jsq

ALEC’s “our state legislators” behind multi-year GA constitutional amendment referendum


Ronnie Chance
Look who sponsored

Georgia Senate Resolution 1231 which put
the second referendum question on the ballot!
Two of ALEC’s “our state legislators”,
Senators Ronnie Chance of the 16th,
and
Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers of the 21st,
are among the sponsors (Chance is the first sponsor).

SourceWatch’s ALEC Exposed

found Ronnie Chance on ALEC’s International Relations Task Force.
Rogers himself told CBS News how much he values ALEC,

Who is ALEC?
By Mark Strassmann and Phil Hirschkorn 30 June 2012.
Rogers spelled out the same thing ALEC itself told me:
it considers people like Chance and Rogers
“our state legislators”.
“Our” as in belonging to ALEC, not representing you the voters and taxpayers.


Chip Rogers
Guess who sponsored the bill that put the charter school amendment on the ballot,
HB 1162 in its Senate form?

Chip Rogers.
And who sponsored the companion bill that would suck money out of public
schools and give more per pupil to charter schools, using our local tax dollars,
HB 797 in the Senate?

Chip Rogers.
And House sponsors Jan Jones (R 46th) and Edward Lindsey (R 54th) of both bills

are also ALEC’s “our state legislators”.

I don’t always agree with Adam Smith, but when I do, I quote The Wealth of Nations from 1776:

Continue reading →

Softbank’s Son to install solar in Japan: watch out, Georgia Power!

The same Masayoshi Son who shook up Japan’s Internet market

and is about to do the same in the U.S.
is moving to modify Japan’s power market from nuclear to solar.
Watch out, Georgia Power and Southern Company!
If you don’t get a move on, Son-san will eat your lunch, too.

Mariko Yasu wrote for Bloomberg Businessweek 23 June 2011,

Softbank’s CEO Wants a Solar-Powered Japan,


Masayoshi Son
Billionaire Masayoshi Son made a fortune taking on Japan’s phone
monopoly. Now he aims to shake up its power utilities after the
worst nuclear crisis in 25 years. The 53-year-old chief executive
officer of Softbank says he will build solar farms to generate
electricity, with support from at least 33 of Japan’s 47
prefectures. He’s asking for access to transmission networks owned
by the 10 regional utilities and an agreement that they buy his
electricity. No other company has secured unlimited access to the
those transmission networks. The utilities would not comment.
Japan’s main business organization, the Keidanren, called for
“careful analysis” before any drastic change in the power system
took place.

If Japan ever felt ready to back Son’s ambitious plan, this is the
moment. Radiation has spread across at least 600 square kilometers
(230 square miles) in the northeast since the Mar. 11 earthquake and
tsunami led to meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant.
Outgoing Prime Minister Naoto Kan said in May he will rethink a plan
to increase atomic power to 50 percent of the nation’s energy output
from 30 percent. Renewable energy already accounts for 10 percent,
according to Japan’s Agency for Natural Resources and Energy. Son
wants to see that tripled by 2020. “The question is how this nation
is going to survive after cutting nuclear power,” he said at a
government panel meeting on June 12.


Complacent Georgia Power and SO, you maybe don’t think he can do it?
NTT probably thought that, too:

Continue reading →

Solar college campuses far to the north: why not at VSU?

This spring,
the University at Buffalo did it,
and now
Rutgers is doing it:
installing solar arrays for power and profit.
Rutgers is in New Jersey,

the #2 state in solar power.
We have a lot more sun down here.
How about we catch up and get ahead in solar power,
starting with VSU?

Brita Belli wrote for ecoemagination 25 September 2012,

Renewable U: College Campuses Invest in Renewable Energy



Over the summer, crews at Rutgers University's Livingston Campus
began transforming a 32-acre, 3,500-spot parking lot into one of the
largest solar canopy arrays in the nation. The array will have a
capacity of 8 megawatts, enough to power 1,000 homes.

The canopy is more than just eco window dressing — Antonio
Calcado, Rutgers vice president for facilities and capital planning,
expects that with the financing structure, grants and energy
credits, the investment will return about $28 million to the
university over the next 20 years. A previous solar project had a
similarly rapid payback.

“Combined with the electricity we produce, it's a winner all
around,” says Calcado. “We're an institution of higher
learning—we teach this stuff—so we should also lead by
example. It's a living laboratory in many respects.”

Lead by example: now there's an idea!
An idea that might even attract businesses.

-jsq

Videos @ 30Club 2012-10-22



Here's

a video playlist
of the Candidate Forum last night organized by the 30 Club at Serenity Church.
Probably more commentary later; for now, in the interests of speed, just the raw videos.


Candidates Forum, 30 Club,
J.D. Rice, President

Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),

Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 22 October 2012.

-jsq

Solar yes, nuclear expansion no —David Staples for GA PSC



After

he spoke at last Thursday’s Political Forum,
David Staples said something interesting out in the hall and I asked
him to repeat it for the video camera.

Here’s

the video,
followed by
a transcript.


Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 18 October 2012.

Here’s the
transcript:

I think right now we need to look at solar.
The two new nuclear reactors probably shouldn’t be built right now.
You look at the wholesale power rate curves,
and where it’s most expensive, and it’s during peak hours.
Wholesale power is 50 cents a kilowatt-hour,
and the electric companies are buying at wholesale rates,
What do we need to offset that with?
We’ve got something to do that with: solar.
The cost has come so far down that that’s something
we should be spending our money on rather than
than building nuclear reactors right now.



Solar PV costs

dropped 50% last year.

Southern Company’s new nukes

continue to run farther over budget.

If

Denmark can do it
maybe

Southern Company and Georgia Power should stop manufacturing buggy whips
and

help get Georgia on the solar train.

Staples is

on record for solar
and as he says
ethics matter:
all the incumbent GA PSC members
have taken campaign donations from
people closely associated with the industries they regulate,
(including

Stan Wise)
and Staples
has apparently

only accepted donations from clean sources.

-jsq