Tag Archives: Economy

Senate Farm Bill adds Rural Gigabit Amendment

The U.S. Senate just adopted an amendment to invest in gigabit
(1,000 megabit per second) rural broadband networks.


Our local leaders need to lobby for the House to pass this,
if they are serious about fast affordable Internet service for everyone here.
Senator Leahy’s tiny Vermont, with the population of a single Congressional district,

is already well along towards gigabit Internet.
Our three House members can help get south Georgia on the road to better
jobs, education, and health care through better Internet service.

Jennifer Reading wrote today for WCAX,
Leahy’s high-speed internet amendment passes,

What I want to make sure is that a rural area can compete the same
way an urban area can. It’s actually the argument, the debate that
went on before I was even born about whether you had rural
electricity, rural telephone or not and if we hadn’t done that much
of this country would be a wasteland,” said Sen. Leahy.

Don’t we want that, too?

Continue reading →

Austin Energy pays 3 cents extra for solar and everybody wins

Net metering actually shortchanges rooftop solar generators,
discovered Austin Energy by running the numbers.
And here in Georgia we can’t even get net metering:
maybe we should.
In Austin, Texas it’s called the

Value of Solar tariff,
and it’s an odd tariff that actually pays the solar generator.

Chris Warren wrote for Oxford American 7 June 2013,

The Revolution Will Be Solarized,

To come up with a true value of solar to the utility, Austin Energy
formulated numerical values for all of the benefits yielded by each
kilowatt-hour of distributed generation. These included not only the


actual electricity produced but also the elimination of line losses
as well as costs the utility could avoid by not building, or even
delaying, construction on more generation. “If you put off a
billion-dollar decision for one year, that’s at five percent
interest,” said [Karl] Rabago. “It’s a big savings in cash each
year.”

In the end, Austin Energy determined Continue reading →

June LAKE meeting Tuesday @ LAKE 2013-06-11

Same agenda as in January, local governance: Water, trash, and money.


View Larger Map
What: Monthly LAKE Meeting
When: about 6:30PM Tuesday

(after the Lowndes County
Commission meeting)

11 June 2013
Where: Let's Eat Cafe

2102 W. Hill Ave.

(just west of I-75,

at the Shell station)

Valdosta, GA 31601

Don't let the location fool you:
Let's Eat is locally owned, and serves a lot of locally-grown food.

If you're on Facebook,
please Like the

LAKE facebook page.
You can sign up for

the meeting event there,
Or just come as you are.

-jsq

ADS revolving door with local and state government

Not paid enough as an elected official?
Apply to Advanced Disposal for a job!
Then you can run for the statehouse, win, and sponsor legislation
about waste collection!
Oh, look: there’s Steve Edwards again.



CummingHome.com updated 25 September 2011 a press release originally
published 20 September 2009,

Former Mayor Joins the Advanced Disposal Atlanta Marketing Team,

Advanced Disposal Services, Inc., a regional provider of integrated
solid waste and recycling collection, transfer, and disposal
services, is pleased to announce the hiring of Brett Harrell as the
Municipal Marketing & Government Affairs Representative for the
Metro-Atlanta area.

Mr. Harrell brings a multitude of experience to his new position
having spent time as former Mayor of the City of Snellville where he
administered the city’s solid waste and recycling program serving Continue reading →

More clues to how much garbage collection fees will go up

ADS proposed last December to Lincolnton, GA, to start trash collection
with a rate very like what Veolia bid to Lowndes County, with increases
every year after that.



The Lincoln Journal wrote 6 December 2012,

Council hears proposal to privatize garbage collection,

The Lincolnton City Council heard a proposal to privatize the
municipality’s trash collection service at its regular meeting held
Monday, December 3. The Lincolnton City Council heard a proposal to
privatize the municipality’s trash collection service at its regular
meeting held Monday, December 3.



The presentation was made by Kevin Rupinta, general manager, and
Steve Edwards, area municipal marketing manager, of Advanced
Disposal, the Columbia County company that also serves Lincoln
County.

The written proposal stated: “Since Advanced Disposal collects
garbage in Lincoln County and runs through and around the City of
Lincolnton, Advanced Disposal offers the following to reduce the
city’s expenses:

(1) Purchase the city’s garbage trucks at an agreed upon fair market
value.

(2) Purchase the city’s carts at an agreed upon fair market value.

(3) Provide garbage service for the city at rates that mirror those
charged to the county.”

The rates quoted were:

Continue reading →

Budget hearing public notices @ LCC 2013-06-05

Yesterday’s County Commission meeting was billed as a

Budget Discussion Meeting,
and apparently it was not a public hearing on the county’s budget,
because state law requires such a hearing to be advertised in the newspaper
or published as a news story, a week in advance.


This is different from public notice for other Commission meetings:
for budget hearings the notice has to be not just sent to the newspaper:
it has to be published, and not in the legal notices section,
and it has to appear at least a week before the hearing.
It’s also illegal

to refuse to provide a copy of the submitted
draft budget to the public or the news media:

O.C.G.A. 36-81-5.(d)
On the day that the proposed budget is submitted to the governing


authority for consideration, a copy of the budget shall be placed in
a public location which is convenient to the residents of the unit
of local government. The governing authority shall make every effort
to provide convenient access to the residents during reasonable
business hours so as to accord every opportunity to the public to
review the budget prior to adoption by the governing authority. A
copy of the budget shall also be made available, upon request, to
the news media.



LAKE is a news medium,

according to federal law.

Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts has

Georgia Law on Local Government Budgets: Continue reading →

GM Ag corporations thank Jack Kingston for Monsanto rider

A long list of agricultural corporations wrote a letter
thanking Jack Kingson (R GA-01) for working to get the Monsanto rider
into the 2013 Ag. bill:


Again, we commend Subcommittee Chairman Kingston’s efforts and
urge the support of Section 733 in the Fiscal Year 2013 Agriculture,
Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies
Appropriations Act.



This letter is on

Monsanto’s own website.
It contains not one word about public health or quality of food or preservation of farmers who do not choose to

poison people the Monsanto way.
The glyphosate mentioned in the letter is the principal ingredient in Roundup, and



research shows it causes DNA damage even when vastly diluted.
Monsanto’s glyphosate-resistant crops are genetically modified to include a gene which produces a poison that

other research indicates is toxic to humans.
These poisons are what the Monsanto rider makes harder to get out of fields.

June 12, 2012 

The Honorable Harold Rogers 

Chairman 

House Committee on Appropriations 

United States House of Representatives 

H‐307 U.S. Capitol 

Washington, D.C. 20515  		The Honorable Norm Dicks 

Ranking Member 

House Committee on Appropriations 

United States House of Representatives 

1016 Longworth House Office Building 

Washington, DC 20515 


Page 1

Dear Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Dicks: 
 

Our organizations strongly support Section 733 of the

Fiscal Year 2013 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies Appropriations Act.
The provision will give
growers assurance that crops developed through biotechnology that
have already been approved by the Department of Agriculture (USDA)
can be planted and harvested under temporary stewardship conditions
in the event of litigation against the agency’s decision. We commend
Subcommittee Chairman Kingston for including Section 733 in the
subcommittee bill and urge your support for this necessary provision
when the Appropriations Committee considers this bill later this
month. The provision addresses Continue reading →

Remerton Mill demolition –WCTV

Maybe Nina King’s elegy on the sad demolition of Remerton’s Strickland Mill will spur enough people to get involved in the community
so next time a monument is threatened with demolition we can find
the resources to save it, and we can bring things
the community needs now, like fast affordable Internet access for all.


Nina King
Greg Gullberg reported for WCTV 11PM News last night,

Demolition Of Remerton Mill Has Begun,
in which Nina King said:

“Well, it breaks my heart, and it’s so sad.
And I don’t understand why anybody would want a historic
old building torn down like this.”

Continue reading →

How much will trash collection rates go up in Lowndes County? @ LCC 2012-10-09

Speaking of

Veolia winning its high bid for garbage collection,
here’s a clue to how much more its rates may go up.


Remember
ADS Veolia was bought hardly a month later by ADS, owned by Highstar Capital
of New York City?
Look at ADS’s bid for Proposal D: $18.39.


That’s $220.68 a year.
Which is even higher than
Wakulla County, Florida’s $196 a year,
which Gretchen warned us all about more than a year ago.
And more than double the $100 a year for the former county waste collection sites.

Want to guess how much ADS’s monthly rates will rise?
Maybe Continue reading →

Kemper Coal greatest transfer of wealth from customers to a monopoly –Brandon Presley, MS PSC

Too ambitious, technology untried, like Katrina and the BP oil spill:
that’s Southern Company’s Kemper Coal plant, according to a Mississippi
Public Service Commissioner.

Geoff Pender wrote for ClarionLedger.com yesterday,

PSC member slams Miss. Power,



“This is the greatest transfer of wealth from customers to a
monopoly in the history of the state of Mississippi,” [Brandon] Presley
said. “Where are all these so-called conservatives on
that?”

Maybe Mississippi, like Georgia, Continue reading →