Some local councils don’t even have open records request forms,
and many don’t have them posted online.
But that doesn’t have to stop you!
As mentioned,
there are plenty of open records requests still to be filed.
If you want suggestions, inquire at
information at l-a-k-e.org (the dashes are part of the address).
For how, see the previous post on the
Open Records Act.
Send LAKE the results of your request and we may publish them.
If you want your name mentioned in a LAKE post as the open records requestor,
please say so.
Also remember that any communications you may receive from
an elected
Continue reading →
Elizabeth Pran asks
Who Gets More Tax Dollars… Prisoners or School Children?
Of course, being Fox News, it advocates cutting prison
costs by reducing air conditioning for prisoners.
The real problem is the War on Drugs and Three Strikes.
She does at last manage to mention in passing “alternative programs
for non-violent offenders.”
Yes, like not locking up people for minor drug offenses in the first place!
And indeed, educating students today would cost less than
locking them up later.
Meanwhile, privatizing prisons does nothing to solve these problems;
it just lines some corporation’s pockets with tax money.
After he gave his
goodbye speech,
I
wished him happiness in Myrtle Beach
and thought maybe he’d make a graceful exit.
Nope, he’s still cranking the Edison phonograph on the same old
scratched wax cylinder.
Here he is last week responding to James Wright
and dozens of other people in the same thread
to which I later posted
It’s an opportunity.
In Lofton’s case, he’s still fixated on the losing proposition of biomass fuels.
-jsq
Thanks so much for sharing this and for your continued strong support of our
client’s green renewable energy project. In addition to assisting the
country in reducing our consumption of middle eastern fuel and improving the
environment, this project will provide a much needed economic impact for
landowners of every race, and the Industrial Authority will assist in the
efforts underway to assist local farmers. Google “benefits of biomass
electricity,”
We’ve rotated around the north end of Lowndes County;
time to rotate down to the west of Valdosta.
Monthly LAKE Meeting
When: 5:30 PM, Tuesday 5 April 2011
Where: Heidi’s Brooklyn Deli
1407 W Hill Ave Ste 1
Valdosta, GA 31601
(229) 241-9944
That’s on Hill Ave just east of St. Augustine Road.
They’re open until 9PM, and they’d be happy to push a few tables
together for us.
Restaurant review and source of the picture.
Help cover food, water, transportation, incarceration, solar energy,
biomass, and regular local government meetings: you never know when
news will be made!
If you follow the LAKE blog,
On the LAKE Front,
which you can also see through the
LAKE facebook page,
you know what we cover, from protesters to private prisons to gardening,
all of which turn out to be related.
What else do you want to investigate?
You can be LAKE, too!
Continue reading →
Over 8,000 activists rallied outside the State Capitol on Thursday, March
24, 2011, to show their outrage and disgust over Georgia’s Arizona-type
immigration bills.
As previously reported by Atlanta Progressive News, legislation, HB 87,
has already passed the State House. A similar bill, SB 40, has also
passed the State Senate.
While the vast majority of protesters at the Capitol were Hispanic,
opposition to the bills came from a wide spectrum of constituents
including immigrants, students, religious groups, peace groups, veterans
of the Civil Rights Movement, Asian groups, GLBTQI activists, labor,
artists, musicians, business owners, elected officials, and others.
Protestors wearing respirator masks held signs reading “Biomass? No!”
in front of the Valdosta City Hall building on Thursday. Members of
the Wiregrass Activists for Clean Energy, the VSU student organization
Students Against Violating the Environment, and other concerned Valdosta
citizens showed up to protest the construction of the Wiregrass Power:
Biomass Electric Generating Plant.
“We already have solar power resources in place that we could be using
and I feel like money should be directed towards that,” Ivey Roubique,
vice-president of the Student Geological Society, said. “It wouldn’t
be good for the community and even though I’m in college here it
still matters.”
The Spectator article quotes from two speakers for whom LAKE
happens to have video, linked below.
Continue reading →
When public officials ignore objections for long enough, eventually
people start speculating as to their motives, in this case about the proposed biomass plant.
Here’s
the video:
Regular meeting of the Valdosta City Council, 24 February 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Hotels are hiring desk clerks and housekeepers in anticipation of a spring
tourist boom in Savannah, while even a rural Georgia city devastated by
manufacturing losses is putting some people back to work as construction
begins on a $57 million private prison.
Erin Hurley provided the very model of how to give a speech:
I’m the president of
Students Against Violating the Environment at VSU.
I’m here representing
200+ members of SAVE, that consists of students, faculty, community members.
We are deeply concerned with environmental issues and
we are networking together to make this city a more humane and
sustainable community
for future generations.
As a student, I feel I have the right to be able to breathe clean air
at the college I attend.
With this biomass plant possibly being built here,
the future for generations to come are in jeopardy, and we want to protect our fellow and future students’ health.
Please take into consideration the future health of this university
and its community,
and don’t sell grey water to the proposed biomass plant.
Erin Hurley, President of
SAVE, Students Against Violating the Environment, speaking at
Regular meeting of the Valdosta City Council, 24 March 2011,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
She said who she was, who she represented, how many, what they were for, what they wanted, quickly enough that attention didn’t waver, slowly and loudly enough to be heard, and briefly enough to transcribe, with pathos, logic, and politic. Even the mayor looked up at “As a student….”
The center “will educate a person to work in an advanced manufacturing
plant,” Gilley says, just the kind of plants that are coming to Troup
County over the next year or so. Using industry-standard equipment,
students will be educated to meet the manufacturing community’s
workforce needs.
In fact, the manufacturing community already is calling on the
center. DaeLim, a supplier to Kia and Hyundai (the latter has a plant
nearby in Alabama), expressed interest in students doing prototyping of
plastic parts once the center, which opened June 1, is up and running.
“We’ve left a good platform on which to build. We have good faculty,
good staff. I think we have good community relations,” Gilley says of
his time at West Georgia. Then he looks to the future and what he’ll
miss most about his job. “We offer programs that allow people to get
better paying jobs. I’ll miss having the power to make decisions that
change people’s lives.”
Hm, so the locals think the technical college has more to do with
industry than the K-12 schools.
Some local councils don’t even have open records request forms,
and many don’t have them posted online.
But that doesn’t have to stop you!
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