Tag Archives: Georgia

Private Prisons failing in Texas, leaving locals in lurch

John Burnett writes for NPR that Private Prison Promises Leave Texas Towns In Trouble:
It seemed like a good idea at the time when the west Texas farming town of Littlefield borrowed $10 million and built the Bill Clayton Detention Center in a cotton field south of town in 2000. The charmless steel-and-cement-block buildings ringed with razor wire would provide jobs to keep young people from moving to Lubbock or Dallas.

For eight years, the prison was a good employer. Idaho and Wyoming paid for prisoners to serve time there. But two years ago, Idaho pulled out all of its contract inmates because of a budget crunch at home. There was also a scandal surrounding the suicide of an inmate.

Shortly afterward, the for-profit operator, GEO Group, gave notice that it was leaving, too. One hundred prison jobs disappeared. The facility has been empty ever since.

The pullquote: Continue reading →

Gigabit Internet in Chattanooga

If we’re going to copy Chattanooga about something, how about this: 133 US cities now have their own broadband networks by Nate Anderson in Ars Technica:
Such publicly owned networks can offer services that incumbents don’t, such as the 1Gbps fiber network in Chattanooga, Tennessee, run by the government-owned electric power board. And they sometimes have more incentive to reach every resident, even in surrounding rural areas, in ways that might not make sense for a profit-focused company.
According to this map of Community Broadband Networks by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, quite a few small cities in south Georgia have municipal cable networks:

All three of Moultrie, Thomasville, and Cairo use CNS, whose brochure for Moultrie says you can get:

DownstreamUpstreamMonthly Cost
5 Mbps1 Mbps$29.95
12 Mbps2 Mbps$35.95
22 Mbps3 Mbps$49.95
Now that’s not 1 Gbps, but it’s a darn sight faster than the allegedly 3Mbps AT&T DSL!

If Moultrie, Thomasville, and Cairo, and yes, Doerun can do this, why can’t Valdosta and Hahira?

And then how about add on a wireless network to reach the rest of us rural folk?

Maybe then we wouldn’t be the Internet backwoods.

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Thanks to George Rhynes for the district number label idea –Tim Carroll @ VCC 24 March 2011

A small example of following up on citizen suggestions, but who knows? maybe it’s a sign of much more to come. In the comments by council members at the end of the 24 March 2011 Valdosta City Council session, member Tim Carroll thanked George Rhynes for his suggestion to put district numbers on council members’ name plates so citizens could more easily tell which was their council member. Caroll raised his plate up so everyone could see it has a number on it, too, now. Other Council members also commented on various things.


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.

George suggested the district number labels on 20 January 2011.

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It’s an opportunity –John S. Quarterman

“Like a burned-over longleaf pine, we can come back from this recession greener than ever, if we choose wisely.”

Here is my response to James R. Wright’s questions about jobs and priorities. -jsq

It’s an opportunity for those of us who are not currently searching for our next meal to help those who need jobs, and thereby to help ourselves, so they don’t turn to crime. Like a burned-over longleaf pine, we can come back from this recession greener than ever, if we choose wisely.

Switchgrass seemed like a good idea five or ten years ago, but there is still no market for it.

Meanwhile, local and organic agriculture is booming, and continued to boom right through the recession.

Not just strictly organic by Georgia’s ridiculously restrictive standards for that, but also less pesticides for healthier foods, pioneered as nearby as Tifton. That’s two markets: one for farmers, stores, and farmers’ markets in growing and distributing healthy food, and one for local banks in financing farmers converting from their overlarge pesticide spraying machinery to plows and cultivators.

Similarly, biomass may have seemed like a good idea years ago, but with Adage backing out of both of its Florida biomass plants just across the state line, having never built any such plant ever, the biomass boom never happened.

Meanwhile, our own Wesley Langdale has demonstrated to the state that

Continue reading →

After Kia: still school problems in Troup County; no mention of unification

Let’s keep looking for evidence of any connection of school unification in Troup County, Georgia, to the Kia plant, even though CUEE didn’t present any. It’s rather odd that none of the locals seem to have mentioned any such connection in the numerous articles published about the Kia plant.

Here’s an interview with Mayor Drew Ferguson IV of West Point, Georgia by Larry Copeland in USA TODAY, 25 March 2010, Kia breathes life into old Georgia textile mill town. Nope, no mention of schools, education, or unification. Nice picture of the mayor with a Kia, though.

Karen Kennedy published a lengthy article about the Kia plant in GeorgiaTrend in August 2008, LaGrange/Troupe County: The Kia Effect, in which the first mention of schools is for the period after the Kia plant opened:

The biggest need Mayor Ferg-uson sees in West Point right now is public education. “We have a wonderful elementary school.” But there is no middle or high school in the city limits. “The current formula for education funding is not working,” he says of the state’s approach, which bases money on students who are already in the system, not on students who will be coming through the system in the near future. “If you don’t have great education opportunities people will live far away and drive [to work]. Schools should be looked at as an economic driver.” They are a way to help recruit good strong families to an area, he adds.
That’s right, after the Kia plant, there are big problems with the schools, and there’s not even any mention of unification.

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Call to action for City Council not to sell water to biomass plant –Karen Noll @ VCC 24 March 2011

Karen Noll of WACE, Wiregrass Activists for Clean Energy, asked the Valdosta City Council not to sell wastewater to the proposed Wiregrass Power LLC biomass plant. She presented
“500+ signatures from community members and organizations”
asking for that. She also said
“…furthermore a response to our request each member of the council is expected before the next council meeting.”
Here’s the video.


WACE, Wiregrass Activists for Clean Energy, 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.

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Kia and school unification in Troup County, Georgia: any connection?

The only example in Georgia that CUEE claimed of good effects of school unification was Troup County, Georgia, where a few people are convinced that the Kia plant would not have come to town if the schools hadn’t unified. That’s one county out of 159. And it’s hearsay anecdotal evidence. So let’s look for any actual evidence.

The county’s own announcement of the Kia plant opening says nothing about schools, much less unification. Troup County’s web page about their Strategic Plan for Sustainable Development does mention education, but says nothing about school unification. Their county history page mentions the Kia plant but nothing about education being a factor, much less school unification.

Even if that anecdotal connection between school unification and the Kia plant had some evidence behind it, that’s not an example of improved education!

-jsq

Private prisons illegal in Israel

I couldn’t find a U.S. Jewish statement on private prisons, but Tomer Zarchin published this in Haaretz in Israel 20 November 2009: International legal precedent: No private prisons in Israel
The High Court of Justice put an end to years of controversy Thursday by ruling that privately run prisons are unconstitutional.

Following the decision, the state is expected to have to pay hundreds of millions of shekels in compensation to a company that had already completed construction of the first private prison, near Be’er Sheva.

The panel of nine justices, presided over by Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch, ruled that for the state to transfer authority for managing the prison to a private contractor whose aim is monetary profit would severely violate the prisoners’ basic human rights to dignity and freedom.

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Solar is better than biomass because it doesn’t pollute –Jack Pruden @ VCC 24 March 2011

Jack Pruden’s hand-lettered sign says:
Ban the burn
Go 100% solar
Gretchen asked him about that and he said:


Regular meeting of the Valdosta City Council, 24 March 2011.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

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Angela Manning and her extended ovation @ VCC 24 March 2011

It’s Sunday, so let’s see what a local preacher thinks about the biomass plant. Mayor Fretti asked if there were any Citizens Wishing to be Heard, and a preacher said, “yes”. No, not Rev. Rose. He last spoke to the Valdosta City Council back on 10 February, and left in disgust. Besides, the Council thinks people are frightened of little old him.

This time, 24 March 2011, Angela Manning, minister of the 1500-member New Life Ministries in Valdosta near the proposed site for the Wiregrass Power LLC biomass plant, read from the Valdosta City Council’s own mission statement and asked,

How do you adhere to your mission statement?
Here’s the video: Continue reading →