Tag Archives: Nathan Deal

Ohio selling off prisons

The governor of Ohio created a budget shortfall, and wants to solve it
by selling off private prisons in “a yard sale” in a recession,
like “a junkie” for “his next fix.”


According to testimony by a nonpartisan research institute:

“The biggest source of Ohio’s budget problem is not overspending or
compenstation for public employees. It is a reduction in revenue.

…

The tax changes also were weighted to high-income Ohioans. More than 40
percent of the income-tax cuts are going to the five percent of families
with income of $135,000 or more a year. Meanwhile, the bottom three-fifths
of Ohio families will receive just 13 percent of the total tax cut.

According to a recent poll,
the people of Ohio think this is unfair and don’t believe the governor
can fix the budget without raising taxes.

There are other reasons selling off prisons to private prison
companies such as CCA is a bad idea.



Mark Niquette wrote for Bloomberg 29 June 2011,

Kasich Tries to Avoid Arizona’s Mistakes in Ohio Prison Selloff:



Still, Democratic lawmakers, including Representative Matt Lundy of
Elyria, question whether Ohio is making a wise move.

“The buyer wins and the taxpayers lose when we sell in the middle of
a recession,” Lundy said during press conference last month, calling
the move “a yard sale.”



Selling assets for “one-time” money is a mistake, Louisiana Treasurer
John Kennedy said. He opposed a plan by Republican Governor Bobby Jindal
to sell three prisons to raise $90 million, a proposal the Legislature
didn’t approve.

“A junkie can sell his TV or his stereo or his iPod and generate money
for his next fix,” Kennedy, also a Republican, said in a telephone
interview from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. “But if he’s going to ever
get well, he needs to face his addiction.”

An even better quote in that story comes from CCA’s own Steve Owen:

Continue reading →

The Atlantic dissects Georgia’s anti-immigrant law

The VDT’s pan of HB 87 gets national notice.
Why we don’t need a law that puts south Georgia farmers out of business
while profiting private prison company CCA at taxpayer expense.

Megan McArdle wrote in the Atlantic 21 June 2011,

Georgia’s Harsh Immigration Law Costs Millions in Unharvested Crops.
She started by quoting Jay Bookman,
who quoted the VDT.
She then goes into the economics:



The economics here aren’t particularly complicated, and I’m sure they
won’t be new to the sophisticated readers of the Atlantic, but they are
useful to look at and consider explicitly when thinking about issues
like this.

It goes like this. If you’re not going to let illegal immigrants do the
jobs they are currently being hired to do, then farmers will have to
raise wages to replace them. Since farmers are taking a risk in hiring
immigrant workers, you can bet they were getting a significant deal
on wage costs relative to “market wages”. I put market wages here in
quotations, because it’s quite possible that the wages required to get
workers to do the job are so high that it’s no longer profitable for
farmers to plant the crops in the first place.

Yes, that would be the problem.
A law that benefits private prison company CCA at the expense of
Georgia taxpayers while putting Georgia farmers out of business.

She concludes:

Continue reading →

GA HB 87 ridiculed in Atlanta; VDT cited

Who could have forseen this?
Well, other than anyone who actually knows Georgia farmers.
And the VDT becomes thought leader to the world:

“Maybe this should have been prepared for, with farmers’ input. Maybe
the state should have discussed the ramifications with those directly
affected. Maybe the immigration issue is not as easy as &lquo;send them
home,&rquo; but is a far more complex one in that maybe Georgia needs them,
relies on them, and cannot successfully support the state’s No. 1
economic engine without them.”

Except of course HB 87 doesn’t just send them home:
it also locks up as many as it can catch, to the profit
of private prison company CCA, at the expense of we the taxpayers.

That’s as quoted by
Jay Bookman in the AJC 17 June 2011,

Ga’s farm-labor crisis playing out as planned:



After enacting House Bill 87, a law designed to drive illegal immigrants
out of Georgia, state officials appear shocked to discover that HB 87 is,
well, driving a lot of illegal immigrants out of Georgia.

It might be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

Continue reading →

From 4 to 40 solar companies in Georgia —James Marlow @ Solar Summit

James Marlow started the

Georgia Solar Summit by saying
in a few years we’ve gone from four to forty solar companies in Georgia, and
we should:



“Stop talking about what we’re going to do in the future,
and start talking about what we’re going to do in 100 days.”

He directly challenged Gov. Deal and the legislature.

“This is about goodness and light, and sound economics.”

The next speaker (didn’t get his name, sorry) ran through some statistics,
including:

  • 93,502 U.S. solar workers: doubled since 2009

  • 26% growth

  • No other industry is growing like this.

A telling comparison:

  • 1GW nuclear power station takes 10 years to build.

  • In one month Germany installed 2GW of solar last June.

Germany, which is far north of Georgia.
Georgia has far more sun.

-jsq

Trend towards drug legalization

Has anyone else noticed that even sitting big name
politicians are saying things only one step short of just legalize it?

The most famous politician in the world said a few months
ago:

‘Drug legalization is an “entirely legitimate topic for debate,”‘
which is a big change from 2009 when Obama laughed
off the question.

Newly elected GA gov. Nathan Deal said

we can’t afford to lock up non-violent drug offenders.
In April Gov. Deal
signed a bill to create a panel to overhaul sentencing laws.



Public opinion

is almost to the majority nationwide for legalization,
according to the Pew Research Center.

Private prisons have no business plan, because the majority of their
“customers” are in danger of not getting locked up.
We don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia.
Spend that tax money on rehabilitation and education instead.

-jsq

Gov. Deal celebrates Juneteenth by recommending indentured agricultural labor

Remember 85% of people in the prison system are black,
and Gov. Nathan Deal recommends during the week of Juneteenth celebrations,
according to David Rodock in the VDT today,
Parolees to replace migrants?
Gov. Deal says put probationers in fields



With the recent exodus of undocumented Hispanic migrant workers leaving
Georgia to avoid the consequences of House Bill 87, Gov. Nathan Deal made
a statement on Tuesday suggesting that probationers could potentially fill
the approximately 11,000 open jobs in the state’s agricultural economy.

“Specifically, I asked Department of Corrections Commissioner Brian
Owens and (Department of Agriculture) Commissioner Gary Black to review
the current situation and offer possible options,” said Deal in his
statement. “Commissioner Owens has indicated that there are 100,000
probationers statewide, 8,000 of which are in the Southwest region of
the state and 25 percent of which are unemployed … I believe this
would be a great partial solution to our current status as we continue
to move towards sustainable results with the legal options available.”

The potential move would allow probationers who are unable to find work
to have a source of income, provided they are able to meet employer
standards. Income can then be used to pay probation fines, along with
other state fines that are a requirement of their probation sentence.

This fits right in with Joe Pritchard’s rumored suggestion

to replace animal shelter employees with interns.

Hey, if there’s one thing Georgia is good at, it’s
locking up more people
even while other states realize they can’t afford to do that anymore.

So if probationers don’t want to pick onions, lock ’em up again,
in the new private prison VLCIA wants to build in Lowndes County!
That will benefit private prison executives and investors and not
us in Lowndes County, but hey, that will serve those immigrants right!

-jsq

Lowndes County is disaster area —Gov. Deal

Climate change makes Lowndes County a disaster area.

Amber Eady wrote for WALB,

Deal requests disaster designation for Lowndes County:



Gov. Deal sent a letter to the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack
asking that 22 Georgia counties be declared disaster areas because of
Georgia’s ongoing drought.

Lowndes County was on that list of 22 counties that Deal wants to be
declared as disaster areas.

-gretchen

Gov. Deal asks state to look into farm labor shortages

GA Gov. Nathan Deal doesn’t know what caused the
sudden Georgia agricultural labor shortage;
asks Ag. Dept. to look into it.
Could it be… HB 87?

Jeremy Redmon wrote in the AJC 27 May 2011,

Governor asks state to probe farm labor shortages

State officials confirmed Friday that they have started investigating the
scope of Georgia’s agricultural labor shortages following complaints
that the state’s new immigration enforcement law is scaring away
migrant farmworkers.

Gov. Nathan Deal asked for the investigation Thursday in a letter to
Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black. Deal wants Black’s department to
survey farmers about the impact Georgia’s immigration law, House Bill
87, is having on their industry and report findings by June 10.

The labor shortages have sent farmers scrambling to find other workers
for their fall harvests. Others are making hard choices about leaving
some fruits and vegetables to wilt on their fields.

Proponents of HB 87 say people who are in the country legally have nothing
to worry about concerning the new law. They hope the law that takes effect
July 1 will deter illegal immigrants from coming here and burdening the
state’s taxpayer-funded public schools, hospitals and jails.



However, I have seen suggestions that the state send taxpayer-funded
prisoners to do the agricultural labor.
Should we go back to slave labor on plantations?

Better: we don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County.
Spend that money on education instead.

-jsq

Privatizing water —GA SB 122

Privatizing prisons is not enough; now Georgia wants to privatize water.

Aaron Gould Sheinin wrote in the AJC Monday 2 May 2011,

Deal signs bill allowing public-private reservoirs



Partnerships between public authorities and private enterprise to build
new reservoirs are now legal in Georgia under legislation Gov. Nathan
Deal signed into law Monday.

Senate Bill 122 “is particularly useful at times such as these when budget
cutbacks hinder our ability to invest in new infrastructure,” Deal said
at a Georgia Chamber of Commerce luncheon in his honor. “This stretches
public dollars by attracting partners to move forward with public works
projects that will benefit the citizens of the state for generations.”

Lawmakers approved $46 million in bond money in the state budget
that takes effect July 1 to help facilitate the construction of new
reservoirs. Deal said he hopes to increase that to $300 million over
the next several years.

“Increasing our water supply in terms of holding that supply is critical
for meeting our future needs,” Deal said.

Yes, but trumping up a fake budget crisis by giving tax breaks to
people who don’t need them and then using it to privatize
public infrastructure for corporate profit at taxpayer expense
is not the way to do it.

Wait, it gets even better:

Continue reading →

Georgia first to copy Arizona anti-immigrant bill



Georgia passes anti-immigrant law that benefits private prison companies.

Seth Freed Wessler wrote 15 April 2011,

Welcome to the Wild, Wild South: Georgia Passes SB 1070 Copycat Bill

Many worry about the financial costs of the bill. Though these are
surely not the greatest concerns for immigrant communities who would
be most impacted if Georgia’s bill is enacted, many business groups
are anxious. A national boycott of Arizona cost the state an estimated
$250 million in lost taxes, tourism and other revenue, according to the
Center for American Progress.

Even before the Georgia bill passed, a group of organizations across
the country threatened to wage a boycott of the state of Georgia if it
enacts the legislation.

Most states that have had this bill introduced have had the good sense
to get rid of it.

Continue reading →