T-SPLOST regions are an intermediate level of government in which all the people in the region vote together, not by counties.
Gretchen Quarterman asked:
When the 18 counties vote, is it county by county, say Atkinson votes yes, and Lowndes votes no, and if there were 9 counties that voted yes and 9 counties that voted no, or is it the total of all the voters together, and then we say there were 400,000 voters and it’s a simple majority.
Corey Hull answered:
It’s a simple majority. It’s the latter of how you described it, it’s all the voters together.
How do we vote on T-SPLOST? T-SPLOST Public Meeting, Southern Georgia Regional Commission (SGRC), Corey Hull, Nolen Cox, Gretchen Quarterman, Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 19 September 2011. Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
The Vogtle $913 million cost overrun by itself could have paid for
approximately 1,000 megawatts of natural gas generation; 450 megawatts
of wind power; and 330 megawatts of solar power.
That’s not 20 gigawatts.
But the population of Germany is about 81 million,
while the population of Georgia is about 9.8 million people,
so the Georgia equivalent of 20 gigawatts would be about 2.4 gigawatts.
The federal government has guaranteed about $8.3 billion in loans
related to Plant Vogtle.
That $8.3 billion would pay for about 3 gigawatts of solar power.
That
big dish at Plant Vogtle?
That’s not just a nuclear containment vessel,
it’s a solar prevention wall.
Preventing jobs, energy independence, and profit through solar power in Georgia.
Plant Vogtle is why Georgia is not a leader in solar power today.
Lowndes County would be a T-SPLOST donor county: it would put more money into T-SPLOST than it would get back for projects.
Somebody (I think it was Robert Yost) asked whether Lowndes County would be a donor county for T-SPLOST. Corey Hull said yes, that was the case. Someone else noted:
Atkinson County that’s been coming over here spending our money all these years, gets a little of it back.
And the smaller counties get penalized a lot more if they vote against T-SPLOST, because they depend much more on LMIG.
So T-SPLOST among other downsides is a scheme to pit smaller counties against larger ones in the T-SPLOST region.
Lowndes County donor county T-SPLOST Public Meeting, Southern Georgia Regional Commission (SGRC), Corey Hull, Nolen Cox, Gretchen Quarterman, Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 19 September 2011. Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour—equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity—through the midday hours on Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank said….
Norbert Allnoch, director of the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry (IWR) in Muenster, said the 22 gigawatts of solar power per hour fed into the national grid on Saturday met nearly 50 percent of the nation's midday electricity needs….
The record-breaking amount of solar power shows one of the world's leading industrial nations was able to meet a third of its electricity needs on a work day, Friday, and nearly half on Saturday when factories and offices were closed.
Berlin is at more than 52 degrees north latitude. Even southern German city Munich is at 48 degrees north. That's a thousand miles north of where we sit here in south Georgia at 31 degrees north.
Germany has sun like Alaska, while Georgia has sun like the south of Spain.
"Never before anywhere has a country produced as much photovoltaic electricity," Allnoch told Reuters. "Germany came close to the 20 gigawatt (GW) mark a few times in recent weeks. But this was the first time we made it over."
In a statement, Wal-Mart representative Maggie Sans wrote, “Previously, we expressed our concerns about ALEC’s decision to weigh in on issues that stray from its core mission ‘to advance the Jeffersonian principles of free markets…We feel that the divide between these activities and our purpose as a business has become too wide. To that end, we are suspending our membership in ALEC.”
Wal-Mart claimed that ALEC was no longer as interested in Jeffersonian free market principles as they were other partisan political issues. Two of those unnamed political issues are most certainly voter ID and stand your ground laws.
When even Wal-Mart complains that ALEC isn’t “free market” enough, Wal-Mart, which
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Corey Hull explained what the state of Georgia has in store for us if we vote down T-SPLOST:
If the voters do not approve the referendum, then all local governments must match their LMIG funds a rate of 30%. And then we have to wait 24 months to start the process over again. And when I say start the process over again, I mean start the process over to enact this tax.
Nolen Cox, Chairman of the Lowndes County Republican Party (LCRP), remarked:
Is that commonly called a stick?
Gretchen Quarterman, Chairman of the Lowndes County Democratic Party (LCDP), observed:
It looks like a baseball bat.
Now I doubt either were speaking in an official capacity, but I know from talking to them that both individuals oppose this tax, and I’m pretty sure most people in their local parties do, too.
T-SPLOST: stick or baseball bat?
T-SPLOST Public Meeting, Southern Georgia Regional Commission (SGRC), Corey Hull, Nolen Cox, Gretchen Quarterman, Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 19 September 2011. Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) and Southern Co. (NYSE:SO) agreed to disclose and have their directors oversee soft money political contributions made with corporate funds, shareholder activists announced today. The groups, Washington-based Center for Political Accountability (CPA), socially responsible investment firm Trillium Asset Management Corp., and the Central Laborers’ Pension Fund, are part of a nationwide campaign to bring transparency and accountability to company political spending.
FYI: The Strickland Mill in Remerton is being threatened with demolition. Remerton City Council will meet to discuss this situation on Monday, June 4th at 5:30pm during their work session, and on Monday, June 11th at 5:30pm to vote on the matter. The public is invited to both of these meetings to express opinions on the possible demolition of the Mill. As you all are aware, this mill complex dates to 1899 and is one of the few surviving textile mills in our region. This is an important community landmark and was very influential to the development of Valdosta, not to mention integral to Remerton's existence.
Remember the Southern Company brags about “Our competitive generation business”. The important word there is “our”, as in the Southern Company and its subsidiary Georgia Power gets to compete, and you don’t. Unless you’re big enough.
Some retail competition has been present in Georgia since 1973 with the passage of the Georgia Territorial Electric Service Act. This Act enables customers with manufacturing or commercial loads of 900 kW or greater a one time choice in their electric supplier. It also provides eligible customers the opportunity to transfer from one electric supplier to another provided all parties agree.
Because of that law, you can’t you put up solar panels on your own land and sell your power to somebody somewhere else. And you can’t get a company like SolarCity or Lower Rates for Customers to put up solar panels on your property and sell you the power ( or can you?). Unless you’re generating at least 900 KW; then maybe you can get selected businesses to switch to your power once. Except you probably still won’t qualify, because
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I think of Georgia Power more as like IBM when minicomputers came out. IBM built bigger mainframes. The Internet started to spread, and IBM pushed its own proprietary SNA network. (Remember SNA? I didn’t think so.) Then PCs came out, and IBM layoffs started….
Everybody except for Georgia is jumping on the wind and solar bandwagon, but Georgia Power is side-lined in a nuclear jam like a horse-buggy manufacturer at the dawning of the Ford assembly line.
The white area on that map is for states that have no standards or goals for renewable energy.
Remember Georgia Power is the biggest part of its parent, The Southern Company, and the nuclear units at Plant Vogtle (operating and planned) are actually owned by another offshoot of The Southern Company. According to Southern Company’s webpage, Megawatts and Markets,
Southern Company regulated regional electric utilities serve a 120,000-square-mile territory in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi. Our competitive generation business extends to markets in six southeastern states.
It’s interesting how similar the Southern Company’s markets are to the states in that white southeast no-renewable-energy-portfolio area!
When the 18 counties vote, is it county by county, say Atkinson votes yes, and Lowndes votes no, and if there were 9 counties that voted yes and 9 counties that voted no, or is it the total of all the voters together, and then we say there were 400,000 voters and it’s a simple majority.
