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
As Dr. George said Continue reading
Dr. Cristóbal Serrán-Pagán y Fuentes reminds us we don’t need a biomass plant
because:
We have plenty of sunshine here.You’d think the Valdosta City Council would know that, since only about a month ago Mayor Fretti assisted groundbreaking for Wiregrass Solar LLC. Maybe it takes somebody from Spain to remind everyone. Spain, which is a leader in solar power in the world. Spain, which is actually north of Georgia.
Here’s the video:
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Dr. George gets to the point!
After talking to several Valdosta City Council members, he has
observed that people make up their minds regardless of evidence.
So he wants to know:
What evidence would you need to see to conclude this is a bad idea?
Dr. George also gets at something even deeper that Council might
consider a wakeup call:
The public outcry about this across the political spectrum, from conservative to liberal.People against the biomass plant are not just black or white or young or old or conservative or liberal or college professors or unemployed: they are all of those things. The intransigence of elected and appointed officials is causing citizens to stand up and be heard on this and other issues around the county. This issue is serving as a catalyst for people to demand more transparent and responsive government.
Here’s the video:
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Roy Copeland had a question about Project Excel,
the
private prison that Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) wants
to build in Lowndes County,
at the
15 March 2011 VLCIA board meeting.
Q: He wanted to know if there are other communities competing for the project, and whether they had also paid a second extension.
A: Col. Ricketts answered that there is another community competing, but he did not know whether they had made that payment: Continue reading
Regarding the
private prison that Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) wants
to build in Lowndes County,
at the 15 March 2011 VLCIA board meeting,
Col. Ricketts gave an update,
saying CCA had made a second payment as stipulated in the purchase
and development agreement:
The story continues in later posts.
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Previously we asked if
public objections caused VLCIA to change its tune about
letting CCA build a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia.
OK, that was a rhetorical question: of course not!
Speaking at the Lake Park Chamber of Commerce annual dinner, 28 January 2011, Brad Lofton praised the private prison project:
“…we hope will be under construction in the next 18 months. It will be about $150 million dollar project; anywhere from 4 to 600 new jobs. A lot of communities in Georgia are built around state prisons. A hundred of those 400 will be post-secondary, nutritionalists, physicians, nurses, vocational rehab, so we’re proud of that project. You’ll start to hear a little bit more about that. There will be about 300 construction jobs over about a 24 month period, which will have a major impact on the community.”
That was part of Lofton’s famous “jobs, jobs, jobs” speech. Lofton is gone now, but apparently VLCIA still plans the prison.
The story continues in later posts.
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Back in August 2010 when the VDT first brought this story to light, I pointed out that CCA is the same company that lobbied heavily for Arizona’s new immigration law so CCA could get more customers. And I wondered what VLCIA thought about this? Silly question: of course they’re all for it! It’s “jobs, jobs, jobs” with them.
As of 21 December 2010,
apparently things were still pretty tentative
when Brad Lofton gave an update to the VLCIA board,
claiming the CCA private prison would bring 600 jobs to Lowndes County, Georgia:
Some public objection had surfaced by 20 January 2010, when Dr. Mark George remarked to the Valdosta City Council:
Next, we’ll see if objections had any effect on the Industrial Authority.“I think we can do better than a generator that burns human waste. I think we can do better than a private prison and those are two things that we seem to be excited about as a community.”
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And what about all that land?
In addition to a news story about Brad Lofton moving on up to Myrtle Beach, the Valdosta Daily Times also had an editorial yesterday (14 March), Lofton’s leaving a void in which they make some good points, including:
While the search is on for a new director, now is the time for the city, county and industrial authority board to come together to make some decisions about the organization and what the community leadership needs and wants it to be.Here are a few modest suggestions along those lines, including considerations such as water.
More from the VDT: Continue reading
Some people compare LAKE to Wikileaks, so let’s go there.
Julian Assange, like
Wendell Berry,
links the civil rights movement and the environmental movement.
He
then says:
“For the Internet generation this is our challenge and this is our time. We support a cause that is no more radical a proposition than that the citizenry has a right to scrutinise the state. The state has asserted its authority by surveilling, monitoring and regimenting all of us, all the while hiding behind cloaks of security and opaqueness. Surely it was only a matter of time before citizens pushed back and we asserted our rights.”
LAKE’s motto is:
Citizen dialog for transparent processThat makes Assange’s proposition
“the citizenry has a right to scrutinise the state”sound very familiar to us.
Locally it’s more a matter of elected and appointed bodies ignoring their chartered responsibilities to the public good and the general welfare. Well, many people are also tired of the permit inspection brigade, but that’s another story.
Assange also adds: Continue reading