Category Archives: Activism

Lowndes, Tift, and Ware donor counties and majority @ SGRC 2011-09-19

Someone asked:

If Lowndes, Tift, and Ware vote against it, and the other fifteen counties vote for it, that’s a majority.

Corey Hull:

As long as they reach 50% + 1 in voters.

Questioner:

Those three counties, which would probably be the three donor counties in this region… they could kill it for our region if it was a large turnout.

Roy Taylor:

A large county like we could kill it for everybody.

The referendum is still on for July (during the primary, with less turnout) not November (during the general election).

The eighteen counties are: Continue reading →

Fukushima destroying nuclear-owning electric power utilities

The world’s worst nuclear disaster at Fukushima in Japan has had economic effects on nuclear-owning power utilities. What will happen to the Southern Company as Georgia Power customers and U.S. taxpayers get tired of paying for cost overruns which are already almost a billion dollars?

Erik Kirschbaum wrote for Reuters 26 May 2012, Germany sets new solar power record, institute says,

The German government decided to abandon nuclear power after the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, closing eight plants immediately and shutting down the remaining nine by 2022.

And closing those nuclear plants caused German electric utility E.ON to lay off up to 11,000 staff, to take its first quarterly loss in a decade, and to cut its shareholder dividend. According to Forbes, E.ON in 2006 was the biggest electric utility in the world (and TEPCO, owner of the Fukushima nuclear plants, was number 6). In March 2012, E.ON was number 22. (TEPCO dropped from number 6 to number 45.) Southern Company (SO) jumped from number 16 in 2006 to number 6 this year, quite possibly because E.ON and TEPCO and others dropped so rapidly.

Hm, I wonder what Southern Company’s nukes, already almost $1 billion over budget, will do to SO’s ranking in Forbes’ list of top utilities? Maybe there’s a reason Moody’s called nuclear “a bet-the-farm risk”. What will SO do when this big nuclear bet goes bad? And how big a bill do Georgia Power customers and we the taxpayers want to let SO run up that we’ll get stuck with?

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How do we vote on T-SPLOST? — Gretchen Quarterman @ SGRC 2011-09-19

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.

Here’s the video:

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).

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Plant Vogtle is why Georgia is not a leader in solar power today

Could Georgia approach that German 20 gigawatt solar power figure? We’d already be there if we weren’t building Plant Vogtle.

Remember, John Hanger figures:

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.

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Lowndes County donor county @ SGRC 2011-09-19

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.

Here’s the video:

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).

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Germany solar equal to 20 nuclear plants

What's 20 times more powerful than a nuclear plant and didn't already run a billion dollars over budget? German solar plants!

Erik Kirschbaum wrote for Reuters 26 May 2012, Germany sets new solar power record, institute says,

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."

Maybe it's time for the Southern Company and Georgia Power to get out of the way and let the Georgia legislature change the Georgia Territorial Electric Service Act of 1973 so we can get on with solar power in Georgia. How about if Southern Company and Georgia Power also stop pouring money into the leaking nuclear bucket and buy solar power instead.

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Nydia Tisdale returns to city council where she was thrown out for videoing

Remember Nydia Tisdale, who got illegally ejected from a Cumming City Council meeting for videoing an open meeting? She’s back, in the front row, videoing.

Previously we called Cumming someplace worse than here. But look at this:

A city of Cumming audio-visual recording policy sheet was available outside council chambers.

“Handheld audio and/or visual recording devices may be used from any location within the public seating area,” wrote Gerald Blackburn, city administrator. “No audio and/or visual recording device may be set up in the aisles.”

Hm, that’s better than the Lowndes County Commission, whose chair Ashley Paulk famously said,

Continue reading →

ALEC loses 8 more, including Wal-Mart

Even Wal-Mart ditches ALEC! What about the Southern Company?

ALEC Exposed is keeping a list of Corporations Which Have Cut Ties to ALEC, and since the ten we last counted, eight more have jumped the sinking lobbying ship: Blue Cross Blue Shield, YUM! Brands, Procter & Gamble, Kaplan, Scantron, Amazon, Medtronic, and Wal-Mart. That’s right, even Wal-Mart. Jason Easley wrote for Politicus USA yesterday, Wal-Mart Dumps ALEC and Outs Them as Un-American,

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 Continue reading →

T-SPLOST: stick or baseball bat? @ SGRC 2011-09-19

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.

Here’s a longer explanation of what happens, including what LMIG is, April 2011 LCDP meeting.

Here’s the video:

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).

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Coal ash and political spending transparency shareholder resolutions defeated @ SO 2012-05-23

Defeated, but with increased shareholder support this year, two shareholder transparency resolutions have been introduced year after year at Southern Company (SO), one on coal ash and the other on political spending. Here’s video of the political spending resolution being presented at the meeting, and here’s the text of the resolution. This year as usual the SO board opposed both resolutions, and as you can hear SO CEO Thomas A. Fanning announce in this video, both were voted down, with these percentages:

The reasons the board gave for opposing the political spending transparency resolution include that SO claims it is already disclosing everything it needs to. Much of that disclosure started in 2006 due to shareholder and outside pressure to do so. Center for Political Accountability press release 5 April 2006,

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.

In its own 2012 statement of opposition, the SO board noted shareholder pressure is having an effect on transparency:

Continue reading →