Category Archives: Politics

GM Ag corporations thank Jack Kingston for Monsanto rider

A long list of agricultural corporations wrote a letter thanking Jack Kingson (R GA-01) for working to get the Monsanto rider into the 2013 Ag. bill:

Again, we commend Subcommittee Chairman Kingston’s efforts and urge the support of Section 733 in the Fiscal Year 2013 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies Appropriations Act.
This letter is on Monsanto’s own website. It contains not one word about public health or quality of food or preservation of farmers who do not choose to poison people the Monsanto way. The glyphosate mentioned in the letter is the principal ingredient in Roundup, and research shows it causes DNA damage even when vastly diluted. Monsanto’s glyphosate-resistant crops are genetically modified to include a gene which produces a poison that other research indicates is toxic to humans. These poisons are what the Monsanto rider makes harder to get out of fields.

June 12, 2012 
The Honorable Harold Rogers 
Chairman 
House Committee on Appropriations 
United States House of Representatives 
H‐307 U.S. Capitol 
Washington, D.C. 20515  		The Honorable Norm Dicks 
Ranking Member 
House Committee on Appropriations 
United States House of Representatives 
1016 Longworth House Office Building 
Washington, DC 20515 
Page 1

Dear Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Dicks:   

Our organizations strongly support Section 733 of the Fiscal Year 2013 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. The provision will give growers assurance that crops developed through biotechnology that have already been approved by the Department of Agriculture (USDA) can be planted and harvested under temporary stewardship conditions in the event of litigation against the agency’s decision. We commend Subcommittee Chairman Kingston for including Section 733 in the subcommittee bill and urge your support for this necessary provision when the Appropriations Committee considers this bill later this month. The provision addresses Continue reading →

Remerton Mill demolition –WCTV

Maybe Nina King’s elegy on the sad demolition of Remerton’s Strickland Mill will spur enough people to get involved in the community so next time a monument is threatened with demolition we can find the resources to save it, and we can bring things the community needs now, like fast affordable Internet access for all.

Nina King Greg Gullberg reported for WCTV 11PM News last night, Demolition Of Remerton Mill Has Begun, in which Nina King said:

“Well, it breaks my heart, and it’s so sad. And I don’t understand why anybody would want a historic old building torn down like this.”
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DeKalb County is a slum –DeKalb County Commissioners

I could see our Commissioners using this reasoning. -gretchen

DeKalb County as a slum Urban Redevelopment in DeKalb County

Erica Byfield reported for WSBTV yesterday, DeKalb commissioners declare most of county a slum,

What’s this urban redevelopment zone about? Tax breaks for businesses that produce new jobs, leaving taxes to be paid mostly by… Continue reading →

Bubba McDonald’s solar evangelism

I’ve thanked Bubba McDonald for being serious about solar. However, 500 MW by Georgia Power in several years is nowhere near enough, when New Jersey has 1,000 MW already installed. What we need in south Georgia is distributed solar power for local jobs and direct reduction of electricity bills. Making a solar monopoly as in HB 657 wouldn’t solve that problem; it would actually hinder a real distributed solution. Instead we need to reform that antique 1973 Territorial Electric Service Act to enable financing for distributed solar.

Jim Galloway wrote for the AJC yesterday, GOP revolutionaries push Georgia Power to embrace solar energy,

Lauren “Bubba” McDonald Jr. has spent more than four decades in and around the state Capitol. That fact alone should automatically disqualify him as a rabid revolutionary.

And yet here he is, attempting to force real, radical change upon one of this state’s most staid and revered institutions. McDonald is the leader of a new and very Republican effort to require that Georgia Power give solar energy a chance.

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China carbon cap and Georgia Power

If China implements a carbon tax, will Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers change his recent answer to a question about a carbon tax, which was “why would anyone want that?”

Paul Bowers speaking In February the Chinese Ministry of Finance (MoF) said China would soon tax carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and that’s getting closer in the country whose capital Beijing has smog bad it’s literally off the charts. Katie Valentine wrote for ThinkProgress 22 May 2013, Bombshell: China May Be Close To Implementing A Cap On Carbon Pollution,

China is taking steps to tackle its huge carbon output. Today, the country announced the details of its first carbon trading program, which will begin in the city of Shenzhen next month. The southern city is one of seven cities and provinces, including Beijing, which will take part in the pilot program, set to be completely implemented by 2014.

And according to one local news source, China could implement an absolute, nation-wide cap on its carbon emissions by 2016. China’s 21st Century Business Herald reported this week that the country’s State Council still needs to approve the carbon cap proposal submitted by the National Development and Reform Commission, a government entity that controls much of the Chinese economy. The proposal, which the State Council is reportedly likely to support, would ensure China’s emissions would not increase past the country’s target cap, regardless of economic growth — though it’s still unclear what that cap would be. The paper reported that the NDRC also predicts China’s greenhouse gas emissions will peak in 2025, rather than 2030, as earlier predictions stated.

If the cap is adopted,

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Monsanto rider came from south Georgia: Jack Kingston GA-01

Jack Kingston (GA-01) slipped the Monsanto rider into a recent law, requiring “the Secretary of Agriculture to grant a temporary permit for the planting or cultivation of a genetically engineered crop, even if a federal court has ordered the planting be halted until an Environmental Impact Statement is completed”.

Alexis Baden-Mayer wrote for AlterNet 8 July 2012, The “Monsanto Rider”: Are Biotech Companies About to Gain Immunity From Federal Law?

Whom do we have to thank for this sneak attack on USDA safeguards? The agricultural sub-committee chair Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) — who not coincidentally was voted “legislator of the year for 2011-2012” by none other than the Biotechnology Industry Organization, whose members include Monsanto and DuPont. As reported by Mother Jones, the Biotechnology Industry Organization declared Kingston a “champion of America’s biotechnology industry” who has “helped to protect funding for programs essential to the survival of biotechnology companies across the United States.”

The Biotechnology Industry Organization’s PR about that award of 24 April 2012 says down at the bottom:

Photos of the award presentation are available upon request.

If that award is such an honor, why are they hiding the pictures of Jack Kingston receiving it? If Monsanto’s products are so great, why don’t they label them so we can tell which they are? Why did a French court just uphold a conviction of Monsanto for poisoning a French farmer? Why does Monsanto oppose independent GMO research? And why did hundreds of thousands of people just march against Monsanto?

Could it be because of liver and kidney damage, cancer and birth defects, pollution of water and air, systematic gaming of the patent system, perversion of the regulatory system, and corruption of the legislative system?

Speaking of corruption, Kingston has put the survival of biotechnology companies above the survival of farmers and the health of the American people.


Jack Kingston, voted Biotech “Legislator of the Year.” Responsible for adding the Monsanto Immunity Rider to the farm bill (H.R. 5973, Section 733). Tell him what you think!
www.facebook.coim/jackkingston/, 202-225-5821, 912-352-0101

-jsq

Valdosta Utilities Department 5-Year Action Plan

Received 26 April 2013. Basically Valdosta is accelerating its plans to do something about wastewater, including adding pumpstations and force mains, as well as relocating the Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant uphill. Here are the summary pages; there’s much more detail in the plan. -jsq

Utilities Department 5-Year Action Plan:

Since 1992, the City has received $179 million in SPLOST funding and over the same time period has invested nearly $168 million in capital projects for the Water and Wastewater system. This includes SPLOST funding, system revenues, bonds, and GEFA loans.

Since 2009, the Utilities Department has expended over $49 million on sewer system improvement with approximately $5.6 million spent on the Withlacoochee Treatment Plant. When the projects listed below are completed by December 2018, the City will have invested approximately $230 million in capital projects for its Utilities system from 1992 to 2018, a 26-year period.

PUMP STATION, FORCE MAIN, HEADWORKS AND EQUALIZATION BASIN PROJECT

Continue reading →

Sinkhole costs, and prevention vs. reaction

The day after the VDT ran Lowndes County’s admission that the sewer line break was theirs, not Valdosta’s, did the VDT start a series of financial investigation like they did about Valdosta’s water issues? Nope, they ran a piece about how much weather costs the county, with no recognition of watershed-wide issues, nor of any need for the county to participate in proactively dealing with them, to reduce costs, for better quality of life, to attract the kinds of businesses we claim we want. Nope, none of that.

Jason Schaefer wrote for the VDT 27 April 2013, What natural events cost Lowndes taxpayers,

In the Deep South, near a river plain where floodwaters rise and ebb from season to season and wetlands that distinguish the region from anywhere else in the nation, flooding makes a significant portion of the concern for Lowndes County emergency management.

OK, that’s close to getting at some of the basic issues. We’re all in the same watershed, and we need to act like it instead of every developer and every local government clearcutting and paving as if water didn’t run downhill. Does the story talk about that? After all, the county chairman attended the 11 April 2013 watershed-wide flooding meeting that led to the city of Valdosta’s likely participation in flodoplain planning. Nope; according to the VDT, everybody around here seems to be hapless victims of weather:

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Openings on local boards and authorities

Valdosta City Hall Annex Want to help your community and find out how local politics works without even having to run for office? You can apply to be appointed to a local board or authority.

Here are (most of) the local boards and authorities. Budgets range from zero to more than $3 million a year. Influence ranges from unknown to very high. Your interest you have to determine for yourself. Maybe start by going to see the CDBG Citizens Advisory Committee in action Monday. Bring back some video, will you?

Here’s a list of openings to be filled by the City of Valdosta soon. The deadline for applications is 5PM 1 May 2013; that’s next Wednesday. HTML version is below. (I would link to a similar list for Lowndes County, but that Commission doesn’t post such a list.)

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A grid with a million solar rooftops

Bill McKibben wrote for Rolling Stone 11 April 2013, The Fossil Fuel Resistance,

A grid with a million solar rooftops feels more like the Internet than ConEd; it’s a farmers market in electrons, with the local control that it implies.

Distributed solar power is exactly what electric utilities fear. There’s a reason why Southern Company CEO Thomas A. Fanning consistently ranks “renewables” as his second-to-last power source; the only thing worse for big baseload utilities is his last one: efficiency, which could remove all demand for additional electrical supply in Georgia.

How big of an opportunity for the rest of us is this threat to the cozy business model of big baseload utilities? Continue reading →