Jody Hall is running for the Lowndes County Commission in the new District 5.
Here’s his campaign website and his facebook page. I saw him at Valdosta Farm Days, 16 June 2012:
Tag Archives: taxes
Tanker truck turning from Hambrick Road onto Cat Creek Road, 20 June 2012
This tanker truck just barrelled down Hambrick Road faster than the speed limit and turned onto Cat Creek Road, even though Georgia 122 is less than a mile to the north, connecting to GA 125 (Bemiss Road) three miles to the east. Does this safety hazard to residents on a local road seem right to you? Yet this is the kind of thing Lowndes County T-SPLOST projects would promote.
Tanker truck turning from Hambrick Road onto Cat Creek Road, 20 June 2012
Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
Remember, the county wants to make this problem worse by widening Cat Creek Road and adding turn lanes at Pine Grove Road, Radar Site Road, New Bethel Road, and, you guessed it, Hambrick Road. The county wants to turn Cat Creek Road into a highway and Hambrick Road into a feeder highway. That project got cut from the non-discretionary T-SPLOST project list, but T-SPLOST also includes 15% discretionary funding, which will probably go to some of the projects that got cut if T-SPLOST gets funded.
And it’s not just Cat Creek Road. Also on the original T-SPLOST list was $3 million to widen Val Del Road and $10 million to widen New Bethel Road to the Lanier County line. And of course still on the approved list is 
$8 million to widen Old US 41 North from North Valdosta Road to Union Road. Even though $7.5 million for a bus system was cut first pass.
Which do you want, a new 1 cent sales tax on everything including food going to projects that promote sprawl and risk public safety? Or, if we really need new transporation projects, a gasoline tax going to projects that actually would benefit the public, including businesses, such as a bus system?
-jsq
Industrial Authority still pushing “benefits” of scrapped private prison
The Industrial Authority appears to have learned nothing from the
reams of information about the CCA private prison
found for them by members of the public.
They’re still pushing the “benefits”
while saying nothing about
the numerous cons (pun intended),
the biggest of which is that
the state and federal prison population is already decreasing,
meaning we don’t need any more prisons, and if we built one here,
it would be likely to close.
So it’s not just a bad idea, it’s bad business.
But here they go again….
Eames Yates wrote for WCTV Friday, Plans For New Prison Scrapped,
To people who mostly don’t live here now and mostly wouldn’t want to live here then, while driving away better businesses; she didn’t mention any of that, or the other problems with the whole private prison bad business.Schruijer went on to say “It would have been a huge economic impact. There were about 400 jobs associated with the project with approximately $150 million dollars in capital investment.”
Those four hundred jobs that the prison would have created, on average, would have payed between $40,000 and $50,000 dollars eah.
That picture of Ms. Schruijer is hosted on the LAKE website, by the way. The VLCIA website is still broken, a week after I first pointed it out. Is this how the Industrial Authority plans to do PR, still promoting yet another failed Brad Lofton boondoggle while not making anything positive available on their own website?
-jsq
CCA private prison project shelved —VDT
According to this morning’s paper VDT, the contract between
private prison company CCA and the Valdosta-Lowndes County
Industrial Authority has expired.
The land owner could sell the land to CCA anyway,
but that would be
without a state or federal customer for the prison
and without $5 or $6 million in
economic incentives
VLCIA was going to arrange, including
without water and sewer.
According to the letter Brad Lofton signed and VLCIA sent to CCA 12 November 2009, the total of incentives was more like $9 million dollars of tax abatements for CCA or tax-funded work, all of which the rest of us taxpayers would have to pay for one way or another. All that plus the prison itself would have been paid for with our tax dollars. Tax dollars that now can go to rehabilitation or education instead.
So the people of the community win!
Congratulations to
Drive Away CCA and all others who helped oppose this private prison project,
and congratulations to the Industrial Authority
for finally saying what is going on.
Perhaps now the Industrial Authority can get on with bringing in industry that will actually contribute to the community. How about industry that people would be proud to move next to? Industry that would employ local people? Industry that would attract knowledge-based workers and businesses? Maybe that’s what VLCIA’s Strategic Plan Process is about. If so, let’s all help the Industrial Authority achieve it.
-jsq
Keep an eye on the Land Bank Authority —Barbara Stratton
Today the Georgia Senate Rules Committee votes on
Sen. Tim Golden’s SB 284 “Georgia Land Bank Act; governing
creation/operation of land banks; provision”.
Received 24 February 2012. -jsq
A citizen’s committee needs to be formed to keep an eye on the Land Bank Authority because they seem to think they are exempt from state Sunshine Law rules. In addition Sen. Golden has a bill SB 284SB 284 already passed Monday a week ago in the Senate Finance Committee, according to Nelson Mullins, Gold Dome Report – 2-27-2012, Continue readingintroduced into the state senate that will allow the establishment of regional land bank authorities. We citizens never consented to all this regional government that is being forced on us. If we can’t keep up with what the local land bank authority is doing just imagine what a regional land bank authority will be able to accomplish with zero public knowledge and input. This is one of the most dangerous pseudo-government entities ever and it needs to be addressed from the citizen level immediately. I applied for a citizen vacancy on the Land Bank Authority, but of course those positions are reserved for politically supportive individuals. Per the sunshine laws, which Sam Olens has sworn allegiance to, a citizen review committee would have to be advised of the meetings that are currently never publicized.
-Barbara Stratton
I have become a Fan of Very Supervised Probation —Robert Nagle
Received yesterday on
Save money by streamlining the state penal code. -jsq
My darling 22 year-old daughter wound up with a second DWI, becausePresumably this was for driving while intoxicated (DWI) with alcohol. We tried Prohibition for alcohol back in the 1920s, and repealed it in the 1930s, because it produced criminal gangs while failing to stop people from drinking alcohol. So instead we criminalized the misuse of alcohol such as while driving and legalized, regulated, and taxed purchase of alcohol. And now we mostly don’t actually lock people up for DWI: we put them on supervised probation.the first one was a wrist-slap. Don’t hate me as a parent because of it. But she went to DWI Court in Austin. The year of intense supervision and no-nonsense attitude and her willingness to not fight it (much) has turned her attitude and Life around. Did it suck for her? Why, yes. But, who knows but what it saved someone else’s life? And maybe it saved her own. I have become a Fan of Very Supervised Probation. If she’d gone to jail for six months, I suspect she’d have just come out hating society and gone right back to what put her there.
-Robert Nagle
It’s time to do the same for other drugs. We can’t afford to continue to spend more taxpayer dollars on locking people up than on education.
-jsq
ACLU podcast against private prisons —Alex Friedmann
CCA inadvertently rehabilitated former prisoner Alex Friedmann
and gave him a new career, lobbying against prison privatization.
He says:
This comes from the ACLU’s Prison Voices, Episode 1: Private Prisons: Continue readingIn my view, the worst thing is that they have normalized the notion of incarcerating people for profit. Basically commodifying people, seeing them as nothing more than a revenue stream….
If you incarcerate more people and you put more people in your private prisons you make more money. Which provides perverse incentives against reforming our justice system.
And increasing the number of people we’re putting in prison, whether they need to be there or not, just to generate corporate profit. I think that’s incredibly immoral and unethical, I think that’s the worst aspect of our private prison industry.
Lowndes County priorities: tanks and lunches for Commissioners, but no lunches for seniors?
So the Lowndes County Commission wouldn't accept a grant for NOAA Weather Radios, (but did vote themselves $75/day travel per diem), wouldn't accept a grant for an emergency vehicle, cancelled lunches for seniors, and barely approved a grant to help people with home downpayments, but the Lowndes County Sheriff's office did accept a grant for an armored vehicle.
Dawn Castro wrote for the VDT today, BearCat Rules: Lowndes sheriff’s office has new armored vehicle
BearCats are typically referred to by law enforcement as being armored rescue vehicles primarily used to transport tactical SWAT officers to and from hostile situations and to assist with the recovery and protection of civilians in harm’s way during terrorist threats, hostage incidents or encounters with armed offenders. The BearCat is designed to provide protection from a variety of small arms, explosives and IED threats.
Sure, and it will never be used against peaceful protesters.
Last month in Tampa, Adam Freeman wrote for WTSP.com 21 November 2011, Are Tampa police using tanks to threaten Occupy protestors?
Members of the movement say TPD is cruising by in the big, armored trucks. Pictures spread around the country over Facebook and Twitter, leading to speculation that TPD was moving in with the tanks.
But officers say it's just a coincidence, and the vehicle act passed by on its way to a Great American Teach-In event.
Maybe the Lowndes County Sheriff's dept. would never misuse an armored vehicle.
And I know, the Sheriff is a constitutional officer and the Lowndes County Commission has very limited control over the Sheriff's budget.
But it's still our same tax dollars. Are these our priorities?
-jsq
The private prison game: Banking on Bondage
Rania Khalek wrote for AlterNet 29 November 2011,
The Shocking Ways the Corporate Prison Industry Games the System
Just a decade ago, private prisons were a dying industry awash in corruption and mired in lawsuits, particularly Corrections CorporationWe’d already heard from Bloomberg that Continue readingof America (CCA), the nation’s largest private prison operator. Today, these companies are booming once again, yet the lawsuits and scandals continue to pile up. Meanwhile, more and more evidence shows that compared to publicly run prisons, private jails are filthier, more violent, less accountable, and contrary to what privatization advocates peddle as truth, do not save money. In fact, more recent findings suggest that private prisons could be more costly.
So why are they still in business?
In a recently published report, “Banking on Bondage: Mass Incarceration and Private Prisons,” the American Civil Liberties Union examines the history of prison privatization and finds that private prison companies owe their continued and prosperous existence to skyrocketing immigration detention post September 11 as well as the firm hold they have gained over elected and appointed officials.
Militarization of Police and Private Prison Profiteering: the Connection
Occupy UC Davis and the UC Davis Police have suddenly turned militarization
of police from an obscure topic to a huge story with more than 3,000
stories found by google news.
But what’s the connection between
Mic check stops a police riot at UC Davis
and
CCA charges inmates five days’ pay for one telephone minute?
The main cause of the militarization of police
is also the main cause of the huge U.S. prison population (5% of the world’s
population,
25% of the world’s prisoners: USA #1!).
That cause is the failed War on Drugs.
Norm Stanager wrote for YES! Magazine (via AlterNet) 17 November 2011, Police Chief Who Oversaw 1999 WTO Crackdown Says Paramilitary Policing Is a Disaster
Did anybody consider informing the protesters of the issues and asking for cooperation, or checking to see if there were alternate routes for emergency vehicles, or…. Hey, I’m not a professional emergency responder, but surely there must be a plan B in case some major intersection is out of commission due to a water main blowout, natural gas leak, earthquake, or whatever.Then came day two. Early in the morning, large contingents of demonstrators began to converge at a key downtown intersection. They sat down and refused to budge. Their numbers grew. A labor march would soon add additional thousands to the mix.
“We have to clear the intersection,” said the field commander. “We have to clear the intersection,” the operations commander agreed, from his bunker in the Public Safety Building. Standing alone on the edge of the crowd, I, the chief of police, said to myself, “We have to clear the intersection.”
Why?
Because of all the what-ifs. What if a fire breaks out in the Sheraton across the street? What if a woman goes into labor on the seventeenth floor of the hotel? What if a heart patient goes into cardiac arrest in the high-rise on the corner? What if there’s a stabbing, a shooting, a serious-injury traffic accident? How would an aid car, fire engine or police cruiser get through that sea of people? The cop in me supported the decision to clear the intersection. But the chief in me should have vetoed it. And he certainly should have forbidden the indiscriminate use of tear gas to accomplish it, no matter how many warnings we barked through the bullhorn.
My support for a militaristic solution caused all hell to break loose. Rocks, bottles and newspaper racks went flying. Windows were smashed, stores were looted, fires lighted; and more gas filled the streets, with some cops clearly overreacting, escalating and prolonging the conflict. The “Battle in Seattle,” as the WTO protests and their aftermath came to be known, was a huge setback—for the protesters, my cops, the community.
This article was published a few days before the UC Davis pepper spray events, but the author explicitly cites what happened to Scott Olsen in Oakland and the arrests in Atlanta, saying those are continuations of the same problems he experience in Seattle in 1999.
Then he gets into why: Continue reading