Email to Demarcus Marshall, Lowndes County Commissioner, District 4

Dear Commissioner Marshall,

Thank you for your service to Lowndes County as my county commissioner these last years.

Commissioner Marshall, I ask that you would attempt to get a majority of the commissioners to pass an ordinance, with teeth, that would effectively prevent Sabal Trail from running the pipeline through our county. You could even start with outright prohibition of any pipeline company surveying for, or contructing a pipeline through Lowndes County without the expressed written consent of the Lowndes County Commission.  I intend to write other commissioners to ask them to join with you, and to get it on the chairman's agenda for a vote. You could do this if you so chose. 

Know that if you would do this, you would have my sincere gratitude from the bottom of my heart. I think doing this would be for the benefit of the citizens of Lowndes County, and it would be you to whom history would point to as the one who supported the effort. 

Thank you,

Email to Crawford Powell, Lowndes County Commissioner, District 3 Re: Sabal Trail pipeline

Dear Commissioner Powell,

Thank you for your service to Lowndes County as my county commissioner these last years.

Commissioner Powell, you will leave the commission at the end of the year. I ask as this one parting gift to the citizens of Lowndes County, that you would attempt to get a majority of the commissioners to pass an ordinance, with teeth, that would effectively prevent Sabal Trail from running the pipeline through our county. You could even start with outright prohibition of any pipeline company surveying for, or contructing a pipeline through Lowndes County without the expressed written consent of the Lowndes County Commission.  I intend to write other commissioners to ask them to join with you, and to get it on the chairman's agenda for a vote. You could do this if you so chose. 

Know that if you would do this, you would have my sincere gratitude from the bottom of my heart. I think doing this would be for the benefit of the citizens of Lowndes County, and it would be you to whom history would point to as the one who supported the effort. 

Thank you,

Email to Richard Raines, County Commissioner of Lowndes County, GA Re: Sabal Trail pipeline

Dear Commissioner Raines,

Thank you for your service to Lowndes County as commissioner, and thank you for your words of support for the Sabal Trail pipeline opposition after the last commission meeting. I especially took note of your statement that, "none of the commissioners think this pipeline is a good idea." You particularly said you wanted to do something substantial. 

May I ask that you do just that, something substantial? You could write an ordinance that would ban any pipelineline company from surveying property, and any construction whatsoever without the express written consent of the commission. Then you could also write an ordinance with a list of requirements that a pipeline would have to follow that would pretty much make it impossible to run through Lowndes County. One requirement could be they could not cross or tunnel under rivers, or through karst geology. 

Commissioner Raines, you will leave the commission at the end of the year. I ask as this one parting gift to the citizens of Lowndes County, that you would attempt to get a majority of the commissioners to pass an ordinance, with teeth, that would effectively prevent Sabal Trail from running the pipeline through our county. I intend to write other commissioners to ask them to join with you, and to get it on the chairman's agenda for a vote. You could do this if you so chose. 

Know that if you would do this, you would have my sincere gratitude from the bottom of my heart. I think doing this would be for the benefit of the citizens of Lowndes County, and it would be you whom history would point to as the one who spearheaded the effort. 

Thank you,

Wisenbaker Shares His Plans As Commissioner

So read the title of the ValdostaToday article. (BTW, in case you don't know, commissioner-elect Tally Mark Wisenbaker is brother of Gary Wisenbaker, editorial page director of ValdostaToday.com, and director of parent company, Black Crow Media. Needless to say, Mark will probably get some good press and influence during his tenure as a county commissioner.)

I got to briefly meet commissioner-elect Wisebaker at the county commission meeting of November 11, during which I gave an "emphatic speech" (according to the Valdosta Daily Times) in opposition to the proposed Sabal Trail pipeline, asking the commissioners for some kind of resolution against this thing. After the meeting, I was trying to find my way to the front to talk with the commissioners more informally, when Mr. Wisenbaker and I came face-to-face and he introduced himself to me, which I appreciated since he will be my district representative. I understand he is against the pipeline also, which I greatly appreciate, and hope he can help us turn this thing back.

We will have paying jobs, our college graduates, our children, and grand children, when they finish their education they can stay here instead of moving to Atlanta,” Wisenbaker said. “We will have other jobs that will be attractive to them and I think that’s very important.” - 

I truly, truly hope so. He goes on to say,

 “We have 500 acres of industrial park vacant with infrastructure ready to go,” Wisenbaker said.

“We have a technical school that can train you, we have the military college, VSU, the medical center, PCA paper mill in Clyatville. Moody Air Force base is the key to our security economically here because they bring so many people here.”

I once heard Dandy Don Meredith say to Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football, "Howard, you have a firm grasp of the obvious." I mean no offense to Mr. Wisenbaker, but all he has said is very general. What does he think a number of people in the various responsible positions in Lowndes County have been trying to do for the last, I don't know, forever? If he has some special insight or plan, that's great, and I'd like to hear it.

Here's what he says his plan is:

I intentionally didn’t pry or look into anything. I wanted to be fresh and new and get it straight from the horses mouth instead of from hear say, from other people saying, ‘ here is how the county does this or that,’  Wisenbaker said. “I feel like I’ll be better off by getting it straight instead of different sources that are just speculating. 

It seems to me, he could have started looking at how the county is doing things a long time ago, and gone through the learning curve he's on now.  There are no people he can talk to now, that he couldn't have talked to a year ago.

I'm looking forward to what he is going to do, and really hope he can produce more and better jobs in Lowndes County, that can keep our children and grandchildren here, just as his family has had the pleasure.

The Mystery

The Mystery. that's how I like to put it. It's my guess there is something more to life than we normally perceive. I think that because of what I have experienced, and experience today. There is another dimension from our usual, mundane perception that we take for reality. It's a Mystery, in that, it's generally obscured. We have to exercise some effort in order to ferret out the truth.

You can experience it the same as me. Meditation is a good beginning. Do a little reading of the mystics. Meister Eckhardt, Rumi, Hildegard of Bingham and Theresa of Avila, Krishnamurti,  and even Eckhart Tolle. Most importantly, get in touch with what is inside of you. We all have it in common, yet few are aware of this part of ourselves, a part that makes us truly human, and a spiritual being.

From Mystery, comes the word mystic. It is the mystics that are aware of the spiritual realm, the spirituality of every religion. It has never ceased to be an important revelation to me, that the mystics of their respective religions had more in common with each other, than the mystics of the various religions had with the fundamentalists of their respective religions. It has always been the fundamentalists of all religions that sanctioned and sanctified the most atrocious acts, like war and oppression, in all of history. I encourage all, individually, to pursue the spiritual, to seek to become aware of the Spirit in every moment, and the Truth, the Reality, inherent in every moment.

My eComment to FERC in opposition to Sabal Trail

As a citizen of Lowndes County, Georgia, I am opposed to the Sabal Trail Transmission, LLC’s plan to run a thirty six inch gas pipeline, with a billion cubic feet per day capacity, through my county.

I am opposed to the construction of the pipeline for a number of reasons. The two main ones are:

1.      Over the last year, I have been to numerous meetings and have spoken to scores of people in several counties and two states. All of the people that I have seen and heard are unanimous in their opposition to the pipeline. Never once have I met a local citizen who spoke in favor of having the pipeline. Now these citizen’s governments are hearing their constituents and are passing resolutions and ordinances in opposition to the pipeline, including the Dougherty County (GA) County Commission, the Albany, GA, city council, and the Hamilton County (FL) County Commission. There may be others, and there appear to be others that will follow suit.

In other words, the apparent unanimous desire of the public is to say No to this pipeline. The people’s voice should be heard loudly and clearly.

2.      This whole thing started with Florida Power & Light (FPL) saying it needs the gas to produce electricity in Florida. The data I have seen calls this need into question. Even if Floridians have a need for this electricity, FPL could easily produce that amount via solar on a fraction of the acreage Sabal Trail is wanting to take from the landowners.

In other words, the gas is not needed. There is no need for this pipeline.

Given these, and scores of other reasons written by hundreds of others to FERC, I ask you deny Sabal Trail the permit for this pipeline.

Thank you,

James Parker

The 1% vs. the 90%

Let's face it, when we talk about the 1%, we're talking about top management of corporations, people like CEOs. COOs, CFOs, CTOs, VPs, company owners, and board members, as that is who, by far, dominates the population of the top 1%. The bottom 90% are comprised of working people, those that earn their living by their smarts and the sweat of their brow. Those in the financial industry are almost in a class unto themselves. We'll get to them soon and/or in another post.

When I observe this corporate structure, I find that it is I, the worker, that actually performs the function, the work, of the corporation, and brings into reality what is only conceptual to the high level execs. However, corporate structure and culture puts me, the worker, in a subservient position in a hierarchy. They consider themselves above me in this hierarchy. I become something less than them. That's what it seems to me, given how I've observed how they act toward working people, the 90%. It's weird that so often they talk about "team spirit," and "there's no I in TEAM." Do you really think they think they're on the team with us? I don't get that at all. They're more like the owner of the team that equates himself with the team, or even the creator (god) of the team. Think Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys (among a number of others). 

From my point of view, they use the facade of the corporation as an intermediary in a relationship that is a very small step from slavery. All these corporate execs and owners make their fortunes by skimming off the labor of the people that are doing the production of the corporation. There is a totally unfair distribution of revenue within the corporate structure, in regards to the relative contributions of individuals that actually bring the revenue into a company. This is because a certain system has been set up. The CEO gets to call the shots, like some sort of little Napolean, a dictator in his own little realm, the corporation. I have to admit, that's some pretty heady stuff. They are required to be this way by the board of directors and the shareholders (who are the shareholders? that would be the 1%). 

Here's the thing, a corporation is just a system. It does have a number of subsystems that can comprise it, but even those are limited in number. These systems are what are taught in business schools. If you want to get down with it. that's a subsystem,  the education of future execs. There is even a hierarchy in that subsystem, with Harvard Business School as the primary source of future execs for the 1% worldwide.

This is merely a brief description of the economic/financial/corporate system we find ourselves in. For most of us, that's a very real present concern. We are working very hard to to swim our way through these financial waters. Meanwhile those that are calling the shots are sucking up more and more of the fruits of our labor. 

Not content with economic domination, they now move to political domination in controlling our government, by merely buying up candidates and the resultant politicians. We, 90%, need to come together and do what we want. Why should we 90 be dominated by 1?

Appeal to the Lowndes County Commission 11/11/14

Tonight, on a rare Tuesday night off, I made a point of attending our County Commission meeting, and getting up at the "Citizens to be Heard" portion to make a plea for the Commission to pass a resolution against the Sabal Trail gas pipeline (check out spectrabusters.org, if you don't know what I'm talking about). I was thankful that it appeared the commissioners tuned into what I was saying, and it got a rousing response in applause from the gallery. Thank you to all who expressed your support.

At the end, Commissioner Raines told us that the no one on the Commission thinks this is a good thing for Lowndes County, but wants to do something "substantial" to prevent the pipeline from coming through. Other commissioners told us that they have been told, by what I assumed were Sabal Trail representatives, that this will be decided at a higher level than they, implying it is inevitable, why fight it?

They did bring up the need to take it to the next level and our state and national representatives. I specifically asked that the Commission to lobby our state and national representatives on our behalf, and feel I was assured this would be the case, to which I say, thank you.

Just remember, they told us the biomass plant was a done deal, yet we turned that back. I sympathize with the commissioners sense of powerlessness, and expressed my thoughts about that this evening. However, this pipeline is not yet a done deal. Now is the time for all the state representatives, especially the ones whose districts are affected, to bring this up in the next session of the Georgia Legislature. I'm looking at you, Dexter Sharper, Amy Carter, and Ellis Black. Also, get in touch with Austin Scott, Johnny Isakson, and the newly elected David Perdue, and tell them we don't need no stinking pipeline coming through Georgia and Lowndes County that has no benefit to the citizens of Georgia, and especially, Lowndes County.

Here is what I said to the commission tonight:

Chairman Slaughter, fellow commissioners,

My name is James Parker, I live at ___ in the city of Valdosta. 

I come before you today to humbly request that you follow in the footsteps of the Dougherty County Commission, and pass a resolution in opposition to the Sabal Trail pipeline passing through Lowndes County. 

This proposed pipeline provides absolutely no benefit to any citizen living in Lowndes County, nor, in fact, to any citizen living in the State of Georgia. Yet Sabal Trail wants, no, demands, that they be allowed to run this 36-inch pipeline through hundreds of private properties, taking a hundred foot wide path that the property owners can no longer have full use of, thus negatively affecting the value of their property. 

Over the last year, I have seen hundreds of property owners and their supporters speak at numerous meetings against this pipeline. Never once have I heard a local citizen speak in support of this pipeline. The only people I have ever heard speak in the pipeline's favor have been paid representatives of the corporation.

In my opinion, Sabal Trail has been less than straight up in its dealings with Lowndes County citizens. For example, Sabal Trail has fallaciously, and I would say deceptively, asserted eminent domain in its letters to landowners, in order to give Sabal Trail access to their properties to survey them. Lacking such consent, Sabal Trail has been known to trespass on the properties in order to survey them anyway. 

Why should the residents of Lowndes County, citizens like you and me, have to let this foreign corporation, Sabal Trail, run roughshod over us? Why do we have to kneel before their wishes? How is it that a single foreign corporation can have greater power and say than the hundreds of property owners and their supporters? Why should we living, breathing, human citizens have to yield and step aside and give up our property to this corporation and its pecuniary interests? Are we human beings now second class citizens in our own county and country? It looks to me, right now, that what a multi-billion company, that isn't even from here, wants to do trumps all the local citizenry, their wishes, and property rights. 

This august Commission are the elected representatives of the citizens of Lowndes County. I ask that you protect and defend the property owners and other citizens of Lowndes County against the onslaughts of this foreign entity.

Please, I ask, and even beg you, to pass a resolution forbidding this corporation, Sabal Trail, from ramming this pipeline through our county. It has absolutely no benefit to us in any way, shape, or form, yet it takes property away from our citizens, and is a threat to the people of Lowndes County and their property.

Thank you for your time