Thursday, November 17, 2011
Republican Debates:Hottest Reality?
Colleen O'Connor at the La Jolla Patch wrote:
Opinion: Why Republican Debates are the Hottest Reality TV Shows Around
The recession, unemployment and the mere fact that the Republican presidential candidates are standup thinkers—are reasons you need to watch the debates.
Who knew?
The Republican Presidential Primary debates are so popular that news outlets are scrambling to add even more, according to The New York Times.
Thus far, there have been eleven televised debates—with ten more scheduled. This doesn’t count the Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich sit-downs, or the serialized radio and TV interviews with each candidate. The settings have ranged from sedate round table Q&As to live-audience booing and applause.
Every corporate or educational sponsor knows that the fastest way to improve your brand is to hitch it to a rising star—be it pop, literary, or political—and a big, television audience.
Thus, college campuses, presidential libraries, network studios, newspapers, and even social networking sites are keen to sponsor the GOP debates. For whatever reason, the GOP debates have proven popular.
Thus far, they have produced surprisingly large audiences, some fun news cycles, and, dare I say it, democracy as reality TV.
The latest CNBC “all economics forum” produced the best results yet. Some actual information, some humor, some human and serious push-back moments, and a huge audience share for the cable news network—3.3 million viewers.
CNBC trumped the other cable news channels. Omitting the networks’ Olympic coverage and the O.J. Simpson civil trial, the debate garnered the networks’ highest ratings since 1997, according to the NYT's Media Decoder blog.
The first GOP debate, sponsored by Fox News, understandably, has drawn the largest audience thus far—6.1 million.
But it is the strength of the repeat viewership of these nearly two dozen debates that has many asking “WHY?”
Several answers appear obvious.
No matter one’s political persuasion, these debates make for great television. Someone goes off script. The audience chimes in with boos or applause. The moderators take the hit—because the only group less popular than politicians is the press. And what results is, yes, democracy as reality TV.
Furthermore, the Republican candidates have gone from small-minded attacks against each other (CNN) and armchair brotherhood talks (Gingrich and Cain) to serious, standup thinking. They have “upped their game” from hairstyles, tie colors and put-downs to some intelligent, consequential thinking.
More seriously, the debates occur at a time when the country is lurching for leadership. Increasing unemployment, never-ending wars, fear, and uncertainty make for highly motivated “study-up” time. Viewers and voters want to choose wisely.
In addition, the split in the Republican Party between moderate vs. Tea Party, and cultural vs. economic purity, is compelling—and imbued with great and genuine passion. The differences between the Republicans and the Democrats is even broader and, arguably, even more passionate.
The history of these American divides is long, contentious and serious. The original rift and failure—the Articles of Confederation—almost caused us to become 13 nations instead of one. That issue, as today, remains states’ rights vs. a centralized government.
Who has or should have the ultimate authority? The founding fathers simply finessed the problem when they drafted the U.S. Constitution. Resultant generations did the same—compromise—even as the country expanded from east to west coast, from Canada to Mexico. Compromise always won over disunion—until the 1860s.
It took a civil war and over 600,000 Americans dead to resolve the question in favor of the central government, but the fight—and the debate—remains. That is why the GOP debates are so fascinating. All the changes that the victorious Union forced on the Confederacy are under attack—albeit updated. The Federal Reserve, the states’ rights to decide about health care, education, vaccines, illegal immigration, border security, the environment, aid to the poor, etc.
And the conflicts have taken on more urgency, as the states feel their economies buckle under increased federal mandates—often unaccompanied by any additional funds.
Thus far, no one in American can complain that they are unrepresented. The Democrats have President Obama and the Republicans have a whole smorgasbord of candidates from whom to choose.
Everyone should watch and cheer the GOP primary debates as they represent the “loyal opposition” side of democracy: i.e., the right to dissent, disagree and demand change.
And, everyone should watch and cheer the GOP vs. Democrats general election debates.
Just saying. Time to “study up.”
~~~~~~~~
And I replied (redundant* to this blog, but... )
'No one's unrepresented'??? Obama's a Trojan Horse. AIG bankrolled him. He does essentially everything the neocons want and gets away with it because the Far Unbalanced Network zombots are pushbuttoned to mewl what a lefty radical he is. I don't understand this pandemic of blind idiocy. Before drugs and mass psychological programming had taken over society, the Soviets countered our scorn of totalitarian one-party government by saying we has a one-and-a-half party system. Now it's so much less! All a big FAKE (more obviously than those masking-tape-and-plastic-wrap Kumtag Desert 'mysterious structures') - and we're buying it when we have no money left and 'employers' who only offer no-wage jobs. Daft as his pronouncements sometimes get, Gore Vidal is right in saying we have only one party, the BANK Party.
Who represents pacifists? No one. Who represents those who want an economy based on the production and fair exchange of actual useful goods instead of stock market gambling and money manipulation? No one. What politicians truly in power are TRULY against: Petrochemical and nuke dependence? NAFTA/our goods being made /jobs taken by foreigners? The juggernaut fascism of eminent domain, 'private mandates', the military-industrial complex and other forms of pouring both our rights and tax money into the hands of private contractors? Marketing obscenity, waste, greed and brutality? Lobbies /the buying of pols and 'legal outcomes'? Etc. Who's really for what 'right to life', 'right to privacy' and protection of the helpless/voiceless, 'the family' and the environment ought all to really imply? NO ONE. They're played as hot buttons and hot potatoes -and as stupidly as possible- to bemuse voters by politicians and pundits who NEVER WANT THESE PROBLEMS SOLVED, only money thrown at them and rights surrendered to them.
* Then, I watched the Republican debates until it was obvious they were redundant - and I have only so much taste for comedies of horror.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Afghanistan's Untapped Mineral Riches
My only comment is oblique, this time: I remember an insider-type saying the real reason for WWI (and a lot of events since) was jockeying for dominance of the unparalleled mineral riches of the Dead Sea. Maybe kinda Larouche or 'a-albionics' conspiracy-theory-generated. Anyway, the alleged reason for 'The Great Game' jockeying over Afghanistan has always been that that land - which looks so all-mineral that one would think the natives must eat dust and rocks and snow because what else is there!? - is the key/pass from Central Asia to the sea. But maybe those (true-life, usually, really, quite scientific) types who provided the models for Rudyard Kipling, Jules Verne, Talbot Mundy, John Buchan, etc. to spin wild & woolly spy adventures really discerned the rocks of desire long ago...
Click here: Riches in the Midst of War - Marketing, News, and Educational Communications http://cahnrsnews.wsu.edu/2010/08/03/riches-in-the-midst-of-war/
By Dr. E. Kirsten Peters < Real name of Quaker ~ Elizabeth Elliot Series author Irene Allen. That's a mystery series built on deep Christian discipleship and conscience shown by the elderly reluctant-non-pro-detective heroine. The last book was in 1998; unfortunately none since. This last, Quaker Indictment, used fiction to dramatize the hideous your-tax-dollars-at-work industry of mass murder and multi-millenial plutonium toxicity from Washington State's Hanford plant. The name Irene Allen is on the 'Net mostly as a litigant name '...vs. the United States', in regard to Nevada nuclear tests. Hmm. She wrote:
*****************
Some geologists are heroes.
That was the thought that came to my mind when I read of what Afghan geologists had done during the long and difficult time the Taliban had run their country.
Even without real hope they might ever do geology again, but with fears about what might happen at any time to the reports of previous geological mapping work, the Afghan geologists took the records home to preserve them. When the dust of the American invasion had settled and the Afghan government had been restored, the local geologists brought back the reports.
The records were the starting point for the effort in recent years to explore Afghanistan for mineral resources using fully modern methods. The results have astonished geologists because the riches of the war-torn country are so great.
As the New York Times reported this summer, many geologists now working in Afghanistan feel they are “in the midst of one of the great discoveries of their careers.”
From estimates of what’s under the ground, both at depth and near the surface, Afghanistan may contain nearly $1 trillion worth of minerals. Along the Pashtun area in the south there is gold; in western Afghanistan there is apparently abundant lithium; and elsewhere there are major deposits of copper, iron, cobalt and rare metals like niobium.
As a student, I studied mineral resources intensively. The richest of those here in the U.S. were mined out in the 1800s and early 1900s. There is a cycle in such matters, and the richest deposits are – at least generally – the first discovered and mined. But Afghanistan stands today where the U.S. did long ago, so it’s no surprise that Afghan mineral wealth is likely quite high.
But a $1 trillion bonanza is greater than this geologist would have guessed.
In short, it looks like there is enough mineral wealth in Afghanistan it could alter both the war and the way of life in the impoverished nation where the gross domestic product is only about $12 billion. If investment materializes to exploit the mineral wealth, jobs in mining could employ many men currently involved in the war, U.S. officials speculate.
“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus said to the New York Times. “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think the potential is hugely significant.”
The ore was discovered because the U.S. Geological Survey and some others went to work in 2006 using modern methods of exploration throughout the country. In the old days, geologists used to travel by Jeep (or even on foot and horseback) to outcrops. The accepted technique was to knock off pieces of rock with a hammer and inspect what you had in your hand. The approach still works, but it’s obviously labor intensive and slow.
If you want to rapidly explore a whole country these days, the way to do it is by air. So the Americans flew over Afghanistan with sophisticated gravity measurement devices. The results were highly encouraging. In 2007, the geologists again flew over the country, this time with devices that offer three-dimensional information about mineral concentrations.
The results were “astonishing” to the geologists who saw the data. The story even recently merited a piece in the prestigious journal Science, so impressive is the tale of mineral exploration and discovery.
There seems little doubt that Afghanistan is sitting on wealth that could dwarf the opium trade and what money reaches the war torn country from outside aid. But it remains to be seen how the wealth from the Earth is exploited and used.
Afghanistan is not a developed country with infrastructure or environmental controls. Mining can ruin countryside and destroy water resources if it’s unregulated. And, to complicate matters, the government in the country has had trouble with corruption. Indeed, last year the minister of mines stood accused of accepting a $30 million bribe in connection with giving rights to China to develop a copper mine. (The good news is that the official is no longer in office.)
But still, the challenges of wealth rather than chronic poverty could be a fine change of pace of a nation in need of some good news.
Click here: Riches in the Midst of War - Marketing, News, and Educational Communications http://cahnrsnews.wsu.edu/2010/08/03/riches-in-the-midst-of-war/
By Dr. E. Kirsten Peters < Real name of Quaker ~ Elizabeth Elliot Series author Irene Allen. That's a mystery series built on deep Christian discipleship and conscience shown by the elderly reluctant-non-pro-detective heroine. The last book was in 1998; unfortunately none since. This last, Quaker Indictment, used fiction to dramatize the hideous your-tax-dollars-at-work industry of mass murder and multi-millenial plutonium toxicity from Washington State's Hanford plant. The name Irene Allen is on the 'Net mostly as a litigant name '...vs. the United States', in regard to Nevada nuclear tests. Hmm. She wrote:
*****************
Some geologists are heroes.
That was the thought that came to my mind when I read of what Afghan geologists had done during the long and difficult time the Taliban had run their country.
Even without real hope they might ever do geology again, but with fears about what might happen at any time to the reports of previous geological mapping work, the Afghan geologists took the records home to preserve them. When the dust of the American invasion had settled and the Afghan government had been restored, the local geologists brought back the reports.
The records were the starting point for the effort in recent years to explore Afghanistan for mineral resources using fully modern methods. The results have astonished geologists because the riches of the war-torn country are so great.
As the New York Times reported this summer, many geologists now working in Afghanistan feel they are “in the midst of one of the great discoveries of their careers.”
From estimates of what’s under the ground, both at depth and near the surface, Afghanistan may contain nearly $1 trillion worth of minerals. Along the Pashtun area in the south there is gold; in western Afghanistan there is apparently abundant lithium; and elsewhere there are major deposits of copper, iron, cobalt and rare metals like niobium.
As a student, I studied mineral resources intensively. The richest of those here in the U.S. were mined out in the 1800s and early 1900s. There is a cycle in such matters, and the richest deposits are – at least generally – the first discovered and mined. But Afghanistan stands today where the U.S. did long ago, so it’s no surprise that Afghan mineral wealth is likely quite high.
But a $1 trillion bonanza is greater than this geologist would have guessed.
In short, it looks like there is enough mineral wealth in Afghanistan it could alter both the war and the way of life in the impoverished nation where the gross domestic product is only about $12 billion. If investment materializes to exploit the mineral wealth, jobs in mining could employ many men currently involved in the war, U.S. officials speculate.
“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus said to the New York Times. “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think the potential is hugely significant.”
The ore was discovered because the U.S. Geological Survey and some others went to work in 2006 using modern methods of exploration throughout the country. In the old days, geologists used to travel by Jeep (or even on foot and horseback) to outcrops. The accepted technique was to knock off pieces of rock with a hammer and inspect what you had in your hand. The approach still works, but it’s obviously labor intensive and slow.
If you want to rapidly explore a whole country these days, the way to do it is by air. So the Americans flew over Afghanistan with sophisticated gravity measurement devices. The results were highly encouraging. In 2007, the geologists again flew over the country, this time with devices that offer three-dimensional information about mineral concentrations.
The results were “astonishing” to the geologists who saw the data. The story even recently merited a piece in the prestigious journal Science, so impressive is the tale of mineral exploration and discovery.
There seems little doubt that Afghanistan is sitting on wealth that could dwarf the opium trade and what money reaches the war torn country from outside aid. But it remains to be seen how the wealth from the Earth is exploited and used.
Afghanistan is not a developed country with infrastructure or environmental controls. Mining can ruin countryside and destroy water resources if it’s unregulated. And, to complicate matters, the government in the country has had trouble with corruption. Indeed, last year the minister of mines stood accused of accepting a $30 million bribe in connection with giving rights to China to develop a copper mine. (The good news is that the official is no longer in office.)
But still, the challenges of wealth rather than chronic poverty could be a fine change of pace of a nation in need of some good news.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Salute, Curmugeon!
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-20111105-andy-rooney-obituary-story,0,5496226.story
By Dennis McLellan Los Angeles Times Staff Writer 9:50 a.m. CDT, November 5, 2011
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times
Too long to copy, but a good'n.
By Dennis McLellan Los Angeles Times Staff Writer 9:50 a.m. CDT, November 5, 2011
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times
Too long to copy, but a good'n.
Ayn Rand's Satanic Thelemicism Suffusing the Tea Party?
Click here: Ayn Rand’s Atheists are Crashing the Tea Party
FrumForum November 4th, 2011 at 2:45 pm by Gary Weiss ( info on his forthcoming book Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America's Soul ): http://www.amazon.com/Ayn-Rand-Nation-Struggle-Americas/dp/0312590733?_encoding=UTF8&tag=borntostealby-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325)
Commenter hisgirlfriday // wrote, on Nov 4, 2011 at 5:00 pm, first quoting commenter zephae:
~~~~~'...it is downright wrong (and offensive) to claim that you can’t have morality, strong families, and a sense of social responsibility without a belief in the Judeo-Christian religion. In fact, I don’t see what good the abdication of responsibility at the center of Christianity does for society at large. In fact, atheism says absolutely nothing on any of the issues you raised, which isn’t surprising for a self-contained intellectual position.'~~~~~
I agree with you that you do not have to subscribe to the Judeo-Christian religion (Or Islam because that is an Abrahamic faith as well) to have morality, strong families or a sense of social responsibility.
Outside of the religious doctrine though, there is such a thing as Judeo-Christian values that emphasize honoring your parents, parents providing for their children, and neighbors treating each other as they would want to be treated. It is these values (and I am not even claiming Judeo-Christians have a monopoly on these values but merely refer to them as Judeo-Christian because that’s how they manifested in Western civilization) that provide the prosperity, peace and stability that make democratic republican civilization possible.
However, I don’t think Ayn Rand has been accurately characterized by her opponents by simply lumping her in with atheists who may or may not be hostile to Judeo-Christian values. Rand would be more correctly characterized instead as an antiChristian or a Satanist. Rather than “do unto others as you’d have them do unto you,” Rand espouses the philosophy of “do what thou wilt.” Rather than preach self-sacrifice for the greater community in connection with the past sacrifices of the People of Israel or Jesus on the cross, Rand preaches that sacrifice itself is immoral.
If Rand worships anything beside herself, it is Moloch, the golden calf that provides immediate gratification to its selfish followers willing to sacrifice their (or their nation’s) children’s future rather than sacrifice anything themselves.
Those who care deeply about Judeo-Christian values are put in something of an impossible place by our current political alignment in this country. Pro-life Republicans obviously see the Democrats as the Moloch worshippers with the abortion issue as just the latest form of child sacrifice to rear its ugly head in human history. Social justice-seeking Democrats meanwhile see the Republican Party as the worse Moloch worshippers for being more concerned about selfishly gathering up tax cuts and lavish benefits for themselves now with no concern for the sacrifice their children are making to pay for it in terms of a massive amount of national debt, military service in endless wars and the lack of adequate education, economic opportunity, healthcare, and environmental stewardship.
FrumForum November 4th, 2011 at 2:45 pm by Gary Weiss ( info on his forthcoming book Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America's Soul ): http://www.amazon.com/Ayn-Rand-Nation-Struggle-Americas/dp/0312590733?_encoding=UTF8&tag=borntostealby-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325)
Commenter hisgirlfriday // wrote, on Nov 4, 2011 at 5:00 pm, first quoting commenter zephae:
~~~~~'...it is downright wrong (and offensive) to claim that you can’t have morality, strong families, and a sense of social responsibility without a belief in the Judeo-Christian religion. In fact, I don’t see what good the abdication of responsibility at the center of Christianity does for society at large. In fact, atheism says absolutely nothing on any of the issues you raised, which isn’t surprising for a self-contained intellectual position.'~~~~~
I agree with you that you do not have to subscribe to the Judeo-Christian religion (Or Islam because that is an Abrahamic faith as well) to have morality, strong families or a sense of social responsibility.
Outside of the religious doctrine though, there is such a thing as Judeo-Christian values that emphasize honoring your parents, parents providing for their children, and neighbors treating each other as they would want to be treated. It is these values (and I am not even claiming Judeo-Christians have a monopoly on these values but merely refer to them as Judeo-Christian because that’s how they manifested in Western civilization) that provide the prosperity, peace and stability that make democratic republican civilization possible.
However, I don’t think Ayn Rand has been accurately characterized by her opponents by simply lumping her in with atheists who may or may not be hostile to Judeo-Christian values. Rand would be more correctly characterized instead as an antiChristian or a Satanist. Rather than “do unto others as you’d have them do unto you,” Rand espouses the philosophy of “do what thou wilt.” Rather than preach self-sacrifice for the greater community in connection with the past sacrifices of the People of Israel or Jesus on the cross, Rand preaches that sacrifice itself is immoral.
If Rand worships anything beside herself, it is Moloch, the golden calf that provides immediate gratification to its selfish followers willing to sacrifice their (or their nation’s) children’s future rather than sacrifice anything themselves.
Those who care deeply about Judeo-Christian values are put in something of an impossible place by our current political alignment in this country. Pro-life Republicans obviously see the Democrats as the Moloch worshippers with the abortion issue as just the latest form of child sacrifice to rear its ugly head in human history. Social justice-seeking Democrats meanwhile see the Republican Party as the worse Moloch worshippers for being more concerned about selfishly gathering up tax cuts and lavish benefits for themselves now with no concern for the sacrifice their children are making to pay for it in terms of a massive amount of national debt, military service in endless wars and the lack of adequate education, economic opportunity, healthcare, and environmental stewardship.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Giant Asteroid Coming Close This Coming Tuesday
Satanist-infested rocketry nuts at Devil's Gate - a.k.a the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, tell us there's no chance it'll harm us this time at least, so why not trust them/NASA as we've trusted them with Not Putting Their Research to Bad Use Like Weapons, safe disposal of rocket fuel and such, and using our tax dollars for maximum humanitarian needs with maximum economic efficiency. Don't we all want to be trusting souls? Especially with people who use sliderules and do math in their heads and can speak with such self-assurance as to declare absolutes about vast moving astronomical objects in future events?
Ever hear of Chaos Theory? If you don't believe it now... If you live longer, you will.
I'm not worried. Worry has no good use except in the very short term to prompt some practical strategies regarding the thing in question. If a big-ass asteroid hits our planet (or even moon), or throws things awry on them onnaconna gravitatonal pull or cosmic rays or sompin... Well, if we survive, we'll probably soon wish we hadn't. NOTHIN WE CAN DO ABOUT IT (forget those sci-fis wherein we're saved by rocketry; that's a cometload of BS hitting the oscellator of reality.) As the guy who managed to get his innocent 'best friend' sent to jail for his own crimes explained, 'What can I say, Judge Judy: SHIT HAPPENS!'
Ever hear of Chaos Theory? If you don't believe it now... If you live longer, you will.
I'm not worried. Worry has no good use except in the very short term to prompt some practical strategies regarding the thing in question. If a big-ass asteroid hits our planet (or even moon), or throws things awry on them onnaconna gravitatonal pull or cosmic rays or sompin... Well, if we survive, we'll probably soon wish we hadn't. NOTHIN WE CAN DO ABOUT IT (forget those sci-fis wherein we're saved by rocketry; that's a cometload of BS hitting the oscellator of reality.) As the guy who managed to get his innocent 'best friend' sent to jail for his own crimes explained, 'What can I say, Judge Judy: SHIT HAPPENS!'
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Even the Teeps Can't Qwell Pol's Pet Pork Projects
Go to ( archives of the sadly moribund of late)
http://naturalareafriends.net/ & especially http://naturalareafriends.net/our_blog
and get the MASSIVELY SUCKING YOUR TAX DOLLARS to pay for a destructive and wildly hypocritical white-elephant unneeded project - WHILE THE WHITTIER NARROWS DAM ITSELF IS FALLING APART AND NOTHING IS BEING DONE ABOUT THAT - lowdown on what the 'Discovery Center' is all about - including the board's decision to head the project with a professional contractor whose proven record as dirty crony appointed politician includes another really expensive failure of another 'discovery center'. Don't think the talk of private funding now includes returning the vast fortune you paid for or will better protect your public spaces.
And have you sadly noted how many things around your community are being 'renovated and improved' by old revenue-alloted decisions or new 'Stimulus' money that didn't need fixing, while the things that need fixing are still going unfixed? Is the school or city hall or athletic field getting a cosmetic makeover while the cracks in the bridges are widening and the walkways are hedged with filthy debris and broken glass? Are the libraries and police services getting new gadget$ while laying off workers and cutting pensions and operating hours?
Cherchez les CRONIES!
*****************
San Gabriel River Discovery Center sheds lawsuit, begins fundraising for Whittier Narrows center
By Steve Scauzillo, Staff Writer Posted: 10/28/2011 04:16:37 PM PDT
SOUTH EL MONTE - The San Gabriel River Discovery Center board last week settled a lawsuit brought by an opposition group, paving the way for a major fundraising campaign and possible construction of the nature center by late 2012.
By settling with the Friends of the Whittier Narrows Natural Area, the joint-powers board overseeing the proposed $22 million, 14,000-square-foot nature and water museum at Whittier Narrows Recreation Area was able to finalize the project's environmental impact report, according to the San Gabriel River Discovery Center Authority.
The opposition group agreed to drop an appeal of its lawsuit, which claimed the environmental report was insufficient. That petition was initially dismissed by a Superior Court judge in March. The Discovery Center Authority in turn agreed to waive recovery of about $10,142 in court costs, authority officials said.
The agreement did not change the environmental report or the plans for the project, said sources close to the project.
"One reason we decided not to pursue the suit was why spend more of our dollars when we don't think (the project) will go anywhere?" said Jim Odling, leader of the Friends group, which sent out a press release saying the project is "on its deathbed."
"There is public opposition to it, and they can't raise the money," Odling said Tuesday.
However, the authority board, made up of water and park officials, said the project is moving into a
new fundraising phase and is far from over.
The authority so far has $9.8 million for the project, but it still needs another $12 million before the education center can be built, said Jane Beesley, the interim executive officer of the San Gabriel River Discovery Center Authority..
"In order to move forward to the next step, it needs an infusion of cash," Beesley said.
The authority board last week transferred about $98,000 from its budget to a newly created San Gabriel River Discovery Center Foundation, a private, nonprofit organization as defined by the federal tax code, Beesley said.
The foundation then hired NPO Solutions, a Studio City-based consultant, to form a fundraising board and ramp up a massive campaign. The foundation is paying NPO $80,000, Beesley said. NPO Solutions lists several Pasadena-area clients on its website, including the Pasadena Symphony, Sequoyah School and Pacific Clinics.
The foundation will be soliciting cash from corporations, private foundations and individuals interested in education, water and environmental issues.
"They (the Friends group) may think they've killed the project. But the project is not dead. It will be moving forward," Beesley said Tuesday.
The project absorbed a huge blow this spring when the State Parks Department denied the authority's application for a $7 million grant.
Last year, the Gabrielino Band of Mission Indians came out in opposition to the project.
Opponents want to preserve the 2,000-square-foot nature center on the site, at 1000 N. Durfee Ave. They say the Discovery Center is too large, would destroy local habitat, and would become a monument to water districts and other governmental bureaucracies.
Odling's group took a new tack, asking the authority last week if it will agree to renovate the nature center.
Storm: Death, Destruction, Misery, Millions Without Power - AGAIN
Click here: Northeast Snowstorm Leaves Millions Without Power
Because, for more than a century of obvious need ignored, of valuing war and irresponsible slapdash profiteering over lives, safety, beauty, rights of ownership and sheer common sense, we still have an exposed power grid, now the obivious and supremely ideal target of seriously inimical human forces as well as that of an increasingly roiling, hostile meteorology.
Because, for more than a century of obvious need ignored, of valuing war and irresponsible slapdash profiteering over lives, safety, beauty, rights of ownership and sheer common sense, we still have an exposed power grid, now the obivious and supremely ideal target of seriously inimical human forces as well as that of an increasingly roiling, hostile meteorology.
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