Friday, August 23, 2013

Bigger Pie Forum responds

The Bigger Pie Forum responded to recent attacks by organized labor in this press release:


Institute for Technology Development and Bigger Pie Forum Respond to False Allegations Made by Kemper Power Plant Proponents Representing Alabama Interests


Jackson, MS – August 20, 2013 – The Institute for Technology Development (“ITD”) is a 501(c)(3) Mississippi nonprofit corporation that since its formation in 1983 has promoted economic development in Mississippi through a variety of means, including promoting and coordinating university and private research in the 1980s and conducting applied technological research under contracts with Federal agencies and private parties in the 1990s and 2000s. Throughout its history ITD has promoted public policies and a regulatory environment that benefit economic development, with a special emphasis on the technology sector. In the 1980s, ITD received a Federal grant and a State of Mississippi grant. ITD also received a State of Mississippi grant in 1995. All Federal and State funds received by ITD were completely spent in accordance with contract terms and these contracts were satisfactorily closed in accordance with standard government procedures. ITD has no taxpayer funds.

As authorized and encouraged by Federal and State law, including the Bayh-Doyle Act of 1980, and in accordance with ITD’s purpose of promoting economic development in Mississippi, over the years ITD developed and commercialized technology in the areas of microelectronics, space remote sensing, and infrared sensing technologies. The funds generated from these activities have been carefully managed and invested by ITD and constitute ITD’s only source of funds since the mid-1990s. As noted in ITD’s audited financial statements, all of these funds are classified as “unrestricted” in accordance with Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 117, Financial Statements of Not-for-Profit Organizations.

In 2012, ITD formed Bigger Pie Forum ("BPF") as a Mississippi limited liability company to continue its mission of education and promotion of economic development in Mississippi by providing information to the public and public officials on policies that enhance economic development and by opposing policies and projects that are detrimental to economic development, such as the Kemper Power Plant project. In each phase of its development, ITD has employed legal, tax and accounting professionals to ensure that its activities and operations comply with the requirements applicable to nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporations and the terms of any Federal and state grants or contracts.

Proponents of the Kemper Power Plant, including the Alabama organization JobKeeper Alliance, have recently made a series of false allegations against ITD and Bigger Pie Forum. JobKeeper Alliance represents Alabama coal companies and Alabama labor interests hoping to profit from the Kemper Power Plant at the expense of Mississippi ratepayers. Its founder and Chairman, Stewart Burkhalter, was President of the Alabama AFL-CIO from 1995 until he retired in October 2011. Similar attacks have been made by P.A.C.E., another Alabama-based organization.

The most recent attacks were made in an August 16, 2013 editorial piece in The Clarion Ledger by Patrick Cagle, the Montgomery, Alabama based Executive Director of JobKeeper Alliance. Cagle is a graduate of Auburn University, and his father was employed from 1982-2010 in a high level position with Alabama Power, part of the same corporate conglomerate that is building the Kemper Power Plant.

In the editorial piece, Cagle claims that ITD was “subsidized by Mississippi taxpayers for two decades to the tune of $32 million,” that Bigger Pie Forum was funded with taxpayer money, and that ITD has been mothballed. All of these claims are blatantly false and are reckless and irresponsible attempts to quiet opposition to the Kemper Power Plant through intimidation and by misleading the public and public officials. Cagle further claims that the Mississippi State Auditor can “recoup millions of taxpayer dollars” from ITD and Bigger Pie Forum. There is no legal basis for this claim.

ITD and Bigger Pie Forum do not intend to allow lies, threats and attempts at intimidation from powerful interests in Alabama and Mississippi to stop them from telling the truth about the Kemper Power Plant project. The truth is Bigger Pie Forum’s only interest in Kemper is a public one: to educate the public and public officials about the billions of dollars of adverse economic consequences to Mississippians that will result if Mississippi ratepayers are saddled with the costs of the Kemper Power Plant.

More information and analysis on why the Kemper Power Plant project is bad for the Mississippi economy can be found at www.biggerpieforum.org.


Bigger Pie Forum is a non-profit and
non-partisan, educational organization.

Bigger Pie Forum purchased distribution rights on Jackson Jambalaya

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

So ITD and Bigger Pie have the mission of promoting technological development without regard to the cost/ benefit to the State or the taxpayers?

But, I get to pay their salaries?

Again, I get to pay for start up costs and businesses and their investors get to put the risk on me but then I don't benefit from any profits.

What a sweetheart set up.

Anonymous said...

Good for Bigger Pie Forum! If you ask me, this astro-turf labor group from Alabama, and MS Power being in cahoots against the ratepayers and customers here in South Mississippi is deplorable, they are both a bunch of self-serving corporate socialists and Haley Barbour and Phil Bryant and Leonard Bentz are fake conservative corporate socialists for supporting this boondoggle that is going to cost 6 billion bucks minimum. Does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that when you see Obama's Energy department supporting the same thing that Haley, Phil, and Bentz and Posey supported that you got a giant stinky pile of crap in front of you and the consumer is getting bent over hard!!!

Anonymous said...

Kemper is going to be an economic bust for the ages. It will rival the money our white African-American POTUS has pissed away on "green" energy.

Pugnacious said...

@9;19

Read JJ's post again. Then wipe the egg from your face. Duly noted again that Mississippi Kingmaker Warren Hood, Jr., board member of The Southern Comapny(the parent company of Mississippi Power), has resigned from ITD. I expect his billions are aimed at discrediting Bigger Pie. There has been a lot of activity in H'Burg at the Boilermaker Union on HiWay 49 South. Folks living in glass houses, hidden my recently planted shrubery , protected by security and surveillance camers, shouldn't be throwing rocks. There is that matter with whistleblower Jake Horton and his two pilots, blown to pieces over the skies of south Georgia, on his way meet the Attorney General. And the NTSB didn't have even a clues as to what brought the plane down! Southern Company Board Member Mr. Hood should fess up as to what he knew and when.

Pugnacious said...

No way that Greg Palast is going to get through all that shrubbery and security.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU4eP_YQ3Xk

Anonymous said...

Just another damn soap opera.

Anonymous said...

a bunch of people that are good at spending other people's money issuing press releases that nobody reads. do you really think the average guy listening to the radio doesn't change the channel as soon as one of those spots come on?

Anonymous said...

The anti-BPF comments on this thread are coming from "JobKeepers Alliance". Paid astroturf from union/mob boss guys in Alabama and Georgia and the Gulf Coast.

Pugnacious said...

Shrubbery .

Anonymous said...

The Beef Plant, and other failures from the leadership of Mississippi demonstrate that pouring taxpayer money into any project for the purpose of "job creation" is a total waste of resources.

Click onto their home page and read about the solar panel plant that we gave $$$$ so they could hire 1000, oops, 200, oops 100 people.

Is there any politician alive that isn't a money grubbing whore?

from their home page: Stion = 108 jobs. Cost = $75 million.

Kior - on hold. Cost = another $75 million

GreenTech Automotive - under investigation. Cost = $5 million



Anonymous said...

Then August 24, 2013 at 8:03 AM must be extremely upset with Comrade Barackinov's performance. We've got a big time money grubbing whorehouse painted white in DC.

Anonymous said...

Pugnacious seems to be awfully close to the almighty Kingfish. It's as if they share a keyboard.

Pugnacious said...

The Palestine Texas KIOR conmen have decided to put a hold on the Natchez sawmill waste cellulose-to-diesel fuel facility.So they must have conned Joe Max Higgins into "grant"ing them another $75,000,000 to construct a twin facility right next to the current plant along the Tombigbee river. KIOR is still keeping its production figures a top secret. KIOR stocks are plummeting. You can bet Leland Speed has not invested his own money in these "startup" companies.

Pugnacious said...

Sum Te Wong at Wang's

Great group photo of the New South's greated swindlers at link. McCaulfie is running for Governor of Virginia.


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