Monthly Archives: July 2020
barr on his secret police
Not yet
In spite of what people choose to believe, teachers are in the profession because they know the importance and benefits of an education, and want students to experience those benefits. Although not true of all of them, too many people move as quickly out of the classroom into administration as possible, some for what at the time seemed the right thing to do for the benefit of students, while for others it is because the further you are away from the children the higher the prestige and the money that goes with it.
For teachers, what is important is how well the students are doing and how much of the information they should be learning, they are. Considering the negative attitudes promoted concerning teachers, which benefit those with an anti-public school agenda, (teachers have a difficult time dealing with the continuous attacks and the attempts to constantly paint them as anti-children), teachers still do the best they can under circumstances over which they have little to no control.
The reasons for the lack of control of their profession and the classrooms in which they teach go back to the beginnings of public education and its improper use to promote family members, to train students to think a certain way so as to support the existing power structure, and to give those with political aspirations the first step, or the only step, in a political career having relied on voter apathy and the lack of interest in education as opposed sports, politics, and religion to get elected
There has been a lot of political talk of late about the need to fix public education. This need to fix what was not broken by those in the classroom is a need to repair all the political damage done to public education by those who have little more than a political interest in it. To understand the “problem” and its source, it is necessary to look at the history of the public education system.
When public education began, the United States was agricultural/mercantile, so education needed to deal with only the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. The upper class males had had the opportunity of education for centuries through peerage and the church. Their education was practical and geared toward whatever was necessary for the exercise of civil or religious power, and, later on, industry.
Women were limited in what they could learn, and that usually allowed them to read a long English novel to other upper class ladies as they knitted or sewed in the drawing room while their husbands led countries or conducted business.
The larger cities, which were in the minority, needed an educational system that would ready people to enter the workforce with the education needed to get the work done. In rural areas with an emphasis on agriculture, education had to be basic and practical. The world had yet to progress to where more was needed by the majority of the population than an eighth grade education, if they even went that far. Education was not a priority, but it did serve a purpose, and definitely was never an end in itself. It had to be relevant to the needs of the community, anything more being a luxury that would waste time. It was a chore that someone, other than the parents, had to do since at the beginning of the country, because of their own limited education and need to work, the parents were either unable to, or had no time to instruct their children in the basics. But educating the children was something that had to be done, and hopefully at little cost. Too much education was not only a dangerous thing for the powers that be, but it was a costly danger if properly supported.
Since anyone who had gotten a basic education would be able to pass it on to those who were younger, and as it also would serve as day care for the children while the parents took care of business, it made sense to hire a young, nurturing female not much older than the oldest student in town, who would eventually marry and move on leaving the position opened to be filled, if needed, by an exact replica.
It was not a manly profession, but men were in charge of the boards that set up the system. Theirs was the realm of politics and control. Women knew their place, and were to follow the orders of the men and teach the basics. It was a system that would need little money either in salary or in costs to run as there was only one building the size of a small house and one young woman glad to get whatever pay she was lucky to get in a world where most women did not work outside the home, or make money on their own to use as they saw fit, and who would eventually find a husband who brought home the bacon.
In some places the rules of the teacher’s behavior were reasonable, in others not. Sometimes the responsibilities of the teacher involved just teaching and nurturing. Sometimes they also included more strenuous physical responsibilities like building fires, sweeping rooms, or doing the building maintenance at the little red school house.
In any case, the teacher was an expendable commodity, grateful to have a job, and very glad to do what was required to keep it. This is made clear when a review of teacher rules in many places shows they forbad dating in public, and required the teacher resign upon marriage as pregnancy was an assumed next step, and no one wanted children who grew up on farms and saw gestating animals on a regular basis to see an actually pregnant person. This would not have necessarily been the case if men were the teachers, but that was not the case in the beginning when the mindset was first formed, and men teaching seemed a little too unmanly.
Times changed over the years as the requirements of an industrialized country called for a higher level of education than the basics; a trend that has not stopped. Where once a few years of schooling was sufficient for a decent career, first a high school diploma then a college degree, or at least an associate’s degree, has now become that minimum. Sadly the power structure has not evolved as it should have in either operational procedures or mindsets. While public education is in the twenty first century, those in charge are still applying the methods of running the system that were passed down from elected board to elected board like a Mason’s secret. This is how it was done; this is how it still is.
This is who teachers were and still are, as far as they are concerned.
There are various reasons why a person runs for a School Board seat, perhaps as many as the number of people who have, or who will ever run for the position. But a common thread is the exercise of power which is still wielded like teachers were the same expendable commodities as were the originals, and who in spite of their college degrees are still treated as if they know only a little more than the oldest student in the school and, therefore, are indoor field hands, not professionals.
Administrators are chosen according to how closely they will perpetuate the system, and how close their philosophies match those of the Board. The administrators’ loyalties are more toward the board than the teachers because of who signs the paychecks, allows people to keep their jobs, and decides who will get the higher paying position with the more prestigious title and image. A suggestion from below them that may be valid is seen as a threat because, not being their idea, it might appear the one making it is smarter and, therefore, a worthy replacement.
The administrators usually recommend a similar type to themselves to a leadership position when the Board asks for input in hiring. It becomes viral, and actually has already.
When it comes to the teachers, they are never consulted on educational matters; their input is never sought, and if offered, routinely ignored; and unless they promote the administrators in the eyes of their superiors, they are seen as undesirable trouble makers. The waters of the administrative lake must remain ripple free so the captain of the boat, no matter how incompetent, will appear expert in the absence of challenges.
The days of the easily ignored “school marm” and the occasional male teacher treated like one ended when the Second World War ended, the space age began, the world became more modern, and men saw education as much as a calling as women did. The men did not get married, then pregnant, and have to leave for the convenience of those in charge who liked the power but lacked the required acumen. The first great wave of male teachers beyond universities and church schools came after World War II, and these were the men who had faced death, given orders in life and death situations, followed serious orders in those same situations, and then came home having seen the value of education in a post Depression, World War era.
The existing and expected continuance of the Ichabod Crane school master wound down. But women continued to teach in the majority, generally being a second income to the husband’s more “serious” employment, and the comfort of running things as school boards had always been running things was slow to go away. School Boards were slow to realize that the people teaching were changing in attitude and expertise, and were no longer just a few years ahead of their students and waiting for a Prince Charming. They were professional, and as a group became more so as attrition in the field helped the system change further away from the Miss Crabtree, spinster, or soon to meet a man, stereotype.
Power is not easy to give up. What seems worse is being the one who is the last of the line and the final one to have occupied the throne. That place in history is seen more as the negative loss of power, than the positive win of accepting reality and exercising the real potency that it truly is. So, the status quo continues as does the time and energy required to protect and justify it.
Try looking cialis soft generic into audio CDs that you can listen to a salesman’s professional opinion of what you should be looking for. You can also contact via email and phone so they can answer buy tadalafil in canada your questions and queries. In this condition, the dosage needs to be counseled initial to see and have definitive goal to achieve, otherwise the therapist and also the individual will just be their viagra prescription wasting times. On the other hand, the online teaching allows once and for all to study the lessons without asking again and again. bulk viagraAs the world became more complicated and demanding, so did the classroom. Normal Schools which had trained armies of young girls in the fundamentals of “Readin’, ‘Ritin’, and ‘Rithmatic”, the rudiments of art and music, basic practical sciences like sewing and cooking, and general socially acceptable fine points of deportment became colleges with stricter curricula in all areas of study including science and math, especially after an atomic bomb could be dropped on the earth, whipping out huge acreages at once, and a rocket could be shot into space with a satellite or a man in it.
However, those who inherited a system of running schools as overlords with unrestricted power were slow to move along. They continued the mindset that had attracted them to their position on boards of education in the first place which generally amounted to their getting elected to the highest political position they would ever hold, the chance to help their own children when it came to preference in certain programs like sports, and the chance to be in charge of people who would not question them either because they knew their place or were only going to be around until they found a husband, or got fired because they were seen in public on a date, or, of course, worse, pregnant.
Bureaucracy grew as school districts did with directors, chairs, and chief operation officers added on as seemingly needed. Positions were often jerry-rigged into the system as a stop gap measure to handle new situations, and these often became the reasons for their own existence. What was forgotten was that the focal point of the districts was not its central administration, but the classrooms. Instead of the district and its administrators supporting the teachers in the classrooms, the teachers worked for the administrators and for their purposes.
What has been turned around is the purpose.
The purpose of an administrator should be to insure the teacher in the classroom has what the teacher needs to get the job done, not dictate to the teacher what he/she is to teach and with what they will be allowed to teach it.
The word, administrator, itself comes from the Latin “to minister to”. The professional educator is the one in the classroom who on a daily basis assesses students both formally and informally, educationally and socially. They see the students work as individuals or members of groups; see what sparks a student or causes boredom; develop a rapport which allows for a relationship based on reason, a firm set of beliefs, and a degree of kindness; and all this on an ongoing, morphing basis that goes largely ignored in the decision making process of those in charge but who are not in a classroom or near a student
The present from-the-top-down approach has actually perpetuated old problems while also introducing new ones, ones that could have been avoided if more input was accepted from those in the classroom. People in charge of school districts, like Boards of Education, cannot be involved in the day to day running of schools and so a lot of delegating takes place. They may not be familiar with all the personnel under them, so school boards come to rely on recommendations from those who should be when it comes to promotions and programs, and as in most cases what, or who is promoted is based more closely on what is familiar and friendly to the ones making the recommendations than on anything else. And, this being the case, as stated before, those most like the ones in charge are moved up and a type of culture develops based on their shared beliefs whether correct or not.
Compliance with what is recommended or who is promoted is usually accompanied by the threat of dismissal if not followed, so there is a built in guarantee that all new ideas and all new appointments will go unchallenged. This obey-or-perish approach has replaced the public dating, marrying, or pregnancy of the girls who used to be the teaching force as the most convenient way to rid the board of thinking teachers, or those who appear to be a threat to the positions and pay of those who should face the occasional threat for what they have done to education.
For the majority of my career, education had been a good thing. Teachers had the freedom in their classrooms to approach their subject matter as they saw fit, according to their talents and the observable needs and talents of their students.
There were results.
However, when the politicians found education was a vote getter because, after all, children were involved, things began to change as what teachers knew needed to be done was abandoned for what the politicians wanted for their own purposes. Then education became a question of compliance to what administrators believed would make them look very successful, even if the students really learned little.
The main objection to teachers having collective bargaining rights and Unions is that the decision making has to be shared with those in the classroom, and when authority and power is threatened, even as they should be and for the right reasons, those who are invested in them due to their own agenda become defensive.
The desire to bring back the day of the compliant and easily threatened and dismissed “school marm” becomes very strong and attractive.
It is comfortable.
What is threatening is a thinking and strong teacher force that knows what is best and will fight to have it realized.
That is why those who are in position of authority, and who have never actually taught will design policies that will eliminate what they consider a threat.
And it is this attitude that is presently in full view when it comes to re-opening schools as decisions are coming from the top with little consultation with the teachers who are expected to not only teach those in the classroom, but those who are kept home by fearful parents while teachers will be held accountable for any failure resulting from the decision of others. They will also have to address their students’ various learning styles, languages, home situations, idiosyncrasies, all things they are familiar with for having dealt with students in class and knowing them, but will be held to universal success by those who have no idea that these considerations exist and only see the classroom as a room full of kids with a teacher at the front who pours information into eager, empty vessels thirsty for knol3dge with no connection to reality.
Since students spend every day with teachers, teachers are expected to be co-, or surrogate parents but without the authority to parent.
Rather than enact ordinances, realistic programs, and social networks to handle society’s problems as related to youth, the attitude is that, since the kids are in school all day anyway, have the teachers deal with those things.
After school shootings we are told it is not the time to discuss reasonable gun control laws as a way to at least slow down the occurrences of school shooting, but plenty of time is spent deciding what the teachers must do before, during, and after such an event. They have to protect the children while at the same time stopping the shooter and dealing with the physical and emotional aftermath.
And. They have to make sure all students are educated equally and completely.
Now in the days of COVID 19, politicians are discussing the opening of schools. Along with teaching their subject matter, teachers will now be responsible for the health of their students and insuring that all regimens to prevent the spread of the virus are adhered to. They will be responsible for making sure kids keep a distance from each other and wear their masks, adding another disciplinary assignment to their duties, while being vulnerable to the virus themselves which can be brought into the school by faculty, staff, and students, and home by them.
In exchange for the added duties, teachers will be repaid with such things as the possible elimination of the teacher’s minimum salary schedule, school district provided health insurance, negotiations between a school district and employees, and teacher evaluation and due process protections while teachers are tasked with somehow making whatever someone thinks is a great idea work, and take the blame for the failure of them while their authors take n0o responsibility for failed leadership.
Until there are specific and firm guidelines for re-opening schools, and it is made clear how much liability will be placed on the teachers who had no say in the re-opening and the procedures they will be required to follow while being held to 100% success with student achievement as those responsible point at teachers as the reason for any bad outcomes, they should be kept closed.
moral relativism
Wearing or not wearing a mask is a choice you make before entering a business establishment. If your choice is not to wear one where one is required, then your choice eliminates your entry. You know, like when many of the anti-maskers claimed that being Gay was a choice that allowed for exclusion so a Gay person couldn’t buy a cupcake.
The Gay person entering an establishment and purchasing a product does not endanger anyone.
In addition, medication and complications that may result with austere side-effects. buy generic viagra http://www.devensec.com/rules-regs/decregs402.html devensec.com order cheap viagra If you are facing such problem, talk to your doctor. But there is a downside to these particular drugs and that is once you take them, you almost become addicted to 20mg tadalafil sale porn. For example, a levitra cialis minor physical issue that abates your sexual reaction may cause tension about keeping up an erection.Not wearing a mask does.
And, as far as that weak explanation that because a Christian baker does not support same sex marriage making a wedding cake makes them party to something of which they do not approve, selling that same cake to an unmasked customer should make the baker complicit in any infections or deaths resulting among the people who partake of that cake.
Or, is killing people acceptable, but love isn’t.
Oh, and by the way, while wearing or not wearing a mask is a choice, being Gay isn’t.
how opening school will be handled
EVALUATING TEACHERS 2020-21
SENDING THE KIDS OFF TO SCHOOL
All gaul is divided into three parts, like bcso covid actions
Gallia omnis in partes tres divisa est.
(And in typing that, I answered that high school student’s over half a century ago question, “When will I ever use this?” because, obviously the answer is right now.}
Like Gaul, the Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson’s coronavirus circus at the county jail is, so far, divided into three parts.
When the Coronavirus first hit and people were beginning to understand groups in close quarters could create a Petri dish of infection, restaurants closed, bars closed, movie theaters closed, certain businesses closed, and schools closed all for the common good. It might have been a little over cautious for some, but when battling an unknown virus we adjusted approaches according to new information learned. It wasn’t that people were uninformed, it was more that people were becoming informed, or at least having the opportunity to be.
Until the president made the virus a political tool, most people accepted the science as it was discovered. They might not have liked it and wished things were otherwise, but people accepted, for the most part, what the experts were saying.
However, there were those who immediately latched onto whatever strange theory or remedy the president put out there, mainly because they believe whatever he says, no matter how bizarre. Either his saying things they already believe validates their out from left-field thinking, or they have found being seen as his ally as having personal benefits.
When the pandemic was first seen as such, there was a proposal to thin prison and jail populations to limit the spread of the virus in a closed, self contained petri dish, and, being reasonable, the proposal had specific requirements that had to be met before someone could be released.
Those arrested in the before the coronavirus times for minor offenses that the system saw as a routine approach, those arrested for minor crimes but who had not had their day in court and were, therefore, innocent until proven guilty; those who hadn’t the financial wherewithal to pay bail; those close to their release date; those in the most vulnerable demographics, would be considered for release most likely to some form of house arrest or placement in a less crowded facility.
Those arrested for, or convicted of major crimes were automatically off the list.
After assurance from ICE that it was only apprehending and detaining residents without proper paperwork after committing major crimes, making none of its detainees eligible, it was found that too many of those in detention were not what ICE described, but had been pulled over for things like minor traffic violations, were suspected of minor crimes, or were picked up in raids at work places, bars, and social gatherings. They were not violent criminals threatening their communities.
The “Cite and Release” program was new, and, of course, along with people who supported the program from the beginning, there were those who weighed whether or not to go along with it, not necessarily based on the merits of the program, but on personal opinions about who ICE detainees are supposed to be and who sits in the county jail, and might come to see that under the circumstances they might need to rethink things and act accordingly.
And there were those who saw the opportunity for self promotion and for perpetuating a tough guy image in the law and order world, and, perhaps, even saw that a tough stance might get the attention of someone, like the president, that could fulfill higher aspirations.
It was necessary in the last category to follow the lines being fed by the president regardless what science and common sense had to say.
In Bristol County Massachusetts, Sheriff Thomas Hodgson is staunchly in this last group.
His desire to project a tough law and order image not only included making broad, often baseless statements about immigrants and the inmates in his jails from whom he was saving the county, but his was an immediate, knee jerk rejection of the proposal to thin the jail house herd, a position he clung to even as his original claims were being disproven by on-going events.
The sheriff’s initial reaction was to say,
“We have no current plans to release inmates in the manners you described,”
And he subsequently explained,
“Releasing people to go back into the community, whether back to friends, family, or whoever may be exposed already? Why would we add people to that environment, when we have a controlled environment here? We could probably get them medical treatment faster.”
As he explained,
“We’re disinfecting as much as we possibly can. We are taking extra precautions. We are spraying more than we normally do. We educate the inmates about the preventive measures…. We’re doing probably more than most people would be doing on the outside. … We’ve not had any circumstances with any inmates here indicating (that they may have the coronavirus).”
He claimed there was no need to release anyone from his facilities because his approach would keep the virus out of his jails, and also that anyone who did not agree with him was, in his own words, attacking him individually, uninformed, politically motivated, and anti-Trump.
When an activist group demanded that “incarcerated and detained people, who pose no danger to individuals and the community” should be released “to thin out the population so that safer practices can be implemented”, and went so far as to not only criticize, but make a suggestion for a solution,
“These should prioritize those with serious medical conditions, others awaiting trial for inability to pay bail, and those who have been jailed for technical probation and parole violations. Anyone who is infected with the virus should be quarantined off site, but not at home, so as not to infect family members and friends,”
the sheriff dismissed it as a merely a political agenda.
“To make an arbitrary statement like that, without understanding the impact of it and the level of risk here versus on the outside, says it all. That’s why we are in the business we are in. We’ve dealt with this before in a prison setting. We have protocols. We make adjustments. We pay attention to the CDC. We pay attention to briefings from the White House.… As far as I’m concerned, it’s a baseless suggestion.”
“We suspect these detainees are working with outside political activist groups to use the coronavirus crisis to advance their political agenda.”
This immediate dismissal of people’s concerns and the reasonable release program was, itself, a fine example of an arbitrary decision, and the fact that he interprets it as something politically based, although there is no politics involved in addressing the virus, also would seem to illustrate that his concerns are more about politics than what is best for inmates and detainees.
If he had to deal with medical issues, he would be required to act in accordance with science and medical best practices. If he could convince people it was just political, he could do nothing, but just condemn the politics.
He claimed that if inmates were released, even temporarily, they would be exposed to the virus on the outside when they would have avoided any exposure to it on the inside, ignoring that his whole staff entered and exited Hodgson’s facilities on a daily basis and could very well be the way the virus would get into his jails.
And it did.
While still claiming the steps he had instituted in the jails, with no one monitoring the affects except those who worked for him and know not to speak against him, with no one other than he and his staff actually observing the alleged steps being taken, he had to begin admitting that first one, then a larger number of staff were testing positive for the virus and returning to work when they had recovered while we were learning that while “recovery” might mean an absence of the active virus, it did not eliminate a quiet dormant virus.
In spite of his assurances otherwise, by April he had to address the nurse at his facility who had tested positive.
“It’s encouraging that she’s had no symptoms for a week and is feeling well. It’s also encouraging that no other BCSO or CPS staff members, nor any inmates or detainees, have reported symptoms.”
And, so, they could just move on.
The virus was in, and that called for a distraction.
“Any headlines or press releases from political activist organization claiming infections or outbreaks are completely false and reckless.”
“There are lawyers who represent clients in our custody that are spreading lies and rumors around the community to advance their personal political agendas in a time of national crisis.”
And then a correctional officer and a K9 officer tested positive for COVID-19 according to a press release from Bristol County Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson’s office.
“Both are feeling well. They have some minor symptoms but both said, overall, that they’re feeling okay. That’s very encouraging.”
At this point, even though no one was attacking his staff, but were questioning his decisions and lack of action, he felt the need to attempt to make it appear people were not being fair with his staff, so, like Trump who did not want to deal with racial injustice and chose to use his bully pulpit to misrepresent the reason for athletes taking a knee so he could have people seeing America under siege and defend the flag and the troops against a non-existent attack and not discuss racial disparity, the sheriff tried this approach, but in so doing revealed that the conditions he claimed would keep his jail virus free, had not been successful,
“My staff has to come into a very challenging environment.”
He went on to say what in retrospect was either his not seeing or choosing not to accept reality,
“Provided we remain mindful and vigilant with our social distancing and personal sanitation, both here and in the community, we can reach our shared goal of preventing our inmate population, us, and our families from becoming exposed to and infected by COVID-19.”
And rather than science and preventative measures, the sheriff continued to rely on his self-image and luck, and echoing one of Trump’s signature phrases when it comes to results.
“So far we don’t have any COVID-19 cases, knock on wood, in regards to our inmates and detainees. We hopefully won’t have any, but we’ll see.”
He had rejected a reasonable approach to preventing the spread of the virus in an enclosed environment for an approach that was, according to his own words, not a sure thing that he was clinging to, but a gamble that could go either way, an approach that involved knocking on wood.
As the virus was slowly making its way into his county jails, the sheriff dug his heals in and continued to adamantly insist that he had created conditions that would keep the virus out.
As the number of COVID 19 cases among staff, county inmates, and ICE detainees grew, and while what he declared would not happen was, in fact, happening, he modified a bit by explaining it was all under control. He began to present a new story, hoping, it seems, no one would remember his original declaration because something he had guaranteed would not happen was happening enough to need to be controlled.
He was proud that he was controlling that which he had insisted was just the ramblings and the politics of those who were attacking him individually, those who were uninformed and politically motivated, and anti-Trump.
He’s the captain of his own Titanic who insists that the ship is not sinking, and after helping a few people into a lifeboat then brags about the few people he saved while ignoring the hundreds he could have saved had he acted sooner and according to information at hand and not the original claim that only God could sink his ship.
He continued to oppose the practice of releasing those who were eligible according the “Cite and Release”, the recommendation he had in knee-jerk fashion refused to follow when it was first proposed.
His claim that the virus had not entered his jails because no inmates had tested positive followed the Trumpian line that the fewer the tests administered the fewer the positive results since testing was not being done in his facilities, and this was countered by a court order demanding that he test everyone in his facilities,
Within days of the order to have everyone at his facilities tested, according to a press release, six Bristol County Sheriff’s Office staff members and eight inmates tested positive for COVID-19, and a later press release issued on that same day stated that seven staff members had recovered from COVID and had returned to duty while eleven were away from the facility recovering.
This many people testing positive would mean the virus is in there, and the admission that seven staff members had gone through the before, during, and after stages of the virus before this press release while eleven others were going through it at that time clearly showed knocking on wood was not as effective an approach than sound medical steps would have been.
Making matters worse, in spite of the sheriff’s claiming,
“Releasing people to go back into the community, whether back to friends, family, or whoever may be exposed already? Why would we add people to that environment, when we have a controlled environment here?”
and boasting,
“We’re doing probably more than most people would be doing on the outside,”
Bristol County, with a population of 560,571 people, has so far had 8,399 cases of COVID-19. In the sheriff’s facilities out of the 625 people incarcerated there, 47 have been infected, and out of its 450 corrections officers, 43 have. Bristol County has experienced less than 15 COVID-19 infections per thousand people. In contrast, inmates in Hodgson’s jail have had roughly 75 cases per thousand while corrections officers have had more than 95 cases per thousand.
Contrary to his claims that his way was the safest, the Bristol County Corrections prisoner rate of infection is almost 5 times greater than the rest of the county, and among the corrections officers that would be a rate six times greater.
Any increase in numbers happened in a place the sheriff assured the public, his employers, it would not happen because he just knew that what he was doing was the only acceptable approach, and, so, he needed no advice from anyone else.
He played around the edges of court orders to follow the proposal so that he was not outright ignoring them, but wasn’t following them either.
Now we have arrived at the point where a press release from the sheriff’s office boasts that since June 19, only one staff member had joined the 42 Bristol County Sheriff’s Office staff members who had previously tested positive for COVID-19, as did one additional inmate, and that 47 inmates had recovered and returned to general population or had been released as their sentences had concluded.
Considering the timeline, this last group could have been released when the Site and Release program was originally enacted in the state months ago. Clearly it would have been safer.
According to the sheriff,
“The staff here has done an amazing job in the battle against COVID-19. We’ve flattened the curve in our facilities, but we’re not out of the woods yet. The virus is still out there, and we will continue to be vigilant and careful in our day-to-day operations.”
How do you praise yourself for flattening a curve you have consistently insisted just would not exist and for which your actions may have been responsible?
The general public only pays as much attention to the sheriff and his jails as they do school board members. They are both elected in really quiet voting years, and people having no kids in school often results in little interest in the day to day workings of the school department or the actions of the school committee unless something goes horribly wrong, and who holds those positions is not all that important to most. So, too, the general population pays little attention to sheriffs and jails if neither touches them directly. And since sheriff offices have their own spokespeople and public relations staff, what we often hear about the inmates and detainees is filtered and controlled.
So while the sheriff claims he had done the right thing, the court at whose edges he played, sees things otherwise.
The judge who has been dealing with the sheriff, his jails, and his ICE detention center, questioned the sheriff’s rosy picture of his success. Considering the history of Thomas Hodgson’s actions during the opening months of the Pandemic the judge recently said that
“just as the increased rate of infection does not prove deliberate indifference … the absence of known infections does not disprove deliberate indifference… We are not yet out of the woods.”
How could things have been different if the sheriff had been more open minded about addressing the virus?
And as far as ICE, the judge was concerned that,
“ICE’s insistence on opposing these bail applications on a blanket basis has led it to take some positions that are downright irrational, not to mention inhumane.”
Remember, there had been a riot in the ICE detention center at the Bristol County House of Corrections based on the initial refusal to test and then the panicked way the testing was to be done after the court required it. The sheriff may have blamed “activists” both inside and outside the jail for having played a role in staging the riot, claiming he and his staff were blindsided by the event, and that he has video to prove who had initiated the melee, yet, it has been 2 1/2 months since that event, and the tape has yet to be released to the public who employ the people involved and pay the taxes that pay for the jail and everything connected to it.
These are the three parts into which the fiasco has so far been divided:
- The denial that the pandemic was what it was and how it could eventually affect the incarcerated population and the claim that he alone could prevent it.
- The quiet growth of the virus and its entry into the jail by way of staff so what he claimed would not happen did.
- The latest claim that he had reduced that which he had originally assured us would not be and wanting praise for doing it.
The pandemic shows no signs of dying out. To the contrary, in the case of Bristol County, serious consideration needs to be given to addressing ways to minimize those incarcerated for minor crimes, whether or not convicted or waiting their day in court, unable to pay bail, are just shy of their release date, or are the people ICE forgot to tell us about, those none serious criminal threats to the community, those who were at work and got scooped up in a raid, or were stopped randomly on Acushnet Avenue the first night of the annual Portuguese festa.
The sheriff has the opportunity to do things correctly and humanely in the event there is a resurgence, or he can continue to play John Wayne, stamp his foot petulantly, and complain people are picking on him while he gambles with more lives.
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not long before school opens
What’s the difference between…..
What is the difference between an Atheist and a conservative Christian?
An Atheist will do the right thing because it is the right thing to do. A conservative Christian will do the right thing because if they don’t, they could end up burning forever in hell.
The Atheist acts on morality, the Christian on fear of punishment.
With or without some rule or law, the atheist will do what is right regardless, while the conservative Christian, arriving at the same place sees that a choice exists to either do right and get a reward, or do wrong and be punished for eternity, and will actually consider both of them. They will consider pros and cons and make a choice accordingly.
As a kid in Catholic elementary school I learned, although it was not the intended lesson to be learned, that when you wanted to do something wrong, go with a Venial Sin. It would only cost a few days in Purgatory and, if you didn’t want to tell anyone about it, it eliminated the need for Confession. If you were going to go big, you went Mortal Sin. That meant hell or Confession and Penance.
We were actually inadvertently taught the art of weighing the action against the choices of punishment, and acting accordingly.
Atheist do good deeds while no one watches. Conservative Christians, who claim a higher morality, do things knowing God, like Santa, is always watching.
At the Bristol County House of Corrections the sheriff, Thomas Hodgson, has ways to make money off of those under his care, and people in the community have a problem with that. He has the practice of overcharging for needed items and keeping the profits. He claims the extra money goes to other necessary things, but he is not too forthcoming when people from the county that employs him ask to see the receipts.
Among such practices is the artificially inflated price of inmate phone calls. Phone calls are important because they allow consultations between attorneys and their clients inside the jail, and they may be the only contact between an inmate and the family. And there is money to be made from this vital service needed by a captive audience without an option.
And, yes it affects the James Cagney tough guy types, but it also affects your uncle or aunt who is a really nice person, but was in the wrong place at the wrong time and can’t afford bail.
The sheriff has a contract with a private equity technology company that supplies communication services to prisons and jails, and at a cost to inmates of $3.16 for the first minute and $0.16 for each additional minute for in-state calls, a 15 minute phone call can cost $5.40, and there is money being made. If for some reason the call gets cut off, to resume the call, the inmate must begin at step one.
The contract doubled the cost of a phone call, and over the last decade has earned the sheriff $10 million.
This is the sheriff who was sued for charging inmates $5.00 for every day of their incarceration while constantly referring to their low socio-economic standing. At the end of a sentence, release would happen after the hotel bill was paid, and this was putting a financial and emotional burden on families. Upon losing the suit and having to stop the practice, the sheriff merely looked for a different revenue source, and settled on phones.
A lawsuit was filed against the sheriff alleging the phone contract was a scheme to get illegal kickbacks, but in June, US District Court Judge Indira Talwani found that the contract was legal under Massachusetts law saying, and this is important,
“Plaintiffs’ concern that the Sheriff is generating revenue through charges paid by inmates’ families and attorneys for phone service is timely as our communities consider how the criminal justice system may best achieve its stated goals. However, these policy questions are for the Legislature not the court.”
In other words, although it is clearly obvious that the action of the sheriff may not be moral, as it is not prevented by law, he can’t be sued as he is breaking no law.
Ignoring the complete picture, the sheriff was all in-your-face happy he can continue collecting kickbacks and burdening his inmates and their families.
“For years, we have had to defend ourselves from unmitigated attacks by political activists who have been non-stop accusing us of ‘illegal kickbacks’ and profiteering on inmate phone calls. Now, the federal court has unequivocally told us that our actions were proper.”
Um, no.
What the court decided was that, because it was not covered by a law that either allowed it, or one that banned it, the court could not make a ruling as the court deals with existing laws and their application.
I understand this. In my many years as the union’s shop steward, many people had legitimate complaints about wrongful treatment, but, because it was not something covered in the contract, rather than file a grievance, the employee had to be advised to seek legal help.
The action may not have violated the contract, but that did not make the action proper or legal.
The sheriff had also stated,
“As usual, I will not hold my breath waiting for any apologies for all the hateful and defamatory comments made about the Sheriff’s Office or myself. Rather, the BCSO will continue to provide top-notch care and custody to the inmates and the community it serves while insuring that every effort is made to minimize the burden on taxpayers.”
In a recent pod cast interview the sheriff actually mentioned that I drew cartoons about him, mentioned my book of collected blogs about him, said that he hoped I made lots of money with it, and ended by saying maybe he should get some royalties.
That would be a no in this case, and another to his hoping for an apology.
The sheriff would do the right thing if there was a threat of punishment, so to do the right thing for him, the legislature is considering An Act Relative to Inmate Telephone Calls (S.1372) that mandates no-cost phone calls in state prisons and county houses of correction.
And was not the clear win he wants people to accept it as.
And then there is this.
No matter what information is given to the local newspaper that might expose some of the many faults of the sheriff, (his price gauging, suicide and recidivism rates, poor medical and mental health care, involvement in white supremacist groups) the newspaper either challenges the information which delays or eliminates the facts getting out, or, if a letter to the editor or an op-ed piece critical of the sheriff is published, within days there will be a glowing press release from the sheriff’s office, a letter allegedly written by the sheriff himself, or some puff piece about the warm fuzzy sheriff published in the paper. It most likely doesn’t hurt that the sheriff’s spokesperson was a reporter at the local newspaper and is listed as a contributing writer.
In the article that announced this court decision, ignoring the real, clearly stated motivation of the plaintiffs, according to the newspaper article, the law suit was based on “the politically charged distortions of the prisoners’ rights groups and political activists claiming the receipt of “illegal kickbacks,” echoed in many cases by the media…..”
There were no quotation marks around these words in the article as published, which would mean that unlike the other sourced quotes, these are the words of the writer.
Why would the writer refer to the media as if it were something else with no connection to him or herself, an enemy?
The article also characterized the long process of investigating, gathering documentation, and taking the legal steps to file a lawsuit as simply and dismissively
“Two years ago, prisoners’ rights activists brought suit against Sheriff Hodgson and Securus, and ran to the media to publicize their filing.”
At the end of the paragraph containing the reporter’s list of the wonderful things the sheriff is supposed to have used the income for, are the words,
“utilized outside sources of revenue to relieve some of the burden on taxpayers”,
The article ends with a quote from the sheriff in which he mentions what he will continue to do with the money with no specificity, just general platitudes, in which he finishes with the words
“while insuring that every effort is made to minimize the burden on taxpayers.”
The paragraph written by the reporter and the quote from the sheriff are mirrors of each other in structure, content (one is specific, however, while the other general), and in the concluding words as if the directives for quotes and press releases is to end with words that project that BCSO is thinking only of the taxpayers, to distract them from the actual fleecing much the same way others may require ending with “In Jesus’s name”, or “God bless these Unitrd States
Makes a person wonder if the person writing the article made up the quotes, or if the person who issued the quotes, also wrote the article.
school opening plans.
I was sitting at the bar one night. It’s a Gay Bar. Most of the patrons are of the GLBTQMORELETTERS Community, although there are quite a few straight people who are regulars. It’s not the fanciest bar in town, but there it is, having that neighborhood feel to it in which patrons develop friendships and conversations are usually friendly and the people of like mind.
Allow me an expository digression.
Once, when home from California visiting my family in Massachusetts for Christmas, I was watching the news on television with my father when a story came on about politics and Gay rights. I became a little uncomfortable because when I first “came out” my father had a bit of a conflict with it, but finally agreed to be as open minded as possible so long as we didn’t talk about it. He wasn’t uninformed regarding my life as a Gay man and a Gay Rights Activist as my mother would ask all the parental questions and then relate all the information to my father later that night in bed. So he was informed, although he often pretended not to be.
He might have been somewhat conservative in matters of religion and to some extent politics, but, even though he belonged to neither political party as an “Independent”, he tended toward the Democratic politicians because they seemed to be out for the little guy while the Republicans seemed more interested in protecting the interests of the upper class. As someone who grew up in Boston during the Depression and then World War II, politics was something he paid attention to.
So there we were sitting, and through no fault of my own and not having brought up the Gay topic, watching someone on TV talking about Gay politics. The report included interviews with some activists supporting a change in law that would benefit the Gay Community, and, in an attempt to present balance, there was an interview with the president of the Log Cabin Republicans who, for some reason, opposed the change.
Apparently taking it for granted that viewers knew what the LCR was, their being Gay Republicans was not explained, so my father, assuming they were a conservative political or religious group that opposed Gay Rights, asked if I knew who that group was. After filling him in, my father turned to me with an incredulous look on his face and asked,
“You have those?”
He found it strange that anyone in the Gay Community would form an organization that works against what was in the community’s best interest and supported politicians who did the same.
Yes. They are a strange group of people who are “fiscally conservative” while “socially liberal ” so long as what was socially liberal did not interfere with the benefits their membership gets from the fiscal part, the rest of the Gay Community be damned. Every group, ethnic, religious, political, gender, orientation, has those members who put personal benefit above that of the group and are willing to be denied basic rights so long as there is some financial advantage to them.
Remember, before they got the vote in 1920, there were women working against the Suffragettes having drunk the Koolaid supplied by the “patriarchy”.
Among the patrons at the bar there are some Gay Republicans who get their news from Fox and the Boston Herald. If it was not reported there, it didn’t happen or doesn’t exist, and, in spite of verifiable facts to the contrary, nothing will sway them from their stances on any and all topics, including those Gay related, when those two are their major sources.
Many, while having done nothing to get the rights the Gay Community had won over the years, simply accepted what changes had come about like those people in the work place who condemn the existence of unions while happily accepting the benefits the union fights for and wins during contract negotiations.
A while back, a news story about a recent anti-Gay executive order the president had gleefully signed came on the television behind the bar, and the reaction of the patrons’ was anger at this set back. However, a Gay Republican immediately declared that as a friend of the Gay Community, the story had to be fake news since Trump would never go along with it. The fact that he had signed the executive order meant nothing to him, and rather than accept the information he was given both verbally and by some who showed him news articles they brought up on their cell-phones or tablets, this patron held firmly to what he wanted to believe in spite of evidence.
In response to his denial that Trump had ever done anything that negatively affected the Gay Community, the bartender and some patrons attempted to point out actions taken by Trump that negatively affected the Gay Community since he took office.
His only response was to deny it all as just stories made up to make Trump look bad because we didn’t like that he swept the election, even though this too was not true but acceptable the Gay Republican patron.
This is the main reason why their problem further deteriorates tadalafil 80mg to the extent that they stop getting hard at all. In this manner, the medicine makes man able to gain or sustain erections. official web-site levitra ordering Don’t panic as it is very common and is now treatable with an operative and reliable medicine- sildenafil citrate. purchase cialis online It increases the level of energy as it is viagra brand a powerful antioxidant.To support what became a broader claim that people buy into fake news too easily, for some reason he began to recount all the fake news and what he claimed were made up stories that had been used by Gay Activists to change the laws that ultimately benefited him. Although he was glad we now had equal rights laws, he did not like that the good had been gained by false stories meant to sway people’s opinions.
The silence in the bar lasted until the bartender asked for an example, and that is when he turned into the woman who complains to the manager and denies that non-white people have not been treated equally because she had never been treated like they claim they have been.
His chosen example was the claim of people that they had been attacked verbally and physically merely because they were entering or exiting a Gay bar. He was old enough to have experienced the days when Gay bars which are now just part of a city’s entertainment fabric were relegated by needed safety to the seedy parts of town or were known only by word of mouth, and whose patrons were often the victims of Gay bashings and bar raids.
Because he had never been in a bar raid nor physically attacked entering or exiting a Gay bar, these claims were, to him, obviously exaggerated tales either because an individual wanted attention or an activist individual or group needed an illustration to support change.
Since it had never happened to him, it had never happened to anyone.
Those of us who had been in a bar that was raided, knew someone who had been attacked or had seen and perhaps intervened when someone was, or had been in a bar when the music was interrupted by a warning from the DJ to watch out for a particular car that was driving around the area, or groups of men roaming the area near the bar because it was obvious from what they were yelling that some Gay person’s night was not going to end well, knew that he was denying facts.
He insisted that no one had ever been attacked mainly because he had never been attacked or knew anyone who had been.
In response, one patron who obviously had been a regular before he had moved away, this being made clear by all the cheers and back slapping when he had entered the bar that night, and who had been speaking with the Gay Republican about old times, recounted how one night in Boston he was attacked by a group of men as he walked out of a bar. It was one of the reasons he had stopped going to bars in the city and had eventually moved to a new place for a new start in a new location with nothing negative connected to it.
The Gay Republican as part of that moment in history, but, according to him, the person might have been attacked by someone, but it wasn’t because he had just exited a Gay bar, and over the years the events obviously morphed in his mind until it had become more than just a tussle with a stranger.
I should also point out that the bar I was in had been a women’s bar up until about a dozen years ago when someone with a hatchet attacked patrons in what was at the time the Gay men’s bar whose subsequent closing left the men to find a friendly place to patronize.
Rather than accept that there were people who experienced things he never did, will, or hasn’t yet, he preferred to believe his experience was universal.
To me he is like those people who criticized the legitimate aims of the Black Lives Matter movement because they believe, or want to believe, what they are protesting never really happened in spite of evidence that it did and still does.
The claim that it couldn’t have happened to anyone because it did not happen to me is the revealing and comfortable excuse for the general refusal to examine the facts, acknowledge the problem, seek solutions and implement them.
And this is the attitude of many who reflexively oppose the Black Lives Matter movement because they have experience what this movement opposes and wants to end.
What they comfortably refuse to accept is that others have had experiences that they themselves have not, and since they have not experienced something they will not accept that others may have.
So while People of color point out systemic disparity of treatment many White people claim their own experience proves these claims wrong.
They are comfortable in denial.