Probably my shortest diary EVER. Watch THIS:

[Hat tip to Steve Benen for this.]

For many local Franklin County folks in politics and law enforcement, moving the state’s women prisoners to NWSCF (Northwest State Correctional Facility) in St. Albans a few years ago made no sense. Among other concerns expressed was the loss of local space to house men being held by local law enforcement for trial and of federal money for housing federal immigration detainees. Now, the proposal to move men back to the St. Albans prison, and the women to the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility would alleviate those concerns. Further, some argue, more male beds at Northwest means more local corrections jobs.

The diary below provides another point of view, under a pseudonym, because DOC workers are not allowed to speak publicly on DOC issues. ~ NanuqFC

By Concerned Observer

When the new governor was elected partly on a platform of changing the paradigm of criminal justice in this state, many of us who work in this field were optimistic that the time had come for some thoughtful long term planning, to not only save money, but to keep the community safe while changing people’s lives for the better.

The recent proposal from the Shumlin administration to move the women’s prison from the St Albans facility stunned almost everyone who works with this population. This is being called a plan, but in reality there seems to have been virtually no planning involved. None of the DOC staff here at NW were consulted prior to the announcement. Certainly none of the contracted staff were consulted. As far as I can tell, no one involved with this decision stepped foot in either facility before it was announced.

Let’s stop the charade that this is somehow better for the female inmates in Vermont. This will be an enormous step back for them, and to portray it as some kind of wonderful opportunity is disingenuous in the extreme.

• When the Governor announced this decision a great deal was made of how this would create new opportunities for incarcerated women. Anyone who’s been inside of the Chittenden facility would see this immediately as absurd.
• We keep hearing that this will enable women to see their children easier. St. Albans is not the end of the world, it’s only 25 min. from Burlington. I don’t believe there are any women who haven’t been able to see their children because of location. In fact, if the underlying issues of substance abuse, mental health, education, employability training aren’t addressed, the sad fact is that most of these kids will be better off not being reunited with their mothers. Children who visit their mothers in jail are many times traumatized by the experience of entering a correctional facility. The proposed family center at CRCF [Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility] is amazingly bleak and depressing.
• Since  there is no room at CRCF for the type of programming available at NWSCF, the  non-profits are being told they will have to figure out a way to deliver these services outside the facility. This will involve more money, public opposition to siting these type of outside facilities, security issues, etc. The list of obstacles to be overcome is a long one and will take a great deal of planning and money. We are being told we have till July 1, 2011, and there will be very little if any money.
• The  plan at CRCF is for there to be a wing that can house up to 80 women who will be able, so we’re told, to leave the prison daily for jobs in the community. I can’t imagine where these jobs will come from, since, in the population of around 155 at NWSCF there are nowhere near 80 women who can even keep a job inside the prison. In today’s economy to think that, without any kind of preliminary work, there are jobs for these women seems to be spectacularly  optimistic.

• PREA:  The Prison Rape Elimination Act was enacted to stop coercive sexual contact in prison populations. One of the reasons for moving the women in 2009 from Windsor and Dale was the high number of PREA incidents mainly due to having 3 or more inmates to a cell. Re-locating women to CRCF will put the women at risk and force the facility to have 3 and 4 inmates to a cell again.
• The  #1 issue the female population has is substance abuse. At NWSCF Phoenix house  runs a comprehensive, residential treatment program with 6 employees, 5 offices and a conference room. Phoenix house also runs a highly effective, 7-month program for violent offenders in this same space. There is no room at  Chittenden for this type of facility.
• Many  incarcerated women have a long and tragic history of childhood sexual and physical abuse, and for many that pattern continued into  adulthood. NWSCF has an effective program dealing with these issues. There is no room at Chittenden for this  program.
• Lack  of education is another piece of the recidivism puzzle. At NWSCF there is a separate building run by the Community High School of Vermont with two dedicated staff members and 2 offices, 2 large classrooms, a well equipped  library, 3 smaller classrooms, a computer resource center where women can write resumes and cover letters and learn job interview skills, and a law library. Women can get a GED or they can get either an Adult High School Diploma or, if they’re under 25 they can, by making up missing credits, get a diploma from the high school they would have graduated from had they not dropped out. At Chittenden, Community High school has 2 small rooms and no library, woefully inadequate.

• The  type of staff and skills needed is very different for men and women. You don’t just drop a large population into a correctional facility and just pick up where you left off. At NWSCF there was a long and arduous adjustment period, with much of the new staff being hired specifically for their ability to work with women. It’s taken most of the last two years to incorporate all of the  staff into a smooth working system. The NW DOC staff is hard working and very professional, and I have no doubt they can accomplish the switch, but there will be a long and expensive adjustment period, with much training and staff turnover before the facility is up and running. The same goes for the Chittenden facility. This unacknowledged adjustment period will eat up much of the  overly optimistic saving projections.
  

There is certainly money to be saved in Corrections over the long haul; however, it will require a great deal of planning and collaboration with all parties to make a change to the way we deal with crime in this state. This move, proposed in haste with virtually no thought or planning, will be an enormous step back for everyone involved.  

UPDATE: The bill that allows Michigan’s Governor Rick Snyder to declare a “financial emergency” — impose a dictator (a person or a corporation) on any town or city or school district, dissolve any election, and abrogate any and all existing contracts, including union contracts — is now law, signed by the (ahem) duly elected leader of state government as of yesterday. Maddow had it last night, and it was posted on Central Michigan Life today. Our condolences to those who now are living in the Michigan gulag. ~ NanuqFC

Steve Benen, over at Washington Monthly, yesterday ran a piece on what’s happening in Michigan while most of the Left are watching Wisconsin.

He’s quoting E. D. Kain, writing for Forbes. Some excerpts:

Newly elected [Michigan] Republican governor, Rick Snyder, is set to pass one of the most sweeping, anti-democratic pieces of legislation in the country — and almost no one is talking about it.

Snyder’s law gives the state government the power not only to break up unions, but to dissolve entire local governments and place appointed “Emergency Managers” in their stead. But that’s not all — whole cities could be eliminated if Emergency Managers and the governor choose to do so. And Snyder can fire elected officials unilaterally, without any input from voters. It doesn’t get much more anti-Democratic than that.

Except it does. The governor simply has to declare a financial emergency to invoke these powers — or he can hire a private company to declare financial emergency and take over oversight of the city. That’s right, a private corporation can declare your city in a state of financial emergency and send in its Emergency Manager, fire your elected officials, and reap the benefits of the ensuing state contracts.

[emphasis added]

Those anti-democratic powers include undoing the results of elections, dissolving or disincorporating municipal governments, and canceling union contracts.

Why would Michigan cities be in such financial trouble? Well, because the Michigan governor has massively cut state aid to those cities, says Benen. The plan has been characterized as “financial martial law.” We’re talking about towns essentially being sold off or given to corporations, becoming wholly owned subsidiaries of favored firms, the fullest realization of the concept “company town.”

Typically, Rachel Maddow was on the case before most MSM took notice (video on the flip).

Maddow’s clip from March 8 (pay particular attention to Naomi Klein’s analysis):

Klein calls the Citizens United Supreme Court decision the moment when the corporations “went nuclear” against the working and middle class. And now she says, “they’re going after the slingshots” (the unions as the last stand against the total corporatization of America) left to the ordinary people.

The closing message is worth taking to heart: when these tactics are exposed while they’re happening, sometimes the unions and the people win. The corporations are not unstoppable.

Got this in my inbox yesterday, International Women’s Day,  from the VDP (reprinted with permission):

Standing Up Again – and Again

By Judy Bevans

Chairwoman

Vermont Democratic Party

With the national Republican legislative assault on collective bargaining rights we are witnessing in Wisconsin and other states, it’s a good time to remember our history. Not only is it Women’s History Month, and March 8th is the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, but March 25th is the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

In 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory employed women, lots of them, and many were immigrants. The factory occupied the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of the Asch building on Washington Place in New York City. It was a Saturday, their sixth day of work, a seven-hour day instead of the nine they worked the rest of the week, plus overtime. As they got ready to leave, preparing to open their pocketbooks for inspection at the only unlocked door, someone yelled, “FIRE!”

The 146 workers who died – 129 of them women – were burned trying to get out the other door, leapt from the ninth floor to their deaths rather than be burned, or died when the fire escape buckled and fell from the building. Some leapt down the elevator shaft only to be crushed on the top of the car. Seventeen of the dead workers were men. Six of the victims – one man and five women – were identified only last month.

The foreman escaped, with the keys. The building’s owners later insisted the building was “fireproofed” and had been certified by city inspectors. There were just 27 water buckets for firefighting, along with huge bolts of flammable material and piles of fabric scraps on the factory floor.

The owners were acquitted at trial and settled two years later with 23 families who sued them paying each just $75. The owners were compensated $400 per life lost by their insurance company.

The fire and its legacy boosted the organizing efforts of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, the ILGWU. Workers realized that only by speaking together in one voice would the changes they demanded to protect their lives and bring dignity to their work be made.

History like this underscores why we must stand with workers – whatever the color of their collars. As Rose Schneiderman, a union activist with the Women’s Trade Union League said just days after the fire, “[E]very time the workers come out in the only way they know to protest against conditions which are unbearable, the strong hand of the law is allowed to press down heavily upon us. … I know from my experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement.”

We must stand with workers and we must stand with women. Women have always been in the workplace. And women have always sought control over their reproductive rights, by any means available. The death toll among women, who had no choice but to succumb to noxious chemicals swallowed or squirted, or secret surgeries in less than sterile surroundings, was as murderous as the arrogance of factory owners.

[more on the flip …]

Before Roe v. Wade, women who had more children than they could care for, who had been raped, who could not safely carry a fetus to term, who had to work to live – these women and many more died for the lack of adequate medical care and a safe alternative to back-alley abortions and do-it-yourself miscarriages.

According to Cornell University’s online history of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, things haven’t changed enough: “Recent studies conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor found that 67% of Los Angeles garment factories and 63% of New York garment factories violate minimum wage and overtime laws. Ninety-eight percent of Los Angeles garment factories have workplace health and safety problems serious enough to lead to severe injuries or death.”

According to the Republicans in Congress seeking to defund Planned Parenthood, it is more important to take away women’s rights to private, safe reproductive medical care than to pass policies designed to create jobs for our millions of unemployed. They want to take us back 101 years, to a time when workers and women had not yet found ways to make their voices heard.

We won’t go back. We won’t stand for retrograde laws. Every time conservatives and tea partiers try to knock us into the early days of the last century, we will stand up for our rights as workers and as women. We will not go back. We will stand up. Again and again.

Tell it, sister!

Here’s the question: When I am – or you are – terminally ill, who should decide when to call it quits? Right now, it’s mostly hospitals and doctors, with enforcement from the state.  

I don’t want hospitals, churches, or the government making decisions for me about what happens to me at the end of my life. If I’m ill with a terminal disease, then the last choice I get to make should be how I leave this world.

Oregon has led the way in providing terminally ill patients with medically supervised options.

Next week, George Eighmy will be in Vermont to talk about how the more than 10 years of patient choice in dying law has worked out there.

For 12 years he was Executive Director of Compassion & Choices of Oregon, providing non-judgmental information on end-of-life options; he retired last fall.

 

Vermont’s Patient Choices at End of Life invites all who’d like to hear about Oregon’s experience with Death with Dignity to join them at an event with George. Bring your questions and your friends and family. Copies of Vermont’s proposed Death with Dignity bill (H.274) will be available. All events are free and open to the public.

The first public discussion is Wednesday, March 2nd from 6:30 – 8 pm at the St. Albans Historical Museum, 9 Church St. 3rd fl (enter through rear of bldg. – elevator available).

The rest of the schedule is below:

 

Thursday, March 3rd

12:30 pm – 2 pm

Middlebury Town Hall Theatre

68 South Pleasant (Merchant’s Row – on the Green)

 

6:30 pm – 8 pm

Mark Skinner Library in Manchester Center

48 West Rd, just off 7A

 

Friday, March 4th

6:30 pm – 8 pm

Hardwick Memorial Building, 3rd Fl., 20 Church St.

elevator available at Police Dept entrance. Others enter through main door and go up the stairs.

 

On the Radio:

 

MARK JOHNSON SHOW

WDEV

Thursday, March 3rd

9:00 am – 11 am (not sure what time George will be on)

 

If you want to read the bill or a detailed outline of H.274, you can find both here.

I have seen how hospitals dealt with both of my parents and my mother-in-law and father-in-law: invaded by tubes, pumps, ventilators, beeping monitors, their eyes asking for release whenever they were awake. They all had Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) orders in their charts. It made no difference.

My father-in-law’s only option for controlling the end of his life was to starve and eventually dehydrate himself to death.

At the end of their lives, both my mother and my mother-in-law found themselves in hospitals with the whole array of medical and mechanical interventions preventing them from dying long after they said they were ready. My 61-year-old mother declared she was ready to die after her third or fourth round of ineffective chemo. The hospital instituted an intrusive ‘suicide watch,’ further destroying any possibility of choice or dignity at the close of her life.

Over a decade ago the woman who was a second mother to me chose to die at home. On a day when she could swallow, she asked for help to consume an overdose of pain medication. One (non-medical) person accepted the legal risk of holding a glass of water and opening the prescription container for her. Everyone close to this woman heaved a sigh of relief when the family doctor later certified the death without question.

Why is it that hospitals get to decide how they can wring out the last dollar from a dying patient regardless of the pain and intrusion they cause or the lack of expected positive result? Why is it that the patient cannot decide how they wish to die, and get expert advice and care from a medical professional on how to accomplish that final request?

The Death with Dignity bill (H.274) being considered in the legislature has so many safeguards against misuse that it may well encourage a dying patient to give up on the process: as currently drafted the bill requires that the patient must be terminal (six months or less to live), request a life-ending medication verbally on two separate occasions, and make a third request in writing before two non-family, non-caregiver witnesses, and all of this AFTER getting a second medical opinion and discussing comfort care and hospice care and pain control. There’s also a two-week delay built into the process.

Oregon’s 10 years of experience with patient choices in dying show that for some patients, just knowing they have the choice and control the means of their dying is enough, and they never actually use it.

Death with Dignity provides an option, not a requirement. It’s the last choice you’ll get to make – if the bill passes. If you want more control over the last days of your life – you should tell your Representatives and Senators you support this bill, and they should, too.

At least go hear George Eighmy. He’s lived with the process for 10 years.

For those who think Vermont Democrats are ignoring labor:

From VDP Chairwoman Judy Bevans:

As you have undoubtedly heard, workers in Wisconsin are under siege. Under the banner of addressing his state’s budget crisis, the Badger State’s tea party governor is pushing through one of the worst union-busting bills in modern history.

But Wisconsin’s workers aren’t alone!

All over this nation, teachers, fire fighters, cops, and other public employees are under the threat of having their voices silenced.  Vermont might too have been one of these states, if it weren’t for the fact that we stood up against the Republican attack machine and elected a Democratic Governor and strong Democratic majorities in our State House and Senate who value our middle class.

To that end, we are asking our activists to stand together with Democrats in Wisconsin and fight for workers’ rights.

The Wisconsin Democratic Party is currently conducting virtual phone banks to let people know what’s happening in their state.  If you’re interested and can help, please email saveourstate@wisdems.org for log-in information.

There’s more after the flip

VDP’s Labor message to Vermont Democrats, continued:

Republican Governor Scott Walker’s budget represents one of the boldest assaults on working families and the middle class in quite some time. And this from a state known for its progressive leaders from both sides of the aisle, like Republican Congressman “Fighting Bob” La Follette, Sr. and former Democratic Senator Russ Feingold, who has recently started his own PAC, Progressives United.

Right now, the bill is temporarily stalled in the Senate after 14 Democrats walked off the floor of that chamber in protest, denying Republicans the chance to pass this legislation. Those Democrats are currently in Illinois, working to get their message out about what this bill will mean to the working families they represent.

[Thursday], over 25,000 protesters stormed the statehouse in Madison in opposition to the bill, with many more expected to show today. But even this might not be enough to prevent Republicans from getting their way.

We need to stand shoulder to shoulder against these threats and show our solidarity with Wisconsin’s working families. Again, I’d like to ask you to consider taking an hour or two to make phone calls into Wisconsin to let people know what’s at stake. You can do your part by e-mailing the Wisconsin Democratic Party at saveourstate@wisdems.org.

I’m also calling on Vermont Democrats to make your voice heard next Tuesday, February 22nd as we stand with organized labor for a noontime rally at our own statehouse in support.  Contact the Vermont AFL-CIO for more details at (802) 223-5229.

Thanks for your consideration of this urgent request.

~ Judy

Judy Bevans, Chairwoman, Vermont Democratic Party

[emphasis added]

Some notes from the scene:

According to someone I know who was at the Wisconsin Capitol Thursday, two Republicans have also absented themselves to prevent a quorum.

[UPDATE: The report of the two R’s walking is unconfirmed, although it was tallied that way on a whiteboard in the rotunda]

She also wrote that firemen from Janesville (home of Lands End catalog merchants) marched in solidarity, accompanied by three bagpipers, even though police and firefighters have been exempted from the depredations of this particular union-busting bill.

She saw:

People of every possible age and a wide demographic range. There were “Orthodox Christians For Unions”, and a guy at the top of State St calling for a General Strike.

And, btw, she says the unions are receiving statements of support from members of the Super Bowl-winning Green Bay Packers, the only publicly-owned football team in America.

Another person in a comment on this LiveJournal entry quoted “St. Molly of Austin: ‘have fun fightin’ for freedom!'”

Words to live by.

Also check out Steve Benen’s take:

[Republican Governor Scott] Walker inherited a pretty good fiscal situation from his Democratic predecessor — Wisconsin was on track to end the fiscal year with an extra $120 million in state coffers. […] a far-right governor inherited sound state finances, made them worse on purpose, and now demands public employees fix his problem. While he’s at it, Walker hopes to engage in superfluous union-busting, not to improve the budget, but just because he feels like it.

The “worse on purpose” came from a couple of big business tax breaks and a train wreck in health care policy.

Make some calls: you’ll be glad you did.

This week two Vermont teens at opposite ends of the state have become victims of despair and ended their own lives by gunshot. On Monday, Leah Short of Dummerston (just northwest of Brattleboro), 16 years old, was found at home. On Tuesday 15-year-old Connor Menning was found in a bathroom at his high school in Jericho (central Chittenden County).

Our hearts go out to their families and friends, to the communities they were part of who will never get to see them grow and change.

We don’t know yet what pushed them into such despair that the only way out of their pain was to end their lives. We can — and some will — speculate about bullying, physical and/or sexual abuse, pressures to achieve, shame, homophobia, and other issues as factors. But we may never truly know.

What I do know is that it gets better. Not wonderful all the time, but at least tolerable and sometimes incredibly good — along with some real craptastic times and episodes of personal pain and despair. Adult life is not all wine and roses.

And I know this from experience. The first of my three suicide attempts occurred when I was 13. I was being abused and had been since age 4. And since the abuser was the one who found me, no one knew to ask questions.

Now I’m almost 60, and glad I was not successful at 13 or later. I like my life.

The people who most tormented me in high school are having very tough lives. It doesn’t always work out that way. One of my favorite quotes is this one, from Bertrand Russell:

In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.

If you know a high school kid, wouldn’t hurt to check in, let them know they are not invisible, that she or he is a valued part of your life, that whatever hurts them will pass if they can just hold on, that you’d listen if they want to talk about it.

If you are a high school kid, it’s probably hard to see a different future. It can look like whatever painful, bad thing is happening now is never going to end. It’s all so incredibly intense. But, please, just hold on. It does get less bad — may even get better. Find someone to talk to who will listen. You are worth the effort it takes to save your life. Death is a permanent end to possibility. Be curious enough about who you will become and how the world will change to wait and see.

Happy New Year to Vermont from a Texas judge! Judge Jon Wisser issued a temporary restraining order that threw a monkey wrench into the plans for a “hurry up” vote to expand access to the nuclear dump where Vermont plans to send material from VY.

The plan up for a vote was to expand access to the low-level nuclear waste dump in West Texas to all states and commercial nuclear companies. Unbelievably, Vermont’s two representatives on the committee for the dump planned to vote for the plan, even though it was likely to shut Vermont out by taking such waste on a first-come, first served basis, as reported earlier this week here by BP and quoting a December 1 report by Vermont Digger.

Texas Vox, “the Voice of Public Citizen in Texas,” regards the order as a win for folks who oppose the dump entirely.

The final vote on the plan was to have taken place on Tuesday, January 4, by the members of the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission –  just before Governor-elect Peter Shumlin will be inaugurated. That vote is now apparently on hold.

Texas Vox reports that at least 4,000 anti-expansion comments were received during the public comment period, which ended on December 27.

Stay tuned.

PS: As someone with a Vermont ISP, I found the (presumably state-tailored) advertising (by Google) on the Texas Vox site interesting: “Click to hear more about the safety of Vermont Yankee.” followed by “www.iamvy.com”.

The woman whose image was part of the campaign to encourage and empower women as factory workers while men were enlisting or being drafted for World War II has died, according to the Lansing Journal.

Geraldine Doyle was 86.

Doyle was the model for the poster that was created by J. Howard Miller in 1942 for Westinghouse, titled “We Can Do It!” That image was taken for Rosie the Riveter when it was re-popularized by feminists in the 1970s.

Interestingly enough, Wikipedia names two other women as the inspirations for the iconic image of women taking on men’s work to help the war effort.

There was a song, Rosie the Riveter, purportedly inspired by Rosalind P. Walter, “who came from old money and worked on the night shift building the F4U Corsair fighter.”

Wikipedia goes on:

Rosie the Riveter became most closely associated with another real woman, Rose Will Monroe, who was born in Pulaski County, Kentucky in 1920 and moved to Michigan during World War II. She worked as a riveter at the Willow Run Aircraft Factory in Ypsilanti, Michigan, building B-29 and B-24 bombers for the U.S. Army Air Forces.

Few of the ‘Rosies’ holding jobs, especially in formerly male-only occupations, would be where we are without these women of the wartime factories, particularly those who refused to meekly return when that war was done – and at the government’s behest – to unpaid homemaking and/or gender-stereotyped work .

The U.S. Senate today passed a stand-alone bill to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the so-called compromise bill signed into law by President Bill Clinton (D) in 1993, and for which Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) voted.

Today, our senior Senator did the right thing (after too long a delay) and voted for S.R. 4023 (with the same language as H.R. 6250, meaning no conference committee is required). From his email release:

The Senate today approved the repeal bill in a vote of 65 to 31.  The final victory came only hours after the Senate invoked cloture on the bill, ending months of delays and filibusters.  The bill has already passed the House and now goes to President Obama’s desk for signing. 

 

I am so proud that the Senate rose to the occasion in this historic vote.  It is a galvanizing victory for individual civil rights in our country, grounded in enduring American values.  Removing a discriminatory barrier for some Americans underscores the rights of all Americans.

Sen. Bernie Sanders of course voted for repeal.

According to several sources, six Republicans initially crossed the aisle to vote for cloture (an indication of the strength of support a bill has): Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Scott Brown (R-Mass.), Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and George Voinovich (R-Ohio). Burr (R-NC) and Ensign (R-Nev) joined in voting for repeal.

Yeah, one wonders what drove some of them, but that’s okay, I’ll take it.

Regardless of what you may think about wars and armies, there will likely be people who want to join the military for any or all of the usual reasons. Some of them are gay or lesbian or bisexual (the repeal does not affect current regulations on transgender folks). They should be able to serve without facing daily harassment or discrimination based on who is waiting for them back home.

We’ve still got a ways to go, folks – both on actually implementing repeal (the military is still slow-walking this one) and in getting the other equality obstacle removed – national marriage equality and equal rights and benefits in federal law and regulation.

Lt. Dan Choi is recuperating from the stress of his activism on DADT. He famously came onstage during a Harry Reid meeting and gave Reid his West Point ring to keep for him until DADT was repealed. Looks like he’ll be getting it back.