Pennsylvania state Senator Jane "Dipstick" Orie started the questioning. Orie is a dim-witted Republican from Erie County in Northweatern
Pennsylvania. She really looks very silly, like a floozy secretary in a seedy private dick's office.
Orie wanted to know about getting more prison guards. Every year she obsesses about the same things. When you're as dumb as as a kettle of crawdads, you can't be expected to have an original thought. Orie's a Republican. Her last original thought was about changing her wig.
Doctor Jeffrey "Make Mine Bourbon" Beard, Pennsylvania's Secretary of Imprisonment (called the "DOC") was before the senate committee to get more tax money to operate his little kingdom. I must give Bourbon-Beard credit. He's a true bean-counted. An array of statistics are at the tip of his tongue. He can instantly tell you how many of this and the percentage of that about his prison fief.
The senators (at least the Republicans) eat it up. They care about money, not about people. What Beard lacks is any practical concerns as an administrator or any genuine concern for prisoners. He condones their torture and regards them pretty much as cattle to be milked for money.
Bourbon tolerated Senator Orie's inane questions with good grace. He explained that virtually the entire budget increase was for the already overpaid guards. It amounts to almost $90,000,000.00, or $7.50 from each citizen just to add to the guards' fat wallets. There's one guard for each 5.3 prisoners (about twice what's really needed) .
According to the costly printed booklets that Beard produced at the hearing, the Pennsylvania Department of Imprisonment budget tops $1.8 billion dollars. That's billion with a "b!" or almost 10% more than the previous year, the jump going to guards and to building a whole array of new, albeit secret, prisons.
True to Republican manias, Orie whined about "illegal" aliens. Other Republican crackpots decided that a third of the state's prisoners were those dangerous "illegal" aliens. Like the rest of Republican dogma, the "illegal" alien crap is lies. Republicans always need classes of persons to hate.
Republicans like prisoners as hate-objects. Where a prisoner can also be labeled as an "illegal" alien, that makes him twice as nice to hate.
The odd thing about the hearing was that even the Republicans were starting to realize the failings of Beard's prison system and its staggering costs. Hate has a limit when it comes to money. There was actually some talk about reducing prison populations!
By 2013 almost 2% of all Pennsylvania's adult citizens will be imprisoned. Most will be minorities. Many will be very old. Pennsylvania simply doesn't release its prisoners.
There was a lot of talk about cops being shot in Philadelphia and that being a really good reason to keep men locked up. We don't like to see anybody being shot, not even cops, guards or lawyers, but the simple fact is that when a bully signs on as a cop, he/she signs on to being shot or shot at. If you're afraid, become a prison guard.
Our Publisher, Sandra Feigley, went to the hearing to report on Beard's lies and the crushing mismanagement of the prison system. She took me along, wheelchair, oxygen and all. My goal was to let that bastard Beard see me. He tried for years to kill me, even after I was belatedly released from prison. I wanted to rub his nose in the fact that, even very old and sick, I survived his worst efforts.
How many others is the fiend trying to kill?
Beard confessed that his prisons have 165 prisoners who are so sick that they are getting the prison's version of nursing home care. Another 256 of Beard's victims are in what he calls "personal care" settings. They need full-time access to medical staff.
There are over 8100 prisoners who are over 50 years of age and pose little or no real risk of committing crimes. No matter. The rabid Republicans want to keep them in prison - well, so long as it doesn't cost too much.
There are 4600 life prisoners in Pennsylvannia. That's about 10% of the present prison total. In Pennsylvania "life" actually means life. The lifers never get out. It's a death-by-old-age sentence. Each lifer costs on the order of a million dollars to keep imprisoned.
Of the liffers about 347 were sentenced to life in prison while they were mere children!
Bourbon-Beard also confessed that Pennsylvania has a 47% recidivism rate. He still insisted that his stupid programs "work." Bullshit! The reason the recidivism rate isn't even higher is because prisoners are so old when they are finally released that they can't commit crimes. They can't express the extreme hatred that the prisons imbued into them. It's hard to flee from the cops with a wooden leg.
One of the most offensive things to slither from Beard's grog-gullet was his DPW lie. He told the senators that (being a good hearted guy) he works with DPW or the Department of Public Welfare, to insure that old sick prisoners get treatment as soon as they leave prison. In fact, prisoners get little but hardship from DPW. The Wagners in the Welfare Department work diligently to deprive prisoners of every necessary, especially essential healthcare. If Beard or his bully-boys work with the Welfare Department, it's only to screw released prisoners who are the most in need of help.
Beard murdered a small forest of trees to print-up the (often humorous) raft of papers he shoved at the senators. Give a fool a computer and he goes wild!. It's not that Beard is dumb. He's just crass, cruel and greedy, vindictive, dangerous and incompetent, but he's a smart incompetent.
Among the senators he was doing his best to fool was Jay Costa. He's the Democratic minority chairman of the committee and a very perceptive fellow. He was one of the few members who made sense and seemed genuinely interested in doing a good job.
By any measure the Department of Imprisonment's budget is a disgrace, a travesty. It says a lot about the character of the people in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania Sucks! They can't figure out what's in their own best financial and social interests.
What's in your interest, guys, is to close down the prisons or as many of them as you can close. Instead of giving Orie's guard cronies more money, give them real jobs as parole agents or trashmen.
