Quite some time ago we bought a copy of the official, published list of all the employees of the Pennsylvania prisons and the Parole Board. We wanted to republish it so that you taxpayers could see (A) how very many of these drones you employ and (B) how much of your tax money they gobble up. Almost at once it became obvious to us that it would be impossible for us to republish the mammoth list. There was just no way we could rekey over 20,000 records listing each employee. Even if we could, there was no way that we'd ever be able to keep it current. If we tried scanning the hardcopies of the records as a series of images or PDFs, there would be something like a thousand large high-resolution files. That would consume so much memory that nobody could access it and we couldn't afford to post it. What's more, the images wouldn't be searchable and so would have little value. We'd have to use PDF. We realized that our ambition was frustrated. The only reasonable option was to try to get the state to publish the list online as they publish a list of all the prisoners. Alternately,we thought that we might be able to buy an electronic list which could be converted into a database, but that seemed like a remote and costly alternative. While we were sulking over our failure to demonstrate the huge burden that guards are to the public, the guards sued us!
Guards are bullies and cowards, but you already know that. They are also too stupid to realize that republication of the list was impossible. Being stupid thugs, they elected to use the courts to bully us. A few guards and parole offices along with the union that then represented them, AFSCME, brought a suit to abridge our Constitutional rights of free speech and free press. Violating the Constitution is something guards do alot. The guards found a gang of lawyers who were happy to take the case. Where a lawyer compares money to the Constitution, guess what wins out. They hired an outfit out of Philadelphia, Willig, Williams and Davidson. We have our opinions about this firm, (does phlegm strike a cord?) but will let it up to you to decide what kind of bullies would help prison guards crush free speech and your right to know. The guards pretended that they were afraid. They claimed that their "privacy" would be invaded if we republished the list which has been available for the asking in the Pennsylvania State Library for over 80 years. They felt so guilty about the things that they've done to prisoners that they wanted to keep secret such things are their addresses. That was no problem, we didn't have their addresses, didn't want their addresses and the published list only gave the name of the county in which they vote. But the facts came out. These parasites were also afraid to let you know how much of our tax money they take! A judge (of the wrong court) enjoined us from republishing the already public list. That didn't mean anything to us. We couldn't republish it anyhow. The only irksome thing was that the bullies had found a judge who was willing to ignore the law and precedents against prior restrain of publication to kiss up to a union with a lot of votes. Of course, judges are just politicians and this one's idea of the law was utterly unrealistic. We published an article trying to explain to the judge, a woman totally out of touch with technology how the Internet is different from a local newspaper. Dah!
Of course nothing about any of these prison guards is "private." We couldn't possibly invade what they don't have. All kinds of information about them (and about you or John R. Bielski, Esq. or Amy L. Rosenberger, Esq. the guards' lawyers) is already easily accessible online. Invasion of privacy, my foot! The guards and their agents are simply cowardly bullies. So, for the moment, at least, we can't republish the employees list and you are deprived of knowing how much they cost you.What you can do, if you wish, is find out all about any guard you like. Go to any of the MANY background search sites that are online. Here are a few that we've tried:
We tried out these sources on a guard we chose more or less at random although, admittedly he's a twit not deserving of much notice; D. Cress age about 46. We used this scrap of information and the fact that he's employed at State Correctional Institution at Frackville which is in Schuylkill County,Pennsylvania. Presto! there's everything you want to know, name, address, etc., etc. This guy's a nobody and his life is an open book He's got damn little "privacy." If, for any reason, you want to know anything about a guard or any employee of the Department of Imprisonment or Parole Board (or a crooked lawyer, for that matter), just click and search, you'll be amazed what's out there. |
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