Poli Psy: A Poverty of Solutions
Published December 15, 2008
Vermont is about to push through another round of “child protective” sex-crimes legislation. These laws won’t protect kids. There is a way to do that — but it won’t grab any sexy headlines: attack child poverty.
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Poli Psy: Cruel and Unusual
Published August 13, 2008
Hysteria, said Elia Kazan, “is inflamed by mystery, suspicion and secrecy. Hard and exact facts will cool it.” Kazan was wrong about a lot of things — for instance, his decision to inflame anti-communist hysteria by naming names of alleged pinkos during McCarthy’s Hollywood inquisitions. But he was really wrong about this.I come to this [...]
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Poli Psy: “Death Wishes”
Published July 19, 2007
Two weeks ago attorneys for Donald Fell, the first person sentenced to death in Vermont in 50 years, brought an appeal to save his life. Last week, Rachel Lawler, a Woodbury College pre-law student, was convicted of holding a banner reading “Stop Executions” on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court.
These events made me think [...]
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Poli Psy: God on Their Side?
Published June 7, 2006
“The Chaplain is not a law enforcement officer, but a representative of God . . . Believing that God is the answer to man’s dilemma, the Chaplain stands ready to bear witness to the forgiving love and redeeming power of God, through Jesus Christ, to all people, especially to those in crisis.”
So reads the official [...]
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Poli Psy: Naming Names
Published March 15, 2006
It was Memorial Day 2005 when Ross Connelly, co-publisher and editor of The Hardwick Gazette, decided to use his weekly editorial to name the American soldiers killed in Iraq. By that time, 34 months after the U.S. invasion, the American casualty count was 1735.
Connelly headlined the column “In Memoriam.” Trying to squeeze in as many [...]
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Poli Psy: No Room at the Inn
Published February 15, 2006
The cookies lay uneaten at the Lakeview Union Elementary School on Friday evening, February 3. This was no feel-good gathering.
A third of Greensboro (pop. 770, tripled in summer) was meeting representatives of Northeast Kingdom Human Services, which wants to convert the former Lakeview Inn to a residential treatment facility for eight mentally ill patients moving [...]
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Poli Psy: Wrongful Commitment
Published January 18, 2006
On January 4, Vermont District Court Judge Edward Cashman sentenced Mark Hulett to the minimum: 60 days in jail, probation predicated on compliance with 21 conditions, including participation in community-based treatment. Hulett, 34, had pled guilty to two counts of sexual assault of a friend’s daughter when she was 6 to 10 years old.
Defending his [...]
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Poli Psy: Burning Compassion
Published December 7, 2005
The response last week to a fire in my town, Hardwick, exemplified everything that’s good about small-town life — in fact, everything that’s good about people in general.
Before the fire trucks had left Main Street, townspeople were raising money, donating everything from furniture to new underwear, and making up the beds in their spare rooms [...]
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Poli Psy: On the Clock
Published July 20, 2005
Depressed?” reads the front of the black T-shirt created by a group of Chicago theory wonks and upstarts called FeelTank. The back declares: “It’s political.”
Now, I’m not the world’s cheeriest gal (I am an atheist Jew from Brooklyn, and for Vermonters unacquainted with my race, I’ll mention that we suffer from congenital existential despair). But [...]