NEW HELL HOLE NEWS
SEPTEMBER 21, 2009
New Hell Hole News #14 September 21, 2009 Welcome to another exciting edition of the New Hell Hole News! Ha/ha. It’s been a hard time here and getting worse by the minute. The Tabler/Whitmire circus is back in town. I’d like to point out a few obvious facts about this then move on to som’ real. Whitmire has been crying in the media like a little girl for a year now, that Tabler is “threatening” him. If Tabler had any aces “in the streets” to play, Whitmire’d long ago been done to, yeah? If Tabler had any stroke, he’d had his “homies out there” anonymously paying his phone bill, not mommie and sissy, eh? Right. It’s beyond obvious that there is no real threat at all; it’s just these two idiots and their sicko co-dependant relationship to get attention in the media. Every time this thing is about to die down, ol’ Whitmire, acting like a real prima donna, finds some tired way to resurrect it. Hey, come on, the dude managed to get hold of a dollar-two-ninety-eight Tracfone and make some calls. Like a kid with a toy he ain’t supposed to have. They took it away from him, they plugged the hole thru which he got it. They arrested mom and sis for buying his phone cards. End of story. Let it go! But no. We gotta have Senate committee hearings on this “issue”!! Do you have any idea the amount of taxpayer funds this guy Whitmire has wasted over this? Just so he can flout his lil’ ruffled feathers, Ms. Peacock? After that dies down, ol’ Whitmire is dying for another media fix so he gets his “aides” to call that ol’ Tracfone number and gets the computer recorded voicemail still online, which allows him to carp some more thru his good buddy Mike Ward at the Austin American-Statesman, that the phone has been “passed off to another prisoner and is back in use.” When told that TDCJ-OIG confiscated the phone from Tabler, so that is not possible, he says the phone number has been sold to another prisoner and is still in use. I asked someone to look into that possibility. Apparently those phones are so cheap Tracfone won’t change or reassign a number. You want a new number, buy another Trac, $9.97. I was also told Whitmire could’ve discovered that with a single phone call to the Tracfone support center. Now Whitmire is back at it again saying Tabler is threatening him over the Internet on a blog. It’s been posted since May but again his “aides” just “discovered” it while researching another matter. Hmmmm. So, here we go again. Without any evidence whatsoever about how Tabler’s new “threat” came to be posted online, Whitmire fires off a letter/statement which “expresses his utter dismay at the level of security which continues to be present at the Polunsky Unit” and “I specifically ask how an inmate on death row is allowed to openly send letters out to the public that are designed to intimidate, threaten and retaliate against an elected official or any citizen of this state.” He’s also “appalled that no one within TDCJ contacted [him] on that issue.” I think it highly unlikely Tabler “smuggled” any letter out of here or mailed one, either. The so-called “bug eyed emu” is roundly despised by every officer here because he lied on them last year, falsely 1
claiming one of them smuggled a phone to him; then saying he “passed it off” to an officer before a shakedown; another blatant lie. More likely he just dictated a few quotes to one of his “friends” and the proxy wrote and posted the message on the blog. It’s not hard to imitate Tabler’s style; anyone versed in rambling-blathering idiotese 101 could do it. This posting occurred in May, a full month before our semi-annual lockdown/shakedown July 6th – 20th. Yet just to cowtow to Whitmire TDCJ admin – Quarterman/Livingston, I guess – have locked down 15-17 units for a “contraband sweep” to appease Mr. Whitmire. I guess ol’ Tabler has threat letters hid all over the system now so they gotta find ‘em before another gets posted? Here’s what most disturbed me about his nonsense: Whitmire is quoted as saying “obviously I’m concerned – for her (his ex-wife Tabler allegedly referenced in “his” blog post), me, anyone in the state of Texas. I know for a fact inmates have contacts on the streets of Texas. Their ability to carry out a threat is real.” Uh huh. Well, how’d this get to plurals, you wonder? Only Tabler, singular, threatened anyone, if you believe Tabler did it – like I say, I’d bet he himself is not actually responsible for it. But how does the senator turn that into an indictment against us all? Whitmire is not now complaining about contraband; he’s complaining about words. So how is this new lockdown/shakedown going to solve that? This “threat” was posted before the last lockdown less than 2 months ago! I know, lets just sew Tabler’s hands together, sew his lips shut and sew him to his bunk. That’ll stop it. I agree that Tabler should not be “threatening” any person out there, if he did. That’s a mighty big “if”, too. But by the same token, senator Whitmire, a man and a state official, should be mature enough to ignore an obvious and empty, attention seeking provocation such as this blog post. It’s really silly and should be far beneath a man of his supposed stature. Whether Tabler actually authored it or not, he revels in this attention and thus the media and Whitmire are just catering to his sick needs. It would’ve been much better for the senator to just quietly address the issue with TDCJ and if something were going on under the tables with Tabler they might’ve caught him at it. Instead, we’ve got this new public fiasco where nobody wins. These units that are locked down, every one of them has Texas Correctional Industries (TCI) operations – school bus refurbishing, school furniture factories, box factories, agriculture and canning operations, livestock facilities, etc. Do you have any idea what it costs the taxpayers when all these operations cease for 2 weeks or a month? Now we’re all being fed inferior, unconstitutional sack lunches called “johnnies” that contain at least 1 peanut butter sandwich all 3 meals. The first day of the lockdown, Sept. 16th, we weren’t fed at all, all day. Finally at 3:00 pm we were given a sack with only 2 sandwiches in it. One peanut butter and the other a smidgen of tuna and mustard mixed in a ton of macaroni. Call it a pasta and bread sandwich. For supper which finally arrived at 11:30 pm we got rotten/spoiled chicken and rice in a cup that smelled like week old road kill. Even tho’ the kitchen acknowledged the situation we didn’t get any replacement food. Finally with the breakfast sack at about 5:30 – 6:00 am we got an extra peanut butter sandwich to make up for the spoiled supper. The kitchen captain says this is all he can feed us because the warden has ordered him to feed only 1200 calories per day on lockdown. USDA caloric daily intake for a grown semi-sedentary man is 2400-2600 calories per day. i.e. We’re being fed less than half rations, slowly starved. Just to appease Senator Whitmire, mind you. Lockdown, shakedown, 2
starvation rations as punishment. Since April I’ve been subjected to a “shakedown” every other day where officers just tear up my cell and my property, confiscate things from me they have absolutely no business taking at all – e.g. my clothing, my legal material, stamps, pens, my books which my loved ones purchased and had sent to me via amazon.com, E. R. Hamilton bookseller, powells.com, Hastings, Barnes & Noble, etc. Of course these items are not contraband of any description. TDCJ officials mistakenly read the governor’s mandate of a “zero tolerance policy on contraband” as license to mistreat us and deprive us of a simple measure of life’s basic necessities. That aside, the every-other-day shakedown has no basis in security needs either, it’s just T. Lester’s lil’ harassment creation and he’s using the situation as an opportunity to retaliate against me over my speaking truth to power. All of these situations could easily be alleviated by application of a little common logic. Lester created three sets of shakedown teams to address the contraband issue but instead of having them actually searching for contraband, he’s using them to merely harass prisoners he doesn’t like for whatever reason(s) and trying to use them to suppress vocal prisoners like myself. Onerous policies always harbor the potential for abuse and that’s exactly what’s happening here. Lester believes he can use shakedowns and illegal confiscations of prisoners’ property as retaliation, as punishment, as a means to micro-manage matters he shouldn’t even be concerned with in the first place. What he blithely calls “a behavioral modification tool.” That’s not the purpose of a shakedown at all. Best regards, Hank P.S. #1 – Well, I went to visit to see my lawyer, saw one of my acquaintances from A-pod comin’ back, who says Tabler’s pastor/chaplain was caught by OIG as the one who posted his threats. Tsk-tsk. I knew it was not an officer. That was rather stupid, if it’s true. Maybe. Maybe not. P.S. #2 – They’re saying it was not Brad Livingston or Nathaniel Quarterman who ordered the lockdown but the Region 1 director, Robert Treon. Figures. He was the warden here I successfully litigated against when I won the suit years ago, over conditions and medical. He’s about the same size as Lester and almost as smart. 999143 Polunsky Unit H W Hank Skinner 3872 FM 350 South Livingston, TX 77351-8580 USA http://www.hankskinner.org h.w.skinner@gmail.com
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