March 12, 2011
BRUCE A. BRENNAN BLOG FROM THE WORLD AND MY MIND
The news as I see it and the views as I want them.
March 12 is … Alfred Hitchcock Day. This day is for the birds
The earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan early morning on Friday, our time, is projected to be a natural disaster of unheard of results. We will see. These days, the press and governments tend to over react to these types of events. I hope the predictions are chicken-little like. Already the dire predictions of devastation to Hawaii and our left coast were exaggerated. Japan is obviously in a bad way but they get over 20 percent of the world’s earthquakes of 6 or higher on the Richter Scale. Japan knows how to deal with it. The cleanup will take months but life will go on for the survivors. I am assuming the nuclear power plant does not have a meltdown. We call it The China Syndrome here; there it would be called the St. Louis Syndrome.
Forbes is out with its yearly guess as to who are the richest people in the world. I assume they are close but not dead-on. This is Forbes' 25th year of tracking global wealth and it was one to remember. The 2011 Billionaires List breaks two records: total number of listees (1,210) and combined wealth ($4.5 trillion). This horde surpasses the gross domestic product of Germany, one of only six nations to have fewer billionaires this year. BRICs led the way: Brazil, Russia, India and China produced 108 of the 214 new names. These four nations are home to one-in-four members, up from one-in-ten five years ago. Before this year, only the U.S. had ever produced more than 100 billionaires. China now has 115 and Russia 101.
Atop the heap is Mexico's Carlos Slim Helu, who added $20.5 billion to his fortune, more than any other billionaire. The telecom mogul, who gets 62% of his fortune from America Movil, is now worth $74 billion and has pulled far ahead of his two closest rivals. Bill Gates, No. 2, and Warren Buffett, No. 3, both added a more modest $3 billion to their piles and are now worth $56 billion and $50 billion, respectively. Gates, who now gets 70% of his fortune from investments outside of Microsoft, has actually been investing in the Mexican stock market and has holdings in Mexican Coke bottler Femsa and Grupo Televisa. The Facebook crowd is on the list and so are the Walton family of Wal*Mart.
Atop the heap is Mexico's Carlos Slim Helu, who added $20.5 billion to his fortune, more than any other billionaire. The telecom mogul, who gets 62% of his fortune from America Movil, is now worth $74 billion and has pulled far ahead of his two closest rivals. Bill Gates, No. 2, and Warren Buffett, No. 3, both added a more modest $3 billion to their piles and are now worth $56 billion and $50 billion, respectively. Gates, who now gets 70% of his fortune from investments outside of Microsoft, has actually been investing in the Mexican stock market and has holdings in Mexican Coke bottler Femsa and Grupo Televisa. The Facebook crowd is on the list and so are the Walton family of Wal*Mart.
While Illinois and our do nothing fire-ball of a governor is outlawing the death penalty, Ohio has decided to put in a no waiting line. Ohio executed a killer earlier this year. They have another one scheduled for March 10, 2011. A man convicted of killing a storeowner was to be put to death Thursday with the country's first use of the surgical sedative pentobarbital as a stand-alone execution drug.
Success; Ohio appears ready to continue an execution rate of about one inmate per month following a successful procedure putting to death a condemned killer with a single dose of pentobarbital, a drug never before used by itself in an execution. Johnnie Baston briefly gasped and appeared to grimace during Thursday's execution at the Southern Correctional Facility in Lucasville, but the moment passed quickly and he lay still for most of the 13-minute process. He was pronounced dead at 10:30 a.m. Ohio has an execution a month scheduled for the next 12 months with the exception of December, including an April 12 date for Clarence Carter, sentenced to die for beating to death a fellow Hamilton County Jail inmate in 1998.
The execution of death row inmate Johnnie Baston also marked a move to make the process more public and give inmates speedier access to attorneys in case something goes wrong when needles are being inserted into them. Ohio has had problems inserting needles in a handful of cases, including the botched 2009 execution of Romell Broom, who was sentenced to die for the rape and slaying of a teenage girl abducted in Cleveland as she walked home from a football game. The governor stopped the failed needle insertion procedure after two hours. Broom complained that he was stuck with needles at least 18 times and suffered intense pain. He has sued, arguing a second attempt to put him to death would be unconstitutionally cruel.
Now, an attorney concerned about how an execution is going could use a death house phone to contact a fellow lawyer in a nearby building with access to a computer and cell phone to contact courts or other officials about the problem, said Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. There's a catch with the change: The state will still allow an inmate only three witnesses. For an inmate to be guaranteed fast access to a lawyer, he would have to give up one of his designated witnesses, usually a family member. A federal judge has already ruled that an inmate's constitutional rights aren't violated by having to substitute a witness for an attorney. Baston's brothers and his public defender, Rob Lowe, not the actor, were scheduled to witness his execution Thursday. The witnesses are not revealed by the state but they can come forward. The change is consistent with federal court rulings that have limited challenges to Ohio's injection process to problems that crop up during individual executions, said Greg Meyers, trial division chief counsel at the Ohio public defender's office. He said a lawyer who chooses to witness an execution now has immediate access to a phone if he or she believes something is going wrong. He said judges will have the final say on problems, which, it is assumed, will limit abuse of the system.
Although the prisoner will now be just a few feet from witnesses as the needles are inserted, a curtain will be drawn blocking the actual view. The procedure will still be shown on closed-circuit TVs in the witness viewing area. Using the TVs is meant to protect the anonymity of the executioners and to reduce the pressure they might feel having an audience watching them work, LoParo said. Even before the change, Ohio had one of the most transparent execution procedures in the country. Several states, such as Missouri, Texas and Virginia show nothing of the insertion procedure and allow witnesses to watch only as the lethal chemicals begin to flow. In Georgia, officials allow one reporter to watch the needle insertion process through a window. Baston, 37, was sentenced to die for killing Chong-Hoon Mah, a South Korean immigrant who was shot in the back of the head. The 53-year-old victim's relatives oppose the death penalty and the execution. The victim was a journalist in South Korea before moving to Ohio and opening two retail stores in Toledo. He started life over as a manual laborer before opening his stores and rarely took a day off, his brother, Chonggi Mah, testified at the end of Baston's 1995 trial.
Baston has given differing accounts of the crime and has suggested he was present but didn't do the killing. But his attorneys say they don't dispute his conviction. The Lucas County prosecutor's office acknowledges the victim's family's opposition to Baston's execution but points out the family testified strongly about its anguish and Baston's lack of remorse. Prosecutors also say Baston has refused to accept responsibility. Republican Gov. John Kasich last week rejected Baston's plea for mercy, and Baston has no pending appeals. Baston asked for clemency based on the victim's family's opposition to capital punishment and his chaotic upbringing, with his lawyer saying he was abandoned as an infant and would wander the streets with his dog trying to find his mother when he was a boy. Oklahoma uses also pentobarbital, a barbiturate, but in combination with other drugs that paralyze inmates and stop their hearts. Ohio switched to pentobarbital after the company that made the drug it previously used, sodium thiopental, announced production was being discontinued. States around the country have dwindling supplies of sodium thiopental, and several have looked for supplies overseas.
Governor Milquetoast, are you listening? Ohio is going to kill one a month, at least. Illinois is giving killers a reason to leave Ohio and come to Illinois to kill people. You think the murders in Chicago are out of control, just wait until the ignorant gangbangers figure out they can kill anybody, including police officers without worrying about being put to death.
Thanks Quinnie.
BRUCE A. BRENNAN
DEKALB, IL 60115
COPYRIGHT 2011
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“False words are not only evil in themselves,
but they infect the soul with evil.”
but they infect the soul with evil.”
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