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‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

NEWS IN BRIEF • Guns • Violence • News • ISSUE 50•21 • May 27, 2014

ISLA VISTA, CA—In the days following a violent rampage in southern California in which a lone attacker killed seven individuals, including himself, and seriously injured over a dozen others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Tuesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said North Carolina resident Samuel Wipper, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this guy from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what he really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past five years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

Emplasis mine. Good quote about the NRA: “If the NRA ran the tobacco industry, the solution to lung cancer would be more cigarettes!”

Emphasis, mine.

Historically, lethal injection has been plagued with problems just like those that occurred in Lockett’s case, and they are due in large part to the incompetence of the people charged with administering the deadly drugs. Physicians have mostly left the field of capital punishment; the American Medical Association and other professional groups consider it highly unethical for doctors to assist with executions. As a result, the people willing to do the dirty work aren’t always at the top of their fields, or even specifically trained in the jobs they’re supposed to do. As Dr. Jay Chapman, the Oklahoma coroner who essentially created the modern lethal injection protocol, observed in the New York Times in 2007, “It never occurred to me when we set this up that we’d have complete idiots administering the drugs.” Dr. Jay Chapman said that were he to do it once more, he would not recommend the three-drug concoction now in widespread use.

An injection of chemicals used to execute death row inmates can cause such excruciating pain that veterinarians are banned from using them to put down animals, according to one of the most thorough reviews ever undertaken of the administration of the death penalty.

The report, endorsed by a range of criminal justice experts, urges states have the death penalty to kill an inmate with a single chemical overdose, rather than the “three drug cocktail” used in a series of botched deaths, including Oklahoma’s disturbing execution of Clayton Lockett last week.

Lockett’s attempted execution, which took one hour and 44 minutes from the moment he was first restrained on the gurney, prompted outrage across the world. He was administered a drug cocktail in dosages never before tried in American executions, and complications arose after officials were unable to locate a suitable vein. Witnesses saw him writhing and groaning on the gurney, and it was a full 43 minutes after the drugs were administered before he died.

A spokesman for the United Nations high commissioner for human rights said Lockett’s experience in the death chamber may have constituted “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment”. President Barack Obama described the case as “deeply troubling” and ordered a review into the wider use of the death penalty by the US Department of Justice, which is hampered by the fact it has no jurisdiction over state-administered executions and still in the process of determining the remit of its inquiry.

The 200-page report published on Wednesday by the Constitution Project, a Washington-based thinktank, carries particular clout because it is endorsed by a bipartisan panel of experts who both oppose and favour the death penalty. They include former judges, police chiefs, attorneys general and governors who have signed execution warrants.

The panel argues that the so-called “three-drug method”, in which death row inmates are administered a drug combination which, by turn induces unconsciousness, causes muscle paralysis and stops an individual’s heart, “poses a risk of avoidable inmate pain and suffering”.

A concern with such cocktails is that if the first, anaesthetising drug fails, as has been known to occur, a patient is at risk of feeling the agonisingly painful effects of the follow-up drugs.

Instead, the report urges states to adopt a “one drug-protocol” that kills an inmate with a single, high dose of an anaesthetic or barbiturate. “The one-drug method is also preferred over the three-drug method by veterinarians for euthanising animals because the one-drug method is more humane and less prone to error,” the report states.

“It is quite true we have executed humans in the United States with drugs that have been prohibited in the euthanising of animals, not just in Tennessee but in a number of states,” said Sarah Turberville, a senior counsel at the Constitution Project.

States have felt vindicated in their use of a three drug cocktail since 2007, when the supreme court ruled that the technique was not unconstitutional. But the Constitution Project’s report argues the ruling is moot, as states have since begun experimenting using different combinations to overcome a Europe-led moratorium on the supply of drugs used in executions.

Arkansas, Georgia, South Dakota, Texas and Tennessee have all passed laws to keep secret their execution recipes in efforts to preserve their relationship with suppliers. “Such secrecy undermines the public’s faith in the integrity of the justice system as it conceals from the public, lawyers, and those facing execution critical information about the lawfulness and reality of states’ execution procedures,” Wednesday’s report states.

Of the 32 states that have the death penalty, only eight have single-drug protocols for executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Others, such as California, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina and Tennessee, have indicated their intention to move toward a system of one-drug executions. However experts say some of those states are under pressure to use chemical cocktails because of the difficulty in procuring the drugs necessary for single-dose executions.

The Constitution Project is considered a moderate thinktank that strives to bridge political divides. In order to achieve support from across the political spectrum, the panel shelved the question over whether the death penalty is right or wrong.

Its report highlights other weaknesses in the administration of the death penalty, including confusion over the law relating to death row inmates with intellectual disabilities, the poor standards in forensics used to obtain convictions and what the author’s say is a flawed clemency process.

“Without substantial revisions – not only to lethal injection, but across the board – the administration of capital punishment in America is unjust, disproportionate and very likely unconstitutional,” said committee member Mark Earley, a former Republican attorney general in Virginia. During his tenure, Virginia carried out 36 executions.

Other death penalty groups counter that while a single-dose execution may be safe and less likely to result in a botched execution, reforming the method of killing death row inmates misses the point. “At the end of the day, there is no right way to kill,” said Thenjiwe McHarris, a senior campaigner against the death penalty for Amnesty International.

“This report is asking for scientifically-reliable methods to minimise pain and suffering,” she added. “But the death penalty is cruel in and of itself; it violates the right to life. Giving someone a death warrant with the day and time that their life is going to be taken, taking them into a death chamber, administering a drug that takes their life – there is cruelty in that.”

Sometimes, the hypocrisy expressed in real life is so sublimely rich that one could never hope to construct a similar scenario out of pure imagination. Meet Rex Tillerson, the CEO of oil and gas superstar ExxonMobil Corporation—the largest natural gas producer in these United States of America—and a newly emerging giant in the world of exquisite hypocrisy.

A key and critical function of Mr. Tillerson’s day job is to do all he can to protect and nurture the process of hydraulic fracturing—aka ‘fracking’—so that his company can continue to rack in billions via the production and sale of natural gas. Indeed, so committed is Rex to the process of fracking that he has loudly lashed out at those who criticize and seek to regulate hydraulic fracturing, suggesting that such efforts are a very bad idea, indeed. According to Tillerson, “This type of dysfunctional regulation is holding back the American economic recovery, growth, and global competitiveness.”

Thus, according to Rex Tillerson, nobody should have much of a reason to be disturbed or concerned when ExxonMobil comes knocking on your door to deliver the news that fracking is about to become a part of your daily life…unless, or course, you happen to live in Mr. Tillerson’s neighborhood. In that case, the rules are, apparently, very, very different.

You see, while Tillerson believes that the inevitable noise pollution that accompanies the fracking process—not to mention the potential for water contamination and other dangerous side-effects even when it is done safely (and some would strenuously argue that it is not possible to frack safely)— is of no real significance when it affects someone else’s neighborhood, he surely thinks it to be a pretty big deal when someone dares to get involved in fracking in Rex Tillerson’s neighborhood.

So much is this the case that Tillerson—ExxonMobil CEO and proud proponent of fracking as a key to both America’s and his company’s great energy future—has joined a lawsuit seeking to shut down a fracking project near Mr. and Mrs. Tillerson’s Texas ranch.

Why?

Because the water tower being built next to Tillerson’s house that will supply the water to the near-by fracking site, means the arrival of loud trucks, an ugly tower next door, and the general unpleasantness that will interfere with the quality of his life and the real estate value of his sizeable ranch.

Making this all the more entertaining is the content of the lawsuit which, in an attempt to get rid of the water tower, goes to great effort to lay out the problems experienced by those who are subjected to the fracking process—problems that Tillerson has always been quick to dismiss when his company picks a location that is not in his own neighborhood. Of course, none of the concerns set forth in his lawsuit ever seemed to trouble Mr. Tillerson when these issues were relevant to someone else’s home and quality of life—particularly if that ‘someone else’ lacked the resources to challenge the practices in court as Mr. Tillerson has elected to do.

The Wall Street Journal, says it all quite nicely—

“BARTONVILLE, Texas—One evening last November, a tall, white-haired man turned up at a Town Council meeting to protest construction of a water tower near his home in this wealthy community outside Dallas.

The man was Rex Tillerson, chairman and chief executive of Exxon Mobil Corp.

He and his neighbors had filed suit to block the tower, saying it is illegal and would create “a noise nuisance and traffic hazards,” in part because it would provide water for use in hydraulic fracturing. Fracking, which requires heavy trucks to haul and pump massive amounts of water, unlocks oil and gas from dense rock and has helped touch off a surge in U.S. energy output.

It also is a core part of Exxon’s business.”

Oops.

Making this even more deliciously enjoyable is the name of the lead plaintiffs in the case.

That would be Mr. and Mrs. Dick Armey…as in former GOP House Majority Leader Dick Armey who is also the former Chairman of FreedomWorks Dick Armey. FreedomWorks is, of course, the well financed (thanks to the Koch Brothers) Tea Party organization that has been been a vocal and avid proponent of fracking.

If anyone has a better nominee than Rex Tillerson for this month’s Hypocrite Hall of Fame I’d like to know who it is. In my mind, Tillerson now stands tall not only as a giant of the natural gas and oil industry but has managed to scale the loftiest of heights where he shall breathe that rarest of air inhaled only by a very special breed—corporate giants who will gladly profit from your misfortune and misery so long as what they peddle to you does not impinge on their own fine quality of life. Way to go Rex. I’m sure you can expect one hell of a great stock option bonus in your Christmas stocking this year.

Source: Forbes [http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2014/02/22/exxon-ceo-profits-huge-as-americas-largest-natural-gas-producer-but-frack-it-in-his-own-backyard-and-he-sues/]

Emphasis mine.

Have a look at these:

Now take a look at these:

See anything different?

The IOC uses gold medals to determine the medal count winner. Silver and bronze are only brought in as tiebreakers. But most American media outlets rank by overall medals, with golds being used to break ties.

Why, you may ask? The answer should be obvious, really. Uncle Sam can’t bear the shame of coming in 4th place. It’s bad enough that it didn’t “win” the Olympics, but to finish behind Norway? Canada, maybe, but Norway, preposterous! So that do they do, they just change the yardstick everybody else uses. 2+2=lemon. USA! USA! USA!