Chinese justice swift for culprits in melamine scandal

While Bernie Madoff holes up in his multi-million dollar Park Avenue apartment after swindling $50 billion from investors, many of them Jewish charities, a number of people who benefitted from another large scandal on the other side of the world are facing a different fate.

Embarrassed by the fact suppliers were putting a plastics chemical into food additives to falsify protein levels, killing pets and sickening babies, the Chinese have sentenced two officials deemed responsible for the fiasco to death, and another to life in prison.

Leave it to the Chinese to use the death penalty more effectively than we do. While big-time crooks like Madoff are sentenced to white-collar, country-club prisons, if that much, Chinese ne'er do wells are actually deterred from their activities by the swift application of the ultimate penalty.

The American death penalty, if carried out at all, is separated from the crime by years if not decades, to the point few can see the connection.