In a stun­ning yet total­ly prece­dent­ed case of Déjà vu, Jamaica’s oppo­si­tion, People’s National Party(PNP) have once again refused to sup­port proac­tive mea­sures tak­en by the Government to stem the Island’s vio­lent crime wave and loss of life.
What makes this more con­se­quen­tial is the fact that they decid­ed to pull sup­port from the mea­sure right before the Christmas sea­son.
Even though the autho­riza­tion does not expire until January 31, 2019, the sig­nal to the Island’s crim­i­nals could not be more clear.

In seek­ing to strad­dle the fence by pla­cat­ing the crim­i­nal world while at the same time pre­tend­ing to be a respon­si­ble polit­i­cal par­ty, Opposition leader Peter Phillips said the fol­low­ing.
“Not one police offi­cer or mil­i­tary per­son­nel have to be moved from St James after the expi­ra­tion of the SOE,” the Opposition par­ty said on Twitter “Police can still cur­few, cor­don, search and arrest sus­pects. The only dif­fer­ence is they will not be able to detain indis­crim­i­nate­ly and indef­i­nite­ly.”
I find the use of the term [indis­crim­i­nate] slan­der­ous, hyper­bol­ic, inflam­ma­to­ry, igno­rant, incen­di­ary and gross­ly unin­formed.
Let me be clear the PNP does not care about the offi­cers in the field, nei­ther does the par­ty lead­er­ship care about the fact that Jamaicans are dying in alarm­ing num­bers and the SOE is intend­ed to help stop the bleed­ing.
They did the very same thing in 2010 and they were not pun­ished for it.
The PNP wants an issue on which to con­test the next nation­al elec­tions, the econ­o­my is doing pret­ty good, unem­ploy­ment is down and there are reports that as a result of the SOE and ZOSO ini­ti­at­ed by the Government along with oth­er ini­tia­tives the nation is mov­ing in the right direc­tion.
Murders are down 21.7 per­cent, shoot­ings are down 21.4 per­cent, rape down 12.2 per­cent, aggra­vat­ed assault down 11 per­cent. Additionally, there have been sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tions in the year-to-date reports of mur­ders across sev­er­al police divi­sions, the most notable being St. James, where there has been more than a 70 per­cent reduc­tion in mur­ders. accord­ing to the police.” 

These facts are not lost on Peter Phillips and the bunch of PNP thugs who dou­ble as par­lia­men­tar­i­ans.
A sim­ple cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis shows that the incon­ve­niences to a few peo­ple, who are caught up in a drag­net, (though unde­sir­able ) are minus­cule when com­pared to the few­er deaths which result from the SOE’s pres­ence in the affect­ed com­mu­ni­ties.
And most impor­tant­ly the peo­ple in the area are beg­ging the Police offi­cers and sol­diers not to leave.
So the irrefutable con­clu­sion is that the par­ty wants dead bod­ies to run on polit­i­cal­ly, and they are going to get those bod­ies one way or the other.

This par­ty which did not take long to morph into a force anti­thet­i­cal to the good of Jamaica has been respon­si­ble for the degra­da­tion of the Jamaican cul­ture for decades now.
A total destruc­tion of the Island’s econ­o­my in the 1970s and evis­cer­a­tion of the mid­dle ‑class has been the par­ty’s claim to fame. The PNP has been the only polit­i­cal par­ty to sus­pend the rights of cit­i­zens as it jailed all of the major play­ers and politi­cians in the then oppo­si­tion Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) dur­ing the ’70s.
Regardless of the san­i­tiz­ing process being under­tak­en in left­ist aca­d­e­m­ic cir­cles and by the myr­i­ad inter­est groups on behalf of the par­ty, noth­ing has been able to explain or wash away the stench of the many scan­dals of theft, graft, and unabashed cor­rup­tion the par­ty has engaged in since it’s inception. 

The fact that the PNP has decid­ed to play pol­i­tics once again with peo­ple’s lives means that they will be made to own the vio­lence now.
If they decid­ed that this is the strat­e­gy on which they want to hang their hats for the next gen­er­al elec­tions, fine.
But we will do every­thing in our pow­er to make sure they own the results.
For too long this par­ty has played fast and loose with the lives of the police and the nation for polit­i­cal gain.
We will make sure that peo­ple are remind­ed of their strategy.

Legislators can write the best bills with the best research data and when those bills are vot­ed into law they may end up hav­ing only a mar­gin­al effect on that nation’s progress.
That is so because Governing is a pact between those who gov­ern and those who are gov­erned.
If the peo­ple refuse to be gov­erned by any rules and the Government acqui­esces to that sort of low-lev­el anar­chy, it is only a mat­ter of time before the entire thing erupts into a conflagration.

A few days ago I wrote the above arti­cle in which I bemoaned the lack of account­abil­i­ty in Government(par­ty-neu­tral).
This I believe is hav­ing a debil­i­tat­ing effect on the nation’s abil­i­ty to curb the run­away vio­lent mur­ders and return to the rule of law.
On that note, I would wish to asso­ciate myself with an arti­cle which appeared in Wednesday’s(Jamaica Observer) writ­ten by Elizabeth Morgan a spe­cial­ist in inter­na­tion­al trade and pol­i­tics.
In a bril­liant syn­op­sis, Morgan wrapped the fol­low­ing in her lead para­graph.

You leave home to tack­le the may­hem on our roads with fear and trem­bling; in the mod­ern, sophis­ti­cat­ed ten­e­ment yards you are afraid to talk to neigh­bors who are invad­ing your space with rau­cous behav­ior; you encounter rude and crude peo­ple in dai­ly activ­i­ties; men turn pub­lic spaces into pub­lic toi­lets expos­ing them­selves to all; there is no respect for self or any­one else; cor­rup­tion and crime have over­tak­en the soci­ety. Discipline and pru­dence are out the win­dow. Selfishness and fol­ly reign.
 http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​/​i​n​d​i​s​c​i​p​l​i​n​e​-​a​n​d​-​j​a​-​s​-​d​e​v​e​l​o​p​m​e​n​t​_​1​5​1​966

It is not often that an arti­cle of this qual­i­ty appears in the local papers which slices straight down the mid­dle and address­es the burn­ing issues of the day.
She did so with­out the pre­dictable (BS) and nuances we have become accus­tomed and numb to.
I have con­sis­tent­ly argued that we may have lost the gen­er­a­tions liv­ing now but there is no rea­son that we can­not get back to the basics.
There is no rea­son we can­not begin the process of incul­cat­ing val­ues, respect, and love into our chil­dren from the for­ma­tive years.
God, fam­i­ly coun­try are good prin­ci­ples on which to raise our young­sters, good peo­ple make good com­mu­ni­ties, good com­mu­ni­ties make good coun­tries.
A three-minute read on a social media thread reveals the lev­el of dys­func­tion in the minds of the peo­ple.
The lev­el of igno­rance and fer­tile space for wrong­do­ing is stun­ning. This did not take gen­er­a­tions to become a real­i­ty it took only a cou­ple of decades.
If we want to have a coun­try, now is the time to begin revers­ing this malignancy.

Two days ago a young woman, a vis­i­tor to the United States came into my busi­ness-place. She would be leav­ing the coun­try in about two weeks so she want­ed to have cell phone ser­vice for the remain­der of her stay with­out pay­ing a lot of mon­ey.
Her friends or fam­i­ly mem­bers had obvi­ous­ly tak­en her to a com­pa­ny store to get ser­vice which cost her (a vis­i­tor), over eighty dol­lars per month(US$80), a sum which rep­re­sent­ed well over a hun­dred per­cent cost increase com­pared to what she could have sourced in my establishment.

Unfortunately for her the estab­lish­ment where she pur­chased the device and ser­vice had no time for her so her fam­i­ly mem­bers brought her to the .……[Jamaican store to fix her prob­lem].
She told me what she want­ed, but lied about the type of account she had unwit­ting­ly signed up for.
In seek­ing to get the req­ui­site infor­ma­tion in order to be of help to her she became eva­sive and com­menced talk­ing over me. 
So I told her in an [unusu­al­ly] calm voice that she should take her phone and her­self back to where she pur­chased it if she was going to talk over me and make demands.
She stopped, looked into my eyes long enough to real­ize that she was out of options and I was dead seri­ous.
I was even­tu­al­ly able to give her ser­vice on the same device for much less of what she was ini­tial­ly pay­ing per month.
This brought a big smile to her face. She thanked me and told me “yu too per­fect.”!
Insisting that she con­duct her­self in a respect­ful and dig­ni­fied man­ner, in her eyes is per­fec­tion. More stun­ning­ly, Perfection is a pejo­ra­tive, a neg­a­tive.
Crassness, coarse­ness, rude­ness, dis­re­spect, bad man­ners are the aspi­ra­tional tenets Jamaicans now aspire to.
It is what gets them noticed.

In the years in which I have writ­ten for this site, I have like a bro­ken record spo­ken out at the indis­ci­pline, which has tak­en over our coun­try.
Not only have I bemoaned the break­down in the rule of law, but I have also con­sis­tent­ly point­ed to the need to get back to insti­tut­ing respect and basic man­ners in our homes.
I have point­ed to our pub­lic insti­tu­tions from the par­lia­ment on down The coarse dis­course, cor­rup­tion, graft, and theft is reflec­tive of a wider soci­etal rot which is lit­er­al­ly stunt­ing the growth and devel­op­ment of this pris­tine lit­tle Island. 
The thing which offends me most are those peo­ple who live abroad and have to con­duct them­selves accord­ing to the laws of their adopt­ed coun­tries but revert to hooli­gan­ism as soon as they land in Jamaica.
This has got to stop. The gov­ern­ment must stop equiv­o­cat­ing and pass laws with seri­ous con­se­quences for law­break­ing.
There is noth­ing wrong with hav­ing tough laws, if peo­ple do not want to be neg­a­tive­ly impact­ed by them they will obey them. 

Crime should not be politi­cized.
Why, because it affects us all and the con­se­quences it impos­es on soci­ety are far too con­se­quen­tial for us to be pulling in dif­fer­ent direc­tions on it.
One would think that with that in mind, the issue of how to com­bat crime effec­tive­ly would take on an a‑political tone and demeanor.
Not so, it is too shiny an object for politi­cians to ignore when it comes to seek­ing polit­i­cal mileage. 
Never mind that the prob­lem is not new, that the prob­lem is also a major issue when each polit­i­cal par­ty is in office.
As soon as a par­ty is out of office the oth­er side becomes the worst ever on the issue.

Now, despite the fore­gone, It is nev­er­the­less under­stood that polit­i­cal par­ties are not reli­gious insti­tu­tions.
In fact, since we can’t even place our trust in reli­gious insti­tu­tions we clear­ly can­not place our trust in any insti­tu­tions, least of all, rapa­cious pow­er-hun­gry polit­i­cal par­ties.
The Holness Administration has tak­en some steps, albeit, ones which can­not be the extent of the admin­is­tra­tion’s long-term strat­e­gy on crime.
Those steps include the Creation of Zones Of Special Operations (ZOSO), in tar­get­ed areas and the oft-cri­tiqued lim­it­ed states of emergencies(SOE’s) in a few oth­ers.
Like oth­ers, I too have opined on both initiatives. 

My take is that nei­ther ini­tia­tive can be the objec­tive but a means to an end.
Simply put, I believe that the pol­i­cy on crime should be far more bush-clear­ing with less dec­o­rat­ing.
Now is the time that the dirty work of erad­i­cat­ing dan­ger­ous mur­der­ers from our midst must be done before installing a long-term crime pol­i­cy. 
What is irrefutable, is that the tem­po­rary mea­sures insti­tut­ed by the admin­is­tra­tion are hav­ing some mea­sure of suc­cess.
If only one inno­cent life is saved by these mea­sures, there is no argu­ment to be made(outside con­sti­tu­tion­al lim­its) for their dis­con­tin­u­a­tion, much less when hun­dreds of lives are being saved.

Having a polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion make hay out of crime is to be expect­ed.
Having the People’s National Party(PNP) try to cre­ate lever­age is nau­se­at­ing, con­sid­er­ing that it was only a cou­ple years ago, a clue­less and exas­per­at­ed Minister of National Security Peter Bunting, threw up his hands and declared that the only thing which can save Jamaica from its present crime epi­dem­ic was “divine inter­ven­tion.“
Now I too under­stand the pow­er of “divine inter­ven­tion,” but I’m also mind­ful that faith with­out works is dead and as Paul said in Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ that strength­ens me”.
We ask for his help then get up and do what we can to fix our sit­u­a­tions. That is what the Government is doing.
The polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion should seek lever­age else­where and shun the pop­ulism it has used since its incep­tion as a polit­i­cal par­ty.
For the good of the nation, no one should want to see the admin­is­tra­tion fail on crime.
The cost is sim­ply too great.

Since the cost in blood and trea­sure is too great to play games, it is impor­tant that we have all hands on deck , yes, admin­is­tra­tion and oppo­si­tion alike.
What is incon­ceiv­able and must not be tol­er­at­ed are moles and ter­mites with­in the gov­ern­men­tal struc­ture, active­ly eat­ing away at the foun­da­tions.
I could go on and on about how a house divid­ed against itself can­not stand and any num­ber of oth­er clich­es.
But there is no need to state the obvi­ous. If there are per­sons with­in the Government who are paid with tax dol­lars and are work­ing duplic­i­tous­ly to thwart any aspect of the Government’s objec­tive it is impor­tant that they are removed in the inter­est of the country.

It is not out of the ordi­nary that employ­ees in a demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment would opine on poli­cies they may not like.
Sometimes we put our foot in our mouths when we tread in areas we do not under­stand.
So I under­stood then, how the Public Defender could have put her foot in her mouth when she pre­ma­ture­ly called for an end to the state of emer­gency in Saint James in April of this year.
Like many Jamaicans, the argu­ments put for­ward by the Public Defender are the same.
We real­ly do not like scrap­ing up large groups of young men and detain­ing them as a crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy.
Nevertheless, those con­cerns have to be bal­anced with the greater urgency of stop­ping the wan­ton loss of life.
See [PD’s call here]
http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​l​e​a​d​-​s​t​o​r​i​e​s​/​2​0​1​8​0​4​1​7​/​s​t​-​j​a​m​e​s​-​s​t​a​t​e​-​p​u​b​l​i​c​-​e​m​e​r​g​e​n​c​y​-​m​u​s​t​-​e​n​d​-​p​u​b​l​i​c​-​d​e​f​e​ner

Unfortunately, the Public Defender did not even both­er to demon­strate that she under­stood, let alone care about the blood­shed.
Her sin­gu­lar focus was on the young men who may or may not be guilty of any crimes, who are picked up and have to suf­fer the indig­ni­ty of spend­ing a cou­ple of days in jail.
None of us want this to be the way we fight crime, but some­times our hand is all we have to plug the dike.
I nev­er got the impres­sion that offi­cials like Arlene Harrison-Henry, Earl Witter before her, Terrence Williams of INDECOM and oth­ers sees them­selves as arms of the gov­ern­ment which ought to work cohe­sive­ly for the greater good of the gov­ern­men­t’s objec­tives.
Instead, they oper­ate as parts of the gov­ern­ment which has gone rogue.
Here is what Arlene Harrison-Henry said to the media last April which clear­ly shows that by her own words she does not see her role and that of her office as part of the Government. 

Speaking of detainees…
 “You release them after spend­ing three, four and five days in cus­tody, and less than 10 per­cent have been charged. That has seri­ous con­se­quences as to whether that was law­ful,” argued Harrison Henry. “Even under a state of emer­gency, there is a min­i­mum thresh­old that [they] have to meet before[they] deprive you of your lib­er­ty. [They] have to see you behav­ing a cer­tain way or com­mit­ting an offense.”

Mrs. Harrison-Henry’s own words are demon­stra­bly clear that she views the secu­ri­ty forces (an arm of gov­ern­ment) adver­sar­i­al­ly. Even though the ill-begot­ten office she holds was unnec­es­sary, she and her staff are paid with tax dol­lars and that makes her and all employ­ees of that office sub­ject to the dic­tates of the gov­ern­ment.
She has no right to be run­ning a sep­a­rate oper­a­tion that is anti­thet­i­cal to the direc­tion in which the admin­is­tra­tion is going.
Regardless of which admin­is­tra­tion nom­i­nat­ed her to the post, if she does not sup­port the admin­is­tra­tion’s man­date she has a duty to resign.
She should not be allowed to sub­vert the pol­i­cy posi­tions of the gov­ern­ment through the use of lies and half-truths.

The shock­ing real­i­ty is that the lies and mis­in­for­ma­tion that the Public Defender tes­ti­fied to in the par­lia­ment recent­ly were total­ly un-nec­es­sary regard­less of her polit­i­cal or ide­o­log­i­cal posi­tion.
Stating the facts about what she saw truth­ful­ly did not mean that she was not doing her job.
In oth­er coun­tries lying to the par­lia­ment is at least a fir­ing offence if not a crim­i­nal one.
Lying to the nation and smear­ing the police made her office a joke.
Lying to the nation showed that she can­not be trust­ed.
The Public Defender would do all Jamaicans a favor if she did the right thing and ten­dered her res­ig­na­tion.
Failing which she should be shown the door.
Public office is about hon­or. ser­vice. self­less­ness. duty. commitment.character.
If we expect that from oth­er pub­lic offi­cials we must also ask the same of the pub­lic defend­er.
 

READ, LIKE,SHARE, MAKE SURE THE ADMINISTRATION HEAR US ON THIS

I gen­er­al­ly have noth­ing good to say about Republicans for the sim­ple rea­son that the Republican Party advances and sup­ports lit­er­al­ly every­thing I hate and hate every­thing I sup­port.
On the issues of Race. Poverty. Health-Care. Immigration. The Environment. Foreign Policy. and every oth­er issue in between, my views are vast­ly dif­fer­ent than those espoused by the Republican party.

The idea of black Republicans is even more revolt­ing to me as I have stat­ed in pre­vi­ous arti­cles. 
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. , Trump’s Housing Secretary Ben Carson and the likes of Ken Blackwell for­mer Ohio Secretary of state all are black men who have demon­stra­bly act­ed in ways that have been destruc­tive and par­tic­u­lar­ly vicious against their own race. 

As I have said time and again the destruc­tive nature of the Republican par­ty makes it impos­si­ble for me to under­stand why any per­son of col­or would sup­port a par­ty which actu­al­ly hates them.
Nevertheless, some­times the abil­i­ty to use a cer­tain course to pow­er far out­weighs prin­ci­ples and it’s impor­tant to always remem­ber that to each his own.
Which brings me to South Carolina’s Republican Senator Tim Scott.
Tim Scott has been win­ning elec­tions in South Carolina’s most­ly white Districts from 1995 when he ran in a February 1995 spe­cial elec­tion to the Charleston County Council at-large seat vacat­ed by Keith Summey, who resigned his seat after being elect­ed as Mayor of North Charleston.

Scott, a for­mer finan­cial advis­er, and busi­ness­man who owns an insur­ance agency, (Tim Scott Allstate) pos­si­bly did not see a path for­ward in pol­i­tics unless he declared and ran as a Republican.
Tim Scott is the Republican US Senator from South Carolina and Tim Scott final­ly stood up today when I did not believe he had the balls to do what’s right.
Here is the sto­ry from our friends at @ https://​www​.msn​.com

Sen. Tim Scott said Thursday he will oppose the nom­i­na­tion of Thomas Farr to the fed­er­al bench, assur­ing the con­tro­ver­sial pick will not be con­firmed. The South Carolina Republican was the decid­ing vote in deter­min­ing whether Farr, wide­ly accused of efforts to dis­en­fran­chise black vot­ers, would be con­firmed.
Scott’s deci­sion comes after four days of intense dra­ma and spec­u­la­tion about what the Senate’s only black Republican would do.
Sen. Jeff Flake, R‑Arizona, made it clear ear­li­er in the day he, too, would oppose Farr’s nom­i­na­tion. Senate Republicans could only afford to lose one vote and still con­firm Farr. Senate Republicans con­trol 51 seats, and all 49 Democratic cau­cus mem­bers were expect­ed to oppose Farr.

In a brief state­ment explain­ing his deci­sion, Scott cit­ed a 1991 Department of Justice memo that was leaked just this week, days before the Senate was set to vote on Farr’s con­fir­ma­tion. It detailed Farr’s involve­ment in “bal­lot secu­ri­ty” activ­i­ties by the 1984 and 1990 cam­paigns of then-Sen. Jesse Helms, R‑North Carolina.
Farr worked for the cam­paign in 1984 and rep­re­sent­ed the 1990 cam­paign as a lawyer.
Helms’ 1990 re-elec­tion cam­paign against for­mer Charlotte may­or Harvey Gantt, who is black, includ­ed charges of vot­er intim­i­da­tion for post­cards mailed to pri­mar­i­ly black vot­ers warn­ing of pos­si­ble arrest at the polls. The Department of Justice inves­ti­gat­ed the vot­er intim­i­da­tion claims and set­tled with the Helms cam­paign in a con­sent decree.

“I am ready and will­ing to sup­port strong can­di­dates for our judi­cial vacan­cies that do not have lin­ger­ing con­cerns about issues that could affect their deci­sion-mak­ing process as a fed­er­al judge,” Scott said in his state­ment. “This week, a Department of Justice memo writ­ten under President George H.W. Bush was released that shed new light on Mr. Farr’s activ­i­ties. This, in turn, cre­at­ed more con­cerns. Weighing these impor­tant fac­tors, this after­noon I con­clud­ed that I could not sup­port Mr. Farr’s nomination.”The 1991 memo said that “Farr was the pri­ma­ry coör­di­na­tor of the 1984 ‘bal­lot secu­ri­ty’ pro­gram con­duct­ed by the NCGOP and 1984 Helms for Senate Committee. He coör­di­nat­ed sev­er­al ‘bal­lot secu­ri­ty’ activ­i­ties in 1984, includ­ing a post­card mail­ing to vot­ers in pre­dom­i­nant­ly black precincts which was designed to serve as a basis to chal­lenge vot­ers on elec­tion day.”
Farr told atten­dees at a 1990 meet­ing that the need for “bal­lot secu­ri­ty” mea­sures, such as post­cards, “was not as com­pelling as in 1984, since, unlike in 1984, the state had a Republican governor.”

In 1990, the Helms cam­paign sent post­cards to black vot­ers who may have changed address­es warn­ing of “vot­er eli­gi­bil­i­ty and the penal­ties for elec­tion fraud.” Farr said he did not know about the deci­sion to send the post­cards, and the memo does not state that he did.
Scott spent the past days study­ing this memo and speak­ing direct­ly to the document’s author. He spoke to the author Wednesday for at least part of a near­ly 45-minute peri­od as his col­leagues vot­ed on lim­it­ing debate on Farr’s nom­i­na­tion. Scott agreed to the lim­it.
On Thursday, just half an hour before Farr’s con­fir­ma­tion vote was set to take place on the Senate floor, Scott invit­ed sev­er­al col­leagues to his office to dis­cuss the memo and hear from the author, via con­fer­ence call, once again.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R‑Florida, told McClatchy as he head­ed to that meet­ing he was still inclined to vote for Farr but as a prac­tice always dis­cussed nom­i­nees with Scott, espe­cial­ly when race has been a fac­tor.
“Was (Farr) a lawyer rep­re­sent­ing a client, telling them what they were legal­ly allowed to do, or was he a polit­i­cal con­sul­tant deter­min­ing strat­e­gy and tar­get­ing? I don’t know the answer to that. It was a long time ago,” Rubio explained. “But I think that’s kind of what we’re focused in on.“
Sen. Susan Collins, R‑Maine, anoth­er sen­a­tor at the meet­ing and a mem­ber of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had ear­li­er in the week said she would con­firm Farr but was now “tak­ing a look at this infor­ma­tion which was not avail­able previously.”It’s not clear whether Scott would have ulti­mate­ly per­suad­ed them to also vote against Farr, but he has a track record of being influ­en­tial. 
Earlier the sum­mer, Scott announced he would oppose Ryan Bounds, a nom­i­nee for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals who as a Stanford University stu­dent-pro­duced writ­ings that mocked mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism and cul­tur­al sen­si­tiv­i­ty. Scott’s oppo­si­tion influ­enced Rubio and oth­er Republicans to also say they would vote against Bounds, result­ing in GOP lead­ers hav­ing to pull the nom­i­nee just min­utes before the con­fir­ma­tion vote was set to take place.

North Carolina’s Eastern District cov­ers 44 coun­ties stretch­ing from Raleigh to the Atlantic coast. The pop­u­la­tion of the dis­trict is 27 per­cent African-American, and no black judge has ever been seat­ed on the court. The seat has been vacant since Jan 1, 2006.

Farr was nom­i­nat­ed by President George W. Bush in 2006 and 2007, but nev­er received a vote. President Barack Obama nom­i­nat­ed two African-American women for the court, but nei­ther received a vote. Farr was nom­i­nat­ed for the seat by President Donald Trump in 2017 and again in 2018.

Farr’s nom­i­na­tion has been bit­ter­ly con­test­ed by Democrats and civ­il rights groups, who cit­ed Farr’s work for Helms and more recent work defend­ing North Carolina’s Republican law­mak­ers in law­suits over vot­er ID and ger­ry­man­der­ing. A pan­el of fed­er­al judges said the 2013 vot­er ID law tar­get­ed African-American vot­ers with “almost sur­gi­cal pre­ci­sion,” strik­ing it down.
“Thomas Farr is not fit to serve. He has a long, long his­to­ry of being hos­tile to vot­ing rights and vot­er sup­pres­sion,” said Rep. G.K. Butterfield, a Wilson, North Carolina Democrat and for­mer chair­man of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Farr’s sup­port­ers, includ­ing North Carolina Republican Sens. Thom Tillis and Richard Burr, have point­ed to his “well qual­i­fied” rat­ing from the American Bar Association. Tillis said Democrats engaged in a “Kavanaugh-esque attempt to dis­cred­it him,” ref­er­enc­ing the fight over Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh who faced alle­ga­tions of decades-old sex­u­al assault dur­ing his con­fir­ma­tion hear­ing.
Tillis said Thursday that Farr’s back­ers were “still work­ing on it” and that he was “hope­ful” sup­port­ers would pre­vail over skep­tics.
On Wednesday, Scott was sig­nal­ing an open­ness to vote for Farr, but told reporters on Capitol Hill he was both­ered that his par­ty was “not doing a very good job of avoid­ing the obvi­ous pot­holes on race in America and we ought to be more sen­si­tive when it comes to those issues.
“There are a lot of folks that can be judges, in states includ­ing North Carolina, besides Tom Farr,” Scott added.

The pri­ma­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty of Government is to pro­vide safe­ty and secu­ri­ty to its peo­ple.
Today we do not build walls to keep out invaders because walls can be scaled, and tun­nels are made under walls.…..
[Oh wait I spoke too soon]. I meant to say that smart lead­ers do not do that. I for­got that some still believe that hid­ing behind walls is a great defen­sive mech­a­nism.
But I digress…

The secu­ri­ty nations pro­vide for their cit­i­zens is not con­fined to keep­ing the peace with hos­tile neigh­bors, it includes pro­tect­ing the pop­u­la­tion from threats for­eign and domes­tic.
When the domes­tic threat assess­ment is dis­sect­ed, Government must make deci­sions to pro­tect the pop­u­la­tion not just from those who would will­ful­ly cause harm but from those who would reck­less­ly and care­less­ly cause harm to oth­ers as well.

That is why I sup­port the Government’s attempt at the restruc­tur­ing of the Road Traffic Act.
The Road Traffic Act of 2018 was passed in the House of Representatives but was stalled in the Senate because of con­cerns raised by the Jamaica Association of Transport Owners.
The bill has been stalled in the Senate and accord­ing to Ruel Reid who was act­ing as leader of gov­ern­ment busi­ness, the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion will be con­sid­ered at a “lat­er date”.

The rea­son Reid gave for the delay is that the Government want­ed time to lis­ten to the con­cerns of the pub­lic trans­porta­tion oper­a­tors and to pro­vide clar­i­fi­ca­tion.
Adding, quote;“This is a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for the matur­ing of our democ­ra­cy, where stake­hold­ers feel that the Government will lis­ten to them if they have gen­uine con­cerns.”
“We are not in a dic­ta­tor­ship, we are in a democ­ra­cy, and so we will val­ue our impor­tant stake­hold­ers.”

There is so much wrong with all this but here is the thing. 
Why would a bill be passed in the low­er house with­out hear­ings and debate on the bill?
Hasn’t the ill-advised INDECOM Act taught these par­lia­men­tar­i­ans any­thing?
How in God’s name can a leg­isla­tive body pass a mean­ing­ful bill with­out hear­ing from stake­hold­ers, look­ing at data, and see­ing how all of the infor­ma­tion fits into the strate­gic goals of the government?

The much need­ed Road Traffic Act is long over­due, it will replace an archa­ic and out­dat­ed law which has no real teeth and does not pro­vide the lev­el of pro­tec­tion the pub­lic need today.
The trans­port lob­by which is a high­ly vocal, high­ly dis­or­ga­nized and high­ly dis­rup­tive loose­ly-knit body should be heard in this, but their point of view as it relates to penal­ties should not hold any sway.
We sim­ply can­not have the inmates run­ning the asy­lum any longer.

The need for an updat­ed Road Traffic law was made nec­es­sary by the very same mem­bers of the afore­men­tioned undis­ci­plined Transport sec­tor. the car­nage on the roads, from unli­censed taxi-cabs, dark-tint­ed cabs over­tak­ing at dan­ger­ous points where such activ­i­ties is pro­hib­it­ed. Drinking alco­hol and smok­ing weed while dri­ving. Speeding dan­ger­ous­ly. And a host of oth­er ille­gal activ­i­ties have cost thou­sands of lives over the last decade alone.
The Government must bring this dis­rup­tive sec­tor to heel.
Not only has this sec­tor refused to obey the laws they have engaged in ter­ror­ist acts against the state’s bus­es by throw­ing rocks into the win­dows and set­ting them alight.

The Government can­not allow the very same peo­ple who neces­si­tat­ed the new law in the first place to deter­mine what the penal­ties should be for their trans­gres­sions and utter dis­dain for the rule of law.
We sim­ply can­not con­tin­ue to have the law-break­ers to have a say in what kind of penal­ty is met­ed out to them the law-break­ers.
If there are any [irra­tional­i­ty] in the bill which needs fix­ing, that should be done.
However, under no cir­cum­stances should the law­less trans­port sec­tor and their taxi-oper­a­tors, many of whom are hard­core crim­i­nals, have a say in the penal­ties that are in the pro­posed law.
Good gov­er­nance is about con­sen­sus, it is not about bow­ing down to a lob­by as a pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion did in the lead up to the (INDECOM Act).
This law is still under­go­ing work and has demon­stra­bly cost count­less lives and innu­mer­able heartache thus far.
It is impor­tant that the Government get this one right and not screw up as a pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion has on (INDECOM).
A gov­ern­ment must lead from the front regard­less of pop­u­lar per­cep­tions.
It can­not be about spit­ting on one’s fin­ger and see­ing where the wind blows.