Author Archives: Mike
How To Kill One’s Legacy :Ask Ben Carson.….
“He’s an ‘African’ American. He was, you know, raised white,” said the world-renowned neurosurgeon, whose single mother worked three jobs – and occasionally relied on government aid – to elevate Carson and his older brother from the grinding poverty of ghetto life. “I mean, like most Americans, I was proud that we broke the color barrier when he was elected, but … he didn’t grow up like I grew up … Many of his formative years were spent in Indonesia. So, for him to, you know, claim that, you know, he identifies with the experience of black Americans, I think, is a bit of a stretch.”
WOW !!!
If someone asked what was the formula for destroying one’s own legacy I would point to Ben Carson the once famed Nuero Surgeon as the perfect template.
This could easily be taught as a College course … How to destroy one’s own legacy.
So lets have a little fun with Dr.Carson’s statement.
Quote : “I mean, like most Americans, I was proud that we broke the color barrier when he was elected, but.…
Okay so Carson was proud to latch onto the success of Barack Obama and wasn’t ashamed to take credit for Obama’s blackness then. He certainly has not turned Black since winning the White House , Carson cannot claim he didn’t know Obama was Black.
Quote: He didn’t grow up like I grew up … Many of his formative years were spent in Indonesia. So, for him to, you know, claim that, you know, he identifies with the experience of black Americans, I think, is a bit of a stretch.” !
Okay this is where Ben Carson’s ignorance shows . This is where his dirty drawers started to show for all the world to see, that being a world renowned neuro-surgeon doesn’t mean an intellectual.
By Carson’s reasoning one has to have been born and raised in the ghetto of America’s cities to first qualify as (1) Black enough) and (2) be able to understand what it means to be black in America.
It is the greatest load of cockamamie I have seen in a long time.
In the first instance there is a huge sub-set within the African-American community which has no idea about what it means to be black outside of the consistent desire to be victims.
Blackness is never and was never defined by American-blacks . Being black has nothing to do with geography. In fact it was our blackness which caused us to be lumped into ships and carted into the western world in the first instance, long before Ben Carson and his kind could begin to be perpetual victims we were black.
If Ben Carson is saying that in order that one can be truly black that person has to squander his/her entire life away in that same ghetto is nonsensical and lame .
After Barack Obama graduated from Harvard he could have gone on to a lucrative career in the private sector , instead he went to the south side of Chicago and became a community organizer.
This placed Obama in the unique position to feel the pulse of the ghetto in ways Ben Carson hasn’t. Ben Carson’s claim to being Black is about attempting to stab someone. If that is what Carson means about identifying with the experiences of black America I am immensely proud that the 44th President did not participate in the stereotypical caricature his detractors have of him.
It’s remarkable that Dr, Carson who has the prototype on Blackness hasn’t yet figured out that his 15 minutes of political fame came at the expense of President Obama .
It’s ironic that even though Dr, Carson has accomplished so much academically and in his career, prior to his foray into politics the majority of people in the Black Community would have no idea who he was.
Ben Carson 15 minutes of fame came not because of his exemplary and stellar education but because of the nonsensical things he said about the Affordable Care Act referred to pejoratively as (Obama care).
Carson said the Affordable Care Act was worse than Slavery. You can’t make up that kind of idiocy. Barack Obama accomplished what several Presidents before him wanted but could not accomplish.
By his comments Ben Carson unwittingly and ignorantly diminishes the horrors of over four hundred years of slavery and oppression and shows that to some degree you can get some Negroes out of the ghetto but you can never get the ghetto out of some Negroes.
Interestingly for Carson he received funding because he was willing to tear down the nation’s first black president however the very same hate-filled comments will bury his candidacy once and for all.
The only person who did not receive the memo that republicans would not nominate a black man as their nominee was Ben Carson , his friends like Armstrong Williams and the likes of Clarence Thomas.
Referencing Progressives Carson said: “They assume because you’re black, you have to think a certain way,” . “And if you don’t think that way, you’re ‘Uncle Tom,’ you’re worthy of every horrible epithet they can come up with; whereas, if I weren’t black, then I would just be a Republican.”
No Dr. Carson you chose to be an Uncle Tom all by yourself.
Being a Black Republican is a path to nowhere-land.
It’s the same as going in an East-Westerly direction[sic]
Your political stance will be a huge Albatross around the neck of what would have been a stellar legacy, because you could not be happy for another brother.
Shame on you!!!
T&T Pollster Finds Momentum Leaning To JLP
THE February 25 General Election will come down to 14 marginal seats, which a new poll conducted by Trinidad- based political scientist Derek Ramsamooj shows is leaning towards the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP).
According to Ramsamooj, the privately commissioned poll conducted between nomination day (February 9) and the past weekend, before the JLP-and the governing People’s National Party (PNP)-hosted major rallies in Half-Way-Tree and Montego Bay, respectively, found that 51.76 per cent of electors in these marginal seats would vote for the JLP and 48.24 per cent for the PNP.
“The political momentum at this point is leaning favourably towards the JLP forming the next Government. However, the winning of an election is based on the resources — financial and human — and the [effectiveness] of the election machinery [on election day],” said Ramsamooj.
He warned, however, that any “unforeseen error” by either of the political parties in the next 48 hours will be a political disaster. Ramsamooj said he and his team interviewed 1,859 people for the poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus four per cent.
“It has a 95 per cent confidence level,” Ramsamooj told the Jamaica Observer yesterday.
He said that when Jamaicans were asked who would make a better prime minister, 53.47 per cent said JLP Leader Andrew Holness and 46.53 per cent Portia Simpson Miller, the president of the PNP and current prime minister.
At the same time, when asked if Prime Minister Simpson Miller deserves another term, 52.02 per cent said ‘no’ and 41.41 per cent said ‘yes’.
Some 6.51 per cent, he said, responded that they did not know. Asked what factors would influence them to vote, 74.44 per cent of respondents said leadership; 71.37 per cent the competence of candidates; 69.74 per cent national issues; and 61.30 per cent loyalty to party.
The constituencies (marginal seats) in which the poll was conducted were:
• St James Central;
• St James West Central;
• St Mary Western;
• St Mary South Eastern;
• St Andrew East Rural;
• St Andrew West Rural;
• Hanover Eastern;
• St Andrew Eastern;
• St Thomas Eastern;
• St Ann North Western;
• St Catherine East Central;
• St Elizabeth South Eastern; and
• St Elizabeth South West.
“No polling was done in the hardcore PNP and JLP constituencies,” Ramsamooj said, making it clear that it was not a national poll.
According to Ramsamooj, when asked what they expected in 2016⁄17 if the PNP remained in office, 66.91 per cent of respondents in the marginal seats said rising unemployment; 77.70 per cent rising taxes; and 69.32 per cent an increase in crime.
At the same time, when asked what are the most urgent issues that need to be tackled now, 85.65 per cent said unemployment was the most important; 77.23 per cent identified poverty as the second most important; 71.79 per cent said problems facing the youth; 75.89 per cent education issues; and 73.58 per cent said cost of living.
At the same time, Ramsamooj said when respondents were asked what was the most urgent political problem that needed to be addressed in Jamaica, 72.28 per cent said constitutional reform; 70.24 per cent better governance and dealing with public financing; 69.86 per cent dishonesty in politics; and 68.29 per cent corruption in the political system.
According to the Ramsamooj poll, 62.03 per cent of respondents said ‘yes’ when asked: “Do you think the Government was able to pass the IMF tests at the expense of the citizens of Jamaica?”
Another 21.14 per cent said ‘no,’ and 12.84 per cent said they did not know. Respondents were also asked if they agreed or disagreed with the slogans of the parties — the PNP’s ‘Step up the Progress’ and the JLP’s ‘From Poverty to Prosperity’.
Some 53.47 per cent agreed with the PNP’s slogan, against 46.53 per cent who disagreed. On the other hand, 62.27 per cent were in agreement with the JLP’s slogan, and 37.73 per cent in disagreement.
The JLP, meanwhile, had 80.70 per cent of respondents endorsing its growth agenda as part of its job creation plan; 77.71 per cent endorsed its planned creation of a Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation; and 75.64 per cent backed its National Apprenticeship Programme.
“Both the PNP and the JLP have been able to motivate and mobilise core supporters, and both have demonstrated that they have been able to bring out their support base as a method of testing and reviewing their election day machinery,” Ramsamooj told the Observer yesterday.
However, he said that what is critical is the political appeal of both platforms in attracting the undecided voters. He said it was evident that the electorate is looking for leadership that will meet the IMF conditionalities, while improving their lives.
“The political rhetoric and political optics displayed, while resonating with party supporters, have a different interpretation with the undecided, first-time voters, the business community, and swing voters,” he said.
Voters, he added, would also be concerned about the benefits under a new Administration over the next five years.
Political interest, he said, has been heightened since the parties launched their manifestos last week, but noted that the public conversation is more about the JLP’s 10-point plan.
The PNP, he said, has been responding through a single voice (Dr Peter Phillips), which has raised the question of who will be the next leader of the party.
“Maybe there is a not-so-visible political hand at work that may see Dr Phillips emerging as the leader of the PNP in the next five years” he observed.
He said that in the few days leading up to Thursday’s election, it will be hand-tohand combat in the marginal constituencies, while pointing out that the various incentives being offered to motivate certain voters — the strength of various candidates and strategies on election day to get out the voters — will be crucial.
“One would expect a strategic allocation of campaign resources in the marginal constituencies,” he said.
Ramsamooj, who commended the Jamaican electorate for their level of maturity, said the choices made by citizens will be critical to choices of leadership and policies that should guide Jamaica through the turbulent global waters.
He said, too, that political trust and competitiveness and connectivity to the electorate at the constituency level will also influence voters.
Ramsamooj has, over the years, done political polling in Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Suriname, Belize, Guyana, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Anguila, and St Kitts and Nevis. Read more here : T&T pollster finds momentum leaning to JLP
Real Cause For Pause This Is No Laughing Matter.
Looking Back
By Geffery Toobin :Jeffrey Toobin has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1993 and the senior legal analyst for CNN since 2002.
Atonin Scalia, who died this month, after nearly three decades on the Supreme Court, devoted his professional life to making the United States a less fair, less tolerant, and less admirable democracy. Fortunately, he mostly failed. Belligerent with his colleagues, dismissive of his critics, nostalgic for a world where outsiders knew their place and stayed there, Scalia represents a perfect model for everything that President Obama should avoid in a successor. The great Justices of the Supreme Court have always looked forward; their words both anticipated and helped shape the nation that the United States was becoming. Chief Justice John Marshall read the new Constitution to allow for a vibrant and progressive federal government. Louis Brandeis understood the need for that government to regulate an industrializing economy. Earl Warren saw that segregation was poison in the modern world. Scalia, in contrast, looked backward.
His revulsion toward homosexuality, a touchstone of his world view, appeared straight out of his sheltered, nineteen-forties boyhood. When, in 2003, the Court ruled that gay people could no longer be thrown in prison for having consensual sex, Scalia dissented, and wrote, “Today’s opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct.” He went on, “Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children’s schools, or as boarders in their home. They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a life style that they believe to be immoral and destructive.”
But it was in his jurisprudence that Scalia most self-consciously looked to the past. He pioneered “originalism,” a theory holding that the Constitution should be interpreted in line with the beliefs of the white men, many of them slave owners, who ratified it in the late eighteenth century. During Scalia’s first two decades as a Justice, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist rarely gave him important constitutional cases to write for the Court; the Chief feared that Scalia’s extreme views would repel Sandra Day O’Connor, the Court’s swing vote, who had a toxic relationship with him during their early days as colleagues. (Scalia’s clashes with O’Connor were far more significant than his much chronicled friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg.) It was not until 2008, after John G. Roberts, Jr., had succeeded Rehnquist, that Scalia finally got a blockbuster: District of Columbia v. Heller, about the Second Amendment. Scalia spent thousands of words plumbing the psyches of the Framers, to conclude (wrongly, as John Paul Stevens pointed out in his dissent) that they had meant that individuals, not just members of “well-regulated” state militias, had the right to own handguns. Even Scalia’s ideological allies recognized the folly of trying to divine the “intent” of the authors of the Constitution concerning questions that those bewigged worthies could never have anticipated. During the oral argument of a challenge to a California law that required, among other things, warning labels on violent video games, Justice Samuel Alito interrupted Scalia’s harangue of a lawyer by quipping, “I think what Justice Scalia wants to know is what James Madison thought about video games. Did he enjoy them?”
Scalia described himself as an advocate of judicial restraint, who believed that the courts should defer to the democratically elected branches of government. In reality, he lunged at opportunities to overrule the work of Presidents and of legislators, especially Democrats. Scalia helped gut the Voting Rights Act, overturn McCain-Feingold and other campaign-finance rules, and, in his last official act, block President Obama’s climate-change regulations. Scalia’s reputation, like the Supreme Court’s, is also stained by his role in the majority in Bush v. Gore. His oft-repeated advice to critics of the decision was “Get over it.”
Not long ago, Scalia told an interviewer that he had cancelled his subscription to the Washington Post and received his news from the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times (owned by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church), and conservative talk radio. In this, as in his jurisprudence, he showed that he lived within the sealed bubble of contemporary conservative thought. That bubble also helps explain the Republican response to the new vacancy on the Court. Within hours of Scalia’s death, Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, announced that the Senate will refuse even to allow a vote on Obama’s nominee, regardless of who he or she turns out to be. Though other Republican senators have indicated that they might be a little more flexible, at least on hearing out a nominee, the chances of a confirmation before the end of Obama’s term appear to be close to nil.
This Republican intransigence is a sign of panic, not of power. The Court now consists of four liberals (Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan) and three hard-core conservatives (Roberts, Clarence Thomas, and Alito), plus Anthony Kennedy, who usually but not always sides with the conservatives. With Scalia’s death, there is a realistic possibility of a liberal majority for the first time in two generations, since the last days of the Warren Court. A Democratic victory in November will all but assure this transformation. Republicans are heading to the barricades; Democrats were apparently too blindsided to recognize good news when they got it.
Like Nick Carraway, Scalia “wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever.” The world didn’t coöperate. Scalia won a great deal more than he lost, and he and his allies succeeded in transforming American politics into a cash bazaar, with seats all but put up for bidding. But even though Scalia led a conservative majority on the Court for virtually his entire tenure, he never achieved his fondest hopes — thanks first to O’Connor and then to Kennedy. Roe v. Wade endures. Affirmative action survives. Obamacare lives. Gay rights are ascendant; the death penalty is not. (These positions are contingent, of course, and cases this year may weaken the Court’s resolve.) For all that Presidents shape the Court, the Justices rarely stray too far from public opinion. And, on the social issues where the Court has the final word, the real problem for Scalia’s heirs is that they are out of step with the rest of the nation. The public wants diversity, not intolerance; more marriages and fewer executions; less money in politics, not more. Justice Scalia’s views — passionately felt and pungently expressed though they were — now seem like so many boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.Looking Back
Is Voter Apathy An Issue This Election?
With General Elections scheduled for February 25th less than three(3) full days away, Jamaicans will once again go to the polls to elect a Government.
Jamaica’s Parliamentary style democracy gives voters the choice to go to the polls and elect Constituency representatives,members of parlaiment (MP). Members are predetermined by the two major political parties.
So much for democracy !!!
There are a smattering of other parties like the National Democratic Movement. Jerusalem Bread Foundation and the New Nation Coalition.
Neither of the other parties have won a seat in the Island’s parliament to date . Thus far these budding movements are largely seen as disgruntled off-shoots from the Lamaica Labor Party(JLP) and the People’s National Party(PNP).
Technically Jamaicans do not vote for a Prime Minister they vote for their constituency representatives. The Party which wins the most seats in the Island’s 63 seat Legislature then forms the Government. The head of the winning Party is then sworn in as the Prime Minister.
Observer photo.
This style of electoral politics makes it critical for the parties vying for power to hold onto as many seats as they can. Of course the methodology employed toward that end is generally antithetical to the democratic process, and the very idea of having elections in the first place.
The party in control has total say over the purse strings, in small nations like Jamaica where checks and balances only apply to one’s bank account, scarce resources are doled out as the party in power sees fit.
In essence the party in power further solidify it’s hold the longer it remains in office by using patronage/pay politics to maintain it’s hold on the vulnerable. This is generally done through handouts. Free houses , jobs party hacks never show up to , and other goodies. Most importantly however is the creation of entire communities loyal to one party or the other.
This necessarily means that the party in power holds onto power through patronage of the most crass order.
It’s vote buying at it’s worse yet it’s not the only way that voters are manipulated , actual people turning up at people’s homes not know supporter of the party in power and offering them money for their vote is quite common.
The process fills the bellies of the voters in question for a night, continues the Governing party’s stranglehold on power, while eroding the foundation of the democratic process.
As a consequence of the foregone this election cycle the People’s National Party will go into the elections seeking a majority of the 63 seats in the legislature while holding arguably 12 seats which are not in contention.
For it’s part the Jamaica Labor Party will do the same with what what some say are roughly 6 seats which are not in play.
Over the years there have been calls from many quarters for the Island to do away with Garrison Politics which they argue have caused representatives who hold those constituency seats to be uncaring about constituent’s welfare. Additionally they argue that modern policies cannot be implemented because access to garrison communities are limited both physically and intellectually.
This election the Jamaica Labor Party is asking the segment of the electorate experiencing apathy toward the process to give the party another chance at Government.
The conventional wisdom is that the PNP is a party which cares about the poorer class of the people. Of course since 1972 the PNP has held office for almost 32 of those 44 years.
It’s not difficult to see how patronage politics could help to cement that narrative. Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller has not missed an opportunity to hammer home the idea that her party is a party for the poor earning herself the moniker (mamma P).
The Labor Party has not done enough to counter that narrative since Seaga was first accused of being a white man who cared about the rich. Additionally some of the younger members of the party seem to believe people like being spoken down to.
On several occasions this writer has spoken out about several members of the JLP and their sense of elitism.
The Jamaican people are not above re-electing a party and woman at the helm many believe is not the brightest bulb in the shed but who relate to them on their level.
#DecisionJa2016: Police Reminded To Display Professionalism Today
KINGSTON, Jamaica — With police, soldiers and election day workers scheduled to vote in the island’s 17th general election today, the police high command yesterday reminded members of the constabulary to conduct themselves in a professional manner and refrain from any activities that may cast a shadow over the organisation.
Clifford Blake, deputy commissioner of police who has responsibility for strategic operations, said that while cops have the right to vote for the party of their choice, there are a number of things for which the Jamaica Constabulary Force has adopted a zero tolerance approach. One of them was the display by any of its members publicly, or on social media, of allegiance to any political party Noting that the practice could lead to severe punishment, Blake said they have received reports of one such case and it is being investigated. “Members of the security forces are fully aware of the matter. They have been briefed in the Force Orders to refrain from such practice,” Blake told OBSERVER ONLINE. He said the police were “ready and fully prepared” for today’s activities and added that they were closely watching several hot spots across the island to prevent tensions rising between supporters of the country’s two main political parties. Read more here : #DecisionJa2016: Police reminded to display professionalism today
Manley’s Son Joseph :“Holness House Vulgar And Over-sized”: Confirms Envy.…
In the 1990’s US General Colin Powell was credited with developing what is know as the [Powell Doctrine] .
The Powell doctrine was a series of questions the first ever Black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a Bronx native of Jamaican parents developed.
The idea behind the Powell doctrine was to establish beforehand whether certain fundamental criteria had been met before engaging the American Military in a war.
1 Is a vital national security interest threatened? 2. Do we have a clear attainable objective? 3. Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed? 4. Have all other nonviolent policy means been fully exhausted? 5. Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement? 6. Have the consequences of our action been fully considered? 7. Is the action supported by the American people? 8. Do we have genuine broad international support?
If those questions are answered “yes” ‚General Powell believed that The United States should use all necessary force to get the job done, do it and go home.
Powell also believe that a nation should never engage in war it could potentially lose. If there is any potential for a loss then it may be a good idea not to get into a fight.
Colin Powell figured America was in no real danger from other Nation states because of it’s immense military might. As such he felt it was not in America’s best interest to get involved in military skirmishes but should only engage militarily where America’s vital interest are at stake.
Using the Powell logic ( without referencing his name) I recently wrote about the ongoing inane and ridiculous campaign Jamaica’s People’s National Party was waging against the Leader of the Opposition Labor Party’s house.
In the Article I argued that the debate was a product of the envy Michael Manley sowed in the 1970’s when he was prime Minister of the Island.
HOLNESS’S HOUSE A PRODUCT OF ENVY MANLEY SOWED…..
The Article has drawn a massive and visceral rebuke from Manley’s cultists both on the Island and in the diaspora, the majority of whom decided that personally attacking me was the best way of registering their discontent since they couldn’t credibly refute the facts of my arguments.
I understand just how frustrating it must be for those orange-cool-aid-drinkers to be totally endued with a philosophy which was largely built on fiction.
It was never my intention to speak to Michael Manley’s intent when he said there were five flights leaving for Miami and those who disagreed with his policies should board those flights.
His unmitigated gall was astounding, as if the country was his.
Despite his arrogance however Michael Manley realized the error of his ways and in hindsight he spoke of his regret in making those statements.
Notwithstanding those who worship at the altar of denial chose to attack without one iota of evidence which discredits the assertions I made.
In fact Michael Manley’s son Joseph Manley may have made the best argument in support of my contentions.
In a Facebook rant supposedly in defense of Peter Phillips who now faces questions about his house, Joseph Manley the son of Michael Manley said Quote
” Opposition Leader, Andrew Holness’ house is “vulgar and over-sized” .
Vulgar and over-sized! What real man talks about another man’s house in those terms? What’s next his wife is too pretty? Where does the envy stop ?
You really cannot make this s**t up. If those aren’t words which reflect envy will someone please tell me what they stem from , I am willing to learn.
The ideological tenets of Manley’s so-called Democratic Socialism was in essence a crawling peg slide into Fidel Castro’s Communism. Thankfully the generation of voters at the time had the good sense to reject that ideology wholesale in 1980.
Michael Manley was a son of privilege,like Franklin Delano Roosevelt Manley was seen by many as a traitor to his class . Michael Manley saw the social and societal ills plaguing the young Jamaican nation and wanted change.
For that Manly is to be commended. Good intentions which resulted in wholesale chaos does not insulate Manley from the criticism he justly deserve. Referencing his good intentions may have mitigating value but good intentions are not grounds for absolution.
In a October 20o4 speech delivered to the Florida Atlantic University First Michael Manley Symposium, Professor David P. Rowe poignantly asked and answered .…..
Did Michael Manley trample on anybody’s rights once he achieved high office? Did the Fabianism of the London School of Economics accommodate individual rights and freedoms?
Shortly after Manley’s election in 1972, the ‘pork barrel’ started and Jamaicans were treated to the ‘Special Employment’ or ‘crash’ program, an unfortunate blatant reward for party supporters, for voting the right way in the l972 elections.
The Special Employment Program was legally valid but probably mis-managed as the participants were the targets of political pressure.
Crash program workers were seen receiving large cheques for what appeared to be almost no work and the impression given was that if you were from ‘downtown’, you were a ‘sufferer’ and had the right to ‘free’ money. The crash program money gave way to national ideology.
Manley was extremely popular, but not for the upliftment of the Constitutional Rights of poor people, Professor Rowe wrote.
http://www.constitution-and-rights.com/manleyRights.htm.
As is customary with the masses of Jamaicans the conventional wisdom is to react to form over substance. As I have said repeatedly their love affair with Manley, the People’s National Party and the regressive ideology of that party is similar to cotton candy, sweet to the taste leaves you thirsty and is ultimately bad for your health.
It was not my intention to trumpet the intent of Michael Manley. A true leader is judged by his/her decision making and not necessarily by his/her ability to move a crowd.
Michael Manley wanted to change the plight of the poor we can credit him for trying while we judge him for his inability to understand Geo-politics.
If every dollar is taken from the richest people among us and divided among the world’s poor it would not change the paradigm. “You can’t make the poor rich by making the rich poorer” .(Abraham Lincoln)
Chasing away the productive sector was not helping the poor, it was ensuring that for generations the poorer class would be slaves to abject poverty.
Embracing Castro at the heights of the cold war while thumbing his nose at the United States may have played well on a campaign stage.
It may have impressed thousands of non-Spanish speaking Jamaicans who cheered Castro while never understanding a single syllable outside the words “companero Manley”.
When the rubber meets the road however it is “Quixotic” to pick a fight with an adversary you cannot beat.
Michael Manley was a terrific leader in the fight against oppression and racial bigotry undeniably. As a schoolboy I was proud of the work he did in bringing to the fore the plight of the suffering people of Southern Africa and in many ways the release of Nelson Mandela from prison.
Unfortunately even as Manley championed the case for freedom on the International stage he never understood when not to fight or who not t0 pick a fight with.
In the end the talk about the CIA involvement in Jamaica which resulted in Manley’ undoing is not exactly an argument which merits serious dialogue.
It establishes that Manley’s Quixotic crusade against the Capitalist west was an effort in futility which caused more pain than gain.
Like Colin Powell said, if potentially you may lose do not go to war.
Many have asked why Dr. Martin Luther King did not wage a violent struggle in the United States against Racial oppression and segregation?
The simple answer is that he had no chance of winning . That is the difference. When you cannot win do not fight , try negotiating not antagonizing>
I am prepared to continue this debate with those who feel they can debate on the merits.
ANTONIN SCALIA
Senior Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia passed away on Friday February 12th at a ranch in Texas while on a hunting trip , Scalia was 79 years old.
No sooner had the news of Scalia’s passing hit the airwaves Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruz said that the President of the United States Barack Obama should not appoint a replacement for Scalia because a Supreme Court Justice of Scalia’s stature should be replaced by the next President. The other Cuban running on the republican ticket Marco Rubio also chimed in with exactly the very same arguments.
Now here’s the thing, the President of the United States has a constitutional duty to appoint a replacement to Scalia .
Failing which he would exactly be in direct contravention of his duties and responsibilities as president.
President Obama will be in office until January of 2017 a full 11 months away. Nevertheless the old curmudgeon Senate Majority leader Mitch McConell was quick to say the Senate would not take up any appointment the president puts forward as a replacement to Scalia. For those not so familiar with the US Constitution the President is duty bound to appoint a replacement and the senate has a duty to advise and consent on a potential replacement.
To suggest that the senate will not even consider a Obama appointee is simply obstructionism in it’s most blatant form.
Lets talk about Ted Cruz for a second.
Here is a Cuban Hispanic who has somehow managed to transform himself from a Canadian born Cuban to a Southern white Anglo-Saxon who wraps himself in the American flag under the guise of a Constitutional purist.
Yet the very moment it is convenient for Cruz and his party politically the little Cuban shreds the constitution with reckless abandon.
Even Cruz’s Republican colleagues criticize him for being a liar and a pretentious bastard No one is as conservative as Cruz. No one is a christian as Cruz. No one is more Reagan than Cruz. Only problem is that Reagan could not pass muster as a conservative in Ted Cruz’x GOP.
President Obama addressed the nation on the passing of Scalia .
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Good evening, everybody. For almost 30 years, Justice Antonin “Nino” Scalia was a larger-than-life presence on the bench — a brilliant legal mind with an energetic style, incisive wit, and colorful opinions.
He influenced a generation of judges, lawyers, and students, and profoundly shaped the legal landscape. He will no doubt be remembered as one of the most consequential judges and thinkers to serve on the Supreme Court. Justice Scalia dedicated his life to the cornerstone of our democracy: The rule of law. Tonight, we honor his extraordinary service to our nation and remember one of the towering legal figures of our time. Antonin Scalia was born in Trenton, New Jersey to an Italian immigrant family. After graduating from Georgetown University and Harvard Law School, he worked at a law firm and taught law before entering a life of public service. He rose from Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel to Judge on the D.C. Circuit Court, to Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. A devout Catholic, he was the proud father of nine children and grandfather to many loving grandchildren. Justice Scalia was both an avid hunter and an opera lover — a passion for music that he shared with his dear colleague and friend, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Michelle and I were proud to welcome him to the White House, including in 2012 for a State Dinner for Prime Minister David Cameron. And tonight, we join his fellow justices in mourning this remarkable man.
Obviously, today is a time to remember Justice Scalia’s legacy. I plan to fulfill my constitutional responsibilities to nominate a successor in due time. There will be plenty of time for me to do so, and for the Senate to fulfill its responsibility to give that person a fair hearing and a timely vote. These are responsibilities that I take seriously, as should everyone. They’re bigger than any one party. They are about our democracy. They’re about the institution to which Justice Scalia dedicated his professional life, and making sure it continues to function as the beacon of justice that our Founders envisioned. But at this moment, we most of all want to think about his family, and Michelle and I join the nation in sending our deepest sympathies to Justice Scalia’s wife, Maureen, and their loving family — a beautiful symbol of a life well lived. We thank them for sharing Justice Scalia with our country.
God bless them all, and God bless the United States of America.
The Main stream Media did not waste time, it wasn’t long before the wall-to-wall reporting became cloying. It would be difficult to imagine from the reporting that Scalia wasn’t a Saint.
But Scalia was no Saint, while the Main stream media trips over itself in it’s quest t0 gush over Scalia’s life we decided to show that Scalia was anything but a Saint.
Not everyone was willing to prostitute the facts on the altar of political correctness, one practical observer said.….
Quote: Scalia is a pompous, arrogant, conceited man. His earliest days on the Court were marked with bombastic outbursts at counsel, disrupting attempts by very respectable intellectuals in the law, that were truly objective and unbiased. (Are judges supposed to be that way, too?)Unless you know Constitutional law, you won’t understand how he and the Rehnquist Court literally suspended the doctrine of “stare decisis,” adherence to precedent, so they could “deconstruct” decades of well-settled American jurisprudence and “reconstruct” their own Federalist philosophy, which claims the author of the Federalist Papers was the sole repository of the collective mindset of the Founding Fathers.
Before his passing Antonin Scalia did not attend a State of the Union address since 1997. His reason for opting out of the State of the Union address ?
“It has turned into a childish spectacle, and I don’t think that I want to be there to lend dignity to it.”
What modesty ?[sic]
Talk about an inflated ego?
“The State of the Union is not something I write on my calendar,” Scalia said during his own remarks in 2013 before the Smithsonian Associates at George Washington University during President Obama’s State of the Union address. But he quipped, “I didn’t set this up tonight just to upstage the president.”
1. King v. Burwell, 2015:
When the Supreme Court upheld a major portion of Obamacare for the second time, Scalia unleashed some of his most scathing rebukes, accusing his colleagues of “interpretive jiggery-pokery” and and writing off its logic as “pure applesauce” in his dissent. He was also clearly sick of seeing the Supreme Court side with Obama’s legacy legislation, writing, “We should starting calling this law SCOTUScare.”
2. National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 2012:
The first time the Supreme Court considered Obamacare, Scalia condensed the entire debate over America’s health care system using an unlikely symbol: Broccoli. If the government could tell citizens which health care to purchase, he argued, could it start enforcing our vegetables, too? “Everybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food,” he said during arguments. “Therefore, everybody is in the market; therefore, you can make people buy broccoli.” The veggie became an enduring symbol of the Obamacare debate.
3. Atkins v. Virginia, 2002:
Scalia’s harshest put-down of his fellow justices came in his dissent for this case prohibiting the execution of mentally disabled convicts. Scalia, one of three dissenters, thought silly emotions got the best of his colleagues. “Seldom has an opinion of this Court rested so obviously upon nothing but the personal views of its members,” he wrote.
4. PGA Tour, Inc. v. Martin, 2001:
The PGA Tour required all golfers to walk between shots during a qualifying tournament. The Supreme Court, hearing a case from disabled player Casey Martin, decided this was unconstitutional. Scalia’s reaction? Get deep on the rules of golf, and show some love for Kurt Vonnegut. In his dissent, Scalia referenced Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron,” a satire about a future where the Constitution prevents any American from being better than another. He also mocked the monumental ruling the Court just belabored over a game. “Is someone riding around a golf course from shot to shot really a golfer?” he wrote in his dissent. “The answer, we learn, is yes. The Court ultimately concludes, and it will henceforth be the Law of the Land, that walking is not a ‘fundamental’ aspect of golf.”
5. United States v. Virginia, 1996:
In another sports unexpected analogy, Scalia warned that the ruling of a military institute’s gender policy might as well signal the death of sports. As the lone dissenter in a case ruling against the Virginia Military Institute’s policy of only admitting men, Scalia wrote: “If it were impossible for individual human beings (or groups of human begins) to act autonomously in effective pursuit of a common goal, the game of soccer would not exist.”
6. Fisher v. University of Texas ‚2015: A contentious affirmative action case, the conservative justice seemed to call the abilities of African-America students into question. “There are those who contend that it does not benefit African-Americans to get them into the University of Texas, where they do not do well,” Scalia said, “as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school … a slower-track school where they do well.”
Even though Scalia used the term “there are those who contend” he never argued that those contentions conflict with his own feelings. The inference being affirmative action is bad for black students because they’re not smart enough to succeed in good schools.
President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama went to the Supreme Court and paid their final respects to Scalia whose body laid in repose on Friday .
The President will not be attending Scalia’s funeral. In my mind regardless of what guides the President’s decision, it’s a solid decision.
Jamaica’s Prime Minister Finally Mention Police One Week Before General Elections.
There was a general saying around Election time that whichever political party the security forces support in large numbers is the party which will be victorious at the polls. I believe that in light of that the police as a voting block and indeed an interest group should hold some sway , or have some leverage insofar as it pertains to their vote in a block.
This does not mean by any stretch that the police as a group is a monolith, but police officers like other large groups are acutely positioned to recognize where they get the best support and subsequently where their personal and organizational interest lies.
JUXTAPOSE THAT WITH THE GOVERNMENT’S POSITION MERELY MONTHS AGO.
JAMAICA GOVT. TO POLICE REFUSE TO WORK, WE CONFISCATE YOUR PROPERTY…..
The PNP’s Disdain For The Electorate Will Elude Thousands And Thousands Of Die-hards.….
People’s National Party Leader Portia Simpson Miller and her party has decided to forego the debates process and make itself available to a friendly panel of questioners hosted by RJR.
The People’s National Party on Thursday said it has accepted an invitation from the RJR Communications Group to take part in a 90-minute session focusing on the 2016 general election. According to the Jamaican Media one Journalist has announced that she will not be participating in that question and answer being hosted by the RJR group as a matter of principle.
This medium wishes to congratulate that Journalist who refuses to surrender her journalistic principles in order to be in on the sensationalist fervor surrounding a political party.
By creating preconditions to participating in the debates the PNP has demonstrated that it does not consider itself constrained by rules of accountability.
Thumbing it’s nose at the Jamaican people, the People’s National Party has demonstrated that true to it’s principles, nothing has changed from Michael Manley’s ideological flirtatious affair with Communism before he was sent packing in 1980 by the Jamaican people.
The narrative Jamaica is PNP country ought to stand as a stark reminder to all Jamaicans that that party does not believe in the democratic process. The prime Minister’s refusal to speak to the Media for the greater part of her term in office, her party’s refusal to account regarding Trafigura, Finsac , and other scandals, is in line with it’s most recent decision not to debate the opposition.
These are not the actions of a democratic party , but a party willing to do the bare minimum to get through the electoral process hoping to be allowed to go back to being unaccountable and above the law. A news release from the PNP Thursday said that a PNP contingent, led by Portia Simpson Miller, would field questions from a group of journalists drawn from within the RJR Group’s newsroom. The session will be broadcast before February 22, the release added.
Regardless of the disrespect and disdain come February 25th thousands and thousands of Jamaicans will emerge from all walks of life, over hills and gullies to vote for the People’s National Party. None of this will mean anything to them because as they will readily tell you they were born “Kumreds”.
It’s difficult to envisage how that paradigm is reversed in light of the prevailing lack of education on the part of the wider electorate . The Political parties expect the people to vote for them regardless of their behavior this time will be no different.
We wish to update this story since it was first reported >
The RJR Media group has announced that the 90 minute question and answer it had scheduled between the group and the two major political parties is now off.
RJR has advised that Opposition leader Leader Andrew Holness advised that he would now decline participation as the RJR fora is being positioned by the People’s National Party as an alternative to the Jamaica Debates Commission (JDC) debates,” the RJR Group said. RJR Group calls off news forum with PNP, JLP
This medium support the decision of the Opposition party on the basis that the debates process is an established protocol designed for candidates offering themselves for leadership of our country to be questioned by the media with a view to educating the public as to what they would do if elected.
The People’s National Party does not have the right to summarily decide it will not participate in that established practice (though not a law) while seeking alternative means which it deduces may be more friendly to it’s policies. MB
Obama: Will Nominate ‘indisputably’ Qualified Supreme Court Justice
President Barack Obama said Tuesday he would nominate a candidate to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Courtwho is “indisputably” qualified. He called on the staunch Republican opposition in the Senate to rise above “venom and rancor” and vote on confirming the nominee. “I intend to do my job between now and Jan. 20 of 2017,” he said. “I expect them to do their job as well.” Obama told reporters at a news conference in his first extended comments on the fight over filling the seat left empty by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
Obama cast the dispute as a question of how far Republicans want to push their opposition and whether the Senate can function in the hyperpoliticized climate. Fights over judicial nominations are not new, he noted, but “the Supreme Court’s different.” “This will be a test, one more test of whether or not norms, rules, basic fair play can function at all in Washington these days,” he said. Obama spoke as he closed a meeting of Southeast Asian leaders at Sunnylands, a Southern California desert retreat. Obama gathered ASEAN members for two days of talks on security and counterterrorism efforts.
But the president’s attention was divided. Since Scalia’s unexpected death at a remote Texas ranch on Saturday, White House lawyers and advisers have been scrambling to refine and vet a list of potential replacements, while also devising a strategy to push a candidate through the Republican-led Senate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has said he doesn’t think Obama should be putting a candidate forward. McConnell and several Republican senators up for re-election this year,say Obama should leave the choice up to the next president. The November election, they argue, will give voters a chance to weigh in on the direction of the court. Obama dismissed that notion. He has said he will put forward a replacement in due time and that he believes the Senate will have “plenty of time” to give the nominee a fair hearing and a vote. Democrats say Obama has every right and a constitutional duty to fill vacancies on the court until he leaves office Jan. 20, 2017.
The Republicans’ recommended solution is “irresponsible, and it’s unprecedented,” Sen. Pat Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Tuesday. “The American public expects us to do the job we’re elected to do. The president is going to do what he is elected to do and let’s vote up or down.”
The dispute reflects years of escalating partisan hostilities over judicial nominations, as well as the unusual timing. The pace of lower court confirmations always slows in a presidential election year, as the party that does not control the White House prefers to hold out hope that its nominee will fill vacant judgeships rather than give lifetime tenure to the other party’s choices. But Supreme Court vacancies in presidential years are rare, in part because the justices avoid retiring when prospects for confirming successors are uncertain. If Senate Republicans hold fast to their vow not to confirm anyone Obama nominates, then the Supreme Court will operate with eight justices not just for the rest of this court term, but for most of the next one as well. High court terms begin in October, and the 80 or so cases argued in the course of a term typically are decided by early summer.The court will be unable to issue nationwide rulings on any issue in which the justices split 4 – 4.
Obama: Will nominate ‘indisputably’ qualified Supreme Court justice
Whatever You Do Vote…
There are eerie similarities between The Republican Party in the United States and the People’s National Party in Jamaica.
Republicans do what they want when they are in power, when Democrats are in power all of a sudden the rules of the game change.
The People’s National Party is the very same way.
Now this defy conventional wisdom the Republican Party was thought to be the conservative party much more like the Jamaica Labor Party.
Well not so there are some changes.
The Republicans fundamentally believe the Democrats does not have a right to Govern America . Every Democratic President since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has been demonized and their record marginalized.
The People’s National Party’s silly little mantra ‘jumeka a pnp kuntry’ depict a far more sinister philosophy that the country should be ruled by one party, the PNP.
Republicans demonize everyone not in lock-step with their xenophobic, Racist agenda.
People’s National Party functionaries from the pinnacle to the cellar believe in character assassination , intimidation , threats and cohersion as tools with which to fight dissenters.
Republicans believe only dead Republicans are worthy of praise when America’s history is being debated.
PNP tribal zealotry stridently denies Labor Party stalwarts while elevating the Manleys and other PNP ideologues to the status of deity.
Watching the Republican debates reveals an exercise in the silly and mundane. In fact one candidate refused to participate in the one debate because his ego was bruised.
The Prime Minister refuses to debate the leader of the Opposition unless he apologize for calling her a ‘con artist”.
Of course he was responding to her characterization of his economic plan as quote ‘a con game”. If his plan is a ” con-game” the noun, it is clear to assume that by inference she sees him as a con-artist the pronoun.
I could go on and on with the similarities but you get the picture. Both Political parties want no opposition and are not opposed to use lies and obfuscation to win elections.
Republicans want to suppress the vote , yet they claim they have better plans for the people. The question is “what people” . If a party is confident of what it is proposing why not put it all out there and let the people decide?
The PNP refuses to debate , if the progress is tun up why be afraid to debate the merits of the party’s accomplishments?
Anyway it’s the silly season once again in the big olé US of A and so too is it in little Jamaica. Here’s hoping voters will cut through the noise and the lies and vote their children’s futures.
In the end we get the Government we deserve. Whether we vote or not.
The Bedrock Of Achieving First-world-status Is The Rule Of Law…
As general elections draw nearer with each passing day passions are inflamed, issues rise to the fore which have serious consequences for our Country.
One of the talking points is which party will lead Jamaica to first world status.
Sadly for many in both parties they believe that what constitutes First-world-status is physical infrastructure.
First world status starts with establishing laws, improving the delivery of justice to the population ‚the delivery of education and health care are important as well. Invariably, putting these principles in place creates the components which puts in place the physical long term structures we crave.
Each challenge Jamaica faces is an opportunity for the island to be better. Of course this depends on whether the leaders have the vision necessary to create a better country from these challenges.
It is important that if Jamaica is to ever become better it must transfer power from politicians back to the people.
Jamaica must become a nation of laws , that is the way democracies thrive. The Island will thrive when everyone has a stake in the country, when every Jamaican feel equal in the sight of the law.
Being equal is not about being told you are all equal , its about that equality being enshrined in law, and enforced with strictest fidelity by the courts.
For years this writer has called for fixed election dates in this very medium. It wasn’t until this current cycle came around that I learned that the opposition Jamaica Labor Party support that position, so too does the National Democratic Movement..
The Labor party was in power for four years yet they did not bring this to the parliament for a vote.
Now that Portia exercised her power by manipulating the process to favor herself and her party the Labor Party is upset .
Why did they not bring it to a vote if they believed in the fidelity of the process?
The other pressing issue is that little problem of the PNP’s refusal to debate the Leader of the Opposition by attaching conditions for the Prime minister’s participation.
Of course the Prime Minister’s conditions are cowardly and gutless but these could all be avoided if there were strict guidelines in law which makes it mandatory in the interest of the people that the leaders must participate in debates. In fact it should not be just one debate.
Some will say well the present laws are clear about the time Parliament is dissolved , Nomination day and election day. On that basis they will argue there may not be enough time to have a series of debates.
To those concerns I say , the laws were created to suit that time in our history , this is now.
We change what needs changing to fit our present and future circumstance.
One debate is not enough to deal with the raft of issues germane to the well-being of the people, there should be several debates mandated in law.
Candidates seeking to become members of parliament should also be mandated by law to debate their opponents in a town-hall type setting so the people can participate and make informed decisions.
There are howls of condemnation coming from several quarters of civil society regarding the intransigence of the ruling PNP in not debating the Opposition leader.
What I have not heard is a single individual or entity calling for Legislation which would eliminate these problems.
In the Interest of our Country this writer and this medium will once again call for the following.….
(1) FIXED ELECTION DATES.
(2) MANDATORY DEBATES BETWEEN THE TWO LEADERS, AS WELL AS DEBATES BETWEEN THE CANDIDATES CONTESTING EACH CONSTITUENCY.
If these important issues are not legislated we will be right back here having the very same conversations the next election cycle.
This is an opportunity for the members of the House,both Government and Opposition to grow up, stop banging on desks and hurling insults at each other and do something for the country.
These two issues should be front and center when the next Parliament is convened . This writer will be watching, regardless of the outcome of the elections.
The PNP’s Contribution, Divisiveness, Envy ‚racial Animus…
STEP UP THE PROGRESS !
Progress for whom ?
Over the years the People’s National Party has had Jamaicans fooled using catchy phrases and jingles.
Which leads us to ask just how stupid are Jamaicans really?
Michael Manley’s campaign against Edward Seaga was one of the most divisive campaigns waged in the history of our young Nation. In fact it could reasonably be argued that it was during Michael Manley’s divisive foray into Jamaican politics that the chasm which exist today developed.
MY FATHER BORN YA !!!
Michael Manley waged a viscous and visceral campaign against the JLP’s Edward Seaga who was born on 28 May 1930, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Philip George Seaga and Erna (née Maxwell), Seaga’s parents returned to Jamaica with Edward when the boy was three months old. [wikipedia].
George Nooks a reggae singer and PNP supporter penned and made popular a song titled ‘my father born ya’ which became the National anthem for the PNP in it’s racist campaign against Edward Seaga.
Never mind that Michael Manley’s grandfather T.A.S. Manley was the son of a white Anglo-Saxon trader who migrated from Yorkshire England.
There was nothing in the Jamaican Constitution which precluded or barred Seaga from representational politics because of his American birth. Remember Seaga’s parents returned to their native Jamaica when their son was a mere three months old.
The Constitution appropriately bars a foreign national with allegiance to a foreign Country from holding political office in Jamaica.
This did not apply to Edward Seaga a Jamaica. Yet Michael Manley and his Party did not care they divided the country along party lines, racial lines and along economic lines.
HOLNESS’S HOUSE A PRODUCT OF ENVY MANLEY SOWED…..
Out of many one people.
Jamaica has always been a melting pot of different people of all different backgrounds. One of the defining characteristics of Jamaicans regardless of ethnicity , is our vehemence about our Jamaican-ness.
None of the uniqueness of our vehement Jamaican-ness mattered to Michael Manley he was prepared to win at all cost.
Edward Phillip George Seaga was painted and depicted as an un-Jamaican interloper who should not be trusted.
Every negative connotation was attached to Seaga with a view to making him less Jamaican than the majority black African population, or not Jamaican at all.
The PNP disseminated lies and propaganda which claimed that Seaga was a tool of the Central Intelligence Agency . He was spoken of pejoratively as ‘Spyaga’, despite the fact that Seaga had invested more time and effort toward the development of Jamaica and it’s culture in ways Manley could only dream of .
The character assassination leveled against Bruce Golding and literally every other member of the JLP deserving or not, has always been the ‘modus operandi’ of the People’s National Party.
When a party has nothing substantive to offer it creates diversions intended to inflame passions.
It is withing that context that we must assimilate this brouhaha surrounding Andrew Holness’s home. Recently I wrote that Jamaica is headed in the direction of the 70’s .
JAMAICA HEADING BACK TO THE DARK DAYS OF THE 1970’S…
It was that very same spirit of envy which characterized Manley’s reign which Andrew Holness is being forced to address.
This notion that people who work hard , plan and succeed are wicked capitalists is still alive in Jamaica. The idea is that those who succeed should give half of what they have to lazy people who look to Government for handouts, is alive and well. In fact they no longer want half they simply kill and take what they want.
Hence the murder statistics to a certain degree.
The idea of casting doubt on success, or that successful people derived what they have through less than honest means is reprehensible.
Either way the PNP is not the party to be pointing fingers.
It’s Integrity Commission a misnomer is in need of an integrity overall.
Now that Holness have revealed his sources of funding for his project, let see if Portia Simpson Miller Percival Patterson , Peter Phillips and others will divulge the source of their incredible wealth.
Either way it may not matter to an uneducated electorate whose interest is focused largely on the very next meal .
This is the legacy of the People’s National Party. This is the enduring and indelible stink this Party has on embedded in Jamaica.
Holness Answers.…
Opposition Leader Andrew Holness last night responded to questions about his house posed by the ruling People’s National Party (PNP), disclosing what he described as “an unprecedented amount of personal financial affairs” and stating that he was doing so “in the interest of transparency and integrity” as a public figure.
At the same time Holness, the leader of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), fired back nine questions at the PNP and Finance Minister Dr Peter Phillips, saying that they need to provide answers “for the sake of completeness and transparency”.
Here is the full text of Holness’s statement:
My fellow Jamaicans,
Recently the People’s National Party, namely the minister of finance, has politicised my personal affairs.
As a public figure, I have a duty to ensure that my affairs meet legal and ethical standards, recognising as well that we are now in an election campaign, where there is a concerted effort by the PNP to distract from the plans that the Jamaica Labour Party has put forward in our 10-Point Plan for the benefit and prosperity of the people of Jamaica.
I will answer these questions, but first, for the sake of completeness and transparency, we, too, have questions to ask Dr Phillips and the PNP:
1. Dr Phillips, as a parliamentarian earning practically the same salary as the Leader of the Opposition, how did you afford the house you presently live in, which is valued at multiple times your salary?
2. Were you a part of the Cabinet of Jamaica which created FINSAC, and which took away the property of many hard-working Jamaicans and decimated the entrepreneurial class?
3. If the answer to question 2 is yes, did you acquire any of the properties taken over by FINSAC, or benefit in anyway whatsoever.
4. Did members of the Cabinet that created FINSAC acquire properties taken over by FINSAC.
5. Do the answers to questions 2, 3 and 4 explain your unwillingness to complete and release the FINSAC report?
6. Do you own or have a beneficial interest in a house in Beverly Hills?
7. Are there members the Cabinet who have offshore companies?
8. Will you declare any assets you have overseas?
9. Will the officers of the PNP, including yourself, testify and come clean about Trafigura?
The above questions are pertinent to the electorate, particularly those relating to Finsac. Those who lost their properties due to Government policy have a right to know if their ministers of Government benefited from their loss.
Now, I will take the opportunity to dispose of the smear campaign and innuendoes of illicit funding initiated by the PNP.
Upon becoming a minister, and also having regard to the fact that I had a young family, I took legal and accounting advice as to how I should structure my personal affairs.
Consequent on that advice I incorporated an international business company in St Lucia.
This course of action is common practice, particularly for estate planning purposes. The name of the company, ADMAT, is a combination of the names of my two sons Adam and Matthew.
I am the sole director of the company and the company has three shareholders being my sons and myself.
The company was registered in 2008 and declared to the Integrity Commission that year.
Everything I own is physically in Jamaica.
In late 2010, I started negotiations to purchase a piece of land to construct my family home.
In January 2011, I made the first of four payments on the land.
Payments were completed in August 2011.
The title was transferred in July 2011. At the time of signing I did not write any statement saying, “signed while on a visit to Jamaica”.
Funds from my accounts at JMMB and Stocks and Securities were used to finance the purchase of the property.
In September 2012, we began preparation of the site for construction, which involved excavation of boulders and fragmentation of rocks.
The resulting stones from this process were used to construct retaining, facing and boundary walls. This initial phase was financed from my savings, salary and suppliers’ credit of approximately $3.8 million.
This initial phase cost approximately $8.6 million.
The second phase was the actual erection of the structure, this happened during 2013 at a cost of approximately $35 million which was financed by a $10 million home improvement loan from Scotiabank, a $3 million mortgage from Jamaica National, and supplier’s credit of approximately $15.6 million. My wife, being a real estate developer, has established credit lines for the supply of construction and building material and equipment rental. The suppliers’ credit came from this source.
In 2014 we completed all major construction and in that year spent approximately $9 million financed by salary, savings and supplier’s credit.
In 2015, there was no significant construction activity as the project was substantially complete.
To date, the total cost of land preparation, construction and landscaping is approximately $52 million spent over a period of four years, financed by savings, salary, bank loans, and supplier’s credit.
Currently I am servicing debt repayments to the banks and to suppliers.
All of this has been declared in my annual integrity reports which have been filed within the statutory time frame.
My report for the year 2015 will be filed by March 31, 2016 as required by law.
So, in the interest of transparency and integrity in public life, I have disclosed an unprecedented amount of personal financial affairs. Furthermore, our Government will be committed to transparency. In the coming days we will be publishing the Jamaica Labour Party’s plan to address corruption.
I have now met the demands of the People’s National Party. I look forward to debating Mrs Simpson Miller soon. Story originated here : Holness answers
Holness’s House A Product Of Envy Manley Sowed.….
There were steps taken by Michael Manley’s Socialist régime of the 70’s which are directly impacting Jamaica over four decades later . These steps have had tremendous consequence, and are still impacting the contemporary body-politic.
MOBILIZATION
The People’s National Party mastered the art of mobilizing in the 70’s. One of Michael Manley’s strengths was his ability to bring people along with him on his ideas.
Not just that, Manley was able to mobilize his party, from the highest placed functionary to the least educated grass-roots supporter to buy into what he was selling.
Among the leftists leaders who dotted the landscape of the time, from Latin-America , the Caribbean, to the distant shores of Africa ‚no Leader was more gifted in mobilizing the masses.
With soaring rhetoric and his deep baritone delivery Manley ignited the down-trodden masses of Jamaica the Caribbean and around the Globe.
Today Jamaicans and parts of the Caribbean still think of Michael Manley as a Messiah who came with a message of Self-reliance and self-determination for the poorer class of people largely people of African Ancestry.
A detailed non-biased look at this perception however yields much more than that which meets the eyes.
The results however would have to be considered by an educated electorate capable of sifting through the propaganda with a view to harvesting potential nuggets of value.
When the entirety of the pros and the cons are considered objectively, the rhetoric may not match the facts.
Hans Christian Andersen’s “Pied-Piper of Hamlin” did free the Town of rats but he also led the entire town’s children away. Those children were never seen again.
Some Jamaicans did gain a degree of freedom from the shackles of mental Colonialism but the innocence , peace, and progress the country lost has not been seen since.
You do the math.
PROPOGANDA
The PNP understood that whomever controlled the message controlled the masses.
Michael Manley and the PNP went about politicizing existing Media-houses of the day and creating others for the purpose of mass indoctrination.
The Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation, (JBC) , Radio and Television for all intents and purposes became arms of the PNP.
Under Manley the Jamaica Daily News was created , a now defunct newspaper which was completely dedicated to indoctrinating the masses with the Governing PNP’s agenda.
The Jamaica Information Service(JIS), another Government Medium was politicized and used in the most vulgar ways to disseminate PNP propaganda.
MALIGNING
Under Michael Manley Jamaicans who worked hard and acquired material possessions were maligned and made out to be greedy Capitalists who did not deserve to have the proceeds of their labor.
Manley and the PNP actively taught poor Jamaicans that they were entitled to have half of whatever their neighbors owned as part of his Socialist philosophy.
Jamaica was forever changed because of this, many Jamaicans who had inherited some material possessions and others who benefited through the sweat of their brows feared for their lives and they fled in droves.
Manley’s brigands moved into their homes, a move which literally ghettoized once pristine neighborhoods. This is a trend which Jamaica has not been able to reverse.
Many Jamaicans were killed for no other reason than that they had material possessions.
That rapacious mental depravity is pretty much par for the course in contemporary Jamaica, where people are summarily slaughtered, even when their assailants need not take their lives.
Just recently an elderly couple who returned to the Island became victims of that depravity.
The ongoing debated about a house the leader of the Opposition Labor Party Andrew Holness has under construction is another example of the depraved envy which characterize the very core of the PNP.
It is incomprehensible and shockingly cynical that the PNP would question anyone’s integrity.
The PNP has been a cancerous cesspool of corruption which has sucked the life-blood from the once thriving Island, reducing it to a waste-land of beggars and murderous blood-thirsty demons.
I have no idea where Holness sourced the funding for the house he is building. Neither do I know where Portia Simpson Miller earned the supposed US$20 million she is worth.
Neither have intelligent Jamaicans above” curry goat and Red-stripe Beer” learned the whereabouts of billions of dollars which have dissapeared in the litany of scandals under the current PNP administration.
PATRONAGE
Manley’s machismo on behalf of the down-trodden should not be consumed without a full understanding of captured homes and properties, their owners having fled out of fear for their lives.
Let’s bring some perspective to this charade which has metastasized for too long. Let’s push back against the revisionist historians.
Jamaica is enjoying the bitter fruits of Manley’s labor.
Whatever good was derived from Manley’s tenure must be measured against the negatives which emanated after.
Open your minds and think.
Ted Cruz Fair Weather Constitutionalist
Every President has a Constitutional duty and a responsibility to appoint justices to the Supreme Court as well as other courts in the Federal system whenever vacancies occur.
Elections have consequences, becoming President of the United States is a big deal . As Vice President Joe Biden would say it ” this is a big f*****g deal”.
Every President has the right to his/her agenda, that includes appointing suitable justices to fill vacancies in the federal court system.
No jurist is ever bigger that the process. No President has more power than another .
In fact President Obama who has replaced two associate justices to the supreme court has done an outstanding job in selecting Sonia Sotomayer and Helena Kagan who were both confirmed by the senate.
RIGHT WING HYPOCRISY
It is stunning ‚yet not surprising to hear Ted Cruz and the other Cuban Marco Rubio , two Republican candidates for President immediately demand that the next President(not Obama) appoint a successor to Antonin Scalia who recently passed away.
For the record Antonin Scalia fought tooth and nail to dismantle every single piece of legislation which would seek to reverse over four hundred years of racial injustice in America.
Lets be clear , despite the platitudes and the hand wringing you will hear from the lame stream media going forward, to include so called Democrats, Antonin Scalai represented exactly what is wrong with America.
President Obama in his role as the leader of the country came out and paid tribute to Scalia as he was expected to, (God bless him he is a better man than I am). The President said he would fulfill his constitutional duties by appointing a successor to Scalia in due course.
For the sake of clarity what I find disgusting about Ted Cruz and to a lesser extent the other Hispanic Marco Rubio , is the length to which they will go to pretend they are more American than everyone else.
Ted Cruz runs on the notion that no other candidate is as Con- servative as he is , in fact several of the other candidates have criticized him and labeling him a liar.
Cruz’s own law professor from Harvard called him out for being a fair weather constitutionalist. Everything is only as good as Ted Cruz say it is. No one is as conservative as Ted Cruz . The guy is an ego-maniac and a narcissist , that makes him dangerous.
Is it any wonder that this guy want to carpet-bomb other countries into submission?
Ted Cruz is running to be President of the United States of America, Barack Obama is the twice-elected President of the United States of America. Neither Ted Cruz nor the rest of the right-wing noise machine gets to determine whether the President appoint a successor to Scalia or not . That is the constitutional perogative of the President of the United States and not a self centered Republican Senator from Texas.