“Our mission of uplifting the Jamaican people and working toward economic independence was challenged during the past year by the slippage of the Jamaican dollar. The Net International Reserves also dipped, but not our reserve of courage, determination and resilience in the face of the international economic environment and domestic challenges. Yet, our confidence in the Jamaican people has never been stronger.

“Our ancestors did not fight so gallantly; did not shed their blood for us to now capitulate to gloom and doom. No. We know, as Jimmy Cliff assured us, that we can get it if we really want. All we have to do is to try, try and try, and we will succeed at last.”

PM Simpson Miller:

No those were not my words, they were uttered by Jamaica’s illus­tri­ous Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller pic­tured above. In fact those words were uttered by Miller but must have been writ­ten by a speech writer who clear­ly does­n’t yet under­stand the way each line and every word would be ana­lyzed and construed.

I’m not here to cri­tique the Prime Minister’s speech , I am sim­ply here to draw atten­tion to the fact that Jamaica is in dire straits, and to shine a light to those wish­ing to see that the Country’s lead­ers have no clue.

She did not have the hon­esty or the grav­i­tas to accept respon­si­bil­i­ty for the destruc­tion of the Dollar.

It’s inter­est­ing that the Prime Minister has noth­ing she could point to as progress made since they won the elec­tions on December 29^th 2011. In fact after the PNP took office they had not tabled much less passed a sin­gle piece of leg­is­la­tion with­in the first 100 days of attain­ing office.

This is tes­ta­ment to what I con­clud­ed then that this par­ty was tired, out of ideas, and had no clue that the peo­ple would thrust them back into gov­er­nance after such a short respite. Remember that pri­or to the his­to­ry mak­ing JLP sin­gle term, the PNP had been in office for an unbro­ken ¹⁸¹⁄₂ years, dur­ing which time every­thing we knew and loved about Jamaica had changed for the worse.

It comes as no sur­prise then that the Prime Minister would char­ac­ter­ize the seri­ous eco­nom­ic cri­sis fac­ing the coun­try as , Quote”

Our mission of uplifting the Jamaican people and working toward economic independence was challenged during the past year by the slippage of the Jamaican dollar. The Net International Reserves also dipped”

This state­ment has to be the under­state­ment of the decade, it goes to the heart of why Jamaica’s pre­cip­i­tous posi­tion will not change under this admin­is­tra­tion. As I have said before you can­not fix some­thing you do not understand!

So while the Prime Minister down­plays the seri­ous­ness of the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion crime con­tin­ues to esca­late, less Jamaicans are return­ing to the land of their birth to vis­it , much less to reset­tle. Even Police Officers are being slaugh­tered and the Police Department long laid bare by nepo­tism , pol­i­tics and cor­rup­tion, is reduced to utter­ing threats to crim­i­nals. The irony is that crim­i­nals do not make idle threats, they actu­al­ly car­ry out their inten­tions with cold effi­cien­cy, irre­spec­tive of the vic­tim, police of otherwise.

Over the last few days a Detective Sargent was slaugh­tered as he arrived home, a few weeks ago a retired Deputy Superintendent Denzil Boyd was slaugh­tered , you guessed it.… as he arrived home. Before that Retired Superintendent Anthony Hewitt was mur­dered in broad day­light, also to lose his life was Senior Superintendent Dathan Henry, a friend of mine, word on the street is that he was mur­dered, poi­son being the method used.

To date nei­ther of these mur­ders have been solved, the Jamaica Constabulary Force zero of 4. The year was 1991, after serv­ing 10 years in the JCF I decid­ed to call it a day, I was 30 years old , I fig­ured I would not stay and be an old bit­ter cor­rupt cop. I had suc­cess­ful­ly sat and passed the Acting Corporal exam the first time around at 2 years ser­vice. Not promoted !

Hewitt:

At 4 years ser­vice I was allowed to sit the Corporal exam, aced it . Not promoted.

Sent on CIB course. Aced it, high­est score in the writ­ten exams, sec­ond high­est score in weapons and tac­ti­cal shoot­ing, wrote and dev­iled the Valedictory address, wrote the vote of thanks for the woman cop who deliv­ered it.

Then came the accel­er­at­ed exam pro­gram, I was one of sev­en­ty-five who passed, of the 400 plus who qual­i­fied to sit the exams, did the inter­view, the Superintendent did not rec­om­mend me because he could­n’t push me around. This despite 13 com­men­da­tions on my record in less than a decade of ser­vice and no instance of impro­pri­ety of any kind. Not to men­tion acco­lades from high­ly placed mem­bers of the soci­ety who crossed path with me and want­ed the Commissioner to know. I still have a at least one hang­ing on my home office wall from the for­mer chair­man of the Police Services Commssion Noël Hylton.

It was­n’t until after I had bought a tick­et and decid­ed that I was leav­ing the Force and the Country that I was sum­moned to 103 Old Hope Road to meet with Deputy Commissioner Harper to dis­cuss my future, much to my dis­may. No one ever thought that it was nec­es­sary to pro­mote a hard-work­ing cop who had name recog­ni­tion, clean record, and cred­i­bil­i­ty with the peo­ple he served. It was only after I was ready to walk out the door they were ready to promise me pro­mo­tion and oppor­tu­ni­ty to lead some new squad or anoth­er that was more intel­li­gence based, that would focus on ille­gal trad­ing in for­eign cur­ren­cy on the coun­try’s west coast.

Boyd:

I polite­ly declined, true to his word, DCP Harper saw that I was pro­mot­ed the same week. I learned of that pro­mo­tion from New York. There was no men­tion of my qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the accel­er­at­ed pro­gram, which super­seded most of what they had, many of whom were lack­eys, boot-lick­ers, yes-men , who could not catch a crim­i­nal if he was in their bed. You know the type, the force is full of them now as senior officers.

My sto­ry is the sto­ry of a lot of tal­ent­ed and ded­i­cat­ed men and women who sim­ply walked away, after all the JCF of today is what’s left, it’s not much, they can­not inves­ti­gate, they are still mired in cliques, friends, pol­i­tics, ass-kissers, boot-lick­ers , and yard boys, I refused to be any of those.

I am not in any way impugn­ing the char­ac­ter of all mem­bers of the Force, those who are labeled ‚pret­ty well know them­selves, they did­n’t have any use for me when I served , they were scared, because I did­n’t take or put up with any s***.

Simpson:

The killers of these men are, actu­al­ly still walk­ing around with­out any fear of appre­hen­sion, they know the Police Force is inept, cor­rupt, and inca­pable of ful­fill­ing their emp­ty promise to bring them to jus­tice, or to bring jus­tice to them, my pref­er­ence in cas­es like these. In oth­er local­i­ties Killers of law enforce­ment offi­cers are treat­ed with the utmost dis­patch and alacrity, they will not rest until cop-killers are caught or killed, in Jamaica it’s busi­ness as usu­al. Law enforce­ment is ren­dered impo­tent, by pol­i­tics and crim­i­nal sup­port­ing groups like Jamaicans for Justice, which open­ly sup­ports and lends com­fort to mass killers and cop killers.

In 1991 the JCF was clear­ing up about 70% of the crimes report­ed to it, today that num­ber is down to 7 % , and the con­vic­tion rate is around 1 – 3% . For those who won­der why there are so many killings, look no fur­ther than with­in these num­bers. Criminals com­mit crimes when the chance of get­ting caught is low. In Jamaica it’s next to zero.

If you ever thought pol­i­tics do not seri­ous­ly impact your life ‚take a look at Jamaica and see what a peo­ple’s addic­tive infat­u­a­tion with promis­es , giveaways,cheap pop­ulism, a faux nation­al­ism does to a country.

Latino immigrants march for rights and recognition.

The 2012 Presidential Elections was a serious reality check for conscientious Republicans.…isn’t that an Oxymoron? Ok all kidding aside, they got beat in every category except white male.

African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, Women, Lesbians and Gays, Unionized work­ers, .….….…intel­li­gent peo­ple, ok I did say all jokes aside, but some­times I have to won­der if there are any sane peo­ple in the Republican Party?

I am stunned that a Party could con­scious­ly place itself on the wrong side his­to­ry ‚on issue after issue, after issue.

I am some­times tempt­ed to go on and on about Republicans, but why both­er? There are far more impor­tant things hap­pen­ing on our plan­et which war­rants our atten­tion than a par­ty still stuck in the age of Dinosaurs.

Last General Elections President Obama snagged 71% of the Latino vote com­pared to Mitt Romney’s 27%. In the pre­ced­ing 4 years since Obama has been President, he had hired Latinos to Cabinet posi­tions, signed an Executive Order giv­ing dreamers(mostly Latinos) a breather from depor­ta­tion, and prob­a­bly most impor­tant­ly he appoint­ed the very first Latino to the United Sates Supreme Court, Sonya Sotomeyer.

.

Former Labor Secretary Hilda Solis:Ass. Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomeyer:

I’m not about to cri­tique any­one on the basis of race, but I do won­der at the recent polling num­bers which saw Latinos giv­ing Congress a huge thumbs up. The con­gres­sion­al approval rat­ing stands at an impres­sive 56 per­cent among Hispanics, how­ev­er, up by 21 per­cent since November 2011, when just 35 per­cent gave a thumbs-up to Congress.

I have one sim­ple com­ment to make to my Hispanic friends. You do real­ize that there are Republicans in the Congress right? Even as the con­gress look at Immigration reform, Republicans are dug in on what they call Amnesty. They are opposed to any path­way to cit­i­zen­ship for the mil­lions of peo­ple here liv­ing in the shad­ows, Never mind that this would be a finan­cial plus for the econ­o­my. Whatever Republicans do on the issue of immi­gra­tion must be viewed as self serv­ing, as they are mas­ters and con­trollers of their own demise if they fail to get on board.

Even as the fate of the Republican Party is inex­tri­ca­bly linked to them gain­ing trac­tion with Latinos, the fastest grow­ing minor­i­ty group in the coun­try, they con­tin­ue to hold fast to their mantra of law and order. Everyone agrees this is a coun­try of laws, and as such those who vio­lat­ed the coun­try’s laws should be held account­able. but we must nev­er lose sight of the fact that we are all cit­i­zens of this world, we all came here at one time or anoth­er, and if we did­n’t , our four-par­ents did.

Arizona Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpio:

Republicans have one pol­i­cy, it is the pol­i­cy they have for every­thing, and every­one, except rich white males. “Punitive “, on every issue they adopt a puni­tive approach, an approach designed to pun­ish and exact revenge.

It is against that back­ground that I won­der if Latinos have con­sid­ered that the very peo­ple who want them impris­oned or kicked out of the coun­try are still in the con­gress as they give the con­gress this exu­ber­ant approval rating.

My Latino friends may want to wait just a lit­tle while longer before they bring out the mari­achi bands, There is still no Immigration Bill signed by the President, and the same Racist old Republican White men are still in con­trol of the House of Representatives.

The mem­o­ry and lan­guage of peo­ple like Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpio of Maricopa County should be a stark reminder to Latinos that the bat­tle is far from over. So I sug­gest they hold off on the thumbs up to congress.

Yesterday we reported and commented on a 50% drop in the number of Jamaicans returning home to retire over the last 10 years.

I have warned over the years, in every medium which allowed me a voice, to include the Jamaican Daily papers and more recently my own blogs, that this drop would occur. As I recognized then, we did not have Alumina as a significant earner of foreign exchange, we had lost most of the markets we had for agricultural products like bananas. In essence Jamaicans had conversely bought into the false narrative that American foods were better than locally grown produce. Traditional and would be farmers gave up on agriculture as a means of making a living. There is no single reason Jamaica is in the pickle it’s in now, there is a cornucopia of reasons, take your pick. When we sum up in precise form why our country is broke, crime comes to the fore. Jamaica lost agriculture because farmers could not produce quality foods, with consistency and at the price that the Americans could, Consequently American foods flooded the Jamaican market.

Let me be clear, when I say “Jamaican farm­ers could not pro­duce the qual­i­ty foods” I mean agri­cul­ture foods, par­tic­u­lar­ly har­vest­ed fruits and veg­eta­bles must be cleaned and refrig­er­at­ed as soon as pos­si­ble, if their pris­tine qual­i­ty is to be main­tained. We sim­ply can­not har­vest veg­eta­bles in 90 degree weath­er, put them in the back of an non-refrig­er­at­ed truck to their des­ti­na­tions and sim­ply hope we will be sup­ply­ing top qual­i­ty veg­eta­bles. For finan­cial and oth­er rea­sons, Jamaicans farm­ers are unable to meet the exact­ing stan­dards of today’s food indus­try. Hotels sim­ply have to source foods with con­sis­ten­cy and which are of the best quality.

Having spent a decade in law enforce­ment I am no stranger to the sor­did and com­plex under­bel­ly of Jamaica’s crime mon­ster. I am also acute­ly aware that the coun­try’s crim­i­nals have grown expo­nen­tial­ly more advanced since I exit­ed that dis­ci­pline. One of the most fright­en­ing thing about Jamaica’s crime epi­dem­ic is the extent to which it extends with­in the Jamaican cul­ture. I was not in the least sur­prised that trans­paren­cy International, an inter­na­tion­al rat­ings agency, rat­ed Jamaica 84% cor­rupt. My only prob­lem with that assess­ment is that I tru­ly believe that the truth lies some­where in the 90% range.

The fact is that crim­i­nal­i­ty is a way of life in Jamaica, Politicians, Police, Doctors, Lawyers ‚Clergy, Business-peo­ple, Judges, there is no group of peo­ple who are guilt­less of the cor­ro­sive scourge of dis­hon­esty, or crim­i­nal com­plic­i­ty. Many Jamaicans see hon­est as a vice, one could eas­i­ly lose his life try­ing to do the right thing in the Jamaica of today. Even those perched atop the high­est rungs of the soci­etal lad­der are stained with the pun­gent stench of cor­rup­tion and graft.

It should come as no sur­prise then, that today the Jamaica Constabulary claimed that they were aware that there is a scam under­way which is bilk­ing Insurance com­pa­nies of bil­lions of dol­lars.(Jamaicagleaner​.com). This is noth­ing new but the police’s only duty now a days seem to be that they too have heard of the crimes being com­mit­ted, they seem lit­tle more than a Security Guard Organization and a very bad one at that. This scam alleged­ly involves Lawyers, Doctors, and mem­bers of the pub­lic, no doubt there are police offi­cers involved as well.

Whatever hap­pened to the Finsac Enquiry?

Chen-Young’s Eagle Group was tak­en over by the Financial Sector Adjustment Company (Finsac) in 1997, and a foren­sic audit ini­ti­at­ed into the oper­a­tions of the group. The fol­low­ing year Chen-Young faced a $900-mil­lion law­suit brought by Eagle Merchant Bank and Crown Eagle — two of the com­pa­nies he found­ed. He sub­se­quent­ly left the island. Chen-Young has since repeat­ed­ly insist­ed that peo­ple con­nect­ed to Finsac have made relent­less efforts to dis­cred­it him and destroy his career​.Read more:http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com

Whatever hap­pened to Trafigura? Dutch author­i­ties want­ed to ques­tion PNP President Portia Simpson Miller, par­ty chair­man Robert Pickergill and senior mem­bers Phillip Paulwell and Colin Campbell about a $31 mil­lion dona­tion to the par­ty by Trafigura Beheer. It is ille­gal for Dutch com­pa­nies to donate to polit­i­cal par­ties. At the time of the dona­tion in 2006, Trafigura had an oil-lift­ing con­tract with the PNP Administration which had formed the gov­ern­ment. In court doc­u­ments, the PNP is con­tend­ing that the order for its offi­cials to answer ques­tions in rela­tion to the Trafigura probe by Dutch author­i­ties is a breach of their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. Jamaican Government of the PNP took cam­paign funds from a Dutch Company doing busi­ness with the Government. jamaica​glean​er​.com

Whatever hap­pened to the Cuban Light Bulb case involv­ing Kern Spencer?Whatever hap­pened to the dozens and dozens of cas­es of cor­rup­tion on the part of the Government of Jamaica involv­ing both polit­i­cal parties?

Kern Spencer Colleen Wright

While a state min­is­ter in the ener­gy min­istry in the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment led by the PNP, Spencer was placed in charge of an ener­gy-sav­ing project. The project involved the dis­tri­b­u­tion of four mil­lion free Cuban light bulbs island wide. The project was imple­ment­ed in July 2006.^[3] Allegations of irreg­u­lar­i­ties in the project were lev­eled against Spencer in Parliament in November 2007 by then Energy Minister Clive Mullings, who asked the audi­tor-gen­er­al and the con­trac­tor-gen­er­al to probe the mat­ter ^[3] Clive Mullings, told Parliament that $114 mil­lion was improp­er­ly spent on the dis­tri­b­u­tion of four mil­lion ener­gy-sav­ing light bulbs donat­ed by the Cuban Government to the peo­ple of Jamaica.^[4] In January 2008, the audi­tor-gen­er­al report­ed that about 176,380 of the four mil­lion bulbs, cost­ing approx­i­mate­ly $92 mil­lion, could not be account­ed for. There was also an absence of an effec­tive sys­tem of bud­getary con­trol result­ing in the mak­ing of pay­ments and the incur­ring of unpaid oblig­a­tions of $185.3 mil­lion over the approved finan­cial sup­port. On 26 February 2008 Kern Spencer was arrest­ed and slapped with sev­en charges. He is fac­ing three charges of con­spir­a­cy to defraud, one charge for breach­ing the Prevention of Corruption Act, and three charges for breach­ing the Money Laundering Act.^[3]Spencer spent the night in jail and remained behind bars until he was able to post bail on 29 February 2008.^{[8]wike­pe­dia}

These are some of the most egre­gious cas­es of cor­rup­tion graft and dis­hon­esty in recent mem­o­ry in Jamaica, all of which should have land­ed peo­ple in prison for very lengthy peri­ods of time. To date not a sin­gle per­son has been even tried in a court of law, much less con­vict­ed for these crimes.

In Jamaica like many oth­er nations the poor bears the brunt of the clutch­es of the law, hard­ly is there a coun­try which one may argue with any degree of legit­i­ma­cy that the laws are applied fair­ly across the board , irre­spec­tive of offend­er. Jamaica how­ev­er seem to go over­board to show that the polit­i­cal class and those with mon­ey are above the laws.

The Criminal Justice System would be a joke, were it not so impor­tant to the lives of so many. The like­ly hood of the poor­est and least influ­en­tial per­son who com­mits a crime get­ting caught or get­ting con­vict­ed is between 5 – 7%. That means between 93 – 95% per­sons who have com­mit­ted mur­der will nev­er have to fear get­ting caught. This met­ric is based on a one per­son per mur­der assumption.

The fact that there is such a huge unlike­ly hood that a felon will nev­er be made to pay for his crimes , they are more like­ly to be ser­i­al felons, to include those who mur­der. With all of that said, the chances of a politi­cian get­ting charged crim­i­nal­ly, con­vict­ed. or impris­oned is pret­ty much Zero!!

To the best of my rec­ol­lec­tion the only Politician ever to see what the inside a Prison look like was J.A.G. Smith for­mer labor min­is­ter under the Seaga Administration of the 1980“s, for alleged­ly steal­ing monies from poor farm work­ers accounts.

The Kern Spencer tri­al has been to my mind one of the most galling and (bare-faced) acts of crim­i­nal­i­ty to go unpun­ished. When the mat­ter came to light I stat­ed emphat­i­cal­ly that this case would go on and on then dis­posed of in the usu­al way, wit­ness­es can’t be found, file miss­ing, wit­ness­es can­not recall what they had said in their depo­si­tions, or any bull-shit of that nature.

There is begin­ning to be a gen­er­al con­sen­sus among even peo­ple who were staunch sup­port­ers, that the Country’s chief pros­e­cu­tor the Director Of Public Prosecution is incom­pe­tent, in over her head, or worse, I was one of her sup­port­ers who now ques­tion her com­pe­ten­cy. Despite being large­ly ineffectual,to her cred­it Paula Llewellyn did bring charges against Kern Spencer, it would appear that all the Jamaican peo­ple look­ing for jus­tice will get was the night he spent in jail February 28^th 2008.

From the onset the Magistrate pre­sid­ing over the case seemed over­ly aggres­sive toward the pros­e­cu­tion, this is not unusu­al as the Jamaican Courts are heav­i­ly slant­ed toward the defen­dant. This Magistrate how­ev­er seem over­ly hos­tile toward the peo­ple’s case. I fig­ured then and there then that like all of the oth­er politi­cians accused of crim­i­nal malfea­sance this case would go the route of all of the oth­er calls for justice.

The Magistrate made it obvi­ous that Spencer would not need a defense lawyer, she would cham­pi­on his defense, to date, the case is in lim­bo, those look­ing for a just res­o­lu­tion should move on and not hold their breaths.

Jamaica is a small coun­try, which for years have bor­rowed more mon­ey that it is capa­ble of repay­ing, as such more than 50% of the coun­try’s resources go to ser­vic­ing inter­est on it’s debt, as cat­a­stroph­ic and ulti­mate­ly cat­a­clysmic as this course is , the coun­try’s lead­ers con­tin­ue to seek out every pos­si­ble lender, try­ing to bor­row more money.

There’s no indi­ca­tion as to what that mon­ey has been used for. The coun­try’s infra­struc­ture, where it exist, are anti­quat­ed and dilap­i­dat­ed . Where the gov­ern­ment has built any struc­ture those struc­tures rep­re­sent the needs of today at best, with no thought for pop­u­la­tion growth. At this rate the coun­try will con­tin­ue to be a third world coun­try long after car­ribean neigh­bors, Trinidad, and Barbados have reached first world status.

The Country’s laws are no bet­ter, where new leg­is­la­tion com­men­su­rate with the sophis­ti­cat­ed real­i­ties of the coun­trys crim­i­nal prac­ti­tion­ers, they are usu­al­ly vague and poor­ly con­struct­ed. Which usu­al­ly result in guilty crim­i­nals walk­ing free due to crafty high priced (vul­tures),.….….….….….… I mean attorneys.

The atti­tude of the present Government has demon­stra­bly been one of sur­vival. Survival so it may con­tin­ue to hold state pow­er, but more so dodg­ing and mov­ing from cri­sis to cri­sis, through debt adjust­ments and oth­er short term fix­es. They have asked pub­lic sec­tor work­ers to sac­ri­fice by not ask­ing for, or expect­ing wage increas­es, even as the val­ue of the Dollar depre­ci­ates to almost J$100 to US$1 presently.

What this means is that, not only will Government work­ers not receive a wage increase, the val­ue of what they were receiv­ing pre­vi­ous­ly will con­tin­u­al­ly be whit­tled away. At the same time the Government engages in the pur­chase of high end lux­u­ry Sport Utility Vehicles for politi­cians com­fort at the expense of taxpayers.

The coun­try con­tin­ues to grap­ple with astro­nom­i­cal­ly high crime, com­pa­ra­ble to only five oth­er coun­tries in the world. The Police Department reports, it only has about 50% of the tools it needs to do the job it is tasked with doing.

There seem to be no plan on the part of the exist­ing gov­ern­ment to change direc­tion from the inevitable col­li­sion course it’s on with des­tiny. Whether that course adjust­ment will come through more aus­ter­i­ty, self reliance, reduc­ing cor­rup­tion and crime, thus attract­ing invest­ment and mem­bers of the dias­po­ra return­ing home is any­one’s guess. From my van­tage point it seem that the plan is the same , stay as long as pos­si­ble steal as much as pos­si­ble, to hell with country.

Jamaica now depend on the United States to pun­ish its crim­i­nals, as has been the case in the Christopher Coke and oth­er crim­i­nal cases.

Both of Jamaica’s polit­i­cal par­ties sim­ply refus­es to extri­cate them­selves from the ten­ta­cles of cor­rup­tion and crim­i­nal alle­giance. The peo­ple deserve bet­ter, yet there is no moral lead­er­ship, so it’s every man for himself.

Hill: Rainford:

Today we learned that Carlos Hill, who is on $15-mil­lion bail, and is charged with fraud­u­lent­ly induc­ing, stem­ming from alle­ga­tions that he coerced per­sons to invest in his bil­lion-dol­lar alter­na­tive invest­ment scheme, had his 15 mil­lion dol­lar bail post­ed by the then Permanent Sectetary in the Ministry of Local Government Robert Rainford, under the for­mer JLP government.

At the time of his alleged crimes Kern Spencer of the PNP was the Parliamentary Secretary in the National Security Ministry

Hill oper­at­ed the scheme for five years before its col­lapse in 2008. If con­vict­ed, Hill could be sen­tenced to sev­en years’ impris­on­ment. Even if Hill is acquit­ted in the Home Circuit Court, he would still not be out of the woods. Hill, his broth­er Bertram and for­mer Cash Plus exec­u­tive, Peter Wilson, are also fac­ing pros­e­cu­tion in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate’s Court in rela­tion to the scheme. They are to be tried in the Resident Magistrate’s court on charges of obtain­ing mon­ey by false pre­tense, con­spir­a­cy to defraud and fraud­u­lent conversion.(jamaicaobserver)

We under­stand that when con­tact­ed abroad Rainford hung up the phone on mem­bers of the media who want­ed to ask him ques­tions about his asso­ci­a­tion with Hill a con­vict­ed felon in the United States, who was under indict­ment in Jamaica.

There are real­ly no bound­aries in Jamaica, no one seem to have a moral com­pass even when the instances of con­flict of inter­est and cor­rup­tion are the most glar­ing. Jamaica the once pris­tine pearl of the Caribbean has been reduced to a den of thieves, and a cesspool of cor­rup­tion and graft.

The idea that Government may tell peo­ple what they may drink is a fright­en­ing prospect right?

Well fright­en­ing though it is, or ought to be, many of us allow Government to step in and reg­u­late what we eat in the name of pre­serv­ing our health. I am nei­ther a Doctor, Scientist,or even a pol­i­cy mak­er , what I am a how­ev­er, is a cit­i­zen of plan­et earth who cher­ish­es his free­dom and that of others.

New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg has tak­en it onto him­self to deter­mine that 32 ounce sug­ary drinks ought to be banned from New York City. As such, busi­ness­es doing busi­ness in Bloomberg’s Fiefdom has been scam­per­ing to order small­er sized cups, so as not to breach his Majesty’s decree, which should be in full effect by June of this year.

Of course this was before an Appeals Court Judge over­turned (HRH) Michael Bloomberg’s decree, thank God for checks and bal­ances. A cou­ple of days ago after learn­ing that the Court had done the right thing and stood up to what seem now to be a more aggres­sive and pompous Mayor Bloomberg, I tweet­ed that it was a great day for Democracy.

A dear friend of mine dis­agreed with me and made a very artic­u­late argu­ment on behalf of gov­ern­ment over-reach. Quote:

[ Sometimes a state’s inter­ven­tion to stem what can become a poten­tial­ly seri­ous health issue ‚do make sense …the ratio­nale : peo­ple who are addict­ed don’t think about their health issue which is relat­ed to their ill­ness , only their per­son­al ful­fill­ment . In the long run it will affect every­one who is pay­ing tax­es . An health sys­tem that’s over whelmed will require tax dol­lars to sus­tain it , your hard earned dol­lars man . Democracy is not an iso­lat­ed con­cept it involves mak­ing and tak­ing tough deci­sion by lead­ers on behalf of it pop­u­lace . that’s the prag­mat­ic way of look­ing at this issue. .…. pure democ­ra­cy is a utopi­an concept.]

Bravo, Bravo , Mac, as a bud­ding up and com­ing Lawyer , you make a dis­pas­sion­ate case for Mayor Bloomberg and every oth­er Political leader who feel that they know best whats right for indi­vid­u­als, who they cyn­i­cal­ly deem, too stu­pid to decide for themselves.

But please do tell.. Where in the record­ed his­to­ry of mankind has Politicians ever been judi­cious and/​or restrained when giv­en over­whelm­ing pow­er over it’s peo­ple? I’ll await your research on that my friend mis­ter Mac, but in the mean­time here’s what I think.

Remember when they demo­nized smok­ing then banned it from restau­rants and every eatery,and all pub­lic build­ings and places where peo­ple con­gre­gate, Then they banned it in Parks?.….….….….….……Yes, outside.
No one found it prob­lem­at­ic because they were fight­ing the big bad tobac­co right? This was after they had done decades of demo­niz­ing of tobac­co, it was­n’t hard, after that kind of dem­a­goguery for the Government to line up enough pub­lic sup­port to dras­ti­cal­ly tell us where we could or even if we may smoke.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no love for smok­ing but the issue is much larg­er than smok­ing, it is one of lib­er­ty and freedom.
It is a slip­pery slope when we allow Government to dic­tate to us in that way, one day we wake up and all your free­doms are gone.
Humans are quite capa­ble of decid­ing for them­selves what they drink or if they drink it is not up to the Government to decide, this is not even a legal issue, every well think­ing per­son should be out­raged at the temer­i­ty of Bloomberg, but not so, we have come to believe that Government knows best what’s right for us.

I stopped smok­ing because of the edu­ca­tion­al cam­paign cer­tain NGO’s and yes the gov­ern­ment waged, teach­ing about the health risks asso­ci­at­ed with smok­ing, not because some politi­cian man­dat­ed that I must stop. There are cer­tain fun­da­men­tal rights that must nev­er be abdi­cat­ed or turned over to gov­ern­ment. Those rights are not for Government to dole out to us, they are inalien­able rights giv­en to us by our creator.

Those Rights must nev­er be sub­ject to the whims of politicians.Every time Politicians want to take our rights they argue that it is for the greater good. As such it is dif­fi­cult for peo­ple who believe fun­da­men­tal­ly in the rights of the indi­vid­ual to self deter­mi­na­tion, to win the debate.

My response to my friend: Quote:

[Then you are even more gullible than I thought my broth­er. Pray do tell me ‚where any Government in the his­to­ry of mankind, when giv­en the pow­er over it’s peo­ple have EVER used that pow­er judi­cious­ly, spar­ing­ly, or for the best inter­est of the peo­ple? The peo­ple are the best indi­vid­ual con­troller of their own destiny,it is not up to gov­ern­ment to deter­mine what we eat drink wear, where we wor­ship, or if we wor­ship. Those are inalien­able rights grant­ed by our creator.NOT gov­ern­ment. The argu­ment you put for­ward in defense of Government’s intru­sions and over-reach into our lives are the very argu­ments gov­ern­ments use to con vul­ner­a­ble and gullible tax­pay­ers. You have essen­tial­ly bought into the con­cept my dear friend that we as human beings are too stu­pid to know what to eat or drink, so it’s bet­ter if gov­ern­ment make those deci­sions for us. I guar­an­tee you do not feel that strong­ly about that per­spec­tive you advanced now big Mac.]

My con­tention is not one against Government, it is one of pro indi­vid­ual rights and free­doms, I dare any­one to prove to me , that giv­ing more pow­er to Government any­where, has ever worked out for the good of the peo­ple. It does­n’t, it pro­duces tyrants who abuse peo­ple. Bloomberg is not there yet thanks to the checks and bal­ances with­in the sys­tem, but wher­ev­er politi­cians dare to show such temer­i­ty we should all be wary as to their motives.

Government Legislated Prohibition into law, look how well that turned out, say hel­lo to the Mafia. Government Legislated the War on drugs into effect , look how well that turned out, say hel­lo to mas­sive destruc­tion of lives by Cartels, the incar­cer­a­tion of Millions of non-vio­lent offend­ers and the destruc­tion of lives as a result of over-zeal­ous cops . And by the way illic­it drugs is still here with us more than ever, the mes­sage from that is, can we please try edu­ca­tion and treat­ment , and lay off the testos­terone- laced brava­do for a minute?

Bloomberg and his acolytes argue that they did not man­date that peo­ple could not order a sec­ond drink, they mere­ly want­ed peo­ple to think after hav­ing say a 20 oz, whether to order anoth­er. Sounds rea­son­able does­n’t it ?

The prob­lem with that non­sense is that for some­one pre­dis­posed to drink­ing a 32 oz con­tain­er of a sug­ary drink, there is not one shred of evi­dence that that per­son wont actu­al­ly order a sec­ond drink, the only change which will occur is that that per­son will be forced to fork out more mon­ey to sat­is­fy his/​her thirst, and the Staten Island land-fill will have to con­tend with more non-bio degrad­able thrash, thanks to His Highness King Bloomberg.

As I’ said before Government should extri­cate itself from over-reach­ing into the indi­vid­ual rights of peo­ple, stop telling peo­ple you can’t do this you can’t do that, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to their bod­ies. Education is a valu­able tool for con­vinc­ing peo­ple about obe­si­ty, as it has done with cig­a­rette smok­ing, as it has done with drunk dri­ving, as it will do for illic­it drug use, and pos­si­bly obesity

Bullying and ban­ning will make crim­i­nals out of legit­i­mate busi­ness own­ers, it may fill Jails with a new breed of crim­i­nals, it cer­tain­ly will not stop obe­si­ty, maybe Bloomberg real­ly does­n’t care about obe­si­ty, maybe what he real­ly wants are jails filled with a new breed of criminals.

Maybe there ought to be a ban on peo­ple hav­ing too much mon­ey, I respect­ful­ly argue it will go a long way in reduc­ing arro­gance, what do you say Mayor Bloomberg,? Remember it was your mon­ey and influ­ence which allowed you to con­vince the City Council to change the rules so you may serve 3 terms in office instead of the 2 term legal limit.

Despite the out­ra­geous and reck­less state­ments Antonin Scalia made from the bench at the Supreme Court yes­ter­day equat­ing the right of minori­ties to vote in America with racial enti­tle­ments, not a sin­gle Republican has come out in con­dem­na­tion of his statements.

Those Americans, and in par­tic­u­lar African-Americans who thought that some­how this coun­try had entered some sem­blance of post racial peri­od with the elec­tion of Barack Obama to the pres­i­den­cy ‚need to think again Conversely ‚Obama’s ele­va­tion has awak­ened what I am con­vinced always exist­ed here, a dark under-bel­ly of sin­is­ter evil, even in the high­est places of pow­er. We as humans and in par­tic­u­lar African-Americans must be on watch and in prayer for this pres­i­dent and his fam­i­ly, there are inher­ent evil arrayed against him which has noth­ing to do with his policies.

Whether you believe that Shelby County Alabama has a case in ask­ing the Supreme Court to remove it from Section 5 of the law which makes it manda­to­ry for the States named in the law (egre­gious pre­vi­ous offend­ers against the rights of minori­ties to vote) to get per­mis­sion from the Federal Government before mak­ing changes to their vot­ing laws is one issue.

The argu­ment of Shelby Count’s lawyers and seem­ing­ly the opin­ion of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts, that there are oth­er States which are big­ger offend­ers of the law and as such they ought to removed is insulting.

If the Presidential Elections of 2012 is an appro­pri­ate har­bin­ger of what will hap­pen to African-Americans in America then it is indeed a seri­ous time for intro­spec­tion reflec­tion and indeed some pan­ic. State Rights to the right-wing in America means the abil­i­ty to manip­u­late the laws using archa­ic and ille­gal meth­ods to pre­vent black peo­ple from vot­ing. It means lynch­ings with no one held account­able, it means abuse at the hands of the very peo­ple tasked with pro­tect­ing us. State Rights means rel­e­gat­ing black peo­ple to the back of the bus, it means dogs and water hoses , it means Federal Troops in order for our chil­dren to enter schools our tax­es built and main­tains. That is why they are against the Federal Government, when they talk about giv­ing States rights that is what they crave. Antonin Scalia’s igno­rant and poignant com­ments from the Bench, equat­ing the free and fair right of African Americans to vote as “Racial Entitlements brings to mind an impor­tant fact .Antonin Scalia was appoint­ed to the Supreme Court with a 98 ‑0 vote, the last time the Federal Voting Rights Act was re-autho­rized Senators vot­ed 98 – 0 .

Using Scalia’s own met­ric, it seem the time has come for his appoint­ment to be revis­it­ed, he is tenured, that appoint­ment is for life. Senators should get to work doing the nec­es­sary Legislative work in an effort to ensure that kind of igno­rance is removed from such a loft perch.

Today February 27^th President Obama, America’s 44^th President unveiled a statue of the mother of the Civil Rights struggle Rosa Parks in Washington DC.

Mrs Rosa Parks

As the President unveiled the statute of the slightly built woman on whose shoulders he now stands, The United States Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments in Shelby County Vs Holder, Holder being the United States Attorney General, who also stands on her shoulders.

At the cen­ter of the case before the Supreme Court, is the con­tention by Shelby County in the Southern State of Alabama that the law is no longer rel­e­vant. They are par­tic­u­lar­ly opposed to sec­tion 5 of the Voting Rights Act which forces cer­tain States that have been bla­tant offend­ers to get Federal per­mis­sion before they change their vot­ing laws.

Shelby County Alabama, as it con­tends that it should be removed from sec­tion 5 of the law, was vis­cer­al­ly engaged in pre­vent­ing the sole African-American elect­ed offi­cial in that very locale a fair shot at get­ting elect­ed. That attempt was thwart­ed by the courts and the offi­cial was over­whelm­ing­ly elected.

How a lawyer could straight faced make the case for removal in light of those facts is stun­ning. How a Supreme Court could enter­tain argu­ments in this case in light of the facts is indeed stunning.

There are indi­ca­tions that the right lean­ing Supreme Court, may actu­al­ly accede to the request of Shelby County Alabama, to strike down, or at least seri­ous­ly weak­en the law. Clarence Thomas an asso­ciate jus­tice on that Body, whose very pres­ence there is as a result of the sac­ri­fices and pain of the civ­il rights strug­gle, has been a dis­as­ter for the black com­mu­ni­ty in America.

Thomas is the quin­tes­sen­tial house negro who loathes him­self and as result has turned his back on every­thing which made him who he is and what he has been able to achieve. Thomas as vot­ed lock step with the oth­er right-wing reac­tionary Associate Justice Antonin Scalia , who yes­ter­day argues that the law per­pet­u­ates Racial entitlements.

That state­ment is not the first out­ra­geous state­ment that Scalia has made, but it cer­tain­ly shows that Scalia is not very smart , in fact it places him in the cat­e­go­ry of a racial big­ot with a moron­ic mind. The right to vote is a fun­da­men­tal right, Scalia seem to believe, as he inti­mat­ed that those things can­not be left up to the con­gress, that he has the right to sup­plant the author­i­ty of elect­ed offi­cials with his own right wing views.

Antonin Scalia fan­cies him­self a con­sti­tu­tion­al­ist and a strict believ­er in the con­sti­tu­tion, it appears how­ev­er that on the issue of Blacks peo­ple in America, he wants to be King Scalia and force us back to the cot­ton plantations.

Clearly Scalia, based on his con­tin­ued out­ra­geous utter­ances from the bench, is not there to inter­pret the laws, as is his func­tion, he has shown time and again that he is an activist Judge who believes in leg­is­lat­ing from the bench.

Scalia Thomas and Scalia

This is an out­ra­geous state­ment even if it was com­ing from an elect­ed mem­ber of the Congress, what makes it more chill­ing, is that it comes from a sit­ting mem­ber of the Supreme Court. It is one thing for one to argue that Food-Stamps, or Medicaid is an enti­tle­ment, but how can any­one in their right mind, equate the right to vote with entitlement.

This is a fright­en­ing devel­op­ment that must wake up the sleep­ing Giant which is the African Nation in America, if you ever thought you could trust the high­est court in the land to pro­tect your fun­da­men­tal and exis­ten­tial right as a human being , maybe you real­ly need to think twice about (Plessy VS Ferguson) , maybe you need to con­sid­er the words com­ing out of Antonin Scalia today.

It is an insult to all 37 mil­lion Africa-Americans, and tru­ly all well mean­ing Americans, that Scalia would deval­ue the work and sac­ri­fice of every­one who worked and fought and died, includ­ing those who were arrest­ed then released into the arms of the (KLU KLUX KLAN) only to be murdered.

This is an affront to the dig­ni­ty of every decent human being on this planet.

This is vin­tage Scalia mak­ing reck­less state­ments, sug­gest­ing that the una­nim­i­ty with which the Act was renewed, must be thrown out and sup­plant­ed with his views.

In the last General Elections under so-called nor­mal cir­cum­stances, blacks stood in line 20 min­utes to a com­pa­ra­ble 12 min­utes for whites to cast their votes. In States like Florida and oth­ers where there have been bla­tant attempts to sup­press the Africa-American vote, American cit­i­zens stood in line over 8 hours to vote.

President Obama spoke to this issue in his recent State Of The Union Address.

In 2009 the Voting Rights Act was re-autho­rized by a strong bi-par­ti­san plu­ral­i­ty, these sen­a­tors are elect­ed by the peo­ple, if the voice of the peo­ple mat­ters then this case should not even be before the Supreme Court.

This Act is impor­tant to the Principles of the American Democracy as it relates to the con­cept of one man one vote, it is in dire risk of being struck down by the right lean­ing Supreme Court.

Ironically, this assault on the vot­ing Rights Act comes after Barack Obama was twice elect­ed by the lion’s share of the minor­i­ty vote. What we wit­nessed lead­ing up to the last Presidential Elections was tan­ta­mount to stir­ring up a Hornet’s nest.

Statue of Rosa Parks Civil Rights Icon.

All across America from Pennsylvanian to Florida to Ohio, through­out the South there has been a sys­tem­at­ic effort by Republican State Majorities in those Legislatures, to make it extreme­ly dif­fi­cult for non-whites to vote. The very same Supreme Court has inter­vened on instances to halt some of these attacks.

How then did we find our­selves in this place? If America believes in the prin­ci­ples of democ­ra­cy , found­ed on the tenets of one man one vote, why is the Supreme Court even hear­ing this Case? Shouldn’t the fight be to increase vot­er par­tic­i­pa­tion rather than reduc­ing it?

Black Americans have suf­fered immense­ly in their strug­gle for suf­frage, many have been beat­en, water-hosed, bit­ten by dogs and slaugh­tered, all for dar­ing to demand they be treat­ed as human beings. The very notion of a human being hav­ing to seek legit­i­ma­cy, or even val­i­da­tion from anoth­er human is more than enough to engen­der rage, much less hav­ing to demand that anoth­er human rec­og­nize he is human, cre­ates a whole new degree of incredulity.

The issue is that, free­dom is nev­er free, Fifty years after the Civil Rights Struggle African-Americans have allowed them­selves to face the very specter of hav­ing to once again deal with dogs, bil­ly clubs and inevitable death, in their quest for free­dom. The old adage (those who for­get the mis­takes they made are bound to repeat them), is appropriate.

It is incom­pre­hen­si­ble that a Nation which pon­tif­i­cates so much about free­dom and Democracy , could have ele­ments of its Government con­tin­ue to expend ener­gy and cap­i­tal to restrict the rights and free­doms of sec­tions of its citizenry.

And yes, Shelby County Alabama is using the tax­es tak­en from it’s black cit­i­zens to make the case that they ought to be rel­e­gat­ed to sec­ond class citizens.

Signs paid for by the Lunatic Right in the Midwest State of Ohio, in Black Communities.

It is easy to pass off as igno­rant, the views that allowed for Jim Crow, and Bull Oc’Connor’s thugs. It’s easy to ratio­nal­ize away the lynch­ings and the idio­cy of sep­a­rate but equal, one may smirk at the very notion of racial supe­ri­or­i­ty, and we may fool our­selves into think­ing that those 60’s events could­n’t hap­pen again.

If you chose to believe these things can­not hap­pen again , I ask you this “have you been pay­ing atten­tion? In State after State in America there has been a sus­tained attempt by the Republican Party to nul­li­fy the African-American vote through redis­trict­ing, and vot­er sup­pres­sion meth­ods to include, dra­con­ian vot­er ID laws, less vot­ing days lead­ing up to elec­tion day, intim­i­da­tion, threats, con­fus­ing infor­ma­tion to minor­i­ty vot­ers and more sin­is­ter meth­ods all geared at sup­press­ing the African-American vote.

In addi­tion, they have used the pow­ers vest­ed in them in the State Legislatures they con­trol, to enact leg­is­la­tion lit­er­al­ly wip­ing out the rights of some cit­i­zens for all time. This they do by pass­ing arbi­trary and dra­con­ian statutes, which makes it impos­si­ble for any­one who ever find them­selves afoul of the law to ever vote again, even after they have paid their debt to society.

Mitt Romney the Republican Party’s last can­di­date for the pres­i­den­cy, fun­da­men­tal­ly believed that peo­ple who made mis­takes and paid their debt, should lose the right to vote. The right to vote is the right to citizenship.

It is a damn shame that a Nation which wages war over­seas under the pre­text of spread­ing democ­ra­cy is engaged in sup­press­ing it’s racial minorities.

About 5 Months ago retired Superintendent Of Police Anthony Hewitt was uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly gunned down as he embarked from his motor car report­ed­ly to vis­it his son some­where in the White Hall avenue area.

To date no one has been held respon­si­ble for the killing of Hewitt,a man who has giv­en yeo­man’s ser­vice to his country.

Yesterday Retired Deputy Superintendent of Police Denzil Boyd was gunned down as he returned to his home with his wife from church.

Hewitt:

No pic­ture of Denzil Boyd:

Jamaica is run by a Government that is large­ly made up of self­ish igno­rant half crim­i­nals, as blood con­tin­ue to run the lead­er­ship of the coun­try con­tin­ues to look for IMF mon­ey to solve the coun­try’s fis­cal problems.

There is no plan to grow the econ­o­my by low­er­ing, if not elim­i­nat­ing crime. The present Administration, led by Portia Simpson Miller is lit­er­al­ly inca­pable of even com­pre­hend­ing what is required to pull Jamaica out of the decay­ing morass.

Miller

Listen, there are many capa­ble female lead­ers who have great vision for their peo­ple. History is filled with them, Ben Gurion the famous Israeli leader famous­ly said Gold a Meir was the only sol­dier he had. Golda Meir went on to become Prime Minister of Israel and a damn good one at that.

No one for­gets Margaret Thatcher the iron lady of Britain, Presently the peo­ple’s repub­lic of Germany is in the capa­ble hands of Chancellor Angela Merkel.

So the issue is not gen­der, it is not of female com­pe­tence, the issue is one of com­pe­tence peri­od, Portia Simpson Miller is incompetent.

As a result, Jamaica is mired in a down­ward spi­ral ‚even as oth­er car­ribean Island nations pull them­selves from the ten­ta­cles of this pro­tract­ed world reces­sion and are mov­ing their peo­ple to first world status.

Miller is stuck. intractably stuck, in the pol­i­tics of con­fronta­tion. Rather than seek­ing to find com­mon ground, she would rather cre­ate con­fronta­tion where there is no need for ran­cor, her bel­li­cose approach to every issue is a throw-back to anoth­er time in our history.

Many argue that her con­fronta­tion­al style is a cov­er that masks her lack of intel­lect and com­mand of issues.

Essentially, it is the same type of parochial 3 miles, Spanish Town Road pol­i­tics which we were used to in the 7o’s that now forms the heart of our nation­al discourse.

As more Jamaicans run for oth­er shores, those deter­mined to stick it out do so at the per­il of their lives.

Sadly, the incom­pe­tents who run the clown-show have police pro­tec­tion, until they are touched the blood let­ting continues.

If you decide to be a Doctor you have to get the necessary education as stipulated by law, you also have to satisfy State certification requirements.

This a very rigorous and arduous task which requires years of hard work ‚determination and sacrifice.This is true of literally all other disciplines. There is formal training, there are in many case, probationary on the job training, which requires step by step monitoring. It just doesn’t stop there, there are stipulations in law which requires Operating insurance, and a plethora of bureaucratic Federal, State, and County Regulations.

All of these hur­dles cre­at­ed by, you guessed it, Politicians but have you ever thought about what is required of the politi­cians who lord over you? Seriously, oth­er than their mam­moth egos and nar­cis­sis­tic sense of self-impor­tance there is real­ly no oth­er require­ment except just get­ting elected.

Insofar as that is con­cerned it becomes even more galling that a pop­ulist, the class clown who bare­ly squeezed through, but pos­sess­es the gift of gab and pop­ulism are gen­er­al­ly the peo­ple who make life and death deci­sions for the rest of us.

Republicans have con­tributed great­ly to the way the gen­er­al pub­lic feels about Politicians, Congress’ approval is some­where around 11%, make no mis­take about it, this neg­a­tive per­cep­tion is as a result of the brain-dead Republicans in that body over the last 4 years.

Republicans blame Obama for being a par­ti­san who does­n’t want to work with them, of course this is the best of the names they have for Obama. So Obama names Chuck Hagel a Republican from Nebraska to replace Panetta at Defense.

Republicans are now fil­i­bus­ter­ing Hagel the President’s choice. This is unprece­dent­ed as only two oth­er Cabinet choic­es have ever been denied con­fir­ma­tion in this coun­try’s history.

The irony is that Harry Reid The Democratic leader in the Senate could have changed the fil­i­buster rules and he failed to do so, some said out of fear that when the tables are turned he would not have that tool as an option. Of course the ven­omous snakes must have been laugh­ing at him when he failed to put an end to the fil­i­buster as con­sti­tut­ed , they knew exact­ly that they would con­tin­ue to jam the President’s agen­da by con­tin­u­ing to abuse the fil­i­buster option.

There is no such thing as a rea­son­able Republican those have long been purged from the par­ty, the list is long,Charlie Crist, Colin Powell, Chuck Hagel, Dick Lugar, Arlen Specter(now deceased) as well as oth­ers on the low­er rungs of the lad­der. Others like John McCain once thought to be mod­er­ates have lunged with great alacrity to the right to head off pri­ma­ry chal­lenges on their right flank..

In the case of John McCain the irony is even more pro­nounced, McCain fan­cied him­self a mav­er­ick, a man of con­vic­tion, a man who stood on the prin­ci­ples of his con­vic­tions, it is the same McCain who is lead­ing the charge against Hagel for stand­ing on the prin­ci­ples of his convictions.

It was John McCain only a few years ago who said that Chuck Hagel would make a fine Secretary of State, of course this was when McCain was seek­ing the Presidency. So what has changed ? Well Chuck Hagel wants to be Secretary of Defense for Barack Obama and that is a disqualifier.

Lost in all of this is the fact that Chuck Hagel is a Republican, yes in case you thought the President’s choice was a Democrat, he is not, he is a for­mer two-term Republican Senator from the red State of Nebraska.

So let’s exam­ine what has tran­spired so far that could pos­si­bly cause Republicans in the Senate to be so hell-bent on derail­ing Chuck Hagel’s bid to be Secretary of Defense. before we do that how­ev­er, let’s take a look at the lead band of Republican pon­tif­i­caters in the Senate

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John McCain Lindsay Graham Ted Cruz Kelly Ayotte

John McCain, Lindsay Graham, and Former Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman were a group of what many thought were a trio of inde­pen­dent thinkers in the Senate, it turned out that they were mere oppor­tunists. With Lieberman out, they have recruit­ed Kelly Ayotte the fresh­man Senator from New Hampshire to put a more sym­pa­thet­ic face on their shenanigans.

The fact is Ayotte is just anoth­er hack in the vein of Sarah Palin, maybe a lit­tle more edu­cat­ed. While we are on the sub­ject, I chal­lenge the con­tin­ued hog-wash being per­pet­u­at­ed in the media that women are bet­ter con­sen­sus builders, bet­ter nego­tia­tors for the com­mon good.

The entire notion that women are so much bet­ter at gov­er­nance is lit­er­al­ly domi­ciled in fem­i­nist utopia. There are less women in posi­tions of pow­er and author­i­ty, as such instances of abuse of pow­er, and author­i­ty would nat­u­ral­ly be ampli­fied on the part of men.

Have you ever been pulled over by a female cop? many women attest to the fact that they much rather hav­ing a male boss. My point is that the entire raft of women in the Republican Party are all bit­ter par­ti­sans like their male counterparts.

John McCain Lindsay Graham and the new agi­ta­tor Kelly Ayotte all con­spired to tor­pe­do the pos­si­ble nom­i­na­tion of Susan Rice to be Secretary of State. Ayotte being dragged along had no idea why she was against Susan Rice, not that the oth­ers could artic­u­late a rea­son they opposed Rice’s poten­tial nom­i­na­tion either. So much for females doing the right thing.

McCain who has spent his entire adult life being ele­vat­ed to God-sta­tus because of his for­mer POW sta­tus has no com­punc­tion about lead­ing the charge against Chuck Hagel who earned two pur­ple hearts and still has shrap­nel embed­ded in his body from his gal­lantry in Vietnam.

Even more galling is Ted Cruz line of ques­tions to Hagel sug­gest­ing that Hagel may have earned hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars from North Korea, of course Cruz has no facts to bear out his out­landish claims yet he did it anyway.

This mis­cre­ant nev­er served a day in any of branch of the mil­i­tary, but seem to crave the role of present day Joe McCarthy.

Some argue as McCain allud­ed, that Republicans are extract­ing their pound of flesh from Hagel for his stance on Bush and the Iraq war. Whats inter­est­ing is that Chuck Hagel opposed the ille­git­i­mate Cheney /​Bush war of choice, he was right, they were wrong. Hagel under­stands and argues for the Judicious use of America’s Military pow­er, he has the wounds to show, he’s entitled.

On issue after issue Hagel has been right when his par­ty has been in the wrong. Hagel went to the Middle East with can­di­date Obama, they are friends. Both Obama and Hagel agree on the need for a small­er, lean­er, smarter mil­i­tary, with less dupli­ca­tion and bloat, they do not plan on wag­ing ill-advised wars.

That is at the heart of the John McCain led war on Chuck Hagel. Neo-cons wants to have America engaged in nev­er end­ing wars, thats how their super wealthy pup­pet mas­ters make mon­ey. Corporations which man­u­fac­ture weapons needs to make mon­ey by sup­ply­ing weapons the mil­i­tary does not need but which the poor tax­pay­ers are forced to pay for to keep them filthy rich.

That is at the heart of mis­ter bomb, bomb, bomb Iran McCain’s war on Obama and Hagel, plus that old man is a great bear­er of grudge, he will not just go away after a loss, he stays and make a nui­sance of him­self, he did it to George Bush the last President from his own par­ty, he is doing it to Obama, and no one will call out McCain on it.

At what time does the fact that McCain’s pro­tec­tive cov­er as a for­mer pris­on­er of war become obso­lete, how much longer will he abuse oth­ers while he him­self is insu­lat­ed from right­eous rebut­tal and just confrontation?

John McCain is not the only per­son ever cap­tured in war, many oth­er Americans have served , many paid the ulti­mate price in defense of America, many endured more than McCain, many returned to seg­re­ga­tion , to be spat on, ridiculed, and forced to the col­ored drink­ing foun­tains and the back of the bus.

Many returned to be bil­ly clubbed by uni­formed thugs with badges, many returned to be teth­ered to pick-up trucks and dragged, end­ing up decap­i­tat­ed by vile big­ots. Many returned to despair, degradation,denial, depri­va­tion, and humiliation.

What makes McCain any dif­fer­ent than any oth­er sol­dier who fought and bled or paid the ulti­mate price for coun­try? What is the rea­son so many fall over them­selves to be def­er­en­tial to a man who abus­es oth­ers, by virtue of his own knowl­edge of that seem­ing infi­nite well of good-will and deference?

What is hap­pen­ing is a damn shame, Republicans are ruin­ing the coun­try from oppo­si­tion, obliv­i­ous to the will of the vot­ers who spoke in no uncer­tain terms regard­ing the direc­tion they want­ed for the coun­try. Republicans are deter­mined that the will of the major­i­ty be damned, they will wreck the econ­o­my as they have harmed the coun­try’s cred­it rating.

This seem laugh­able to the rest of the world that Americans could allow this to pre­vail even after an elec­tion where vot­ers made their choice clear. Clearly rules which allows a sin­gle Senator to grand­stand by hold­ing up any President’s nom­i­nee needs changing.

Republicans have decid­ed that they will run the coun­try from the minor­i­ty, they have decid­ed that the only bills which will become law are the bills which gives them 100% of what they want.

On that basis the results of the elec­tions are worth nothing.