There is a legit­i­mate debate that has raged qui­et­ly for some­time ‚but now seem to be all out in the open, it has to do with whether or not it is an oxy­moron to be a black Republican. Before we attempt to answer that ques­tion we have to look at the per­cent­age of black peo­ple who vote for the Democratic par­ty, why they do so, and exam­ine whether that means we think mono­lith­i­cal­ly or not. Pundits argue that maybe as many as 99% of black Americans vote for the Democratic Party. The ques­tion then arise as to why such a large per­cent­age of any one group of peo­ple would grav­i­tate to one polit­i­cal par­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly when they have pre­cious lit­tle to show for it? In exam­in­ing the fore­gone one has to ask whether blacks are forced to sup­port the Democratic par­ty because they have nowhere else to go, or is there a defin­i­tive strate­gic advan­tage for them in sup­port­ing the Democrats.

The Democratic Party was once the par­ty viewed as the par­ty opposed to inte­gra­tion, how­ev­er through Civil Rights leg­is­la­tion start­ed under President Kennedy and the instru­men­tal­i­ty of his broth­er Bobby Kennedy, which became law under President Lyndon Johnson has seen blacks move in droves to throw their sup­port to it. Conversely Whites, and in par­tic­u­lar white men ran in droves to the Republicans,obviously look­ing for a place from which to stage their last stand against equal rights , jus­tice, and a fair play­ing field for all. Fifty years lat­er the repub­li­can par­ty still has white male as it’s core base of sup­port­ers. The Democratic par­ty has mor­phed into a par­ty of coali­tions, blacks, gays, les­bians, some lati­no groups, lib­er­als, jews, and a splin­ter of spe­cial inter­est groups. Republicans have demon­strat­ed that they are quite hap­py to be the par­ty of the white male . Former President Bush to his cred­it tried to make the repub­li­can par­ty a place where blacks would be wel­come, how­ev­er fanat­ics on the right have lit­er­al­ly made blacks per­sona non gra­ta (not wel­come) in that par­ty, at the last repub­li­can nation­al con­ven­tion the num­ber of black del­e­gates could be count­ed on one hand with maybe a fin­ger to spare. The sole black mem­ber of con­gress in that par­ty that pre­dates the lunatic tea par­ty was ex foot­ball play­er J C Watts from Oklahoma, and he has since bowed out.

Allen West  Allan Keys Thomas Sowell

Michael SteeleClarence Thomaslar­ry ElderInnisRuben Diaz

JC WattsArmstrong WilliamsTD JakesCondi RiceSheryl UnderwoodLynn Swann

Arrayed above is a pret­ty impres­sive rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of what the face of black repub­li­can­ism looks like in America,I will­ful­ly left out Colin Powell whom I think is the most impres­sive of the lot by far, my deci­sion may have been col­ored by the fact that he is of Jamaican parent­age, or it may be because he came to his sens­es and endorsed can­di­date Obama for President, or both. Ok the truth is I like Colin Powell , he accom­plished much, served under repub­li­cans, but was­n’t behold­en to them to the point he lost his soul. He showed char­ac­ter in endors­ing Barack Obama for pres­i­dent, that I thought showed balls, and a sense of being one’s own per­son. Some argue that Powell was burned by repub­li­cans when they had him address the United Nations detail­ing at length alleged stock­piles of weapons of mass destruc­tion that turned out to be pho­ny as most well think­ing peo­ple knew all along. I saw it dif­fer­ent­ly Powell was the only repub­li­can in the Bush Administration that had any cred­i­bil­i­ty, he was the only mem­ber of that cab­i­net that the world would actu­al­ly lis­ten to giv­en how the world saw the Bush Administration. Who then was bet­ter than the for­mer Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to tell the world of the seri­ous­ness of the threats Saddam Hussein posed alleged­ly to the world? Dick Chaney saw a dou­ble coup in that move, dis­cred­it Powell,and bring him down to size after he had used him to sell the ille­git­i­mate war, Powell knew he got played. 

One of the cen­tral themes that comes from most of those who call them­selves black con­ser­v­a­tives is that some­how there is no racism, or that racism has­n’t pre­vent­ed them from mak­ing it so blacks suf­fer­ing and look­ing for a way for­ward have them­selves to blame. It seem that in order for a black man to make it they have to denounce who they are and some­how pre­tend they are some­one else, there are some who are on University cam­pus­es, as they have been from as far back as when Malcolm and Dr. King were fight­ing for equal­i­ty and Justice for blacks in this country,they can be found as talk­ing heads on cable tele­vi­sion, some claim­ing to be repub­li­can strate­gists, and pro­fes­sors. Everyone has a right to sup­port the par­ty of their choice, blacks who have made it has a right to wear their con­ser­vatism on their sleeve, what they do not have a right to do is to go around the coun­try as Caine is doing dis­parag­ing the pres­i­dent, and mak­ing claims that some­how the pres­i­dent is not black enough. Herman Caine like all oth­er blacks who have made it has ben­e­fit­ed from the sac­ri­fices of those who went before , those who toiled and were bit­ten by Bull O’Connor’s dogs, bat­tered by his water-hoses beat­en sense­less by his goons, and lynched. Caine and oth­ers like him stands on the graves of those who suf­fered and died to make it pos­si­ble for them to stand at all, or even raise their heads to look in the face of the white man, or walk on the same side of the street he is on, or dare look at his woman, while at the same time they dis­re­spect their sac­ri­fice , pre­tend­ing that they would be where they are today with­out those sac­ri­fices. Interestingly enough those who sac­ri­ficed the least are now ben­e­fit­ing the most, Those who occu­pied posi­tions in acad­e­mia, and oth­er posi­tions in sec­ond class American soci­ety were quite con­tent to have things remain the way they were, in fact they were trot­ted out dur­ing the strug­gle to extol the virtues of how great America was , and the won­der­ful lives blacks were liv­ing, Those who dared to chal­lenge the sta­tus quo were deemed to be trou­ble mak­ers and com­mu­nists by the white pow­er struc­ture , usu­al­ly through their black lap dogs.

Where was Herman Caine in the annals of the civ­il rights strug­gle, who ever heard of this lack­ey, he has sat out the strug­gle, yes Caine has every right to brag about his ascen­den­cy , of course it was the stead­fast­ness of his par­ents why both he and his broth­er could attend col­lege and make some­thing of them­selves, what he does not have a right to do is to sug­gest that some­how he has the for­mu­la for black­ness. There have always seem to be a resid­ual hatred on the part of many black Americans when it comes to the achieve­ments of oth­er blacks who do not share their experience,painful as this trait is, it offers those who wish­es us ill a per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to attack us by using cer­tain mem­bers of the black com­mu­ni­ty as proxy. Michael Steele became chair­man of the repub­li­can nation­al com­mit­tee because Obama was elect­ed pres­i­dent, once he won back the house they boot­ed him, Caine is trot­ting around attack­ing the pres­i­dent does any­one real­ly think this man will be elect­ed pres­i­dent on the repub­li­can tick­et? No ! but they get to say all the nasty things they want by hav­ing some­one in black skin say it. Look how well it has turned out for the black com­mu­ni­ty hav­ing Clarence Thomas on the supreme court. 

It is the same self hate that pre­vents the bulk of us from own­ing and suc­ceed­ing in our own busi­ness­es, instead we spend more mon­ey on con­sumer goods than any oth­er eth­nic group in this coun­try. Everyone now mar­kets to us , we buy any­thing, they curse us , they tell us they nev­er cre­at­ed their mer­chan­dize for us , yet we con­tin­ue to buy and con­sume their prod­ucts at a rate that makes them astro­nom­i­cal­ly wealthy , while we have noth­ing to show for all that mon­ey that pass through our hands annu­al­ly. Why? Because we refuse to show love to our own kind. It seem it would kill us to sup­port black busi­ness­es that are not hair salons and bar­ber­shops, the only rea­son we sup­port those two areas of black entre­pun­ear­ship is pri­mar­i­ly because we can­not get that kind of ser­vice elsewhere. 

The prob­lem with being a black repub­li­can is that the repub­li­can par­ty has not done any­thing to sug­gest that it wel­comes blacks into its ranks, con­verse­ly they are absolute­ly hos­tile to blacks and make no apolo­gies for it, con­sid­er a par­ty that is home to the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, the tea par­ty, Glen Beck, and the Fox mis-infor­ma­tion crowd, con­sid­er the par­ty that is home to ex-clan grand wiz­ard David Duke. It makes per­fect sense that blacks who have tak­en advan­tage of oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able to them,and have got­ten edu­cat­ed to hold them­selves and oth­ers to high­er stan­dards than some of what obtains but not sole­ly con­fined to the black com­mu­ni­ty. As we have said in these posts President Obama can­not change the job­less num­bers in black-America if young black men con­tin­ue to hang out on street cor­ners with their pants sag­ging way below their back-sides, smok­ing weed, when they ought to be in school. The same is true of young black women who at an astro­nom­i­cal rate, con­tin­ue to have chil­dren out-of-wed­lock with­out any fathers for their off­springs, imme­di­ate­ly plac­ing their chil­dren at a disadvantage. 

There is a pre­vail­ing sense with­in our com­mu­ni­ty at least to my mind, that once we accom­plish some­thing we move dan­ger­ous­ly far away from who we are in order to be noticed , and we stay there until we fall out of favor with those we try to impress, then we come crawl­ing back to the black com­mu­ni­ty look­ing for redemp­tion. Wearing a suit ad occu­py­ing an ele­vat­ed posi­tion in acad­e­mia, and for­get­ting where one come from while pre­tend­ing that all is well with the world , and that all black peo­ple who have not made it as you have are lazy and deserv­ing of their lot in life is haughty, sim­plis­tic ‚and dis­gust­ing­ly phar­isee . It is no dif­fer­ent from some of those who are enter­tain­ers, sports stars rap­pers, and actors who make tons of mon­ey go out and pur­chase the shini­est most expen­sive cars , clothes , and homes and in no time ends up broke and right back where they start­ed, the urge to be seen is the same. In the sev­en­ties eight­ies and nineties an edu­cat­ed black woman could be spot­ted a mile away , her hair was unprocessed , usu­al­ly in a twist of sorts, or had a frizz look, her skirt was long and her atti­tude haughty, it said I went to col­lege. Today the hair­styles have changed some­what , but the anger remains, the men for their part walk around with white wives and align them­selves to the repub­li­can par­ty, even though they are not want­ed real­ly, but are used aus­pi­cious­ly and con­ve­nient­ly when needed. 

The list of black con­ser­v­a­tives is impres­sive and runs the gamut of pro­fes­sions, from Judges to busi­ness peo­ple , from ath­letes to aca­d­e­mics, from the cler­gy to the media there is no short­age of blacks who iden­ti­fy as con­ser­v­a­tives, the truth is blacks have always embraced con­ser­v­a­tive prin­ci­ples, God ‚Country, fam­i­ly, no oth­er eth­nic groups is more reli­gious, or prac­tis­es their reli­gion with more fer­vor, so it is not unusu­al that well to do blacks that are promi­nent­ly exposed would espouse their con­ser­v­a­tive prin­ci­ples, what I do not under­stand is why are they repub­li­cans? Some blacks argue that repub­li­cans end­ed slav­ery, well tech­ni­cal­ly yes,but when the wrap­per is peeled back it seem there was more to abol­ish­ing slav­ery than just moral con­vic­tions. After all the north need­ed soldiers,and Lincoln need­ed to have a greater moral cause for the war oth­er than just keep­ing the union togeth­er, it was imper­a­tive that Europe did not enter the war to pro­tect the ter­ri­to­ry of Louisiana.

As does all Americans have a right to sup­port the par­ty of their choice , so does mem­bers of the black com­mu­ni­ty, it is pre­sump­tu­ous of Herman Caine to tell black America they are brain-washed in vot­ing for democ­rats in the num­bers they do, I could use a lot of adjec­tives to describe Caine , but I will refrain from doing so as he has a right to make an ass of him­self, what he does not have a right to do is to speak for me or any mem­ber of my fam­i­ly, my friends or even my race. Caine is a nov­el­ty , he will dis­cov­er this real soon, the num­bers attrib­uted to him in these ear­ly stages are sim­ply a protest against the slate of repub­li­can can­di­dates whom are at best wishy-washy. Even though the tea par­ty has elect­ed two black mem­bers to the house of rep­re­sen­ta­tives ‚one from in Florida and South Carolina each ‚this does not mean that Herman Caine will be the repub­li­can nom­i­nee for pres­i­dent of these United States, if Caine believes this he is even more stu­pid than I thought.

On the front page of this site I com­ment­ed that Jamaica is at a crossroads,at no time is this state­ment more pro­found than at this moment in time in our coun­try’s history.

The reason/​s behind Prime Minister Bruce Golding’s deci­sion to step down is a mon­u­men­tal one , he is not the first Prime Minister to do so, but he may be the first to do so under total­ly unclear moti­va­tions. In the short peri­od since 1962 there have been cas­es where prime min­is­ters have demit­ted office for one rea­son or anoth­er, Donald Sangster died in office, Michael Manley stepped aside due to ill-health and made way for Patterson, who in turn stepped aside mak­ing way for Simpson Miller before his term expired.

None of these chief exec­u­tives have demit­ted office under the cloud Golding has been under, ever since the débâ­cle involv­ing his alleged bungling of the Christopher Coke extra­di­tion . There has been a sus­tained cho­rus-call for his res­ig­na­tion, we on these blogs has also called for his res­ig­na­tion, not for polit­i­cal rea­sons, but because we val­ue coun­try over all else.

There has also been a sus­tained call from oth­er quar­ters for pure­ly polit­i­cal rea­sons, rea­sons that have noth­ing to do with our coun­try’s well-being, but are genised in a desire to see Jamaica return to the days of crash pro­gramme social­ist hand outs. We are less inclined than oth­ers to sug­gest ulte­ri­or motives for the Prime Minister’s res­ig­na­tion , what we do know is that he just lost his moth­er, a loss which must weigh heav­i­ly on him, we wish mis­ter Golding well and hope that heir appar­ent Andrew Holness will check any ego he has at the door .

We are well aware of the nar­cis­sis­tic ego­ma­nia that is a sta­ple of Jamaica’s politi­cians, Holness would be well advised not to take this to Jamaica House. As we have called on Golding to tran­scend pol­i­tics and be a dif­fer­ent kind of polit­i­cal leader, we also call on young Holness to shed the bag­gage of trib­al pol­i­tics and put coun­try first, oth­er­wise his demise will be assured as is the case with Golding.

We will await fur­ther devel­op­ments before com­ment­ing further.

mike beck­les.

heve your say.

Yesterday President Obama went to the United Nations and offered up a stout defense of the state of Israel. At the heart of this year’s General assem­bly meet­ing is the desire by Palestinians to have a sep­a­rate state of their own, side by side with the Jewish state of Israel. The pres­i­dent went to great lengths to artic­u­late the com­mit­ment of the United States in defense of the state of Israel. Absent from the speech was any par­al­lel com­mit­ment to see the thorny issue of Israel’s con­tin­ued build­ing of set­tle­ments stopped, an issue many objec­tive observers see as a land grab. The Israelis for their part seem to argue that the con­tin­ued build­ing of set­tle­ment is in the inter­est of their own secu­ri­ty, this con­vo­lut­ed argu­ment is part of their response to this issue when they are not argu­ing they have no con­trol over the set­tlers. In fair­ness to Israel some set­tle­ments have been bull­dozed as a sign of good-will by a pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion. This Administration of Benjamin Netanyahu is a less than ready to nego­ti­ate with the Palestinian Authority head­ed by Mahmoud Abbas aka Abu Mazen.

The prob­lems that exist between the Palestinians and Israelis are old and dates back to Biblical times, they were not fixed with any American pres­i­dent since the state of Israel was formed on con­test­ed lands in 1947. Those who pur­port to sup­port Israel on bib­li­cal grounds, argu­ing that God had promised the land to Israel, will find it dif­fi­cult to con­tin­ue to make that argu­ment in the face of Israel’s con­tin­ued occu­pa­tion of a sov­er­eign peo­ple, sub­ject­ing them to mul­ti­ple spot checks just to move or do ordi­nary things dur­ing the course of a day, some­thing we all take for grant­ed. The United States can­not be a cred­i­ble bro­ker for peace in light of its con­tin­ued and sus­tained sup­port for all things Israel even in light of her trans­gres­sions and sub­se­quent con­dem­na­tion by the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. Israel will con­tin­ue to find itself iso­lat­ed as long as she is pro­tect­ed by the United States, and does as she pleas­es out of the reach of nor­mal puni­tive sanc­tions that would have been attached to oth­er states. The sense of enti­tle­ment Israel feels is at the heart of the prob­lems and will not be addressed in our life­time if the process toward peace is the road present­ly being trav­elled. Israel can­not expect to flaunt inter­na­tion­al law and cry anti-Semitism when oth­ers speak out. Despite the noise by those on the cam­paign trail pros­trat­ing them­selves in front of Jewish vot­ers, there are some states­men who have a grasp of some sem­blance of fair­ness. Former pres­i­dent Clinton stat­ed in an inter­view with CNN.” The Israelis should state pub­licly that they do not want a two state solu­tion, let the Palestinian peo­ple get on with their lives, and live with the con­se­quences”. Once again pres­i­dent Obama has reneged on a stat­ed promise; he stat­ed he sup­port­ed a two state solu­tion between Israel and the Palestinian, yet yes­ter­day he explic­it­ly went to the United Nations with the intent to veto any move by Abbas to ask the Security Council for state­hood for the Palestinian peo­ple. Christian fun­da­men­tal­ists in America push for uncon­di­tion­al sup­port for Israel, They do so irre­spec­tive of Israel’s trans­gres­sions against the Palestinian peo­ple, if they are argu­ing from a reli­gious per­spec­tive that God has cho­sen Israel, are we to believe that God favors some peo­ple over oth­ers? Does God not care what his cho­sen peo­ple do unto oth­ers? The Palestinian peo­ple for their part must under­stand that they will, not win a bat­tle of might over Israel, they must approach their cause the way Doctor King and Gandhi approached their prob­lems, their cause as it relates to their oppres­sion and con­tin­ued occu­pa­tion is just . They must use moral per­sua­sion, they will be vin­di­cat­ed only through that path.

mike beck­les”

have your say:

 As some­one who sup­port nei­ther of the two gangs that pass for gen­uine polit­i­cal par­ties in Jamaica. I am nonethe­less left shak­ing my head, won­der­ing just how stu­pid Portia Simpson Miller and her par­ty think Jamaicans are ? We will attempt to answer that ques­tion through out this post , mak­ing all attempts to be fair and objec­tive to Miller, based on her record and that of her par­ty. The People’s National Party (PNP) won the pop­u­lar­i­ty con­test decades ago over their rivals the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP),As a result they arro­gant­ly claim Jamaica is PNP coun­try. arro­gant though that claim is, there is s sig­nif­i­cant amount of truth to it. As a boy my dear grand­dad who did dou­ble duties as my dad, told me numer­ous times that Bustamante said his cousin Norman Manley was like a snake and he did not trust him as far as he could throw him. Both my grand­dad and his broth­er my great Uncle told these sto­ries, my youngest broth­er brings our great-uncle back to life with par­o­dy when he relives those sto­ries. Busta obvi­ous­ly had lit­tle trust for his cousin Norman Manley.

One can rea­son­ably argue that maybe Busta’s dis­trust was para­noia, after all Busta was not the glib artic­u­late British edu­cat­ed Queens coun­cil Barrister his cousin Norman was. Jokes abound, (gen­er­al­ly in the cir­cles of PNP par­ti­sans), about Busta’s lack of intel­lect, Busta hav­ing honed his skills in the rough and tum­ble world of the trade union move­ment in its ear­ly days. Busta is not absolved from the stain of pop­ulism and charis­ma, his cousin was just bet­ter at it . Having been born Alexander Clarke to an Irish planter Robert Clarke and a Jamaican woman Mary Clarke Bustamante report­ed­ly changed his name to Bustamante the name of a Spanish sea-cap­tain whom it is report­ed adopt­ed him. Busta report­ed­ly spent some of his ear­ly years in Spain where he was edu­cat­ed and lat­er joined the Spanish Army. He then went to Cuba and New York after which he returned to Jamaica in ‚1932 he dab­bled in a pri­vate busi­ness he found­ed which spe­cial­ized in lend­ing mon­ey, but poor work­ing con­di­tions , low wages , pover­ty and oth­er social ills cat­a­pult­ed him into writ­ing let­ters, orga­niz­ing protest action, giv­ing speech­es and medi­at­ing on behalf of work­ers. His advo­ca­cy took him all over the Caribbean where he advo­cat­ed on behalf of work­ers, In 1938 the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union was born. I detail these facts to show that on the ques­tion of pop­ulism Bustamante could mix it up with the best of them. The People’s National Party fig­ured out how to win elec­tions, like the JLP they claimed a man­date to defend the rights of the poor, they fig­ured if the poor­er class of peo­ple believe they are on their side they will most like­ly have more peo­ple sup­port­ing them, they have played that card per­fect­ly, they have won more elec­tions since Independence that the JLP has.

Many who sup­port the PNP sim­ply do not under­stand that Government can­not be looked at as a means to bet­ter their lives. Government can be a vehi­cle to effect change , by the laws it enacts, the imped­i­ments to growth it removes , and poli­cies it fol­lows, that are friend­ly to invest­ment. Government how­ev­er can­not be the employ­er of labor in a mean­ing­ful way that is sus­tain­able, Governments take in tax­es from tax­pay­ers , it hires and pays work­ers from those tax­es, it pro­vides ser­vices like police , fire, and pays teach­ers , there can only be real employ­ment and greater pros­per­i­ty when the foun­da­tions are laid that are friend­ly to busi­ness allow­ing them to invest , hire work­ers , and pay takes , that is the way to eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty, not from Government hand-outs through pork bar­rel, or crim­i­nal shov­el­ing of cash to sup­port­ers, those are exact­ly how to dri­ve a coun­try into pover­ty ‚and failed state sta­tus. The PNP has suc­cess­ful­ly done that after ¹⁸¹⁄₂ years in office . I am left pow­er­less, just shak­ing my head that this par­ty which has lit­er­al­ly brought this coun­try to ruina­tion, with uncon­trolled crime , pover­ty, and cor­rup­tion could even be con­sid­ered as a cred­i­ble alter­na­tive to the JLP after less that one term in Office. The JLP has done sig­nif­i­cant harm to the coun­try in it’ han­dling of the Christopher Coke mat­ter, what was revealed to the world is what Jamaicans had already known, that both polit­i­cal par­ties are real­ly just crim­i­nal gangs, just gangs oper­at­ing with dif­fer­ent lay­ers and respon­si­bil­i­ties. The PNP could have done the patri­ot­ic thing and not con­test the next elec­tion. They could use the time to retool the par­ty, get rid of the old bag­gage , Portia, Omar Davies, Nicholson,Knight, Pickersgil, Buntin, etal. Michael Manley did not con­test the gen­er­al elec­tion of 1983, Edward Seaga called that snap elec­tion at a time when he thought he could win , Reagan had just invad­ed Grenada and Seaga had sent Jamaican sol­diers as part of the occu­py­ing force. Manley was caught flat-foot­ed and chose not to con­test the elec­tions, choos­ing instead to run around the world giv­ing speech­es and telling Jamaicans that the Government was ille­git­i­mate. Of course Manley knew he had no legs to stand on , any prime Minister can call elec­tions when­ev­er he choos­es under Jamaican law. Manley chose not to con­test because he felt he would lose, plain and sim­ple. Arguing then that the snap elec­tions were fraud­u­lent, is tan­ta­mount to a box­er get­ting knocked out after fail­ing to pro­tect him­self, then blames his oppo­nent. Portia Simpson Miller and her par­ty have now come up with anoth­er acronym [JEEP] Jamaica Emergency Employment Program.

Portia Simpson Miller

As if we have not had our fill of PNP acronyms, and slo­gans they have now devel­oped this new JEEP. There are how­ev­er a few parts miss­ing from this JEEP. Where are we going to get the mon­ey to fuel this jeep? any­one can make promis­es, Portia knows that there is noth­ing in this JEEP pro­gram that is paid for , If they are to be insti­tut­ed then there would have to be mas­sive tax increas­es or bor­row­ing. There is absolute­ly no way we can enact a social­ist pro­gram that puts peo­ple to work unfund­ed. The peo­ple’s National Party has learned noth­ing from events shap­ing the world over the last two decades. Globalization is the way for­ward, some refer to this new phe­nom­e­non as the new world order. It has at its core seri­ous impli­ca­tions for small nations like Jamaica, small­er nations will have to fig­ure out on whose side they are on and stick to that group. In order to com­pete in the areas of trade, receive con­ces­sions on fuel prices, and oth­er areas of the econ­o­my, small­er nation must be part of a group to real­ize those con­ces­sions and receive those con­sid­er­a­tions. CARICOM by the way is a far cry from being that group, with some mem­bers of CARICOM look­ing out exclu­sive­ly for their indi­vid­ual inter­est. European nations have come togeth­er as the European Union, a counter bal­ance to what they per­ceive to be hege­mo­ny on the part of the United States after the fall of the Soviet Union. The Africans are talk­ing about an African Union or some sort of United States of Africa, of course they can’t even agree to dis­agree. South American nations like Brazil are emerg­ing as dom­i­nant forces on the world stage through pro­duc­tion and their com­mit­ment to using alter­na­tive ener­gy sources like ethanol , leav­ing more mon­ey in their cof­fers to grow their economies. Asia has come of age , China in the lead is ben­e­fit­ing from glob­al­iza­tion , build­ing their econ­o­my on mas­sive pro­duc­tion of cheap and inex­pen­sive goods , manip­u­lat­ing their cur­ren­cy , as well as intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty pira­cy. Other Asian nations like Indonesia, India, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, and even Vietnam are emerg­ing as eco­nom­ic pow­er­hous­es as a result of coöper­a­tion , ben­e­fit­ing from out­sourced man­u­fac­tur­ing by large coun­tries like the United States. These coun­tries have seen their economies take on new life as they attract man­u­fac­tur­ing through cheap labor and less gov­ern­ment bureau­cra­cy. Most impor­tant­ly , at a time when all nations with the excep­tion of stub­born auto­crat­ic few like Cuba, and North Korea, are mov­ing their economies toward free mar­ket and open trad­ing, the PNP is propos­ing a raft of failed Socialist enti­tle­ments. The for­mer bas­tions of Communism/​Socialism China and Russia have now rec­og­nized that the only way to remain rel­e­vant is by open­ing their economies to the pri­vate sec­tor allow­ing for inter­na­tion­al trade and coöper­a­tion, it was what made America great, they made things and sold what they made . Jamaica should now be look­ing to fol­low suit with­out sell­ing off the coun­try to China or any oth­er large Nation with mon­ey. Our posi­tion ought to be, we have labor we are pre­pared to remove bar­ri­ers to invest­ment and trade. We must low­er crime which will see an enor­mous influx of new entrapenurialship,essentially more play­ers will want to come to the table. Instead the People’s National Party is propos­ing to take the coun­try back four decades to the sev­en­ties, with a raft of unfund­ed enti­tle­ment pro­grams that look good to poor peo­ple get­ting a lit­tle mon­ey for doing noth­ing, but it will cer­tain­ly be the death knell of the econ­o­my this time . When you hand out money(paper) that you haven’t earned , you sim­ply print it , it dri­ves up infla­tion, cheap­ens the cur­ren­cy and forces busi­ness­es to fail. One would have thought that by now the pro­po­nents of these pro­grams would rec­og­nize that the way to pros­per­i­ty is not through social­ism, but through edu­ca­tion hard work and inge­nu­ity. It is time for this par­ty of Norman Manley and his son Michael Manley to stop with the (sam­fy) and tell poor work­ing class Jamaicans there are no quick fix­es to their prob­lems, edu­cat­ing them that the only true path is through edu­ca­tion and hard work. That is the decent thing to do, the patri­ot­ic thing to do, fail­ing which we will con­tin­ue to lose gen­er­a­tions after gen­er­a­tions to pover­ty crime and despair. Now is the time Portia, you say you love the poor !If you love the poor now is the time to use your influ­ence to edu­cate them, I know it’s not pop­u­lar to do, I know it’ not in your DNA, but if you want to leave a lega­cy of car­ing, and con­cern for the peo­ple you say you love, use this oppor­tu­ni­ty to tell poor une­d­u­cat­ed Jamaicans that you will not be giv­ing them any more cur­ry goat and rice to secure their votes, tell them you want them to under­stand that they will have to help in nation build­ing, by start­ing now , right here , at this time, in this place. What Simpson Miller should be propos­ing at this junc­ture in the inter­est of our coun­try is a sim­ple plan that offers sus­tain­able jobs, here’s how. Miller would first have to have an under­stand­ing of the debil­i­tat­ing effect crime has on soci­ety, she would have to have a desire and or the will to give law enforce­ment what they need to do their jobs. Will and desire that are nec­es­sary com­po­nents that would enable the coun­try to offer poten­tial investors an envi­ron­ment not steeped in crimes to include extor­tion. Portia has none of those under­stand­ings, in inter­view after inter­view she has demon­stra­bly shown that she does not have a full grasp of the issues , or even under­stand the process nec­es­sary to grow our econ­o­my. The fact that the very vehi­cle she choses to push on the Jamaican peo­ple, the social­ist JEEP was designed by peo­ple oth­er than her or oth­er senior oper­a­tives in the par­ty , sug­gest that this is noth­ing based on core beliefs, but a cam­paign slo­gan designed sole­ly to win office. Here’s an idea, at a time when the world econ­o­my is reor­ga­niz­ing , old norms are out the win­dow, and new real­i­ties have to be embraced Jamaica needs to look to the future to see how we can lim­it the amount of scarce dol­lars we pay out for oil. This is the time for both the Governing par­ty and the Opposition to come togeth­er in the inter­est of the coun­try and see how we can encour­age a mas­sive invest­ment in solar, and wind ener­gy, there is no short­age of either of those two types of ener­gy. Investing in them at this time cre­ates jobs , reduces our car­bon foot­print and ben­e­fits our econ­o­my going for­ward. I would be hap­py to sup­ply a writ­ten plan on how this can be achieved to the Government and the leader of the oppo­si­tion, if they are will­ing to work togeth­er for the ben­e­fit of our coun­try. As Golding found out from the world’s eco­nom­ic down-turn mak­ing promis­es does noth­ing to improve the lives of Jamaicans, we are now liv­ing in an inter­con­nect­ed world where the cough of one coun­try insti­gates the snif­fle of anoth­er . Serious politi­cians must now stop with cheap pos­tur­ing and tell the mass­es of the peo­ple there are no quick fix­es to the coun­try’s fis­cal prob­lems. We are a small coun­try our prob­lems are not insur­mount­able, if we fix our crime prob­lem, fix our bureau­crat­ic prob­lems, we have a chance of once again attract­ing invest­ments into our coun­try. Portia and the PNP does not under­stand this . Bruce Golding the present Prime Minister under­stands this , but was unable to extri­cate him­self from the crim­i­nal ten­ta­cles of Christopher Coke and his Tivoli Empire, he will go down in infamy as the lit­tle train that couldn’t.

President Obama’s approval rat­ing is now at an all time low of 43% accord­ing to a recent CBS poll, his dis­ap­proval now stands at 50 %.

The polit­i­cal vul­tures smell blood and are already cir­cling ready for the car­cass. Many have already giv­en him up as dead.

The best thing this pres­i­dent has going for him is a repub­li­can par­ty that can­not find a seri­ous can­di­date that has half the intel­lect he has.

The ven­omous hate in the blo­gos­phere, radio, and TV caused me to won­der how in hell this man ever got elect­ed pres­i­dent of these United States?

I am remind­ed when­ev­er I see the ran­cid hate filled rants , that there are still a lot of repub­li­cans who did not vote for the pres­i­dent, these are gen­er­al­ly low infor­ma­tion semi /​and illit­er­ates who are real­ly not exposed , they do not care to know any truths beyond what pass­es for it in their lit­tle cocoon.

The house and sen­ate is now pop­u­lat­ed with tea par­ty mem­bers who have tak­en an oath not to work with the pres­i­dent on any­thing, this is sole­ly based on race , the pres­i­dent knows it but won’t say it , mem­bers of the black cau­cus knows it but won’t say it, democ­rats know it but they are most­ly white and will not call out their own . Blood is thick­er than water.

President Obama must take the bull by the horns , his sup­port­ers did not elect him to roll over to racist lying repub­li­cans, they did not elect him to acqui­esce to repub­li­can demands, they vot­ed for him to enact the agen­da he laid out on the cam­paign trail, they did not elect him to give repub­li­cans what they want, nei­ther was he elect­ed only to allow repub­li­cans to gov­ern from the minority.

They have essen­tial­ly been gov­ern­ing from the minor­i­ty from day one of the pres­i­den­t’s term, jam­ming and obstruct­ing at every turn. This has got to stop mis­ter Obama, you have demon­strat­ed that you are will­ing to make peace and work together.

Republicans do not want you to have any accom­plish­ments, they said so, you acknowl­edged it recent­ly , they have said they will not sup­port any bill that could give you a win.

Imagine that, giv­ing you a win , they do not care about the peo­ple or the coun­try, coun­try be damned, as long as they stop you.

Any fur­ther attempts at work­ing with them can only be inter­pret­ed not as con­cil­ia­to­ry but as weakness

Americans want their pres­i­dent to be force­ful, deter­mined and resolute .

Right now this pres­i­dent is kow­tow­ing to the peo­ple who want to wit­ness his demise, for no oth­er rea­son than the col­or of his skin.

I under­stand his stat­ed goal to reach across the aisle and offer a hand of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and compromise.

Mister President there are no hands for you to grasp.

They have pulled their hands away,you are no longer a Senator look­ing for oth­ers to co-sign a Bill, you are the President of the United States of America, act like it.

mike beck­les:

have your say>

The Kingston and Saint Andrew cor­po­ra­tion has been com­plain­ing about ille­gal build­ing in the Kingston and Saint Andrew areas which falls under its sphere of respon­si­bil­i­ty. Interestingly the Mayor of the cor­po­ra­tion Desmond McKenzie is a coun­cil­lor from Tivoli Gardens the epic cen­ter of JLP pol­i­tics and heart of Prime Minister Bruce Golding’s west Kingston Constituency.

If the Mayor as head of the coun­cil, and a close ally of the Prime min­is­ter ‚can­not get the ille­gal build­ing to stop , what chance is there for a res­o­lu­tion to this prob­lem? The truth is Jamaicans were gen­er­al­ly nev­er required to seek gov­ern­men­tal approval for build­ing their homes or oth­er struc­tures, how­ev­er as we move into becom­ing a devel­oped coun­try, we real­ized we have to adhere to codes that are uni­ver­sal with a view to sav­ing lives and ensure rel­a­tive safety.

The prob­lem in Jamaica’s case is that Jamaican laws have not kept pace with the times and as such there is no incen­tive to obey the archa­ic exist­ing laws.

In these blogs we have sought to point this out as it relates to the issue of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty. This prob­lem is how­ev­er not con­fined to crim­i­nal law , but oth­er areas of the laws to include those that cov­ers build­ing con­struc­tion or the pro­tec­tion of tourists com­ing off cruise ships.

McKenzie

Surprisingly The Council’s Mayor told the Jamaica Gleaner that the reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing build­ing con­struc­tion are woe­ful­ly inef­fec­tive, result­ing in many play­ers in the con­struc­tion indus­try ignor­ing the KSAC orders to cease and desist.

Finally a state­ment of truth or com­mon sense from a politi­cian. We have been shout­ing this for years. The rea­son we have the lev­el of crime and dis­re­spect for the rule of law is sim­ply because the laws are old and use­less, and the penal­ties assigned inef­fec­tu­al as deterrent.

This offers us a per­fect segue into anoth­er prob­lem in the heart of the coun­try. The issue of tourist harass­ment in resort towns like Ocho Rios. Nothing new by the way, but some­thing left unchecked, because the mon­ey the cash cow brings in still rolls in.

President of the St Ann Chamber of Commerce, Kumar Sujanani, com­plained that the police were not imple­ment­ing the Prescribed Areas Act, even while the com­plaints of tourist harass­ment per­sist­ed. According to Sujananai, the com­plaint was top of the list from cruise pas­sen­gers who dis­em­bark in Ocho Rios. But accord­ing to Superintendent of Police at Area Two head­quar­ters, Gary Griffiths, who was for­mer­ly in charge of St Ann, the police had, in fact, imple­ment­ed the act in an area stretch­ing from Island Village to Pineapple Place, effec­tive­ly cov­er­ing the major­i­ty of the resort town. Superintendent Griffiths said the mea­sure was dis­con­tin­ued due to non-coöper­a­tion and com­plaints by mer­chants, espe­cial­ly those on Main Street, the main shop­ping area in Ocho Rios.

Here we have peo­ple with pow­er and influ­ence blam­ing the police for doing some­thing the police has very lit­tle pow­er to control. 

Rather than use what influ­ence he has individually,or that of the Chamber he heads, to lob­by Government to pass tougher leg­is­la­tion that would effec­tive­ly deal with the issue of tourist harass­ment, he seeks to lam­bast the police the tra­di­tion­al scapegoat .

From the look on the face of Superintendent Griffith’s face I can see he would like to tell this clown where to go with his nonsense.

As a young con­sta­ble sta­tioned at the Mobile Reserve in St Andrew I spent count­less hours with my col­leagues com­bat­ting the issue of tourist harass­ment in towns like Ocho Rios and Montego Bay. Despite count­less hours of patrol time, thou­sands of arrests, and untold phys­i­cal con­fronta­tions with ped­dlers drug-deal­ers and hus­tlers the prob­lem persisted.

Which must lead to a com­pre­hen­sive review of the reason/​s behind the fail­ure of this project.

If peo­ple are arrest­ed , over and over , and over , yet they per­sist in doing what they did that keep get­ting them arrest­ed, then the blind can see that the prob­lem is with the penal­ty. As is the case with all areas of crim­i­nal­i­ty in Jamaica there are inad­e­quate and archa­ic penal­ties assigned to these crimes .

The truth is some offend­ers were arrest­ed dozens of times each month and released some­times with­out even pay­ing a fine.

No one is sug­gest­ing that peo­ple look­ing to make a few bucks from sell­ing trin­kets be impris­oned for life . What we are say­ing is there must be an under­stand­ing that tourists come to our shores with mon­ey to spend, they deserve to be treat­ed with respect,as we would like to be treat­ed , we should also make sure that the tourism dol­lar not be con­fined to rich hote­liers and busi­ness peo­ple, but must be avail­able to the gen­er­al populace.

There must also be a cumu­la­tive penal­ty that says if you get caught com­mit­ting this offense, after a cer­tain amount of times prefer­ably three (3) you are going to jail for a year.

I guar­an­tee this prob­lem would go away,vendors and ped­dlers would sell in des­ig­nat­ed spaces pro­vid­ed for them.

There has got to be order oth­er­wise it’s chaos , what’s hap­pen­ing now and has been so for decades, it is the drip , drip, slow death of Jamaica’s Tourist industry.

The rise in num­ber of oth­er Caribbean Islands as legit­i­mate tourism des­ti­na­tions is proof pos­i­tive that the coun­try’s tourism prod­uct is get­ting tired and stale. Crime vio­lence and harass­ment to vis­i­tors has con­densed the prod­uct itself ‚lit­er­al­ly rel­e­gat­ing it to all-inclu­sive resorts, with vis­i­tors not get­ting a chance to see the coun­try, and prob­a­bly for the better.

Many cruise ship pas­sen­ger con­fide in me that when docked in Jamaica the stay on board, usu­al­ly out of fear.

There must be a gen­er­al con­sid­er­a­tion for the inter­est of every­one when plans are being draft­ed for Cruise ship ports. These must take into con­sid­er­a­tion craft shops , restau­rants, etc. Essentially they must con­tain a direct com­po­nent that ben­e­fits aver­age Jamaicans over and above the gen­er­al ben­e­fits derived from tax dol­lars collected.

Each per­son with a con­tri­bu­tion should feel he or she may ben­e­fit from what­ev­er they have to offer. there must how­ev­er be a dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion between offer­ing a gen­uine prod­uct in a con­trolled and des­ig­nat­ed locale, against push­ing trin­kets into the faces of peo­ple com­ing off a ship demand­ing they buy them, that to most peo­ple is tan­ta­mount to soft extortion.

People will buy what they want because they want to buy it, not because some­one forces it on them, or intim­i­dates them into buy­ing some­thing that at its gen­e­sis , was always going to be an impulse, dis­cre­tionary purchase.

A friend of mine, a female police offi­cer in the States, told me of a hor­ror inci­dent she and her hus­band encoun­tered in Montego Bay when they refused the advances of a sell­er of trin­kets to pur­chase a piece of trin­ket he pushed on them. The inci­dent she relat­ed esca­lat­ed into threats and ver­bal abuse , which cul­mi­nat­ed with a machete being pulled on them , forc­ing oth­er ven­dors to inter­vene on their behalf. Needless to say they will nev­er be back to Jamaica.

We know that bad news gets dis­sem­i­nat­ed four times faster than good news does, so we have to con­clude that soon­er or lat­er this will invari­ably catch up to the Jamaica tourism indus­try, and the coun­try in gen­er­al. Legislators must acknowl­edge that our laws are old , use­less, and inef­fec­tive, this has had a crip­pling effect on the coun­try’s jus­tice sys­tem because of recidi­vism, and a dev­as­tat­ing over­all effect on our coun­try. Law mak­ers must do some­thing about over­haul­ing our laws, instead of spend­ing their time bang­ing on desks and shout­ing child­ish insults at each other.

Asking this of them may how­ev­er be too much to expect from the losers that make up the coun­try’s polit­i­cal leadership.

mike beckles:

have your say: