STEP UP THE PROGRESS !

Progress for whom ?
Over the years the People’s National Party has had Jamaicans fooled using catchy phras­es and jingles.
Which leads us to ask just how stu­pid are Jamaicans really?
Michael Manley’s cam­paign against Edward Seaga was one of the most divi­sive cam­paigns waged in the his­to­ry of our young Nation. In fact it could rea­son­ably be argued that it was dur­ing Michael Manley’s divi­sive for­ay into Jamaican pol­i­tics that the chasm which exist today developed.

MY FATHER BORN YA !!!
Michael Manley waged a vis­cous and vis­cer­al cam­paign against the JLP’s Edward Seaga who was born on 28 May 1930, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Philip George Seaga and Erna (née Maxwell), Seaga’s par­ents returned to Jamaica with Edward when the boy was three months old. [wikipedia].
George Nooks a reg­gae singer and PNP sup­port­er penned and made pop­u­lar a song titled ‘my father born ya’ which became the National anthem for the PNP in it’s racist cam­paign against Edward Seaga.
Never mind that Michael Manley’s grand­fa­ther T.A.S. Manley was the son of a white Anglo-Saxon trad­er who migrat­ed from Yorkshire England.

There was noth­ing in the Jamaican Constitution which pre­clud­ed or barred Seaga from rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al pol­i­tics because of his American birth. Remember Seaga’s par­ents returned to their native Jamaica when their son was a mere three months old.
The Constitution appro­pri­ate­ly bars a for­eign nation­al with alle­giance to a for­eign Country from hold­ing polit­i­cal office in Jamaica.
This did not apply to Edward Seaga a Jamaica. Yet Michael Manley and his Party did not care they divid­ed the coun­try along par­ty lines, racial lines and along eco­nom­ic lines.
HOLNESS’S HOUSE A PRODUCT OF ENVY MANLEY SOWED…..

Jamaica has always been a melt­ing pot of dif­fer­ent peo­ple of all dif­fer­ent back­grounds. One of the defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics of Jamaicans regard­less of eth­nic­i­ty , is our vehe­mence about our Jamaican-ness.
None of the unique­ness of our vehe­ment Jamaican-ness mat­tered to Michael Manley he was pre­pared to win at all cost.
Edward Phillip George Seaga was paint­ed and depict­ed as an un-Jamaican inter­lop­er who should not be trusted.
Every neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tion was attached to Seaga with a view to mak­ing him less Jamaican than the major­i­ty black African pop­u­la­tion, or not Jamaican at all.

The PNP dis­sem­i­nat­ed lies and pro­pa­gan­da which claimed that Seaga was a tool of the Central Intelligence Agency . He was spo­ken of pejo­ra­tive­ly as ‘Spyaga’, despite the fact that Seaga had invest­ed more time and effort toward the devel­op­ment of Jamaica and it’s cul­ture in ways Manley could only dream of .

The char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion lev­eled against Bruce Golding and lit­er­al­ly every oth­er mem­ber of the JLP deserv­ing or not, has always been the ‘modus operan­di’ of the People’s National Party.
When a par­ty has noth­ing sub­stan­tive to offer it cre­ates diver­sions intend­ed to inflame passions.

It is with­ing that con­text that we must assim­i­late this brouha­ha sur­round­ing Andrew Holness’s home. Recently I wrote that Jamaica is head­ed in the direc­tion of the 70’s .
JAMAICA HEADING BACK TO THE DARK DAYS OF THE 1970’S…

It was that very same spir­it of envy which char­ac­ter­ized Manley’s reign which Andrew Holness is being forced to address.
This notion that peo­ple who work hard , plan and suc­ceed are wicked cap­i­tal­ists is still alive in Jamaica. The idea is that those who suc­ceed should give half of what they have to lazy peo­ple who look to Government for hand­outs, is alive and well. In fact they no longer want half they sim­ply kill and take what they want.
Hence the mur­der sta­tis­tics to a cer­tain degree.
The idea of cast­ing doubt on suc­cess, or that suc­cess­ful peo­ple derived what they have through less than hon­est means is reprehensible.
Either way the PNP is not the par­ty to be point­ing fingers.
It’s Integrity Commission a mis­nomer is in need of an integri­ty overall.

Now that Holness have revealed his sources of fund­ing for his project, let see if Portia Simpson Miller Percival Patterson , Peter Phillips and oth­ers will divulge the source of their incred­i­ble wealth.
Either way it may not mat­ter to an une­d­u­cat­ed elec­torate whose inter­est is focused large­ly on the very next meal .
This is the lega­cy of the People’s National Party. This is the endur­ing and indeli­ble stink this Party has on embed­ded in Jamaica.

There were steps tak­en by Michael Manley’s Socialist régime of the 70’s which are direct­ly impact­ing Jamaica over four decades lat­er . These steps have had tremen­dous con­se­quence, and are still impact­ing the con­tem­po­rary body-politic.

MOBILIZATION

The People’s National Party mas­tered the art of mobi­liz­ing in the 70’s. One of Michael Manley’s strengths was his abil­i­ty to bring peo­ple along with him on his ideas.
Not just that, Manley was able to mobi­lize his par­ty, from the high­est placed func­tionary to the least edu­cat­ed grass-roots sup­port­er to buy into what he was selling.
Among the left­ists lead­ers who dot­ted the land­scape of the time, from Latin-America , the Caribbean, to the dis­tant shores of Africa ‚no Leader was more gift­ed in mobi­liz­ing the masses.
With soar­ing rhetoric and his deep bari­tone deliv­ery Manley ignit­ed the down-trod­den mass­es of Jamaica the Caribbean and around the Globe.
Today Jamaicans and parts of the Caribbean still think of Michael Manley as a Messiah who came with a mes­sage of Self-reliance and self-deter­mi­na­tion for the poor­er class of peo­ple large­ly peo­ple of African Ancestry.
A detailed non-biased look at this per­cep­tion how­ev­er yields much more than that which meets the eyes.
The results how­ev­er would have to be con­sid­ered by an edu­cat­ed elec­torate capa­ble of sift­ing through the pro­pa­gan­da with a view to har­vest­ing poten­tial nuggets of value.
When the entire­ty of the pros and the cons are con­sid­ered objec­tive­ly, the rhetoric may not match the facts.
Hans Christian Andersen’s “Pied-Piper of Hamlin” did free the Town of rats but he also led the entire town’s chil­dren away. Those chil­dren were nev­er seen again.
Some Jamaicans did gain a degree of free­dom from the shack­les of men­tal Colonialism but the inno­cence , peace, and progress the coun­try lost has not been seen since.
You do the math.

PROPOGANDA

The PNP under­stood that whomev­er con­trolled the mes­sage con­trolled the masses.
Michael Manley and the PNP went about politi­ciz­ing exist­ing Media-hous­es of the day and cre­at­ing oth­ers for the pur­pose of mass indoctrination.
The Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation, (JBC) , Radio and Television for all intents and pur­pos­es became arms of the PNP.
Under Manley the Jamaica Daily News was cre­at­ed , a now defunct news­pa­per which was com­plete­ly ded­i­cat­ed to indoc­tri­nat­ing the mass­es with the Governing PNP’s agenda.
The Jamaica Information Service(JIS), anoth­er Government Medium was politi­cized and used in the most vul­gar ways to dis­sem­i­nate PNP propaganda.

MALIGNING

Under Michael Manley Jamaicans who worked hard and acquired mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions were maligned and made out to be greedy Capitalists who did not deserve to have the pro­ceeds of their labor.
Manley and the PNP active­ly taught poor Jamaicans that they were enti­tled to have half of what­ev­er their neigh­bors owned as part of his Socialist philosophy.
Jamaica was for­ev­er changed because of this, many Jamaicans who had inher­it­ed some mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions and oth­ers who ben­e­fit­ed through the sweat of their brows feared for their lives and they fled in droves.
Manley’s brig­ands moved into their homes, a move which lit­er­al­ly ghet­toized once pris­tine neigh­bor­hoods. This is a trend which Jamaica has not been able to reverse.
Many Jamaicans were killed for no oth­er rea­son than that they had mate­r­i­al possessions.
That rapa­cious men­tal deprav­i­ty is pret­ty much par for the course in con­tem­po­rary Jamaica, where peo­ple are sum­mar­i­ly slaugh­tered, even when their assailants need not take their lives.
Just recent­ly an elder­ly cou­ple who returned to the Island became vic­tims of that depravity.
The ongo­ing debat­ed about a house the leader of the Opposition Labor Party Andrew Holness has under con­struc­tion is anoth­er exam­ple of the depraved envy which char­ac­ter­ize the very core of the PNP.
It is incom­pre­hen­si­ble and shock­ing­ly cyn­i­cal that the PNP would ques­tion any­one’s integrity.
The PNP has been a can­cer­ous cesspool of cor­rup­tion which has sucked the life-blood from the once thriv­ing Island, reduc­ing it to a waste-land of beg­gars and mur­der­ous blood-thirsty demons.
I have no idea where Holness sourced the fund­ing for the house he is build­ing. Neither do I know where Portia Simpson Miller earned the sup­posed US$20 mil­lion she is worth.
Neither have intel­li­gent Jamaicans above” cur­ry goat and Red-stripe Beer” learned the where­abouts of bil­lions of dol­lars which have dis­s­a­peared in the litany of scan­dals under the cur­rent PNP administration.

PATRONAGE
Manley’s machis­mo on behalf of the down-trod­den should not be con­sumed with­out a full under­stand­ing of cap­tured homes and prop­er­ties, their own­ers hav­ing fled out of fear for their lives.
Let’s bring some per­spec­tive to this cha­rade which has metas­ta­sized for too long. Let’s push back against the revi­sion­ist historians.
Jamaica is enjoy­ing the bit­ter fruits of Manley’s labor.
Whatever good was derived from Manley’s tenure must be mea­sured against the neg­a­tives which emanat­ed after.
Open your minds and think.

Every President has a Constitutional duty and a respon­si­bil­i­ty to appoint jus­tices to the Supreme Court as well as oth­er courts in the Federal sys­tem when­ev­er vacan­cies occur.
Elections have con­se­quences, becom­ing President of the United States is a big deal . As Vice President Joe Biden would say it ” this is a big f*****g deal”.
Every President has the right to his/​her agen­da, that includes appoint­ing suit­able jus­tices to fill vacan­cies in the fed­er­al court system.
No jurist is ever big­ger that the process. No President has more pow­er than another .
In fact President Obama who has replaced two asso­ciate jus­tices to the supreme court has done an out­stand­ing job in select­ing Sonia Sotomayer and Helena Kagan who were both con­firmed by the senate.

RIGHT WING HYPOCRISY

It is stun­ning ‚yet not sur­pris­ing to hear Ted Cruz and the oth­er Cuban Marco Rubio , two Republican can­di­dates for President imme­di­ate­ly demand that the next President(not Obama) appoint a suc­ces­sor to Antonin Scalia who recent­ly passed away.
For the record Antonin Scalia fought tooth and nail to dis­man­tle every sin­gle piece of leg­is­la­tion which would seek to reverse over four hun­dred years of racial injus­tice in America.
Lets be clear , despite the plat­i­tudes and the hand wring­ing you will hear from the lame stream media going for­ward, to include so called Democrats, Antonin Scalai rep­re­sent­ed exact­ly what is wrong with America.

President Obama in his role as the leader of the coun­try came out and paid trib­ute to Scalia as he was expect­ed to, (God bless him he is a bet­ter man than I am). The President said he would ful­fill his con­sti­tu­tion­al duties by appoint­ing a suc­ces­sor to Scalia in due course.
For the sake of clar­i­ty what I find dis­gust­ing about Ted Cruz and to a less­er extent the oth­er Hispanic Marco Rubio , is the length to which they will go to pre­tend they are more American than every­one else.
Ted Cruz runs on the notion that no oth­er can­di­date is as Con- ser­v­a­tive as he is , in fact sev­er­al of the oth­er can­di­dates have crit­i­cized him and label­ing him a liar.
Cruz’s own law pro­fes­sor from Harvard called him out for being a fair weath­er con­sti­tu­tion­al­ist. Everything is only as good as Ted Cruz say it is. No one is as con­ser­v­a­tive as Ted Cruz . The guy is an ego-mani­ac and a nar­cis­sist , that makes him dangerous.
Is it any won­der that this guy want to car­pet-bomb oth­er coun­tries into submission?

Ted Cruz is run­ning to be President of the United States of America, Barack Obama is the twice-elect­ed President of the United States of America. Neither Ted Cruz nor the rest of the right-wing noise machine gets to deter­mine whether the President appoint a suc­ces­sor to Scalia or not . That is the con­sti­tu­tion­al per­og­a­tive of the President of the United States and not a self cen­tered Republican Senator from Texas.

The debates com­mis­sion in Jamaica has announced that debates between the lead­ers of the two major polit­i­cal par­ties sched­uled for Tuesday February 16^th has been called off.
The debates com­mis­sion took the action because the People’s National Party failed to respond con­firm­ing it’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the debates.
In the mean­time the PNP has attached pre­con­di­tions to it’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the debates, which has noth­ing to do with the debates.

♦In the first instance Prime Minister Simpson-Miller refus­es to par­tic­i­pate in the debates unless Opposition leader Andrew Holness apol­o­gize to her for refer­ring to her as the “biggest con artist Jamaica has ever seen”. Additionally she has threat­ened legal action against the Opposition leader claim­ing she has been dam­aged by his characterization.
♦ What the pub­lic may not know is that it was Miller who referred to the Opposition Leader’s 10-point plan as “con-job”,which pre­cip­i­tat­ed the Opposition Leader’s response.
♦ The Finance Minister Peter Phillips not to be out­done demand­ed that Opposition Leader Holness divulge the source/​s of fund­ing for his house which is under con­struc­tion in the Saint Andrew Community of Beverly Hills.
Both of these excus­es are ridicu­lous red-her­rings which has zero to with debat­ing the issues ger­mane to the future of the Island . Notwithstanding, this posi­tion tak­en by the PNP demon­strates a “don’t care, drunk with pow­er, atti­tude and the dis­dain with which it holds the Jamaican electorate”. 

If the PNP has ques­tions about the leader of the Opposition’s ethics, a debate stage is exact­ly the place to air those griev­ances and allow the Jamaican peo­ple to decide.
It rings hol­low that Prime Minister Simpson-Miller who refused to speak to the Press for the four years she has been in Jamaica House would now con­tend the reason/​s she is refus­ing to debate the leader of the oppo­si­tion is about things the oppo­si­tion leader should do, or has­n’t done.
The facts are clear , the Prime Minister has presided over a cor­rupt régime which has been plagued with graft, gross incom­pe­tence, neg­li­gence and ram­pant corruption.
It is insult­ing to the elec­torate that the incom­pe­tent and and clue­less Simpson-Miller would be allowed to hide behind PNP cre­at­ed smoke-screens and get away with it.
Much less be reward­ed with a sec­ond term.
Jamaica is not Simpson Miller’s pri­vate Property nei­ther is it the pri­vate domain of the PNP and it’s gang-land affiliates .
As such, Miller must forth­with attend the debates and answer ques­tions or resign.
What this cheeky and bla­tant dis­re­spect for the process reveals is that Jamaica is a Banana Republic which is ruled by third rate semi-lit­er­ates who have no respect for the rule of law.
Peel back the thin lay­er of veneer and the Sub-Saharan style fief­dom is exposed . Our Country is being run like a gang­land enclave ruled by threats, intim­i­da­tion and violence.

Debates are nei­ther about Holness nor Miller .They are about the peo­ple. Debates are job interviews , .
No can­di­date or par­ty seek­ing office should have the pow­er or indeed the free­dom to say I am not debat­ing with­out con­se­quence> No can­di­date for a job can say to his/​her prospec­tive employ­er I am not inter­view­ing for the job just trust me. It is the most bla­tant dis­dain that a rag-tag polit­i­cal cult can so dis­re­gard the intel­li­gence of the elec­torate by attach­ing pre­con­di­tions to answer­ing ques­tions the media would pose on the peo­ple’s behalf. This is an affront to the dig­ni­ty of the process which can­not stand.

With National Elections only 13 days away it is interesting to know what path the Jamaica Labor Party has to a victory .

On December 29^th 2011 National Elections were held in Jamaica .
Before the night was too far gone it became clear that Simpson Miller and the People’s National Party would form the next Government.
Though Elections were not con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due until September of 2012, Andrew Holness the sit­ting Prime Minister sought his own mandate.
It was a deci­sion which will be in the mind of Holness forever.
The JLP received a one sided drubbing.
In a 44 to 19 shel­lack­ing the jad­ed , tired and out of ideas PNP was returned to pow­er, much to the sur­prise of many includ­ing the PNP itself.
It is still believed that the PNP’s pop­ulist embrace of Gays and Lesbians was the cat­a­lyst which decid­ed the elec­tions in the PNP’s favor.

It begs the ques­tion then “what pop­ulist mes­sage has the JLp which will erase a 25-seat deficit and give the par­ty a one seat majority”?
Jamaican vot­ers are known to be hard-core in their polit­i­cal beliefs, switch­ing their vote only when their per­son­al pantries and cup­boards are emp­ty of food.
This obser­va­tion may not be the most char­i­ta­ble and may even be seen as dis­re­spect­ful of the electorate.
I chal­lenge dis­senters to point to Jamaican vot­ers vot­ing the inter­est of the coun­try over par­ty and their bellies.

The rul­ing PNP has mas­tered the art of pop­ulist pol­i­tics since Jamaica became an Independent Nation[sic].
Michael Manley was a mas­ter of it,Portia and the par­ty acolytes have con­tin­ued that trend.
It was no sur­prise to see Portia Simpson Miller on the Party’s plat­form in Half-Way-Tree Square cham­pi­oning the pos­si­bil­i­ty of gan­ja legalization.
These are huge­ly pop­ulist issues which has tremen­dous res­o­nance for the mass­es many of whom use the weed.
The JLP did not get out front on this issue, so the ques­tion is,“what is the plan to erase the deficit”?

In 72 Hungry Jamaicans scared of Communism boot­ed Manley from office.
By 88 with filled bel­lies and the Cold war over they returned Manley to power.
For an unprece­dent­ed ¹⁴¹⁄₂ years they watched as Patterson and his cronies sold off every­thing. Crime climbed to astro­nom­i­cal lev­els. The econ­o­my lurched from cri­sis to cri­sis and the cur­ren­cy became a worth­less piece of crap.
In that time the very nature of our coun­try changed . Our coun­try was changed from a mod­el in the Caribbean and indeed the world to a pariah.
In many cas­es even CARICOM States do not want Jamaicans in their countries.

Under immense pres­sure, hunger , crime , despair and depri­va­tion Jamaicans turned to Orette Bruce Golding on September 11^th 2007.
The JLP was returned to power.
But just barely.
Despite a col­laps­ing world econ­o­my Audley Shaw and the JLP kept the Jamaican cur­ren­cy sta­ble despite the absence of an IMF deal.
Notwithstanding, the elec­torate returned the PNP to pow­er despite the fact that the par­ty had noth­ing to offer but more despair crime and pover­ty for every­one except it’s elites and gang­land affiliates.

It’s nev­er enough to assume that over­all suf­fer­ing for aver­age Jamaicans will cause them to turn to the oth­er party.
The PNP has an intri­cate net­work of affil­i­ates from the grass-roots to the most sophis­ti­cat­ed areas of the soci­ety ready to go to bat for the PNP .
It is no won­der that Peter Phillips is the sup­posed man of the year.
It is no won­der that the Private sec­tor Organization makes state­ments in sup­port of the Administration.
It is no won­der that for the most part the media hous­es are organs for the party.
Every aspect of nation­al life has been cor­rod­ed with the cor­ro­sive ten­ta­cles of the Governing People’s National Party.

In lieu of the fore­gone it is almost a safe bet to con­clude that unless the Labor Party knows some­thing the rest of us are not privy to, the PNP will be returned to pow­er come February 25^th.
I hope for the future of our coun­try that I am proven wrong but I doubt that very much.
The JLP was nev­er forced to seri­ous­ly defend seats in parish­es like Saint Thomas, St Catherine, Hanover, Clarendon, Portland, Trelawny, and to some degree Manchester.
It is dif­fi­cult to see how the JLP intend to win this elec­tion if it has to defend stren­u­ous­ly in these parishes.
How did these parish­es become com­pet­i­tive parish­es in which the PNP has won and won big?
That’s the issue to consider !
But then again what the hell do I know?

As the tra­di­tion­al car­ni­val spec­ta­cle of elec­tion time cam­paign­ing kicks into high gear, Jamaicans fill the high­ways and byways in auto­mo­bile car­a­vans criss-cross­ing the Island in seem­ing rivers of green and orange bodies.
Yet under­neath the car­ni­val atmos­phere are more sin­is­ter events occur­ring which eludes the die-hard laborites and kum­reds[sic] with the excep­tion of those pulling the strings.

The Island’s Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller rose from the poor­er class through affil­i­a­tions and patron­age to occu­py the high­est elect­ed polit­i­cal office in the Island’s par­lia­men­tary demo­c­ra­t­ic system.
Miller climbed through the rough and tum­ble pol­i­tics which char­ac­ter­ize the Manley régime of the 70’s ‚the lethar­gic ret­ro­grade and cor­rup­tion filled reign of Percival James Patterson to cul­mi­nate in that lega­cy being hand­ed off to her.
Through it all many peo­ple have come to know Portia as a less than qual­i­fied per­son to lead the coun­try , but also to real­ize just how pow­er­ful patron­age pol­i­tics is in the island nation of 2.8 million.

NO DEBATES?
Throughout Miller’s career var­i­ous descrip­tive words have been used to describe her that are far from com­pli­men­ta­ry. Her con­duct in pub­lic to those in the know, has been far from exem­plary and in many case could be ade­quate­ly described as abra­sive and the behav­ior of a crass virago.
It is on this basis that it is stun­ning that Miller would have the gall to threat­en legal action against Andrew Holness the Opposition leader for refer­ring to her as the biggest con-artist the coun­try ever had.
It was Miller who labeled Holness’s 10-point plan as a con job.

This bla­tant attempt at intim­i­da­tion from Miller and her legal team is par­tic­u­lar­ly hyp­o­crit­i­cal con­sid­er­ing Miller’s his­to­ry of call­ing Holness Enemy of the state and a pletho­ra of oth­er unsa­vory names.
Despite this hypocrisy there is more.
Portia Simpson Miller intends to use the legal sys­tem as anoth­er tool of the PNP to quite dis­sent on the Island.
Between the thugs in the street and the Courts on the oth­er end it appears Jamaica is head­ing once again to the dark days of the 70’s when Michael Manley locked up almost the entire polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion and death squads sum­mar­i­ly exe­cut­ed any­one dar­ing to stand with the oppo­si­tion par­ty in public.

HERE’S THE ISSUE.
The leader of the Opposition was asked to respond to the Prime Minister’s com­ments about his pro­posed 10-point-plan which she referred to as a con.
The Opposition Leader responded .
Quote: “The prime min­is­ter is the biggest con artist Jamaica has ever seen,”.
This is what she is suing about, accord­ing to her kum­red lawyer Bert Samuels.

NO ONE CAN REDUCE PORTIA IN THE PUBLIC’S EYE , SHE HAS DONE THAT QUITE EFFECTIVELY ON HER OWN.

The prime min­is­ter is demand­ing: “… a suit­ably word­ed apol­o­gy, approved by our client be pub­lished on Television Jamaica, in the Jamaica Observer and The Gleaner and that our client be paid dam­ages com­men­su­rate with her sta­tion in life local­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly, along with his (her attor­ney) legal costs.”
They also claim Miller is dimin­ished in the eyes of well mean­ing mem­bers of the society.
Note to Bert etal, you should be ashamed to file this despi­ca­ble brief as a so-called respect­ed mem­ber of the bar. When was Miller ever ele­vat­ed in the eyes of the pub­lic (not PNP)?
What you and well mean­ing mem­bers of the soci­ety should be con­cerned about is not the lega­cy of a char­la­tan but the hijack­ing of our democracy .
Threatening not to debate the leader of the oppo­si­tion based on Faux indig­na­tion reveal to the world that Miller is a less than qual­i­fied cow­ard­ly oppor­tunist who will do any­thing , includ­ing dimin­ish our demo­c­ra­t­ic process to hold onto power.

This medi­um hold no brief for Holness but it is a despi­ca­ble yet trans­par­ent attempt on the part of the sit­ting Prime Minister to avoid fac­ing the nation, using the legal process as a cam­paign tool .
As an offi­cer of the Court Samuels and the oth­er Attorneys should hang their heads in shame . It is vast­ly more impor­tant to work toward improv­ing our fledg­ling democ­ra­cy than to engage in this bla­tant un-demo­c­ra­t­ic act. You should hang your col­lec­tive heads in shame.

The Congressional Black Caucus in the US Congress is set to endorse Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Choice for President of the United States.
The Congressional Black Caucus polit­i­cal arm is geared at elect­ing Democrats to office accord­ing to Congressman Gregory Meeks of Queens New York.
This medi­um is unsure about this endorse­ment, and the tim­ing of it time in light of the fact that Democrats have not earned Black votes nor own it.
With all of the killings of unarmed peo­ple by police and oth­er mal­adies plagu­ing the Black com­mu­ni­ty the Democratic par­ty has been silent.
We will have much more to say after the endorsement.

As part of the large group of ana­lysts on CNN Tuesday night dis­sect­ing the results of the New Hampshire pri­maries , Philadelphia Democratic Mayor Micheal Nutter repeat­ed the lie “peo­ple are angry” , over and over again.
It was some­what shock­ing to see an elect­ed Democratic offi­cial sit­ting in a tele­vi­sion stu­dio regur­gi­tat­ing the garbage fed him and the rest of us by the very same net­work and oth­ers like it.

People are angry , peo­ple are angry, that’s the media nar­ra­tive of course that goes down pret­ty well with Donald Trumps cam­paign slo­gan of “Let’s make America great again”
Let’s make America great again is an exten­sion of “Let’s take back our Country”.
It’s unclear whether Americans are aware just how the media to which they look for infor­ma­tion is deceiv­ing them? As we pon­der this ques­tion it’s impor­tant to under­stand the fact that what we call the main-stream-media is actu­al­ly a well put togeth­er net­work of pro­pa­gan­da organs owned and oper­at­ed by the rich­est peo­ple in the world.

It’s no won­der that for the most part sub­stan­tive issues are cast to the side while fluff and incon­se­quen­tial issues are front and cen­ter . That’s what the cor­po­rate shills want you to con­sume while they move their agenda.
How do you explain the rise of social media as the enti­ty to which more and more peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly younger peo­ple are look­ing to for their information?
Does any­one believe Donald Trump was a seri­ous can­di­date for President of the United States before the media recy­cled and cir­cu­lat­ed him over and over , foist­ing him onto the con­scious­ness of gullible voters?

It is said if you spin a lie enough times it even­tu­al­ly becomes truth. Republicans run­ning for office over the last sev­er­al cycles have mas­tered the art of lying over and again until the lies become truth. What is astound­ing is when those who posi­tion them­selves as lead­ers with­in the Democratic par­ty actu­al­ly accept the lies and end up repeat­ing them. The notion that peo­ple are angry is a Republican lie cir­cu­lat­ed by a com­plic­it media to gin up anger and rat­ings for the media and pas­sion for the repub­li­cans, which they hope will nul­li­fy Obama’s accomplishments.

So lets quick­ly see whether there is any legit­i­ma­cy to this narrative.
Under Barack Obama over 9 mil­lion jobs cre­at­ed, as against 800 thou­sand jobs being lost each month under Bush.
Vice President Biden in 2008 said ‚“In the last six months of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, we lost 3.5 mil­lion jobs,” . “As a mat­ter of fact, on that mag­nif­i­cent day … when we were sworn in, before I low­ered my hand that day after tak­ing the oath … we’d already lost over 760,000 jobs that month.”
A politi­co fact check bore out the Vice President’s claims.

Gas was $5 per gal­lon, today gas is less than $2 per gallon.
President Obama did not only save the Auto indus­try he made it stronger than ever.
He restored America’s image abroad.
There were two active wars with no end in sight, today the world con­tin­ue to be a chal­leng­ing place but Obama did not start any new wars.
The econ­o­my implod­ed by the time Obama took office, today the American econ­o­my cre­ates hun­dreds of thou­sands of jobs every month since he took office.
The Housing mar­ket has regained sig­nif­i­cant por­tions of what it lost after the melt-down.
The afford­able Care Act brought health care to mil­lions some­thing sev­er­al pres­i­dents who pre­ced­ed Obama was unable to do.
Wall street has come roar­ing back , with both the Nasdaq and the stock exchange reg­is­ter­ing phe­nom­e­nal gains.

I could go on and on but you get the picture.
So to Mayor Nutter and oth­ers, before you par­rot Republican/​media talk­ing points step back and eval­u­ate your state­ments before you become a mouth­piece of deception.
Barack Obama accom­plished every­thing he did against the great­est intran­si­gence and obstruc­tion any pres­i­dent has every had to con­tend with.
People are not angry, Republicans are mad that Barack Obama is a suc­cess­ful two-term President despite their best efforts at obstruc­tion, pro­pa­gan­da and smear.

Yesterday I spoke to the glar­ing holes in the secu­ri­ty which was in place at the two mas­sive Political ral­lies held in Half-Way-Tree Square and Sam Sharpe Square by the two major polit­i­cal par­ties respectively.
Though my Article was harsh­ly crit­i­cal of the police it was not meant to degrade or demean the Agency I spent 10 years of my life in. It was intend­ed to give the Agency an oppor­tu­ni­ty to think out­side the box com­men­su­rate with the changed and ever chang­ing times.
To my many friends who feel betrayed by my crit­i­cisms , there is such a thing as “con­struc­tive crit­i­cism” , the type you get from your real friends.
RALLY’S SHOOTING EXPOSES WEAKNESS IN ABILITY OF POLICE TO PROVIDE REAL SECURITY..

In the Article I laid out what I thought would be the required amount of offi­cers to ade­quate­ly secure the safe­ty of the peo­ple and can­di­dates at either ral­lies as well as to secure busi­ness­es and oth­er pri­vate prop­er­ty with­ing the envi­rons of the venues.
That num­ber was a thou­sand offi­cers under the com­mand of at least one Deputy Commissioner of Police who under­stand logis­tics, crowd con­trol as well as oth­er secu­ri­ty issues which are like­ly to emerge in sit­u­a­tions where large amounts of peo­ple are gath­ered together.
The plan includ­ed a call for cops on horse-back which are ter­rif­ic at crowd con­trol. It also called for offi­cers with canines which are tremen­dous val­ue assets , par­tic­u­lar­ly where crowd com­pli­ance is a necessity.
I made those rec­om­men­da­tions against the back­ground of the basic prin­ci­ples of the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s own mis­sion statement.
(1) Protection of life and Property.
(2) Preservation of Peace and Good Order.
(3) Prevention and detec­tion of crime.

In 1982 when I entered the Academy the mis­sion state­ment of the JCF was as I pre­sent­ed it above. Nowadays the JCF says this is it’s mis­sion statement.
The Mission of the Jamaica Constabulary Force and its Auxiliaries is to Serve, Protect and Reassure the peo­ple in Jamaica through the deliv­ery of impar­tial and pro­fes­sion­al Services aimed at main­te­nance of law and order, pro­tec­tion of life and prop­er­ty, pre­ven­tion and detec­tion of crime and the preser­va­tion of peace.
Same thing right?
Well pret­ty much, just a lit­tle more wordy, in the end it remains the same.

I ask you my read­ers to remem­ber this mis­sion state­ment as you digest the remain­der of what I will present to you .
By the Constabulary’s own num­bers the offi­cial JCF staff num­bers in 2011 was 9,930 plus 55 aux­il­iary posi­tions, mak­ing a total of 9,985; its cur­rent strength (as of 2011) is 8,441. Since then the JCF and it’s Auxillary ISCF has merged adding rough­ly anoth­er 2’000 offi­cers to the ranks of the JCF.
What I found incred­i­ble was the push-back I received most­ly from for­mer mem­bers of the JCF who were intent on telling me what can­not be accom­plished, large­ly because they can­not per­ceive it.
One of the rea­sons I dropped every­thing and walked away from the JCF was not nec­es­sar­i­ly because the pay was shit­ty. It was pri­mar­i­ly because I real­ized that based on exist­ing atti­tudes the Force as a ser­vice deliv­er enti­ty had no real plan to change or to grow into an agency which deliv­ers on it’s promise.

I real­ized from my van­tage point then that if I stayed for anoth­er hun­dred years the lev­el of con­tri­bu­tion I would be able to make would me neg­li­gi­ble exact­ly because of exist­ing mindsets.
Literally every­one who pushed back against my sug­ges­tions talked about why it can’t be done. Why we should adjust our think­ing to the sit­u­a­tion as it is,rather than how it should be.
Unfortunately I nev­er believed in accept­ing fail­ure as accept­able. Things gets changed by peo­ple will­ing to think and act out­side the box.
Adversity is the moth­er of inven­tion, not a rea­son to pick up the ball and go home because it’s too hard.
I was nev­er com­fort­able wal­low­ing in the mud of medi­oc­rity because it’s easy . I believe in get­ting down in the mud and fight­ing to make a dif­fer­ence, fight­ing for change. Real change is nev­er easy. It has to be earned.
The JCF has no truer friend than me but I would not be a real friend was I to accept that the lev­el of ser­vice being deliv­ered by the agency was val­ue for money.

“IT CAN’T BE DONE THEY SAY” 

The police can­not change the fact that many with­in the lead­er­ship of the Government and Opposition par­ty are in bed with Jamaica’s most dan­ger­ous criminals.
But the Police can exem­pli­fy it’s ser­vice by inves­ti­gat­ing and plac­ing crim­i­nals before the courts regard­less of their sta­tion. There is noth­ing in the JCF Act which places any Jamaican above the law.
When the Police fail to inves­ti­gate and arrest politi­cians with ties to crim­i­nals it embold­ens every­one to dis­re­gard the laws. So whether the crim­i­nal is in Kings House , Jamaica House , or any oth­er House, if they break the law the police must enforce the laws.
Recently the com­mis­sion­er called for mem­bers to avoid sid­ing with any polit­i­cal par­ty . The com­mis­sion­er threat­ened rank and file mem­bers with inter­dic­tion and sus­pen­sion if they are caught engag­ing in politicking.
I ask the com­mis­sion­er ? “what is the penal­ty for the fail­ure of the high com­mand to Investigate crim­i­nals in posi­tions of pow­er”?

The police can­not change the fact that the Governing PNP and to a less­er extent the Opposition JLP has lit­er­al­ly turned the coun­try into spe­cif­ic yet sep­a­rate lit­tle zones of polit­i­cal exclusions.
But the Police can remain neu­tral so that when they are forced to take action they are not accused of partiality.
The Police can­not change that the sys­tem put in place by both polit­i­cal par­ties cre­at­ed and con­tin­ue to cre­ate pow­er­ful above the law gang­sters who deliv­er votes.
But the Police can use their cra­ni­ums to inves­ti­gate, entrap and ensnare these hood­lums and their polit­i­cal patrons , place them before the courts or bring jus­tice to them somehow.
The police can­not pass laws.
However the police has with­in it’s pow­er the abil­i­ty to impact leg­is­la­tion, much small­er groups have had incred­i­bly influ­ence on leg­is­la­tion> The (indecom)Act is a good example.

Jamaica may be a crim­i­nal paradise .
The police does not have to engage in crim­i­nal conduct.
The depart­ment may be stretched as some have suggested .
Jamaicans under­stand force and strength, putting less than ade­quate amounts of offi­cers to cov­er an event places offi­cers lives at risk it serves no use­ful pur­pose except as win­dow dressing.

The police may not be able to get every weapon being smug­gled into a venue .
But there should be no cir­cum­stances in which sev­er­al peo­ple are shot in a venue where the police is on site yet there are no arrests.
The events of 2010 which the world watched in real time occur­ring in Jamaica should have been a warn­ing and a come-to-Jesus-moment for the ‘self serv­ing politi­cians on both sides.
Police sta­tions burned to the ground. Police offi­cers and civil­ians alike killed . Most pro­found­ly was the coa­lesc­ing of vary­ing fac­tions against the Jamaican state. It required an all out effort using assets from the Military to return the Jamaican state to the elect­ed officials.

Rather than thank the secu­ri­ty Forces the Government went ahead and gave more pow­er to (indecom),the brain­child of Bruce Golding and Criminal Rights lob­by Jamaicans for Justice. No one could argue that the police did not need seri­ous over­sight but (inde­com) is not it. Giving unchecked pow­er to a Napoleonic, ego-mani­a­cal nar­cis­sist is not the way to go about it. That is the anti­dote for empow­er­ing criminals.
Soon (inde­com) will want to search Jamaica Defense Force Headquarters to see whether the mil­i­tary has cer­tain types of ordinances.….
Oh wait !!!!
They already tried that . If this isn’t pop­py-show I don’t know what is?
Oh by the way they crow that police killings are down , true dat, but wait, the mass killing of inno­cent Jamaicans con­tin­ue at a mer­ry clip and is actu­al­ly get­ting worse >
So as far as the (inde­com) Act is con­cerned, “Mission accom­plished”

Rather than invest in the secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus of the Island the PNP gov­ern­ment ever the anti-police Administration decid­ed to con­vene an Inquiry into what hap­pened in Tivoli Gardens in 2010. At the head of that Inquiry is an arro­gant for­eign­er whose sole intent is pos­tur­ing and try­ing to show the Security forces in a bad light.
Did I men­tion the fact that that fias­co is still going on with costs in the hun­dreds of millions?
Of course why not if every PNP can eat a food why not bring in a pompous Bajan rel­ic to eat a food as well?
Additionally well over $100 mil­lion in com­pen­sato­ry dam­ages to the very peo­ple who har­bored and encour­aged a crim­i­nal empire in their com­mu­ni­ty for decades.

Yes every­thing that I heard yes­ter­day about why the police can­not be bet­ter are real argu­ments. My dis­agree­ment with those views is this, despite all of the fore­gone the police can do a bet­ter job. The police has a man­date, remem­ber I asked you to keep the mis­sion state­ment in mind?
Yes the police can be bet­ter despite the ” crim­i­nal sup­port­ing shit-heads” in Jamaica House and Gordon House.
Don’t tell me what can­not be done let’s join hands and hearts and change the par­a­digm, instead of suc­cumb­ing to the nar­ra­tive of can’t.

Ever the para­noid ex-cop I watched both polit­i­cal lead­ers arrive at their respec­tive ral­lies and imme­di­ate­ly I default­ed to my police senses.
Like “Spidey sens­es tin­gling” I thought how easy it would be to actu­al­ly take out either of these two lead­ers if some­one had a mind to.
At a time when there are ter­ror threats and ter­ror­ist threats across the Globe, and with Jamaica’s his­to­ry of polit­i­cal vio­lence what is the think­ing of the can­di­dates and maybe most impor­tant­ly the agency tasked with their protection?

Okay I know many of my for­mer col­leagues are think­ing “Mike these m****r‑f*****s deserve what­ev­er may be com­ing to them”.
I get that but this is less about them and more about the peo­ple and the agency tasked with their protection.
Imagine the vit­ri­olic back-lash if one of these lead­ers is killed because the police fail to have a cohe­sive plan in place to ade­quate­ly pro­tect them.
If the Police can­not ensure that guns do not get into the venue, then can­di­dates should not be arriv­ing in a mass of flesh stand­ing with parts of their bod­ies pro­trud­ing through the rooves of their vehicles.
The police Commissioner and his top brass can­not assume that send­ing some poor­ly trained , poor­ly equipped poor­ly backed up cops to an event ris­es to the lev­el of security.
Security plans must be designed with the com­pli­ance of polit­i­cal can­di­dates who con­form with the dic­tates of the plan. Police does not get to tell politi­cians how to be politi­cians , con­verse­ly politi­cians must con­form to police plans to keep them and oth­ers safe.

As I watched both can­di­dates arrive at their respec­tive ral­ly I won­dered with a smile how in hell a cou­ple of cops hang­ing off the vehi­cle amount to secu­ri­ty for the candidates?
I must admit I was not at all sur­prised that an actu­al shoot­ing could occur in a polit­i­cal meet­ing . I would not have been one bit sur­prised that the leader of one par­ty or the oth­er could have been killed right there.
One of the things I taught my fam­i­ly and to a large extent my wife is nev­er get caught say­ing the things peo­ple say on Television when crim­i­nals strike, “oh I nev­er though some­thing like that could hap­pen here”.
Stuff occur wher­ev­er you give crim­i­nal mind­ed peo­ple the oppor­tu­ni­ty to com­mit crimes.
Leaving a pock­et book in a car will most like­ly leave the own­er with­out a pock­et-book, a car, or at best some cost­ly win­dow repairs.
Why take that chance take the pock­et-book with you or, after mak­ing sure you are not being observed, place the item of worth in the locked trunk of your vehicle.

Sunday February 7^th Mass JLP ral­ly in Sam Sharpe Square did not hap­pen upon the Police with­out warn­ing, nei­ther did the PNP’s mass ral­ly in Half-Way-tree square.
I must con­fess that I do not have a copy of the plan the Police had in place to ensure the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of the can­di­dates and their supporters.
I am also painful­ly aware of the un-dis­ci­plined nature of Jamaicans of both polit­i­cal stripes, par­tic­u­lar­ly when they have a cheer­ing sec­tion and worse when they are oper­at­ing in polit­i­cal groups.
The police should how­ev­er use these very char­ac­ter­is­tics to devel­op work­able plans which leave no ques­tion of who is in charge, as well as keep­ing their charges safe.

The Police had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to devel­op detailed writ­ten plans to ensure the safe­ty of atten­dees to these events as well as to ensure that whomev­er show up with mal-intent are swift­ly apprehended.
Many of my friends would most cer­tain­ly want to know how come I know there was no plan in place?
To those ques­tions I say , on Sunday two peo­ple were killed and oth­ers were injured and no one in cus­tody which is a shock­ing indict­ment on what­ev­er plan or secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus that they thought they had in place.
Police may not be able to pre­vent every shoot­ing but they damn well can make sure that the shoot­ers will be appre­hend­ed on the spot.
The ques­tion I have for the JCF as a for­mer Jamaican cop is this,“when will the sup­posed more edu­cat­ed more sophis­ti­cat­ed JCf stop being the Barney Fyffe of policing”?
I believe the Police still have bar­ri­ers for crowd con­trol , the police must do a bet­ter job with the lim­it­ed resources it has .
The Commissioner of Police should have had hun­dreds of police offi­cers over a thou­sand even, cops on horse-back, cops with Canines and ele­ments of every prac­ti­cal piece of asset the Police has at it’s dis­pos­al shut­tled in from Kingston into Montego Bay days ahead of the meeting.
The police must set the agen­da , mov­ing atten­dees through bar­ri­ers where they are searched before they are allowed into the gen­er­al area where the crowd would convene .
I real­ly don’t want to hear about mul­ti­ple entry/​egress points .
It is what it is secure it.

Jamaican peo­ple under­stand one lan­guage, that is the lan­guage of force and pow­er. The police demon­strate feck­less­ness and weakness.
I have just about had it with the feck­less­ness of the Police. There is no crit­i­cal think­ing in the police depart­ment from what meets the eyes and what my sources tell me it’s all a damn show.
Every damn per­son com­ing to that event should have been ush­ered through police check­points . If a patron does not want to com­ply he/​she should leave or face arrest .
That means the pad­dy-wag­on should be on stand-by and yes each offi­cer appro­pri­ate­ly armed and issued with plas­tic handcuffs.
The police must accept respon­si­bil­i­ty for what occurred at that meet­ing, I don’t care that a sup­posed crim­i­nal got killed, that is not the impor­tant thing.
What this event laid bare is the incom­pe­tence of the police in secur­ing the patrons and the leader of the Opposition.
The fact that there was no shoot­ing at the PNP event a week ear­li­er is cold com­fort for the police and the Prime Minister.

I hope every black, man, woman and child watch­ing the Republican debates saw the answer of the Republican can­di­dates when they were asked about police killing unarmed black people.
Everyone who respond­ed want­ed to give the police more pow­er and respect.
Everyone ignored the part of the ques­tion which deals with the ille­gal police killings.
As a for­mer police offi­cer I am shocked that none cared enough to talk about dead unarmed citizens.
What they are advo­cat­ing is more of the same.
No regard for the inno­cent loss of life.
The police work for the peo­ple, the peo­ple do not work for the police .
What kind of peo­ple are these who are offer­ing them­selves for leadership.
Any you know what the great­est tragedy is?
Most of the peo­ple who call them­selves my friends or fol­low my posts won’t even take the time to digest this.
If you don’t care why should they care?

RUBIO

For this blog­ger I must admit the only can­di­date I could poten­tial­ly stom­ach in that Republican filed was John Kasich .
I am not a Chris Christie fan but I was lit­er­al­ly cheer­ing Chris Christie’s smack-down of the class-less lit­tle Marco Rubio ‚who once accused President Obama of hav­ing “no class”.
President Obama has had a scan­dal free Administration thus far , some­thing which can­not be said of any Administration in recent mem­o­ry except Jimmy Carter’s.
Rubio mount­ed his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign by attack­ing the pres­i­dent on every issue to the point of being ridicu­lous and dis­re­spect­ful. The strat­e­gy is designed to appear ready for the gen­er­al elec­tion process by appear­ing ready to take on the Democratic Candidate whether Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.
As part of that strat­e­gy Rubio arrived at the debates with a canned attack on Obama which he repeat­ed three times in answer to ques­tions which had noth­ing to do with the rehearsed attack on the president.
Obviously some­one needs to remind the arro­gant lit­tle Rubio that Barack Obama is a twice elect­ed American President , and oh by the way the pres­i­dent is not on any ballot.
Chris Christie exco­ri­at­ed Rubio mak­ing him seem ama­teur­ish and unpre­pared to be president.
I have nev­er before enjoyed a smack-down as I did the Chris Christie smack-down of Rubio.

Addressing a large crowd in Junction, South East St Elizabeth Thursday night, JLP shad­ow min­is­ter of finance Audley Shaw said the People’s National Party (PNP) has been get­ting a free pass from the media while pro­pos­als of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) are being sub­ject­ed to rig­or­ous examination.
“I was on an inter­view last night. I said that we can cre­ate 250,000 new jobs in Jamaica. Dem a ques­tion me, how yuh gwine do it. Which sec­tors yuh gwine get it out of,” “When Peter Phillips say him was going to cre­ate 100,000 jobs nobody don’t ask him nut­tin,” . “We are going to trans­form the same Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) … PNP say dem can cre­ate 30,000 … 40,000 jobs, Labour Party say we can cre­ate 75,000 jobs in Business Process Outsourcing,”. “If we can cre­ate near­ly 100,000 jobs in that, we nuh can cre­ate 250,000 in every­thing else? Manufacturing, agri­cul­ture, every­thing else”.

I a am lit­tle dis­s­a­point­ed that Audley Shaw would be talk­ing about Government cre­at­ing jobs. Audley you are try­ing to get back into Gordon House as Minister of Finance. Your argu­ments sounds eeri­ly like a social­ist sell­ing a snake oil mes­sage of Government expansion.
A mar­ket econ­o­my in Jamaica depends on..
(1) Empowering, equip­ping, and pay­ing police.
(2) Crime is reduced.
(3)Eliminate graft, cor­rup­tion and bureaucracy.
(4) Lower taxes.
(5) Investors return with real pri­vate sec­tor jobs.
(6) As investors return keep low­er­ing tax­es but widen­ing the tax net which spur more eco­nom­ic growth.

That is how you cre­ate real jobs in a mar­ket economy.
The method­ol­o­gy Audley Shaw artic­u­lat­ed is exact­ly the way Peter Phillips and the PNP goes about cre­at­ing jobs. That method may pro­duce a few jobs for a while which ulti­mate­ly are not sus­tain­able. You can­not build a sky-scraper with­out a foun­da­tion. With the small­est tremor that build­ing comes crash­ing down.
There is no won­der when a slight wind blows hun­dreds of work­ers are laid off from their jobs in Jamaica because of this kind of thinking.
Unfortunately Shaw seem to have accept­ed that path as a viable path to sus­tain­able job cre­ation which it isn’t.
Neither Government nor the pri­vate sec­tor can cre­ate growth in a chaot­ic soci­ety plagued with bureau­crat­ic incom­pe­tence , high crime, high tax rates, Government cor­rup­tion, and over­all chaos.
I under­stand the ever present lure to appeal to pan­der to the most base desires of vot­ers around elec­tion time. However what the JLP can least afford is to be “PNP-lite”.
Jamaicans know what the PNP is about.
The JLP must be what the JLP always stood for, which is prin­ci­pled eco­nom­ic man­age­ment begin­ning with low crime, which inspires investor confidence.
Eventually Jamaicans will grow tired of the non­sense and show the PNP the door.
When will it happen?
That’s above my pay grade.

The fun­da­men­tal ques­tion which faces the Jamaican elec­torate this time like almost every oth­er elec­tion cycle is whether to go with the Long term mar­ket dri­ven strat­e­gy offered by the Jamaica labor Party .
Or whether to stay with the People’s National Party’s which offers small pork-bar­rel solu­tions which are great at vote get­ting but has dis­as­trous con­se­quences for the econ­o­my in the long run.

Leading up to the elec­tions of 2011 there was no IMF agree­ment in place, the Labor Party refused to accept a deal which would break the back of the aver­age Jamaican. Agreeing to a deal would see mon­ey com­ing into the coun­try but with dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences to work­ing people.
There is no ques­tion as to what might have occurred had the JLP signed a deal the IMF pre­sent­ed to Audley Shaw and company.
We have seen the con­se­quences. ♦ Massive depre­ci­a­tion of the local cur­ren­cy ♦ Massive Price Increases♦ Shortages and cut-backs of goods and ser­vices in the pub­lic sec­tor♦ and Lay-offs♦
Those are just a few of the direct con­se­quences of accept­ing IMF mon­ey. Of course there are the indi­rect con­se­quences as well ♦ Escalating crime ♦ dete­ri­o­rat­ing infra­struc­ture and a gen­er­al sense of malaise, unease and mis­ery among the population.

It’s impor­tant that Andrew Holness and the JLP tell the Jamaican peo­ple whether the par­ty will con­tin­ue with the IMF agree­ment and nego­ti­ate a new agree­ment in the near future if the par­ty is elect­ed to office.
The JLP must also explain where the fund­ing will come from to pro­vide Government ser­vices and main­tain the Island’s oblig­a­tions as it relates to debt ser­vic­ing, if it choos­es not to enter into an agree­ment with the fund.

Speaking to the Nation in a live broad­cast, Opposition Leader Andrew Holness out­lined a 10 point plan which he argues will grow the econ­o­my and pro­vide real jobs.
SEE PLAN HERE: Holness offers 10-point plan for growth and job creation

Here’s the rub however.
The Opposition leader him­self stat­ed that the rea­son the Prime Minister set elec­tions for February 25^th of this year is to off­set the neg­a­tive effects of the upcom­ing bud­get. I believe there is much truth to that but more than that is the lit­tle issue of recent polling data which we are told has the gov­ern­ing par­ty with a 4 per­cent­age point lead over it’s rival JLP.
A poten­tial JLP Administration invari­ably will have to deal with the fall­out which emanate from the next bud­getary dic­tates of the IMF which are sure to have neg­a­tive con­se­quences for the aver­age Jamaican.
Holness and the JLP will poten­tial­ly have to lay off work­ers and cut ser­vices as the PNP will also be forced to do. A new PNP Administration will not have to fear a back­lash from lay­offs, and ser­vice cut-backs. A new man­date insu­lates the par­ty from that . They will also have five years in which to cur­ry favor with the voters.
Not so for an incom­ing JLP Administration which will imme­di­ate­ly be pil­lo­ried and labelled “heart­less” for lay­ing off strug­gling work­ers as soon as it acquires office.
Can’t win for losing.….….….….….…..

As divi­sive and dan­ger­ous as the Republican field of pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates are, the most vir­u­lent­ly divi­sive , dan­ger­ous and dis­re­spect­ful is the Hispanic Marco Rubio(R‑Fla)>
Just recent­ly Former Florida Jed Bush blast­ed Rubio as hav­ing accom­plished noth­ing except for his per­son­al agen­da. It may be argued that those are com­ments from a rival who is strug­gling for trac­tion. That would be a legit­i­mate state­ment to make but it does­n’t make the state­ment any less true.
Former Pennsylvania Senator and peren­ni­al pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Rick Santorum who on Thursday dropped out of the 2016 race and endorsed Rubio could not name any­thing Rubio had accom­plished leg­isla­tive­ly when pressed by Joe Scarborough.
New Jersey Governor and fel­low can­di­date Chis Christie blast­ed Rubio label­ing him “the boy in the bub­ble’ who is script­ed and says what his han­dlers want him to say with­out respond­ing substantively.

Set aside the obvi­ous dis­dain Rubio’s con­tem­po­raries have for him. Rubio has man­aged to be ultra dis­re­spect­ful to President Barack Obama over and above what is expect­ed from dif­fer­ences over pol­i­cy directions.
His com­ments regard­ing the President has been some of the most caus­tic and deroga­to­ry than many who are opposed to the pres­i­dent on racial grounds.
Marco Rubio who arrived on the National stage with T‑Party sup­port, brings the same ran­cid dem­a­goguery Sarah Palin T‑Party dar­ling and oth­er right-wink kooks bring.
Nothing seem to be out of the realm of what Rubio won’t say about the president.
It was how­ev­er a huge sur­prise when Marco Rubio stat­ed that “President Obama has no class”.
President Obama now on the last quar­ter of his sec­ond term has had a scan­dal-free Presidency, some­thing no President in recent his­to­ry except Jimmy Carter can lay claim to.
President Obama and his fam­i­ly have been a mod­el of” class, dig­ni­ty and deco­rum” . No President in American his­to­ry have upheld the dig­ni­ty of the Presidency to a greater extent than Barack Hussein Obama has.
Those are crit­i­cal val­ues the inso­lent lit­tle boy in the bub­ble would be well advised to learn.

Rubio who gen­er­al­ly sport a ridicu­lous grin can eas­i­ly fool a crowd regard­ing his dis­re­spect­ful and arro­gant nature.
In a vis­it to the Islamic Society of Baltimore, his first to a mosque in the United States as pres­i­dent, Mr. Obama recit­ed phras­es from the Quran and praised American Muslims as a cru­cial part of America’s his­to­ry and vital to the nation’s future. The President’s vis­it was viewed as a push-back against recent anti-Muslim rhetoric large­ly com­ing from the polit­i­cal right.
Ever the oppor­tunist Marco Rubio was quick to assail the President while speak­ing to FOX mis­in­for­ma­tion quote”

It’s not about clos­ing down mosques. It’s about clos­ing down any place — whether it’s a café, a din­er, an inter­net site — any place where rad­i­cals are being inspired. The big­ger prob­lem we have is our inabil­i­ty to find out where these places are, because we’ve crip­pled our intel­li­gence pro­grams, both through unau­tho­rized dis­clo­sures by a trai­tor in Edward Snowden, or by some of the things this pres­i­dent has put in place with the sup­port even of some from my own par­ty to dimin­ish our intel­li­gence capa­bil­i­ties;“So what­ev­er facil­i­ty is being used — it’s not just a mosque — any facil­i­ty that’s being used to rad­i­cal­ize and inspire attacks against the United States should be a place that we look at.”

I nev­er had any use for this guy, I always had a dim view of both he and Ted Cruz, two Hispanics who seem to suf­fer from a lack of racial identity.
It is rather strange that Rubio and Cruz the two Hispanics in the Republican race, seem to be vying to see who can be the most anti-immi­grant, par­tic­u­lar­ly when Hispanics make up the largest group of un-doc­u­ment­ed peo­ple liv­ing in the coun­try or try­ing to get into the coun­try for that matter..
What if the peo­ple who gov­erned before took the stance of Rubio and Cruz, where would these two be?
If fact their stat­ed Hero Ronald Reagan who grant­ed Amnesty to many would not be eli­gi­ble for today’s Republican party.
This is what makes Rubio and Cruz too mon­u­men­tal frauds.
Thursday’s Huffington Post called out Rubio for lying that President Obama is divisive.
In a blar­ing head­line titled :” DANGEROUSLY DIVISIVE”, the pub­li­ca­tion peeled back the fake lay­er of fraud dis­guised with a smile and laid bare Rubio’s fraud­u­lent bravado.
“Marco Rubio, who often advo­cates for reli­gious lib­er­ty and speaks of his faith on the cam­paign trail, is the one engag­ing in divi­sive rhetoric”.
Finally some light is being shone on this fraud and a phony.

ELECTIONS IN JAMAICA

Elections in Jamaica Generally seem to reflect the will of the peo­ple, if of course you are will­ing to over­look the val­ue of the Island’s Garrison. To those un-famil­iar with the term, it is the prac­tice of the polit­i­cal par­ty in pow­er to unfair­ly use scare pub­lic funds to ben­e­fit vot­ers loy­al to that par­ty. This usu­al­ly means lump­ing acqui­es­cent vot­ers into con­stituen­cies which gen­er­al­ly vote for that party .
In essence what they end up doing is to cre­ate super con­stituen­cies which the oppo­si­tion par­ty has no chance of win­ning. Free Housing and oth­er largess cre­ates a class of vot­ers who become rub­ber stamps for the par­ty, regard­less of whether it has a dis­mal record of achieve­ment or per­for­mance for the coun­try as a whole.
In the United States this is done under the name “Gerrymandering”. This is done through an act of Congress how­ev­er achiev­ing the same dubi­ous results .
The Party with the major­i­ty in the House is allowed to re-draw Congressional dis­trict lines in a way which defies any log­ic but that par­ty’s rapa­cious desire to lump blocks of vot­ers into a sin­gle dis­trict loy­al to the par­ty doing the re-drawing.

All in all our coun­try remains some­what a vibrant Democracy sup­port­ed by both polit­i­cal par­ties and a peo­ple who are fierce­ly loy­al to demo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples and ideals.
Our coun­try is still looked at as a mod­el for bud­ding democracies .
For that our peo­ple can be proud . No, we have not estab­lished the eco­nom­ic frame­work for suc­cess Indonesia or Malaysia has but nei­ther have we sur­ren­dered our rights and free­doms in pur­suit of eco­nom­ic viability.
Clearly a lot more needs to be done in terms of estab­lish­ing and rein­forc­ing an eco­nom­ic frame-work which will wean our coun­try from the dic­tates of par­a­sitic lend­ing agen­cies like the (IMF) which sucks the life-blood from our peo­ple leav­ing us far worse that when we were forced into the unholy alliance in the first place.

That will take time and a decid­ed focus . The ques­tion remains whether the peo­ple have the stom­ach for that change. Someone com­ment­ed to me recent­ly that the deficit is too great for the JLP to make up.
I thought about it long and hard tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion the advan­tage the PNP has because of it’s gar­ri­son constituencies.
However this nev­er stopped Jamaicans before. Jamaicans have a his­to­ry of kick­ing out the bums of both par­ties en-mass when the pinch becomes unbear­able. The ques­tion is “is the pinch unbear­able”?

GETTING OUT MANUVERED

It’s easy to assume that Bruce Golding was forced to step down or that Andrew Holness and the JLP lost the elec­tions of 2011 because Golding refused to sur­ren­der Christopher(Duddus) Coke to the Americans.
It’s easy to assume Portia Simpson Miller made the list of Time Magazine’s list of most influ­en­tial women on merit.
It is easy to mis­un­der­stand the impact of out­side forces in shap­ing events in our country.
However if you are will­ing to look at trends which the Government was inca­pable of under­stand­ing when it decid­ed to hedge oil prices at US$66 per bar­rel, you’ll find out just how events begin.
Bruce Golding’s demise begun when he remarked to a British Journalist that there would be no “Gays in his cab­i­net”.
If you under­stand the pow­er of out­side agen­cies then you begin under­stand­ing what was behind the demand that Coke to be extra­dit­ed to face charges in the United States, and the ensu­ing con­se­quences of that demand.
It was lose, lose for Golding, if he acqui­esced and allowed the process to play out in the Courts as many have said he should, his base of sup­port in Tivoli Gardens evap­o­rate. Golding was a trans­plant into Tivoli, he did not have the con­trol Edward Seaga built for him­self over the decades.
Conversely if Golding fought the Americans, regard­less of the argu­ment he used he would be seen as sup­port­ing a crim­i­nal want­ed by a pow­er­ful ally.
Bruce Golding was done as Prime Minister of Jamaica.

Was it acci­den­tal that the very same ques­tion was posed to Simpson Miller dur­ing the debates between her­self and Holness dur­ing the 2011 elec­tion cycle?
Does any ratio­nal thinker believe Portia Simpson Miller stat­ed she would sup­port revis­it­ing the Bugger Act on her own voli­tion ?
Once you begin to pon­der all this then you begin to see the pieces fall into place. You start under­stand­ing why the tired, out of ideas PNP was returned to pow­er much to their own astonishment.
Then you see why Portia was reward­ed by Time Magazine.
Then you under­stand the Obama visit.

GANJA
HOW QUICKLY SHOULD JAMAICA LEGALIZE GANJA ?

I have sug­gest­ed that the JLP fig­ure out the trends and stake out a pop­ulist posi­tion on emerg­ing trends before the peo­ple them­selves estab­lish a position.
There is hard­ly an issue more impor­tant to Jamaicans than “Marijuana”.
Even with­out the Rastafarian posi­tion on the weed as a reli­gious sacra­ment ‚Jamaicans are heavy users of mar­i­jua­na which we com­mon­ly know as Ganja.
Many Jamaicans smoke the weed , many use it to make a type of tea which they believe havemed­i­c­i­nal val­ue to them.
Not to men­tion the way Ganja is seen as a poten­tial eco­nom­ic sav­ior for many.
On that basis it makes smart polit­i­cal sense to stake out a posi­tion which is in line with the think­ing of the people.
THE TRUTH ABOUT GANGA COMING OUT.

Last Sunday a mul­ti­tude gath­ered in Half-Way-Tree square, the air was filled with the putrid stench of cannabis . Above the sea of heads was a sol­id cloud of gan­ja smoke.
It was a gan­ja smok­ers heaven.
It was in that atmos­phere that the Island’s Prime Minister mount­ed the stage and gloat­ed about less gan­ja arrests to roar­ing ovation.
Long before all this hap­pened how­ev­er, this medi­um and this hum­ble writer begged the JLP to get out in front of this issue.
Set this hum­ble blog­ger and medi­um aside, there were indi­ca­tors aplenty.
It was­n’t too long ago that the min­is­ter of nation­al secu­ri­ty sug­gest­ed to the police that they turn a blind eye to peo­ple smok­ing the weed.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​o​n​-​s​m​a​l​l​-​q​u​a​n​t​i​t​i​e​s​-​o​f​-​g​a​n​j​a​-​b​u​n​t​i​n​g​-​t​o​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​t​u​r​n​-​a​-​b​l​i​n​d​-​e​ye/

Under no cir­cum­stances should the JLP have been out­ma­neu­vered on this issue.
Yet it was.
Does the JLP even under­stand­ing the val­ue of this issue to each par­ty going forward?
These are mon­u­men­tal issues which will influ­ence vot­ers going for­ward for decades. The JLP lit­er­al­ly sur­ren­dered to the nar­ra­tive that it is a rich man’s par­ty which is not true.
As I said in a pre­vi­ous arti­cle it was Alexander Bustamante who spent almost two years locked up in prison for cham­pi­oning work­ers right, not Norman Manley.
Bustamante did not get out­ma­neu­vered by his cousin Norman Manley.
Bustamante a found­ing mem­ber of the People’s National Party PNP left and formed the JLP when the rhetoric and pol­i­cy posi­tions of the PNP became too rad­i­cal too unworkable.
The Jamaican peo­ple eschewed West Indies fed­er­a­tion Manley sup­port­ed, to which they were opposed and elect­ed Bustamante to Office.
Under Bustamante Jamaica became an inde­pen­dent nation August 1962. Alexander Bustamante became the first prime min­is­ter of the new­ly inde­pen­dent Jamaica.

Perceptions if left unchal­lenged becomes real­i­ty. To many Jamaicans that per­cep­tion is reality.
The JLP could least afford to have Jamaicans attribute the free­ing up of gan­ja as some­thing the PNP did .
Of course the par­ty was not in pow­er but there is much it could have done as a mat­ter of pol­i­cy-posi­tion which could have head­ed off and negat­ed that crit­i­cal perception.
It didn’t !!!