They did it in the 70s, at the time the Island had only been a decade into it’s new­ly found inde­pen­dence .……[of sorts], crime was no wor­ry to any­one, the econ­o­my was buzzing from the tourism indus­try, a vibrant alu­minia export sec­tor, our agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor was the envy of the devel­op­ing world, man­u­fac­tur­ing was boom­ing and the gov­ern­ment of Hugh Lawson Shearer was only get­ting started.
Off and run­ning, build­ing schools, hos­pi­tals, and infra­struc­ture at a pace unri­valed to this day.
Yup, the term built by labor was on every­one’s lips.…..
Despite all of that progress and devel­op­ment, Micahel Manley, an intense­ly charis­mat­ic politi­cian with extra­or­di­nary ora­tor­i­cal skills told the nation (“bet­ta mus cum”).

Better must come was a bull­shit pipedream being sold to a pop­u­la­tion that was already intense­ly primed by the PNP to expect mate­r­i­al things they did not work to earn.
So the build­ing of new schools and the lay­ing of new infra­struc­ture, and the peace and tran­quil­i­ty in the coun­try which allowed for peo­ple to be edu­cat­ed, get good-pay­ing jobs, and live their best lives was no good.
What they want­ed was free hous­es, liv­ing on top of each oth­er, free elec­tric­i­ty, free water in the pipes, free mon­ey from jobs they nev­er did, and free stuff that is tak­en from peo­ple who had worked all of their lives and giv­en to them.
By 1972 Michael Manley had rid­den into pow­er on the idea that no one has to work for shit. He was the rod-wav­ing magi­cian [Jousha], who would deliv­er all of the free­bies and no one had to work for shit ever again.

By 1980, a mere eight years lat­er, the tourist had stopped com­ing, the entire man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor had migrat­ed to Trinidad, agri­cul­ture was a dis­tant dream, our once envi­able pri­vate sec­tor was dec­i­mat­ed, investors and busi­ness-peo­ple had all tak­en up res­i­dence in south Florida, hav­ing tak­en one of the five Air-Jamaica flights they were warned to take.…..Their prop­er­ty by then was tak­en over by hood­lums who had vot­ed dozens and hun­dreds of times in a sin­gle elec­tion, in order to receive the wind­fall of free­bies the wealthy and the not so wealthy had left behind.
In try­ing to san­i­tize their pathet­ic social­ist images, not just in Jamaica, but across the Caribbean, the faux Inteligencia indoc­tri­nat­ed at the com­mu­nist-lean­ing University of the West Indies, tied them­selves to free­dom fight­ers like Jomo Kenyatta, Julius Nyerere, Jonas Savimbi, Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko, and even Robert Mugabe, in order to claim legit­i­ma­cy in their com­mu­nist lean­ing failings.

They heap praise on Michael Manley and his Minions like DK Duncan, Trevor Monroe, Percival Patterson, Arnold Bertram and the oth­er losers who ran our coun­try into the ditch, not just between 1972 to 1980 but for an unprece­dent­ed ¹⁸¹⁄₂ years of abject fail­ure that has cost Jamaica incal­cu­la­ble trea­sure, par­tic­u­lar­ly her human brain-drain.
What the fraud­sters at the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to, those who left years ago, or even decades ago, will try to con­vince you of, is that Michael Manley’s raft of social ini­tia­tives was nec­es­sary, and as a con­se­quence, the dam­age and destruc­tion done to the econ­o­my were unavoidable.
I call bullshit.

Michael Manley was instru­men­tal in end­ing Jamaica’s bas­tardy laws. Michael Manley was instru­men­tal in pass­ing leg­is­la­tion that enabled women to go on mater­ni­ty leave with pay. He helped to estab­lish the National Housing Trust. Michael Manley is cred­it­ed with the rur­al elec­tri­fi­ca­tion pro­gram, he should not be cred­it­ed with that it was an idea whose time had come.
He is cred­it­ed with offer­ing free edu­ca­tion up to the ter­tiary lev­el. Politicians can give away what­ev­er they chose to in leg­is­la­tion designed to har­vest votes, how those pro­grams are paid for is anoth­er matter.
Land reform and equal pay for women are to Manleys credit.

None of those social pro­grams sin­gu­lar­ly, or col­lec­tive­ly, had to come at the expense of the Jamaican econ­o­my, the destruc­tion of the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, chas­ing away the pri­vate sec­tor, ruin­ing our cul­ture, and cre­at­ing one that depends on tak­ing from oth­ers, rather than peo­ple work­ing for what they want.
The resul­tant brain-drain from peo­ple tak­ing flight from Manley’s com­mu­nist over­tures, the destruc­tion of our nation­al air­line, the migra­tion of our man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor to Trinidad, the empow­er­ing of the island’s crim­i­nals, and the den­i­gra­tion of the rule of law in our coun­try, was way too much for our coun­try to bear.
Whatever vic­to­ry that may have been derived from the PNP’s tenure, (not just Michael Manley’s tenure) but the tenure of the PNP in the post-inde­pen­dence Jamaica has been a pyrrhic victory.

Yet here we are again, one would have thought that the PNP would have learned some­thing and come back to the table with a plan for Jamaica, one that is not based on the con­tin­u­a­tion of emp­ty promis­es of every­one hav­ing every­thing they want and need .…… all for free.
So here comes Damion Crawford promis­ing free­bies, more freebies,10,000 schol­ar­ships for $3.5 bil­lion. When asked where the fuck­ing mon­ey was com­ing from to pay for it, he remarked, allo­ca­tions will be made in the bud­get annu­al­ly to cov­er the cost”.

To those of you pay­ing atten­tion, that is not an answer, it is not like there are extra funds lying around that can be used for dis­cre­tionary spending.
Every fis­cal year gov­ern­ment is forced to scrape and scratch to meet bud­getary oblig­a­tions that already exist, that must be fund­ed, Health, Education, National Security, Agriculture, and the host of oth­er pub­lic sec­tor agen­cies that must be fund­ed. There is noth­ing else to tax, and there is no new man­u­fac­tur­ing, min­ing, or anoth­er sec­tor that will be pro­vid­ing a wind­fall from which the 3.5 bil­lion may be sourced.
At the same time, they are promis­ing to give every­one land, free hous­es, and every­thing else they need. You guessed it all for free.

Where will all that mon­ey come from to fund those promis­es? The stark real­i­ty is that they will not be fund­ed, because they will not materialize.
The PNP has always used promis­es to fool peo­ple into vot­ing for them. This time around, I hope that the Jamaican vot­ers will real­ize a con-game when they see it, and send them packing.
Send Peter Phillips and his band of thieves a strong mes­sage that peo­ple will no longer fall for promis­es when they can see real and tan­gi­ble results hap­pen­ing in front of their eyes every day.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

One of the rea­sons that Africans were exploit­ed by Europeans, is that Africans nev­er ful­ly seemed to grasp the con­cept of strength through uni­ty. Instead of orga­niz­ing as nations, they orga­nized as [tribes].
My Nigerian friend tells me that with­in a hun­dred square miles inside his coun­try, you will find as many as sixty(60) dif­fer­ent lan­guages and dialects.
Whether this is an over­state­ment or not I do not know, I have nev­er been to Nigeria, but his point is well taken.
In all fair­ness to the Africans, the Europeans too were splin­tered into vicious tribes who preyed on each oth­er much the same way that African tribes preyed on each other.
The dif­fer­ence with the Europeans, is that they weaponized the Chinese inven­tion of gun-pow­der, and the world has not been the same since.

[Andrew Holness & wife Juilet]

Today, African peo­ple in the Diaspora still are splin­tered and divid­ed as if those traits are still a part of our DNA. We cling to trib­al norms and cus­toms which inex­orably weak­ens us, even when we are greater numerically.
And so, even though we say we have cast off the shack­les of our colo­nial­ist pasts.….… or sor­ta, we cre­ate oth­er monar­chist sys­tems of oppres­sions because of those trib­al­is­tic DNA mark­ers that are still inside us today.
How else would you explain the pass­ing down of con­stituen­cy seats from fathers to sons & daughters?
It start­ed a long time ago, Bustamante and Norman Manley were close cousins. Both were instru­men­tal in the for­ma­tion of the two polit­i­cal par­ties which alter­nate pow­er between them in our coun­try today. Was there no one in the PNP to take over after Norman Manley, why did his son Michael Manley have to be the heir apparent?
Why did Bruce Golding have to become heir-appar­ent to his Speaker of the house dad Tacitus Golding? Surely Jamaica would be a much dif­fer­ent, arguably a bet­ter coun­try with­out the nepo­tism that cre­at­ed Michael Manley & Bruce Golding’s tenure.

[Peter Phillips & his son Mikhael]

Could Daryl Vaz have found anoth­er dis­ci­pline or is the lure and perks of Jamaican pol­i­tics so entic­ing, so much so, that he had to fol­low his father Douglas Vaz and now his wife is eat­ing at the gravy trough?
Oh wait, there is a lot more between the old and new, the Prime min­is­ter and his wife are eat­ing at the same gravy trough, Pernell Charles‘ is try­ing his lev­el best to get his son a seat at the trough, so too was Derrick Smith and so is the old com­mu­nist DK Duncan forc­ing his daugh­ter Imani Duncan, into ever polit­i­cal crack that opens up.
His daugh­ter acts as though there should be a coro­na­tion for her and a seat pre­pared for her. Imani Duncan was not the only child that Duncan tried to force to eat at the trough, he also tried to push his oth­er daugh­ter Patricia to the trough as well.
The idea of polit­i­cal dynas­ties is not con­fined to Jamaica by a long shot, but that does not mean that we should cel­e­brate them.
The more entrenched they become, the more they shut oth­ers out of the process.
There is the Leader of the Opposition PNP Peter Phillips and his son Mikhael Phillips, and a whole series of oth­er entan­gle­ments by virtue of mar­riage, and blood.
For exam­ple, the same DK Duncan is now mar­ried to Beverly Anderson the wid­ow of Michael Manley. Others include Angella Brown-Burke, Burke is mar­ried to PNP fix­ture Paul Burke, who is a first cousin to Saint Thomas JLP mem­ber of parliament
James Robertson.

There are those who believe that these entan­gle­ments are wor­thy of cel­e­bra­tion, it is easy to under­stand why. The same trib­al men­tal­i­ty that cre­ates these polit­i­cal dynas­ties is behind the self-appoint­ed élite class, [you know], those who have a degree or two, who cel­e­brate, rather than repu­di­ate them.
Earning a degree is not some­thing to make their lives bet­ter it is for them a kind of men­tal carve-out that sep­a­rates them from the mass­es, so of course, they have no prob­lem with these dynas­tic developments.
Public ser­vice is an hon­or, it should be avail­able to each and every Jamaican, regard­less of their social,familial, or finan­cial status.
The con­tin­ued pro­lif­er­a­tion of these dynas­ties is not what we should be encour­ag­ing in our country.
Whether the elec­torate is sophis­ti­cat­ed enough to rec­og­nize & repu­di­ate this prac­tice is anoth­er matter?

[ Paul Burke & WIFE Angella-Brown-Burke]

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

“He hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t.”

Never before has it come to this, that a sit­ting President is deemed to be such a threat to the Republic that his pre­de­ces­sor is forced to issue such dire warn­ings, that keep­ing him in pow­er may mean the end of this American project.
Such is the threat posed by Donald Trump. Maybe there are oth­ers who could explain it bet­ter than Barack Obama, but we haven’t seen any­one step for­ward to do so as yet.

Barack Obama’s state­ments have par­tic­u­lar res­o­nance, he is the pres­i­dent Donald Trump suc­ced­ed. If a div­er comes up from the deep and tells you there are sharks below do you dive in with­out a death wish?
That is the lev­el of cred­i­bil­i­ty that Barack Obama’s state­ments have as it relates to the impend­ing doom of a con­tin­ued Trump presidency.

But did it require the past pres­i­dent to warn us, wake us up to the dark and present dan­ger the Trump’s pres­i­den­cy poses?
On Thursday morn­ing, the day after President Obama’s address, and the resul­tant deranged all- caps twit­ter freak­out we all knew was com­ing, we learned that Steven Bannon his for­mer Breitbart senior advi­sor was arrest­ed on fraud charges by the Feds and was cool­ing his heels in a in a New York Jail cell.
Trump him­self may be look­ing at an indict­ment were he to lose this elec­tion, hav­ing been report­ed­ly named as an unin­dict­ed co-con­spir­a­tor in an indict­ment by the Southern District Of New York.
That wait­ing indict­ment may be rea­son enough for Donald Trump to do every­thing in his pow­er to remain in pow­er. Hoping to run out the statute of lim­i­ta­tions clock on the wait­ing indictment.

But this lat­est arrest should come as no sur­prise to any­one, not even to those who haven’t been pay­ing atten­tion to the events that have unfold­ed since he assumed the pres­i­den­cy. I mean the whole damn thing has been a ver­i­ta­ble rogues gallery of criminality.

Forget for a moment the 13 Russian nation­als and 3 enti­ties that Special Counsel Robert Muller charged that the American Justice may not man­age to ever bring to justice.
The litany of crim­i­nal­i­ty has been astound­ing and arguably be unprece­dent­ed in the his­to­ry of the country.

(cour­tesy of Axios)

(1) Michael Cohen, for­mer per­son­al lawyer, and fix­er, found guilty.
(2)Paul Manafort, for­mer Trump cam­paign chair­man, found guilty.
(3)George Papadopoulos, Trump cam­paign advis­er, found guilty.
(4)Richard Pinedo, California asso­ciate, found guilty.
(5Alex van der Zwaan, Manafort Associate Dutch Lawyer, found guilty.
(6)Roger Stone, Trump asso­ciate, found guilty, par­doned by Trump.
(7)Rick Gates, Manafort Associate and busi­ness part­ner, found guilty.
(8)Michael Flynn plead guilty, await­ing sentencing.

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, guess what, it is a damn duck. A rogue’s gallery of criminals.
So if you are sit­ting there scratch­ing your head as to why any­one could sup­port this admin­is­tra­tion you may be alone?
Never in record­ed his­to­ry has a pres­i­den­cy pro­duced so many crim­i­nals, much less a pres­i­den­cy that isn’t even four years old.
So yes, the cult that fol­lows behind it ‚they are not all fools or reli­gious nuts, (well except for the black ones),this cult of sup­port is based on a sin­gle principle.
He hates who they hate.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

Donald Trump does not know what the term [suf­frage] means. He has zero inter­est in, or under­stand­ing of the wom­en’s suf­frage move­ment. He does­n’t like or respect women. To him, they are mere instru­ments of plea­sure, to be exploit­ed for sex.…. and that is if they are white. It is a whole oth­er mat­ter if they are Black or brown, then they are *nasty* it is the best his lim­it­ed vocab­u­lary can manage.

But none of that stopped the con-artist mas­querad­ing as chief exec­u­tive, from pre­tend­ing to care about Universal Women’s Suffrage. So as the Democrats unveiled their vir­tu­al Convention, the mas­ter of decep­tion and deceit, decid­ed to dis­tort, dis­rupt and divert atten­tion away from the cor­nu­copia of col­or and diver­si­ty that has so far char­ac­ter­ized the Democratic convention.
His han­dlers obvi­ous­ly thought, that hav­ing him on tele­vi­sion would be a good thing to do to try and steal some of the shine from the Democrats, so they decid­ed to have him par­don the suf­frag­ist Susan B Anthony.
In 1872, Anthony was arrest­ed for vot­ing in her home­town of Rochester, New York, and con­vict­ed in a wide­ly pub­li­cized tri­al. Although she refused to pay the fine, the author­i­ties declined to take fur­ther action.[w]
Donald Trump knows none of this.

https://​youtu​.be/​e​E​v​C​5​g​h​X​r​M​E​?​t​=15

In response to a reporter’s ques­tion on Tuesday at a White House event, as to his thoughts about for­mer first lady Michelle Obama’s speech, and in par­tic­u­lar, her com­ments that he was over his head, the pre­dictable pet­ti­ness-in ‑chief, respond­ed, “no she was in over her head and frankly she should have made the speech live”. He then went on to say that Michelle got the num­ber of COVID deaths wrong, which is some­thing the goof­ball does­n’t even real­ize is not some­thing he need­ed to be high­light­ing because, in the time that the speech was record­ed until it was aired, over 20’000 more Americans had died from the virus.
He then went on to talk about how the net­works across the board were fawn­ing over Michelle. This from the turd who won­dered out aloud about why no one likes him.
So yah, the Princeton cum laude, Harvard Jurist Doctorate grad­u­ate was way over her head, and the bum­bling car­ni­val-bark­er with the busi­ness degree his dad­dy paid for is not.
We gat that.

See, that’s exact­ly the prob­lem with this guy, he has a per­pet­u­al hard-on for the Obamas, but I do get how he must feel emp­ty, know­ing that the busi­ness degree his dad paid for, avoid­ing the draft on a moun­tain of lies, a litany of bank­rupt­cies after he blew dad­dy’s mon­ey, and bor­rowed buck­et­loads more, scan­dals and crimes to the ceil­ing, and still, he was able to get into the most pow­er­ful office in the world because of white privilege.
What’s more, he had the temer­i­ty to say Barack Obama is the rea­son he is stand­ing where he was based on “Obama’s failed presidency”[sic]
No man.……no, no, no.… you are where you are because there are enough racist whites who respond­ed neg­a­tive­ly to the idea of a black man in a place they had reserved only for them­selves, and a cor­rupt & crap­py sys­tem known as the elec­toral col­lege, which allows for a can­di­date with a three mil­lion vote advan­tage to be deemed the loser.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

Two very impor­tant things are in the works almost at the same time, there will be nation­al elec­tions in our tiny Jamaica and there will be a far more con­se­quen­tial elec­tion in the United States.
Consequential, not because of America’s size but because of its abil­i­ty to impact the entire globe in more ways than we care to admit.
The sce­nario seems just as sim­i­lar in some respects, in both tiny Jamaica, and it’s mam­moth neigh­bor to the north, only that, in Jamaica’s case, vot­ers need to keep the present Government in place, while in the United States, vot­ers must get rid of the exist­ing admin­is­tra­tion, if the democ­ra­cy as we know it is to survive.

How many times have we heard the say­ing “this is the most con­se­quen­tial elec­tion of our life­time”, come elec­tion time? As far as America is con­cerned, this is the most con­se­quen­tial elec­tion of all our life­times. If the sup­pos­ed­ly (old­est Democracy is to sur­vive), vot­ers who val­ue that imper­fect promise America rep­re­sents, must act to save it.
In Jamaica’s case, it may not be quite as crit­i­cal were the Opposition Peoples National Party to take the reins of Government on September 3^rd, but still, it would be fool­hardy for Jamaican vot­ers to put the coun­try back in the hands of the PNP after the débâ­cle which occurred between 1972 and 1980 and again between 1988 to 2007.
Decades of regres­sive poli­cies, that lead to the cor­rup­tion of both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors, theft, crime, rust infest­ed zinc-fences, lack of infra­struc­tur­al devel­op­ment, pover­ty, an increase in law­less­ness across the soci­ety, and a total and com­plete den­i­gra­tion of our cul­tur­al norms.

Decent peo­ple in America rose up and made their feel­ings clear after George Floyd was lynched by Minneapolis police in plain view. To this day the cops who mur­dered Breonna Taylor have not been brought to jus­tice. Despite the thou­sands of oth­er cas­es of injus­tices man­i­fest­ed in police abuse, Trump admin­is­tra­tion cor­rup­tion & crim­i­nal­i­ty, a tear­ing down of norms and even bla­tant dis­re­gard for the laws that every­one else are forced to obey, there is a seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion that blind­ly fol­low the Trump clown-show like the rats behind the pied piper of Hamelin.
Children in cages torn away from their par­ents who were mere­ly seek­ing refuge, the appoint­ment of unqual­i­fied white men to high court judge­ships, the evis­cer­a­tion of the vot­ing rights act by the supreme court, and the sub­se­quent new assault on vot­ing rights across cer­tain south­ern states, all because of the actions of the John Roberts court.

Trump’s incom­pe­tent and poten­tial­ly crim­i­nal­ly-com­plic­it response to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, has result­ed in over five mil­lion Americans cer­ti­fied infect­ed with the Coronavirus & over one hun­dred & sev­en­ty thou­sand dead, (170,000), in only a few months. Let that sink in for a minute.
If that hap­pened under a Democrat pres­i­dent, or God for­bid, had it hap­pened under President Obama, the Racist clown enablers in the Republican cau­cus­es in both the house and sen­ate would have brought the coun­try to a halt with fraud­u­lent hearings.
At the same time, most Government agen­cies are far short of the staff they need to do the job they are sup­posed to do and many do not have the sen­ate approved lead­ers they are required to have by law.
The econ­o­my is tank­ing, and Trump’s trade fights with China and oth­er coun­tries have caused many farm­ers to be on the edge of bankruptcy.
America’s cred­i­bil­i­ty is in the toi­let because of the deficit of lead­er­ship. The peo­ple in the streets tells only a small part of the story.
The cor­rup­tion and destruc­tion being done to the coun­try by this admin­is­tra­tion are all out in the open. The choice for vot­ers this cycle could not be clear­er, vote Democratic all the way down-tick­et, or kiss good­bye to the coun­try as you knew it.

In our lit­tle elec­tion back a [yaad], there are some dis­turb­ing utter­ances com­ing from the PNP’s camp, one can­di­date told his sup­port­ers they are will­ing to take the con­stituen­cy seat by force. Really now?
That gen­er­al­ly means rein­tro­duc­ing polit­i­cal vio­lence as a means of gain­ing pow­er. That kind of strat­e­gy has been in the DNA of the PNP all along, for­tu­nate­ly, Jamaicans on their own, have stepped away from the dark days of that kind of politics.
Unfortunately for the PNP lead­er­ship, in its des­per­ate bid to regain pow­er, sole­ly for being in pow­er, it still has not caught on that the peo­ple do not want what they are sell­ing, and thank­ful­ly so, because the cor­rup­tion, theft, and lack of progress is more than the peo­ple can take.
Sure, the rul­ing JLP is far from per­fect.….… Andrew Holness has not done near­ly enough to dis­man­tle the crim­i­nal gangs oper­at­ing across the Island, not because he does­n’t want a crime-free Jamaica, but because he fails to grasp that erad­i­cat­ing the crim­i­nal gangs and get­ting the guns, means strong sup­port for law enforcement.
Andrew Holness’ has scant respect for the Police offi­cers who work their ass­es off to keep Jamaica and his rear end safe. This elec­tion he will most like­ly lose the police vote in the event micro-polling is done to look at the way the votes turn out in a detailed way.
Were he to lose this elec­tion, he would have no one to blame for his dis­re­spect to the police but himself.

Under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, that would have been enough, more than enough to remove Andrew Holness and the JLP from office, sure he has a done a cred­i­ble job on the econ­o­my and han­dling the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, but on the most impor­tant job he has as prime min­is­ter, he has failed and there is no deny­ing it.
A lead­er’s core func­tion is to pro­tect the citizens.
He has not done so.
More peo­ple con­tin­ue to die because his strat­e­gy of appease­ment of the crim­i­nal rights lob­by has ham­pered police efforts and has empow­ered the crim­i­nal gangs.
But the unpre­pared­ness of the PNP, the par­ty’s total unwill­ing­ness to eschew the pol­i­tics of old, should keep the par­ty out of Jamaica house for anoth­er five years.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

The Democratic National con­ven­tion com­menced vir­tu­al­ly, on Monday for the very first time in history.
I believe I speak for more than just myself when I say, I had no idea what that would look like.
The vir­tu­al roll­out, how­ev­er, was, to say the least mes­mer­iz­ing, the cor­nu­copia of human faces blend­ed into a human quilt as they sang the nation­al anthem under the theme “we the people”.

The pro­gram which was mod­er­at­ed by the beau­ti­ful and tal­ent­ed Eva Longoria con­tin­ued on with a parade of American busi­ness­peo­ple who talked about their strug­gles under the Trump presidency.
Other Americans talked about the price they are pay­ing as a result of Trump’s incom­pe­tence in han­dling the pandemic.
Biden him­self inter­viewed a small pan­el of ordi­nary Americans includ­ing Chicago’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot about what they would like to see hap­pen in a Biden administration.

https://youtu.be/b‑0BSwQg540?t=7

One Mexican-American young lady told a tear-jerk­ing sto­ry of los­ing her 65-year-old dad to KOVID, he vot­ed for Donald Trump, and believed him when he said COVID-19 would dis­ap­pear. As a result, she told how her dad went to a karaōke event and was infect­ed with the virus. Days lat­er he was on a ven­ti­la­tor, he died alone in a hos­pi­tal with­out his family.
“My father had only one pre­ex­ist­ing con­di­tion and that was trust­ing Donald Trump.”
Quick side­bar, “why would a Mexican-American vote for Donald Trump, you know after the Mexicans are crim­i­nals, they are rapists esca­la­tor thing”?
Oh, nev­er mind.

The Biden camp rolled out an impres­sive list of Republicans who spoke out against Donald Trump and gave rea­sons why they will be vot­ing for Joe Biden.
Former Republican Governor Christine Todd Whitman, bil­lion­aire CEO and Republican mega-donor Margaret Cushing Whitman, (Meg), Former Republican Governor from Ohio John Kasich, and a real sur­prise for me, for­mer Republican Congresswoman Susan Molinaro of Staten Island.

Former pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Vermont’s Independent Bernie Sanders gave a spir­it­ed speech for the removal of Donald Trump from office. Sanders’ speech was the most direct case made by any of the pre­vi­ous speak­ers as to the rea­son that Donald Trump can­not be allowed four more years in the White House, up until Michelle Obama that is.
Additionally, Sanders chal­lenged his sup­port­ers to under­stand that every­thing they fought for would be for naught if Trump is allowed to remain in the white house.

Then Michelle Obama, Michelle, Michelle, with an intel­li­gent ora­to­ry seem­ing­ly as only the Obama’s can, she dis­sect­ed and tore away the very fab­ric of Trump’s legit­i­ma­cy, enshrined in the star­tling real­i­ty that Hillary Clinton won the pop­u­lar vote by almost three mil­lion votes.
Brick by brick, she decon­struct­ed Donald Trump’s rogue’s gallery of cor­rup­tion and evil. Racism, kids in cages, the strong econ­o­my her hus­band left, her hus­band’s response to what could have been an Ebola pan­dem­ic, America lost two souls, Vs Trump’s incom­pe­tence that has result­ed to date in the death of well over 170 thou­sand Americans and climb­ing. The econ­o­my in sham­bles, white suprema­cy, and divi­sive­ness, it was a beau­ty to behold.

Michelle Obama wooed and mes­mer­ized as only she and her hus­band can. The vir­tu­al Convention end­ed with a ren­di­tion from Billy Porter and Crosby Stills.

After much con­sid­er­a­tion and much thought, I have decid­ed to heed the con­cerns that some of you, the faith­ful loy­al­ists to (chatt​-​a​-box​.com) has expressed, that we con­sid­er chang­ing the URL of our site. A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), col­lo­qui­al­ly termed a web address, is a ref­er­ence to a web resource that spec­i­fies its loca­tion on a com­put­er net­work and a mech­a­nism for retriev­ing it. [w]

For over a decade the URL chatt​-​a​-box​.com has served in get­ting our mes­sage out and has been instru­men­tal in get­ting your views heard. Insofar as we have been able to bring aware­ness through our mutu­al inter­ac­tion, whether it be on issues of race, polic­ing, pol­i­tics, or reli­gion we are tru­ly grate­ful. If we have helped to pos­i­tive­ly impact a sin­gle life, then the work and expense are well worth it to me. This has always been work with a vision for me, a labor of love. For a decade we have self-fund­ed this project from our own resources. We are grate­ful that we are able to con­tin­ue to do so.

To the degree that we have over the years been able to bring atten­tion to top­i­cal issues, it may also have impressed upon us the need to be seen as seri­ous as pos­si­ble, not just in tone, but in optics as well. This change will facil­i­tate eas­i­er access to the site and will hope­ful­ly enhance the seri­ous­ness of our mis­sion. To the extent that-that mis­sion is doable, we have decid­ed to make access to our site as easy as pos­si­ble and that our mis­sion remains to be viewed as seri­ous­ly as we intend to be taken.

And so after a decade on the world wide web, the deci­sion to move to (Mikebeckles​.com) seems to make the most sense. Visitors who use the old URL will be seam­less­ly guid­ed to the site’s new URL.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com.  He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites. You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

I have asked this ques­tion before, I am ask­ing again after I ran across this in one of the black pub­li­ca­tions that I read each day.
First, where the hell is Joe Biden?
Secondly, what the hell is he wait­ing for to select a black woman as a run­ning mate?
I have heard all kinds of malarky com­ments about the need to vet white women and oth­er women in order to come up with not just a good Vice President but the best female can­di­date.
Wait just a minute, with all due respects to Senators Elizabeth Warren, and Tammy Duckworth, with all of the def­er­ence to Michigan’s Governor Gretchen Whitmer, were they in South Carolina to save Joe Biden’s sor­ry weak and inde­ci­sive ass when he was about to be tossed out of pol­i­tics like the pre­vi­ous times he was reject­ed by Democratic vot­ers?
No, it was Black women who reached down and pulled his sor­ry behind up, Potentially mak­ing him some­thing he has nev­er been, that is a nation­al leader.

Some peo­ple are born great, oth­ers have great­ness thrust upon them.
Joe Biden was nev­er great, at best he has been vanil­la ice cream, the kind you revert to with a sigh after dis­cov­er­ing that the choco­late swirl is all gone and the rum & raisin box only has ice par­ti­cles left in it.
In fact, we are talk­ing about Joe Biden today because of a (choco­late swirl) named Barack Obama who ele­vat­ed him from Delaware lev­el obscu­ri­ty to inter­na­tion­al promi­nence.
On that alone, Joe Biden should have already select­ed a black woman as his run­ning mate. (How about you start off by repay­ing the damn favor)?
When you con­sid­er the fact that Joe Biden’s sor­ry ass was done before Black women reached down and plucked his defeat­ed list­less behind out of humil­i­a­tion, some­one please explain to me what is there for Joe Biden to think about. What is tak­ing this dimwit this long to select a black woman as his run­ning mate

In a more just world, Joe Biden would­n’t even qual­i­fy to be on the VP short­list of any of those black women as pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates.
Now Joe Biden is act­ing as if he would be doing the black com­mu­ni­ty a huge favor if he choos­es a black woman. Selecting a black woman, all of whom are emi­nent­ly more qual­i­fied than he is to be pres­i­dent of the United States of America is a must for dimwit old Joe.
When asked why she removed her­self from con­sid­er­a­tion Minnesota’s US Senator, and for­mer pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Amy Klobuchar, stat­ed that she believes that the pick should be a black woman.
What is Joe Biden doing act­ing as if he wants to be begged to pick a black woman? Is it so that when he throws this elec­tion away he will have a scape­goat to blame?
I am way to mad to con­tin­ue, so I’ll defer to the great StephenA. Crockett Jr
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»



100 Black Entertainers and Celebrities Send Letter to Biden Urging Him to Pick Black Woman as VP. Biden Is Going to Mess This Up

By Stephen A. Crockett.Jr

This wasn’t sup­posed to be remote­ly hard; in fact, the ground­work had already been laid down. It works like this: Black women are the back­bone of the Democratic par­ty and they need­ed to be reward­ed with a vice-pres­i­den­tial pick in this upcom­ing elec­tion.
And the pre­sump­tive Democratic nom­i­nee for pres­i­dent still hasn’t made his pick, which has me think­ing two things: 1) Joe Biden is going to fuck this up and 2) Joe Biden is going to fuck this up. 
I’m not alone in these feel­ings, as some 100 Black celebri­ties and lead­ers have called for Biden to pick a Black woman as his run­ning mate, a deci­sion that was sup­posed to be made a week ago and as of Aug. 10 still hasn’t been made. 

Yahoo news reports:

Entertainment mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, radio per­son­al­i­ty and “The Breakfast Club” co-host Lenard “Charlamagne Tha God” McKelvey, for­mer NFL defen­sive end Michael Bennett, civ­il rights lawyer Benjamin Crump and many oth­ers signed the open let­ter to Biden.

“As some­one who has said through­out the cam­paign that VP Joe Biden needs to choose a Black woman VP, the urgency for that pick has gone from some­thing that SHOULD hap­pen to some­thing that HAS to hap­pen,” the let­ter said.

The let­ter denounced the treat­ment of some of Biden’s poten­tial picks, includ­ing Sen. Kamala Harris over her per­ceived ambi­tion and her debate attacks on Biden’s civ­il rights record when she was a rival can­di­date for the Democratic pres­i­den­tial nomination.

“It dis­gusts us that Black women are not just being vet­ted in this VP process but unfair­ly crit­i­cized and scru­ti­nized,” the let­ter said. “Was Joe Biden ever labeled ‘too ambi­tious’ because he ran for pres­i­dent three times? … Why does Senator Kamala Harris [D‑Calif.] have to show remorse for ques­tion­ing Biden’s pre­vi­ous stance on inte­grat­ed bus­ing dur­ing a Democratic pri­ma­ry debate?”

Wait, look­ing through some of the names of the men that have signed this let­ter is just as prob­lem­at­ic, con­sid­er­ing that “Charlamagne Tha God,” fre­quent doo-doo hat-wear­ing Nick Cannon, and CNN polit­i­cal con­trib­u­tor and pos­si­bly one of Trump’s Blacks Van Jones have all signed.

Managing Editor Genetta Adams: So, I’m con­fused, because just over the week­end, Nick Cannon endorsed Kanye.

Me: You know who else is con­fused? Nick Cannon.

Diddy and Charlamagne Tha God have pushed this whole thing of hold­ing the Black vote for ran­som, basi­cal­ly claim­ing that they’d need an agen­da of how Biden plans to improve the lives of Black and brown peo­ple if he wants the “Black vote,” Black Enterprise report­ed. But, much like politi­cians, we don’t hear much from these nig­gas until elec­tion time. 

Harris is report­ed­ly lead­ing the pack along with for­mer Obama admin­is­tra­tion nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er Susan Rice. Other promi­nent names include Rep. Karen Bass of California, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Rep. Val Demings of Florida, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, USA Today report­ed. Harris, Rice, Bass, and Demings are Black. And Biden is total­ly going to fuck this up. Why is he even enter­tain­ing these oth­er names when he clear­ly knows what he needs to do — and what the fuck is tak­ing so long?
Read more below:

https://​www​.the​root​.com/​1​0​0​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​e​n​t​e​r​t​a​i​n​e​r​s​-​a​n​d​-​c​e​l​e​b​r​i​t​i​e​s​-​s​e​n​d​-​l​e​t​t​e​r​-​t​o​-​b​-​1​8​4​4​6​7​8​623

Another nation­al elec­tion is around the cor­ner in Jamaica and as have been the case over the last decade and a half, polit­i­cal killings have more or less become a thing of the past to the cred­it of the peo­ple.
Was it left up to the lead­ers of the two polit­i­cal par­ties it is safe to say that polit­i­cal killings would be a major wor­ry still? The Jamaican peo­ple should take a bow for matur­ing.
Amidst the impend­ing chal­lenges posed by COVID-19 and the bal­anc­ing act that must be done with tourism and allow­ing return­ing res­i­dents back into the coun­try in order to retain some sem­blance of eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty, the present lead­er­ship has done an admirable job.

With that said, the two most press­ing issues that plagued Jamaica before Andrew Holness took office, remain stub­born­ly omnipresent today, and that both­ers me because he had ample time to change the tra­jec­to­ry on both.
The two issues are vio­lent Crimes & Corruption.
As I write this I am ful­ly con­ver­sant that these opin­ions will be improp­er­ly con­strued as sup­port for one par­ty over the oth­er, or feal­ty for one and hatred for the oth­er.
There is nei­ther feal­ty nor hatred, I strive only to speak the truth. When I write about pol­i­tics, I gen­er­al­ly do so cleansed of the cor­ro­sive tox­i­c­i­ty of affil­i­a­tion because of my present geog­ra­phy.
As such my bird’s eye view allows me the lux­u­ry of objectivity.

CORRUPTION

Andrew Holness has the envi­able dis­tinc­tion to have been sworn in twice as Prime Minister of Jamaica, and still be at the ten­der age of forty-eight (48). But to whom much is giv­en much is expect­ed.
He had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to see from inside what most of us can only glimpse at from the out­side.
After Bruce Golding was forced uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly to step aside, Andrew Holness became Prime Minister.
As a young man, he was unde­ni­ably ful­ly aware of the 18 ¹⁄₂ years of the PNP’s many cor­rup­tion scan­dals.
As some­one who is actu­al­ly old­er than Holness, I am nau­se­at­ed at the prospect that elect­ed offi­cials who are entrust­ed with the peo­ple’s busi­ness would betray that trust and engage in cor­rupt prac­tices.
My hope was that Andrew Holness would have been as nau­se­at­ed as I am about cor­rup­tion. I dared to dream that his nascent admin­is­tra­tion would be one that his­to­ri­ans would point to, the one that decid­ed cor­rup­tion was a thing of the past.
In fact, I had good rea­son to hope because can­di­date Holness promised to end cor­rup­tion.….….… He promised to ensure that Jamaicans could sleep with their win­dows open. ( we will get back to that).
On being sworn in, the new Prime Minister Andrew Holness promised much. 

Second Inaugural address.…..March 3^rd 2016.

(The fol­low­ing is the full text of the inau­gur­al address by Prime Minister Andrew Holness at his swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny on (March 3, 2016).
Your Excellencies, the Governor-General, the Most Honourable Sir Patrick Allen, and Lady Allen
Leader of the Opposition the Most Honorable Portia Simpson Miller
Former Prime Ministers:
The Most Honorable Edward Seaga and Mrs. Seaga
The Most Honorable PJ Patterson
The Honorable Bruce Golding and Mrs. Golding
My fel­low Jamaicans
Good after­noon.
I rec­og­nize that I stand here today only by the Grace of God. It has not been an easy jour­ney to this podi­um, but earnest labor and fer­vent prayers con­quer all. To God be the glo­ry.
It is with a deep sense of grat­i­tude, hon­or, and humil­i­ty that I took the Oath of Office moments ago, ful­ly con­scious of the mag­ni­tude of expec­ta­tions and respon­si­bil­i­ty I have assumed, but equal­ly ener­gized and opti­mistic about a pros­per­ous future for Jamaica. I pledge to serve the peo­ple of Jamaica faith­ful­ly, with all of my ener­gies, all of my heart, mind, and soul.
I stand here today hap­py to be rep­re­sent­ing the voice, vision, vote, and vic­to­ry of Jamaica.
We may have dif­fer­ent voic­es and dif­fer­ent votes on a sim­i­lar vision, regard­less of our dif­fer­ences, Jamaica was vic­to­ri­ous at the General Elections. It is not per­fect, but we can all be proud of the peo­ple, sys­tems, and insti­tu­tions that make up our democ­ra­cy.
Meaning of the Mandate
On the day of Election, I wit­nessed a young man car­ry­ing, cra­dled in his arm, an obvi­ous­ly bed-rid­den elder­ly man from a polling sta­tion. I was touched by the sight. In the bus­tle of the busy school­yard, as they passed, the elder­ly man point­ed his ink-stained fin­ger at me and said, “Andrew, do the right thing!“
I stand here hum­bled by the awe­some pow­er of you, the peo­ple, and I com­mit to doing right by you. The peo­ple are sov­er­eign and their views and votes must nev­er be tak­en for grant­ed.
The peo­ple of Jamaica did not vote in vain. They expect a gov­ern­ment that works for them and by the same expec­ta­tion, an Opposition that is con­struc­tive. This his­toric elec­tion deliv­ered the small­est major­i­ty but also the clear­est man­date: Fix Government!
With this man­date:
There is no major­i­ty for arro­gance.
There is no space for self­ish­ness.
There is no place for pet­ti­ness.
There is no room for com­pla­cen­cy and,
There is no mar­gin for error.
I am under no illu­sion as to the mean­ing of this man­date. We have not won a prize. Instead, peo­ple are giv­ing us a test.
There is no absolute agency of pow­er. This means that the win­ner can­not take all, or believe we can do it alone.
Leading Partnerships for Prosperity
To achieve the vision of shared pros­per­i­ty through inclu­sive eco­nom­ic growth and mean­ing­ful job cre­ation, now more than ever, the Government must lead, acti­vate, empow­er, and build real part­ner­ships. I intend to lead a Government of part­ner­ship. The solu­tions to our prob­lems do not rest with the Government alone.
The sum total of our poten­tial exceeds our prob­lems; our col­lec­tive capa­bil­i­ties are greater than our chal­lenges, but it is only through part­ner­ship that these capa­bil­i­ties and this poten­tial can be seized, har­nessed, and real­ized for the good of Jamaica.
Partnerships require trust, clear assign­ment of respon­si­bil­i­ty, and an ele­vat­ed sense of duty.
There is only so much trust that pledges and state­ments of com­mit­ment can buy. I under­stand that the Jamaican peo­ple now want to see action in build­ing trust. This is part of fix­ing the gov­ern­ment.
Everyone who will form the next gov­ern­ment must be seized of this expec­ta­tion.
From the politi­cian mak­ing pol­i­cy to the civ­il ser­vant pro­cess­ing an appli­ca­tion, we must act duti­ful­ly to ful­fill our respon­si­bil­i­ties.
Trust requires the actu­al­iza­tion of our com­mit­ments. We will ful­fill our com­mit­ments.
Our actions can achieve so much more if they are coör­di­nat­ed. We will bring greater coör­di­na­tion, ratio­nal­i­ty, and focus on the role of gov­ern­ment so that the objec­tives of part­ner­ship can be clear.
There is no doubt that sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of Jamaicans have lost hope in our sys­tem, but I am encour­aged that a far larg­er num­ber main­tains faith, keeps hope and con­tin­ues to pray that Jamaica will grow and pros­per.
I am ener­gized by the expres­sions of will­ing­ness to work with our new Government in the inter­est of Jamaica. The sense of duty is alive and well. There is more hope than despair and this cre­ates a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to form part­ner­ships for pros­per­i­ty.
Partnership with Families
You know, I am now joined in Parliament by my life part­ner Juliet. Family is the ulti­mate part­ner­ship. And that is why my Government will focus resources on sup­port­ing fam­i­lies.
By increas­ing the income tax thresh­old we will restore the eco­nom­ic pow­er of house­holds to par­tic­i­pate in not only grow­ing our GDP but more impor­tant­ly grow­ing the gen­er­al well­be­ing of the soci­ety.
Here’s how the part­ner­ship with fam­i­lies, and the work­ing heads of house­holds will work.
Our gov­ern­ment will ease your tax bur­den, but you must spend and invest wise­ly, use the addi­tion­al mon­ey to acquire a house for your fam­i­ly or improve the house you already have, or buy Jamaican-made goods.
This how we will increase local effec­tive demand in hous­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and agri­cul­ture. This is how you can play a part in cre­at­ing jobs while sat­is­fy­ing your well-being.
We will con­tin­ue our pol­i­cy of tuition-free edu­ca­tion and no user fee access to health care. However, will enable you to save in an edu­ca­tion bond for your chil­dren’s edu­ca­tion and in a nation­al health insur­ance scheme your health­care.
We will enhance our social safe­ty net for vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies, and will pro­vide sup­port for par­ents in cri­sis, but you must be respon­si­ble and send your chil­dren to school. Our men must take care of their chil­dren, and cou­ples must be respon­si­ble for hav­ing the chil­dren they can afford.
Our gov­ern­ment com­mits to cre­at­ing the envi­ron­ment in which fam­i­lies can flour­ish and form com­mu­ni­ties of social mobil­i­ty from which every ghet­to youth can be a star. However, every fam­i­ly mem­ber must do his or her part by being per­son­al­ly, social­ly, and eco­nom­i­cal­ly respon­si­ble.
I am sure Juliet will under­stand if I seek to build anoth­er part­ner­ship in Parliament. Leader of the Opposition, Portia Simpson Miller has giv­en long and ded­i­cat­ed ser­vice to the coun­try and I believe the man­date is say­ing, we may not be on the same side of the road, but as much as pos­si­ble we should hold hands in coöper­a­tion to over­come obsta­cles for the good of the coun­try.
We have evolved with­out for­mal struc­ture a very good part­ner­ship in edu­ca­tion and we intend to con­tin­ue our infor­mal col­lab­o­ra­tions in this area and pur­sue oth­er such areas of coöper­a­tion between Government and Opposition mem­bers.
I still believe it is a use­ful sym­bol of nation­al uni­ty for the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition to appear togeth­er in zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sions. I again extend the invi­ta­tion.
Partnership for Growth with Private Sector
The pri­or­i­ty of this Government is to grow the econ­o­my and cre­ate mean­ing­ful jobs. In so doing, we will more rapid­ly and sus­tain­ably reduce debt. I am sure we all agree that much of Jamaica’s devel­op­ment has been achieved with­out growth, which has left us with much debt. This is unsus­tain­able.
Going for­ward, Jamaica’s devel­op­ment must rest on its abil­i­ty to cre­ate propo­si­tions of val­ue and attract invest­ments to con­vert the val­ue into wealth. In this mod­el, the Government is not the main investor, it is the Private Sector whether they be large enter­pris­es or small busi­ness­es. In the eco­nom­ic part­ner­ship with the Private Sector, Government’s role, among oth­ers, is:
To ensure the rule of law.
Create a safe, secure, and fair envi­ron­ment for busi­ness
Make mar­kets where none exist
Ensure trans­paren­cy and access to infor­ma­tion ‑and cre­ate an effi­cient and sup­port­ive pub­lic sec­tor bureau­cra­cy
In exchange, we want the Private Sector to unleash invest­ments in the local econ­o­my. We want to see the return of the pio­neer­ing dri­ve to cre­ate new indus­tries, the entre­pre­neur­ial will­ing­ness to take a risk, and the inno­v­a­tive insight to do things bet­ter. I am heart­ened by the sig­nals com­ing from the Private Sector. I believe they have got the mes­sage about the part­ner­ship for growth and job cre­ation. Now is the time for growth.
Partnership with inter­na­tion­al part­ners.
We are not naïve about the chal­lenges we face regard­ing our debt and the need to main­tain fis­cal dis­ci­pline. This is why we will con­tin­ue with the prin­ci­ple of joint over­sight of our Economic Programme and per­for­mance.
We rec­og­nize the impor­tance of, and val­ue our rela­tion­ship with our bilat­er­al and mul­ti­lat­er­al friends. These rela­tion­ships have been crit­i­cal in secur­ing sta­bil­i­ty. We believe in pre­serv­ing sta­bil­i­ty, but we must now build upon this in pro­duc­tive part­ner­ships with them to achieve inclu­sive growth and job cre­ation.
There are many more areas of part­ner­ships that we must for­mal­ly pur­sue nation­al devel­op­ment and as our gov­ern­ment is installed over the com­ing days these will become evi­dent.
The Role of the Prime Minister
In all these part­ner­ships for pros­per­i­ty, there must be coör­di­nat­ed effort. That is my role. I will ensure that:
The gov­ern­ment is coör­di­nat­ed and strate­gi­cal­ly direct­ed.
Decisions are tak­en quick­ly.
Targets are set.
The nation is informed and that.
Everyone under my appoint­ment is held to account for their action or lack there­of.
Institutional Reform
There is a sense of expec­ta­tion of change. It is not lost on me that I am the first of the Post-Independence gen­er­a­tion to lead Jamaica. More than any­thing else we want to see Jamaica take its true place as a devel­oped coun­try in the next 50 years. The strug­gle is not so much polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence as it is eco­nom­ic inde­pen­dence. It is through our eco­nom­ic inde­pen­dence that we secure real polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence.
However, after 53 years of inde­pen­dence, there is a need for insti­tu­tion­al review of the Jamaican State both in terms of mod­ern­iza­tion of the insti­tu­tions of the State, and the struc­ture of the State. The gov­ern­ment has to improve its busi­ness process­es and become more effi­cient as a reg­u­la­tor and a ser­vice provider.
There is a need for us to have a say in the fun­da­men­tal insti­tu­tions that define Jamaica, the rights we secure for our cit­i­zens, and how we want Jamaica to be. We will give form to that voice in a ref­er­en­dum to decide on con­sti­tu­tion­al mat­ters and social mat­ters.
Independent Jamaica must remove the cul­ture of depen­den­cy from our midst. We must teach our chil­dren that there is no wealth with­out work, and no suc­cess with­out sac­ri­fice. We must remove the belief from the psy­che of our chil­dren that the only way they can step up in life is not by how hard they work, but by who they know.
As Prime Minister, I have a duty to align our incen­tives and reward sys­tems for those who work and fol­low rules. We must cre­ate a Jamaica where the man who plays by the rules is reward­ed!
It is impor­tant that the cit­i­zens of Independent Jamaica have a sense of enti­tle­ment to good ser­vice from their coun­try. However, increas­ing­ly this is not being bal­anced with a duty of ‘giv­ing back’. Jamaica has ben­e­fit­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly from the civic pride and sense of nation­hood that drove so many to give gen­er­ous­ly of their tal­ent and trea­sures to build our great nation.
The spir­it still exists, to a great extent, local­ly and in our Diaspora. However, we have to be more active in pro­mot­ing civic respon­si­bil­i­ty, vol­un­teerism, and ‘giv­ing back’, par­tic­u­lar­ly among our youth. And we have to inte­grate the incred­i­ble tal­ents and assets of the Jamaican Diaspora in local devel­op­ment. Too often I hear com­plaints from the Diaspora that they expe­ri­ence dif­fi­cul­ty in giv­ing to Jamaica. Giving should be easy, as part of our Partnership for Prosperity which includes the Diaspora, we will make it eas­i­er for you to con­tribute to the devel­op­ment of your home­land.
Jamaica is too rich in peo­ple and tal­ent to be a poor coun­try. With good gov­er­nance and a prospec­tive out­look, Jamaica, with­in a decade or less, could emerge as a boom­ing econ­o­my and a pros­per­ous soci­ety.
Jamaica is geo­graph­i­cal­ly cen­tral in the Caribbean. My vision is to turn Jamaica into the cen­ter of the Caribbean. A cen­ter of finance, trade and com­merce, tech­nol­o­gy and inno­va­tion, and the cen­ter of arts, cul­ture, and lifestyle region­al­ly. This is all pos­si­ble with­in our life­time. Despite any neg­a­tives, Jamaica still has a pow­er­ful and allur­ing brand ampli­fy­ing our voice and influ­ence in the world.
We can­not be sat­is­fied with things as they are. My dream is to ful­fill your dream. We must cre­ate a Jamaica where there are hope and oppor­tu­ni­ty. Where we can encour­age our chil­dren to dream big and be opti­mistic about their life chances. We must cre­ate a Jamaica where our young peo­ple can find mean­ing­ful work. Jamaica where you feel safe to live, work, and raise your chil­dren. Jamaica that is boom­ing and investors and entre­pre­neurs can have a con­fi­dent out­look on the econ­o­my. A place where we can retire and tru­ly enjoy as par­adise.
All of this is pos­si­ble. We must start now. Time for a part­ner­ship. Time for action!)

Andrew Holness has done noth­ing to address the acts of cor­rup­tion in his gov­ern­ment. It is not okay to say the PNP did it too.
Public ser­vants are all invest­ed with the peo­ple’s trust. Regardless of what lev­el pub­lic employ­ees oper­ate, he/​she has a duty to be respon­si­ble and hon­est stew­ards of that trust.
Crimes of cor­rup­tion should not be tol­er­at­ed at any lev­el. On this issue, Andrew Holness scores an (F).
[Whataboutism] is not accept­able.
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VIOLENT CRIMES

Despite the myr­i­ad mea­sures employed by the admin­is­tra­tion since tak­ing office, crime has increased each year with no end in sight. Today Jamaica hov­ers some­where around the third and fourth most vio­lent place on plan­et earth.
As a prag­ma­tist, I do not hope and pray to accom­plish tan­gi­ble results, nei­ther do I believe that the only solu­tion to the nation’s crime epi­dem­ic is divine inter­ven­tion.
Sure I pray a lot, I too believe in divine inter­ven­tion, where I part com­pa­ny with the Jamaican crowd, includ­ing the past PNP Minister of National Security Peter Bunting, is that I do not sit around and expect God to come in to fix things.
I am more of a Phillipians 4 – 13 kind of guy. I can do all things through Christ who strength­ens me. I am not the Moses dude who stopped to pray with Pharoh’s army to his back and the red sea, fac­ing him.
Those of us who have been in the trench­es know that crime and vio­lence thrive in envi­ron­ments of acqui­es­cence and tol­er­ance.
There is hard­ly a soci­ety more acqui­es­cent and tol­er­ant of crim­i­nal­i­ty than Jamaica.

Rather than lead on this issue, the People’s National Party and the Jamaica Labor Party have both fol­lowed the crime trends. The media-cheer­leads and the nation con­tin­ues on the slip­pery slope of becom­ing a failed state.
Support of gang­sters and gun­men is now cement­ed and a part of Jamaican cul­ture. It is expo­nen­tial­ly more dif­fi­cult to erad­i­cate the ram­pant crim­i­nal­i­ty that per­vades soci­ety as a con­se­quence.
Pandering for votes and kow­tow­ing to self-styled human rights lob­bies have become far more impor­tant than address­ing the run­away crime epi­dem­ic fac­ing the nation.
Holness has not dis­tin­guished him­self from that cul­tur­al rot. In fact, he made it his duty to be dis­re­spect­ful of the JCF through­out his tenure, first by putting his friend and for­mer head of the JDF Antony Anderson in charge of the JCF.
His words and deeds have been par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­re­spect­ful to the mem­bers of the JCF, and has only begun to be soft­er now that nation­al elec­tions are near. 

Instead of lead­ing on crime the Prime Minister bad­mouthed the JCF, while push­ing the JDF as a sort of qua­si-police depart­ment.
The truth is that the Prime Minister should be suf­fi­cient­ly apprised on the ram­pant crim­i­nal­i­ty in the coun­try and under­stand that, yes, far too many police offi­cers are cor­rupt, but as soon as the peo­ple are suf­fi­cient­ly exposed to the mil­i­tary, so too will the decry the sol­dier’s cor­rup­tion as well.
That did not take long to occur.
In this medi­um this writer implored the Prime Minister to throw his admin­is­tra­tion’s 100% sup­port behind the police, even as efforts are stepped up to ensure that good offi­cer are appro­pri­ate­ly appre­ci­at­ed, ele­vat­ed and bad ones removed and replaced.
I urged him to remove Terrence Williams from INDECOM and replace him with some­one focused on the task at hand. That is the inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion of all reports of abuse by the secu­ri­ty forces, in an objec­tive and pro­fes­sion­al man­ner.
While throw­ing the full sup­port of the Government behind the secu­ri­ty forces, he did nei­ther.
Supporting the efforts of law enforce­ment and hold­ing them account­able (as an arm of gov­ern­ment) are not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive endeavors.

The most fun­da­men­tal mis­take made by Holness has been his inabil­i­ty to ful­ly under­stand the role law enforce­ment plays in ful­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­eties.
The two are inex­tri­ca­bly linked, one does not exist with­out the oth­er. Andrew Holness’ demon­stra­ble dis­dain for the police has bled out into how he leads through­out his term.
Criticizing the work of the police against sea­soned killers, with a broad brush, when you do not have the courage to do a ride-along with them is gross­ly unfair and cow­ard­ly.
Now that elec­tions are around the cor­ner he has soft­ened his tone and mea­sured his demeanor, but the dam­age is already done.
Separate and apart from the polit­i­cal the­ater, there is the lit­tle issue of the mes­sage sent when the nation’s lead­er­ship has a hands-off rela­tion­ship with the police.
In the end, pet­ty feel­ings and grudges can­not be a part of gov­er­nance. SOE’s and ZOSO’s has done noth­ing to stem the blood­shed.
The head of the Police, a for­mer mil­i­tary leader, has not pro­duced any mea­sur­able pos­i­tive result that could not have been achieved by a career police offi­cer.
The jury is still out on what poten­tial harm may have been done to the psy­che of the offi­cers on the ground when their elect­ed lead­ers indi­cate to them that they are not good enough to lead the orga­ni­za­tion to which they have ded­i­cat­ed their entire careers.
You can talk all you want about all of the mate­r­i­al sup­port you give to the depart­ment, if you have not giv­en the moral sup­port that the men and women who risk all to pro­tect oth­ers need, you have failed at the most impor­tant task of governance.

This is the first in a series of arti­cles that I will write lead­ing up to the elec­tions. We will look objec­tive­ly and fac­tu­al­ly at the two polit­i­cal par­ties and their lead­ers, from our research we will out­line the facts and let the Jamaican peo­ple decide for themselves.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

In the sense that Democracy is defined by the American con­struct, the United States of America is the world’s old­est Democracy.
Credible his­to­ri­ans will have some­thing to say about the verac­i­ty of that asser­tion con­sid­er­ing that Africans were the first known peo­ple to engage in par­lia­men­tary demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tems of debate and prob­lem solv­ing, through dia­logue and dis­cus­sions through estab­lished tiered lev­els which con­sist­ed of chief­tains and elders.
Fast for­ward to recent times, and much of the world has embraced American Democracy, lit­er­al­ly split­ting our plan­et into two camps, one that prac­tices and strug­gles to adhere to the west­ern con­cept of Democracy and the oth­er that prac­tices and forces oth­ers to adhere to strict author­i­tar­i­an systems.

The west­ern world fought two world wars, with America at the tip of the spear of both wars. America stood up to the Soviet com­mu­nist pos­ture, ensur­ing that the world was spared being engulfed in the dark throes of com­mu­nist dom­i­na­tion.
America waged overt wars in Korea, in Vietnam, in Grenada, in Kosovo, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Latin America, and count­less covert wars across the globe all in the name of ensur­ing and advanc­ing democ­ra­cy.
The most fun­da­men­tal build­ing block in the con­cept of democ­ra­cy is the fun­da­men­tal right that each cit­i­zen has to vote for lead­ers they want to rep­re­sent them.
(Democracy is not a stamped idea on a sheet of paper. It is a con­cept that has to be replen­ished, and authen­ti­cat­ed dai­ly. It requires that every cit­i­zen share equal­ly in a sys­tem of just & equi­table dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice.
Failing which, the very con­cept becomes emp­ty words that evoke anger rather than inspire hope).
As America con­tin­ues on its search for the elu­sive truth of full democ­ra­cy, inher­ent in her very foun­da­tions are built in anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic ele­ments that con­tin­ue to eat away and weak­en the very foun­da­tion of this great bea­con.
Unless America finds a way to final­ly and con­clu­sive­ly eschew hatred and divi­sive­ness, those vices will destroy the very foun­da­tion of this poten­tial demo­c­ra­t­ic nation.

The ideals enshrined in the accept­ed con­cept of what democ­ra­cy is, is that all who qual­i­fy should vote. That has been an elu­sive con­cept to America.
Despite the protes­ta­tions of excep­tion­al­ism and great­ness, America strug­gles might­i­ly to live up to her own creed that all men are cre­at­ed equal.
Seeking to pre­vent law­ful cit­i­zens from vot­ing, and con­spir­ing to pre­vent those who have paid their debt to soci­ety from doing so, are some of the most despi­ca­ble and cow­ard­ly acts politi­cians could sup­port. they are also uncon­sti­tu­tion­al acts.
When your pol­i­tics are so offen­sive that your only hope is to keep peo­ple from the polls, you are a com­mon thug and worse than a tin-pan dictator.

In some states, Republican offi­cials closed hun­dreds of polling sites. Recently, in Milwaukee, well over a hun­dred polling sites were closed by Republicans, only five sites were left open, sub­ject­ing tens of thou­sands of vot­ers to stand in line for up to eight hours in order to cast their votes.
Those bla­tant acts of vot­er sup­pres­sion were car­ried out only in areas that are heav­i­ly African-American.
In Native-American com­mu­ni­ties, there are reports that peo­ple are forced to dri­ve miles out­side their com­mu­ni­ties to cast a vote.
Voters attest­ed that none of those con­di­tions exist­ed in white sub­urbs that gen­er­al­ly sup­port Republican can­di­dates.
Republican elect­ed offi­cials may not be killing blacks as the try to vote, but they have found a litany of ways to ensure that few­er African-Americans have access to the polls.
Those are clear and unequiv­o­cal vio­la­tions of the 15^th amend­ment to the US constitution.

They are not requir­ing black Americans to guess cor­rect­ly how many jelly­beans are in a jar nowa­days. No, they are not ask­ing them ques­tions even they do not know the answers to, what they are doing is just as bad, and in many cas­es far worse.
Donald Trump has been wag­ing sur­gi­cal war­fare against the right to vote, he has essen­tial­ly embarked on a process of lying about vot­er fraud that even a kan­ga­roo com­mis­sion he set up after he entered the white house could not val­i­date.
He has used his twit­ter account to demo­nize mail-in vot­ing in an effort to cast doubt on the upcom­ing elec­tion results. Never mind that there is zero evi­dence of fraud in mail-in vot­ing, out­side of Trump’s Putin-esque lies.
Donald Trump is quite pre­pared to have anoth­er civ­il war of his cre­ation by sow­ing lies and dis­in­for­ma­tion about the valid­i­ty of the elec­tion results than lose the elec­tion.
Donald Trump votes by mail, by that account Donald Trump’s vote is fraud­u­lent. Donald Trump igno­rant­ly states that he is a sup­port­er of absen­tee vot­ing, the poor idiot still has not grasped that there is no dif­fer­ence between the two.
On the one hand, he is using social media and right-wing media to con­tin­ue a lie that vot­ing by mail will be fraught with mas­sive cor­rup­tion.
Arguably, there is zero evi­dence that there is a scin­til­la of truth to this lie, but this seems to be what Vladamir Putin urged him to do to stay in pow­er.
Trump-appoint­ed one of his hench­men to the post of Postmaster General, that hack is Louis DeJoy. 
Louis Dejoy has been tasked with slow­ing down all aspects of the postal ser­vice to ensure that the agency will not be able to cope with the mas­sive amount of mail-in bal­lots come nation­al elections.

As part of that sab­o­tage, Trump and his min­ions have done away with over­time work, effec­tive­ly ensur­ing that there will be a back­log, and most of all, mas­sive chaos that will throw the results of the upcom­ing elec­tions in doubt.
If and when that hap­pens, Trump will then say he warned that the elec­tions would be the most cor­rupt in his­to­ry as he has con­sis­tent­ly tried to do to cre­ate doubt in the elec­tion process.
The tragedy is that his unin­tel­li­gent sup­port­ers are too stu­pid to see the lies.
In order for the elec­tions to be [rigged] as he lied in his state­ments, fifty (50) states, Republican & Democrats would have to con­spire to do so as American pres­i­den­tial elec­tions are all state events that are held inde­pen­dent­ly of each other.

“These changes are hap­pen­ing because there’s a White House agen­da to pri­va­tize and sell off the pub­lic Postal Service,” said Mark Dimondstein, pres­i­dent of the American Postal Workers Union. “But there’s too much approval for the orga­ni­za­tion right now. They want to sep­a­rate the ser­vice from the peo­ple and then degrade it to the point where peo­ple aren’t going to like it any­more.”
Many peo­ple warned that Donald Trump would try to change the date of the elec­tion. This writer under­stood that Donald Trump had no pow­er to change the date of the elec­tion, nev­er­the­less, he has the pow­er to use the pow­ers of the pres­i­den­cy to cre­ate such sit­u­a­tions that fright­en the pub­lic, there­after declar­ing that free and fair elec­tions can­not be held.
It is the very def­i­n­i­tion of Fascism.
He has already sug­gest­ed that the elec­tions be post­poned, despite the fact that elec­tions have been held dur­ing the civ­il war, dur­ing all kinds of upheavals.
He has poured fed­er­al thugs into the Democratic-run city of Portland Oregon. He has threat­ened to send oth­ers to Chicago, New York, and oth­er cities run by Democrats to insti­gate and stir up vio­lence, he then points to the pitch bat­tles between his cam­ou­flaged Gestapo and pro­tes­tors and argues that he will be a pres­i­dent to restore law and order.
The sad irony is that all of these things are hap­pen­ing under Donald Trump’s lead­er­ship. Why would Donald Trump be giv­en a sec­ond term to enact Vladimir Putin’s agen­da any further?

South Carolina’s state leg­is­la­ture in 2013, imposed a range of vot­ing restric­tions, includ­ing the new vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ments. It was part of a wave of vot­ing restric­tions enact­ed after a 5‑to‑4 Supreme Court deci­sion that effec­tive­ly struck down a cen­tral part of the fed­er­al Voting Rights Act, weak­en­ing fed­er­al over­sight of vot­ing rights.
Civil Rights groups and the Obama Administration filed suit and a.
A tri­al judge reject­ed argu­ments that the law vio­lat­ed the Constitution and what remained of the Voting Rights Act. But a three-judge pan­el of the appeals court dis­agreed.
The appeals court rul­ing struck down five parts of the law: its vot­er ID require­ments, a roll­back of ear­ly vot­ing to 10 days from 17, an elim­i­na­tion of same-day reg­is­tra­tion and of pre­reg­is­tra­tion of some teenagers, and its ban on count­ing votes cast in the wrong precinct.
The court found that all five restric­tions “dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect­ed African-Americans.” The law’s vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­vi­sion, for instance, “retained only those types of pho­to ID dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly held by whites and exclud­ed those dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly held by African-Americans.”(NYT)
The court not­ed that the law went after African-Americans with sur­gi­cal precision.

The Republican Party con­tin­ues to try to pull the wool over the eyes of its white sup­port­ers, and sad­ly there are some Blacks who are fooled as well into believ­ing that the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, the par­ty that reluc­tant­ly signed the Emancipation Declaration, is the same par­ty of today.
Conversely, they want the nation to believe that the racist Democratic par­ty of the Confederacy, is the Democratic Party of today.
Like two ships pass­ing in the night, so has the two polit­i­cal par­ties essen­tial­ly swapped ide­olo­gies begin­ning in the 1960s after the sign­ing of the Civil & Voting Rights Acts in the 1960s.

The Republican par­ty and it’s fake pres­i­dent all across the coun­try have ramped up attacks on vot­ing rights, begin­ning with the Supreme Court’s uncon­scionable and inex­plic­a­ble attack on the act.
The Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder struck down Section 4(b), of the act, which set out the for­mu­la for deter­min­ing which states are sub­ject to the Section 5 pre­clear­ance require­ment, thus ren­der­ing Section 5 — which many con­sid­er the heart of the act — mean­ing­less.
After sign­ing the Act, Southern Democratic President Lyndon Johnson declared the sign­ing “a tri­umph for free­dom as huge as any vic­to­ry that has ever been won on any bat­tle­field.” [adapt­ed]
The leg­is­la­tion was meant to enforce the 15^th Amendment, which almost a cen­tu­ry before, pro­vid­ed that “The right of U.S. cit­i­zens to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, col­or, or pre­vi­ous con­di­tion of servi­tude.”
How about that 15^th Amendment to the US Constitution?
Republican lead­ers across America, par­tic­u­lar­ly in states run by them
claim to be patri­ots, they wrap them­selves in the American flag and feign patri­o­tism when it suits them. However, they con­ve­nient­ly vio­late the con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions of all Americans when they feel threat­ened elec­toral­ly.
Worse, when white suprema­cy is at risk at the bal­lot box.

There was no need for the high court to do any­thing to the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County, Alabama v Holder.
This was set­tled law that ought to have been left stand­ing. The con­cept of (stare deci­sis) Let the deci­sion stand was com­plete­ly thrown out, and inex­plic­a­bly, the rul­ing was that the law worked so well that it was no longer need­ed.
Ari Berman of the nation called the rul­ing a (the return of jim crow). Gilda Daniels | University of Baltimore School of Law, (pre­pare for the trash­ing of the demo­c­ra­t­ic process). Gerry Hebert | Campaign Legal Center,(a rad­i­cal act of judi­cial activism). Spencer Overton | Demos,(a set­back for democ­ra­cy). Paul M. Smith | Jenner & Block LLP,(open sea­son for vot­er id laws).
How about that Supreme Court inter­pret­ing the con­sti­tu­tion and rul­ing on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of laws?
How about that John Roberts and his con­ser­v­a­tive activist col­leagues on the court [call­ing balls and strikes]?

Demonizing mail-in bal­lots, reduc­ing the Post Office’s abil­i­ty to deliv­er bal­lots in a time­ly fash­ion, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly embark­ing on a mas­sive clo­sure of vot­ing sites in minor­i­ty areas, is a strat­e­gy Trump has for steal­ing the next elec­tions.
It is hap­pen­ing right out in the open. Democrats must find ways to get their vot­ers to vote ear­ly there­by reduc­ing the need for those long lines on elec­tion day.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

One of the most anti-mask mem­bers of Congress, Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas, has test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19. Gohmert was sched­uled to trav­el to Texas with President Donald Trump and got a pos­i­tive result after tak­ing a test at the White House.

Gohmert told CNN last month that he would only start wear­ing a mask reg­u­lar­ly if and when he con­tract­ed COVID-19. According to that CNN report, Gohmert “spends ample time on the House floor not wear­ing a mask, often talk­ing with aides and law­mak­ers at length while not main­tain­ing a social dis­tance.” In recent weeks, the icon­o­clas­tic Texan has been in the news for bang­ing on his desk (while not wear­ing a mask) in an effort to inter­rupt a con­gres­sion­al wit­ness and defend­ing sup­port­ers of his who took part in fights (while them­selves not wear­ing masks) at an event being held by the Democrat run­ning against him in November. On Tuesday, Gohmert’s chief of staff used Facebook to post an alter­nate link to a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry video in which a doc­tor who has espoused bizarre beliefs regard­ing demon sperm and alien DNA argued that mask usage is unnec­es­sary. (Both Facebook and Twitter have attempt­ed to remove the video from cir­cu­la­tion on their plat­forms.)
Read more below.

The hyper­bol­ic non­sense sur­round­ing the Prime Minister’s cri­tique of the late Michael Manley’s tenure is as sil­ly as his deci­sion on the need to respond or clar­i­fy that he, in fact, loved Michael Manley.
As a cit­i­zen of Jamaica Prime Minister Andrew Holness did not sur­ren­der his God-giv­en right to speak his mind.
As a mem­ber and leader of the par­ty that com­petes against the late Michael Manley’s PNP, had Andrew Holness not cri­tiqued Michael’s tenure, it would have been pro­fes­sion­al abdication.

With that non­sense set to the side, it is time that as Jamaicans we learn that the art of pol­i­tics is not a zero sum game. We can love the late Michael Manley while at the same time dis­agree with his pol­i­tics.
Conversely, we can love Andrew Holness and not be hap­py with his pol­i­tics either.
Additionally, we can like some poli­cies and hate oth­ers, on either side of the polit­i­cal divide.
I strug­gle to under­stand why the mad rush to balka­nize, to be polar­ized fur­ther, to place our­selves into restric­tive lit­tle box­es?
Are we most com­fort­able when we are sequestered into con­ve­nient lit­tle box­es, if so, we are sti­fling our­selves, restrict­ing our indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive growth. 

The sad irony is that all pol­i­tics is local in Jamaica, the size of the coun­try makes it so, 4411 square miles all told, and under three mil­lion peo­ple, it is a hop skip and a jump.
As such, we need to close the gaps not seek to cre­ate chasms. Growing up in a JLP home, I hat­ed the poli­cies of the PNP, but noth­ing made me proud­er, as a high school­er, than to have seen my Prime Minister, Michael Manley stand on the world stage, and speak as only he could, against the igno­ble evils of apartheid in South Africa.
I still feel chills through my body at the pride I felt when Michael Manley went around the world as the leader of our tiny nation, and a leader of the non-aligned nations, larg­er than life, and demon­strat­ed to the world what human­i­ty ought to look like.
Yet I hat­ed Manley’s Democratic social­ism, I hat­ed what he did to our local econ­o­my, I hat­ed his pol­i­tics of divi­sion that result­ed in hatred, fear, and anx­i­ety.
I hate it still.

Growing up in a con­ser­v­a­tive Christian home, we were taught the val­ue of God, fam­i­ly, and coun­try. We learned the val­ue of edu­ca­tion, hard work. The idea was not to expect any­one to give any­thing to me because I was owed noth­ing.
I took that to heart, as a con­se­quence, I worked to school myself from as young as six­teen years old.
That is what par­tic­u­lar­ly drew me to the poli­cies of the JLP which was a mar­ket-dri­ven ide­ol­o­gy which was heav­i­ly geared at infra­struc­tur­al devel­op­ment as was evi­denced by the mas­sive school build­ing pro­gram under­tak­en by the Hugh Lawson Shearer’s admin­is­tra­tion that pre­ced­ed Michael Manley’s tenure in the ear­ly 1970s.

In ret­ro­spect, Hugh Lawson Shearer’s tenure at the helm of the Jamaican exec­u­tive, still stands as the most pros­per­ous peri­od in Jamaica’s post-inde­pen­dence his­to­ry.
That peri­od of peace and pros­per­i­ty did not hap­pen in a vac­u­um, it was a direct result of the mas­sive con­struc­tion Shearer embarked on that pro­vid­ed jobs to Jamaican work­ers of both polit­i­cal par­ties.
In addi­tion to that, Aluminum export was at an all-time high and the low crime lev­els attract­ed increased tourist arrivals.
Yup.….built by labor.

Both Manley and Shearer are now long gone, the PNP still strug­gles to be the par­ty of the ’70s that Michael Manley led. No one has both­ered to tell them that the idea of social­ism as a suc­cess­ful ide­o­log­i­cal con­struct has long died.
Even the Chinese and the Russians have moved on, adopt­ing vary­ing forms of mar­ket eco­nom­ics that have raised their stan­dards of liv­ing, and in many cas­es, cre­at­ed untold wealth for those with­in their soci­eties savvy enough to take advan­tage of the chang­ing times.
The JLP for its part, is not the par­ty that the Rt hon­or­able Hugh Lawson Shearer led.
Laborites can talk all they want about pros­per­i­ty, but the unde­ni­able truth as it relates to the JLP, as it has been for the PNP, is that both polit­i­cal par­ties are infest­ed with thieves and crooks who should be in prison.
Andrew Holness pledged that there would be no tol­er­ance for cor­rup­tion and theft when he took office, sad­ly, the JLP is no dif­fer­ent than the PNP as it has reneged on its promise, to be hon­est, and trans­par­ent.
On that score, both polit­i­cal par­ties have been abject failures.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course

You can nev­er count out a racist dem­a­gogue who under­stands how to use the pow­er of the media. In fact, this dem­a­gogue has been count­ed out numer­ous times before, and still, he comes back like he is made of Teflon.
He believes that there is no such thing as bad pub­lic­i­ty, as long as his name is being men­tioned on tele­vi­sion he has skin in the game.
Joe Biden bet­ter start under­stand­ing that con­cept if he has any hope of defeat­ing Trump in November.

After the Tulsa débâ­cle, Donald Trump returned to the white house look­ing disheveled and defeat­ed.
But don’t count him out just yet.
Oh, and while we are on the sub­ject of pol­i­tics, where exact­ly is Joe Biden, and what is tak­ing him so long to decide on a run­ning mate?
With just over four months until nation­al elec­tions in November, the pre­sump­tive nom­i­nee of the Democratic par­ty is miss­ing in action.

Is Joe Biden pulling a Hillary Clinton, she went miss­ing for the entire month of August dur­ing the 2016 cycle, while Trump was cam­paign­ing with his trump plane form­ing the back­drop on any tar­mac he could find?
If Biden does not get up off his ass and begin cam­paign­ing, earnest­ly, that label of sleepy Joe will stick and he will be an even worse toast than Hillary Clinton was in 2016.

Six new cas­es of the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) have been record­ed accord­ing to the Ministry of Health and Wellness. This increas­es the tal­ly of COVID-19 cas­es across the island to 605. The tal­ly of recov­er­ies remains at 405.(As report­ed by the Jablogz news team)

The six new cas­es are all import­ed. Three entered the island via a flight from the USA, one on a flight from the UK and two from a cruise ship that arrived at the Falmouth Pier recent­ly, the release stat­ed. The new cas­es range in age from 24 to 54 years, and are com­prised of five females and one male. According to the health min­istry, two of them have address­es in St Elizabeth while the oth­ers have address­es in Manchester, Portland, St James, and St Catherine.
https://​jablogz​.com/​2​0​2​0​/​0​6​/​c​o​r​o​n​a​v​i​r​u​s​-​c​a​s​e​s​-​p​a​s​s​-​6​0​0​-​m​a​rk/

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey pro­vides an update on the George Floyd case.
Mister Mayor as a for­mer police offi­cer and as a mem­ber of the human race I applaud you for giv­ing this press brief­ing today sir.
This was not a press brief­ing that was filled with clich­es and cook­ie-cut­ter sound­bites aimed at pla­cat­ing the fam­i­ly and the com­mu­ni­ty while giv­ing a wink and a nod to the police depart­ment that you have their backs in wrongdoing.

This was a heart­felt response that only the worst kind of crit­ic could find insuf­fi­cient. I applaud you for stand­ing up for the cit­i­zens who elect­ed you. Thank you for stand­ing up for what’s right instead of what’s white.
You have absolute­ly earned my respect today.

Even with the ben­e­fit of hind­sight the JLP Government & Delroy Chuck, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the oppo­si­tion PNP, has made it clear that they are dead set on a path to fur­ther place the Jamaican pub­lic at fur­ther risk.
The Island’s jus­tice min­is­ter Delroy Chuck seems hell-bent on pro­tect­ing crim­i­nals to the per­il of the wider law-abid­ing pop­u­la­tion.


After two smack­downs, one by the Jamaica Court of Appeals and final­ly by the British Privy Council, INDECOM’s agen­da seems to be front and cen­ter on Chuck’s to-do list, rather than the pro­tec­tion of the Jamaican pub­lic from the maraud­ing killers that con­tin­ue to ter­ror­ize the nation.
The pow­er-hun­gry com­mis­sion­er of INDECOM has indi­cat­ed that he intends to step aside in July of 2020, he is on his sec­ond term and has indi­cat­ed that he does not intend to seek a third.
Terrence Williams did not decide to step aside because he want­ed to, his entire tenure at the helm of INDECOM has been ded­i­cat­ed to har­vest­ing more and more pow­er for him­self, which he clear­ly intend­ed to use in a cat­a­stroph­ic way against mem­bers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force(JCF).

As a con­se­quence, Terrence Williams will be remem­bered as a foot­note in a dystopi­an saga of fail­ure. His tenure has been char­ac­ter­ized by law­suits, squab­bles, fights, and press brief­in­gs, with hard­ly any­thing sub­stan­tive, gained despite the mam­moth waste of tax­pay­ers and dark over­seas mon­ey wast­ed to stoke Williams’ frag­ile Napoleonic ego.
Despite two dev­as­tat­ing back-to-back loss­es and his sub­se­quent deci­sion to step aside, Terrence Williams revived the idea that the Parliament intend­ed to bestow upon INDECOM the pow­er to arrest.
For its part, the Police Federation has mount­ed a spir­it­ed push­back to Williams. It argues, Williams, and by exten­sion INDECOM, knew that nei­ther he nor INDECOM had the pow­er to arrest, even before the agency went to the court of appeals with its motion, much less to the Privy Council for a final redress, in a peti­tion to val­i­date a pow­er it already knew nei­ther Terrence Williams nor INDECOM had.

The Federation’s argu­ments fur­ther exposed Terrence Williams to be a sneaky lit­tle snake who would rather fight futile bat­tles to give him­self more pow­er with tax­pay­er’s funds, than actu­al­ly do the job he is being paid to do.
INDECOM has been an abject fail­ure under Terrence Williams. His antag­o­nis­tic and liti­gious approach has result­ed in few­er real inves­ti­ga­tions and con­vic­tions of errant and crim­i­nal cops, than any oth­er body ever assigned that task.
His approach has cre­at­ed a mas­sive increase in crim­i­nal activ­i­ty and dis­re­spect for the rule of law. The crim­i­nal under­world sees an ally in INDECOM.
Attacks on police offi­cers have become more com­mon­place and more aggres­sive. As a con­se­quence, the police have become more ten­ta­tive, and many have even giv­en up on enforc­ing the laws. INDECOM’s mis­guid­ed inves­ti­ga­tions have ruined more and more police offi­cers finan­cial­ly and otherwise.

In the mean­time, the Andrew Holness led Government has done noth­ing to rein in the agency and allow the police to do their jobs.
As vio­lent crime con­tin­ues to increase the police find it hard­er and hard­er to deal with law­less and bel­liger­ent pock­ets of peo­ple who are deter­mined that the laws do not apply to them.
There are sev­er­al rea­sons that the police do not pros­e­cute the peo­ple it inves­ti­gates & arrests. There are equal­ly as many rea­sons that the Office of Director Of Public Prosecutions does not inves­ti­gate and arrest the peo­ple it pros­e­cutes.
It is vital­ly impor­tant for the admin­is­tra­tion of jus­tice that crim­i­nal con­duct is inves­ti­gat­ed with the great­est of integri­ty. For that rea­son alone, it is impor­tant also that the pow­ers to inves­ti­gate and pros­e­cute are left the way they are. 

With all of the cas­es that INDECOM has inves­ti­gat­ed which it has lost in the courts. And with all of the alle­ga­tions of impro­pri­ety in the inves­tiga­tive process­es, a‑la coer­cions & induce­ments. Imagine what would have hap­pened to those defen­dants if INDECOM was allowed to inves­ti­gate, arrest, and pros­e­cute those cas­es?
INDECOM has already done tremen­dous dam­age, leav­ing in its wake a litany of cas­es in which it made arrests, based on pow­ers it [know­ing­ly] did not have. That kind of duplic­i­ty should be pros­e­cut­ed with Williams struck off the roll of lawyers allowed to prac­tice in Jamaica.

Delroy Cuck is about to bring this issue back before the par­lia­ment, Chuck has repeat­ed­ly stat­ed that he want­ed to give INDECOM the pow­er to arrest and pros­e­cute. He lat­er recant­ed that posi­tion stat­ing that his views have changed.
With the ben­e­fit of hind­sight, there should be zero tol­er­ance for giv­ing INDECOM pow­ers to arrest much less the pow­er to pros­e­cute.
What the Parliament should be focused on his expand­ing the office of the DDP to han­dle the greater crush of cas­es to be pros­e­cut­ed and build­ing big­ger and bet­ter cour­t­hous­es and hir­ing more staff to han­dle them.
With the incom­pe­tence of the peo­ple in the par­lia­ment and the atti­tude of the Government and Opposition, no one should expect that there will be many lessons learned from this débâcle.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

Jamaica has record­ed no new pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es for the first time in 50 days and so far 118 per­sons have recov­ered. The total num­ber of con­firmed COVID-19 cas­es in Jamaica as at Thursday (May 14) remained at 509 from the pre­vi­ous day. The island has now been ranked among the top 20 coun­tries glob­al­ly that are described as ‘Beating COVID-19’ by the web­site EndCoronavirus​.org.

The web­site lists coun­tries under three broad cat­e­gories: ‘Winning’, ‘Nearly there’ and coun­tries that ‘Need action’ and show­cas­es ”Recent new/day”graphs that mea­sure new cas­es per day, aver­aged over the last week.

‘Winning’ coun­tries are clos­est to con­tain­ing and elim­i­nat­ing the virus. Countries in the ‘Nearly there’ cat­e­go­ry are approach­ing that point with­in a rea­son­able time frame by a rapid decrease in new cas­es per day. And coun­tries who ‘Need Action’ are either going the wrong way, stay­ing con­stant, or going down very slow­ly. The US and Canada are list­ed among coun­tries that ‘Need action’.

Story orig­i­nat­ed @ https://​jablogz​.com/​2​0​2​0​/​0​5​/​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​-​r​a​n​k​e​d​-​a​m​o​n​g​-​t​o​p​-​2​0​-​c​o​u​n​t​r​i​e​s​-​b​e​a​t​i​n​g​-​c​o​v​i​d​-​19/