The Democratic pres­i­den­tial cam­paign is still not yet decid­ed, but the vot­ing trends since the South Carolina Primaries have giv­en for­mer Obama Vice-pres­i­dent Joe Biden a lead, many observers the­o­rize will only get more insur­mount­able for his rival Vermont (I) Senator Bernie Sanders.
As if want­i­ng to end the pri­ma­ry as soon as pos­si­ble, Democratic pri­ma­ry vot­ers have since sent a strong mes­sage in state after state that has already vot­ed, that Joe Biden is their choice to go up against Republican Donald Trump.
Donald Trump obvi­ous­ly thought that Biden would be the Democrat’s even­tu­al nom­i­nee, and as far as the evi­dence indi­cat­ed, Trump’s pre­emp­tive actions to mud­dy Biden’s char­ac­ter to aid his own reelec­tion efforts got him into seri­ous trou­ble.
Those actions got him added to the infa­mous group of two oth­er American pres­i­dents ever to be impeached.

So now Biden has to build out a nation­al cam­paign, pun­dits say it would be a good idea for him to hire a great deal of the Sanders staff in order to demon­strate to Sanders sup­port­ers, (most­ly younger vot­ers) that he intends to include them in his vision, not just for the Democratic Party, but for America.
The chal­lenge for Biden as it was for Hillary Clinton, is that Bernie Sanders is not a man who is going to bow out of the race any­time soon, or go qui­et­ly into obliv­ion, this is his last shot at the big leagues.
And so the ques­tion remains, when is it a good time for Biden to hire away staff that is already employed to the Sanders cam­paign?
Already there are on some social media plat­forms trend­ing “Never Biden” hash­tags.
I would cau­tion that these trend­ing hash­tags should not be viewed as any real fis­sure with­in the Democratic par­ty per se, nei­ther should they be believed to be com­ing from Bernie Sanders sup­port­ers.
These trend­ing hash­tags may very well be part of the Russian influ­ence cam­paign designed to open a split with­in the Democratic par­ty in order to reelect Donald Trump in November.
The main­stream media can always be count­ed on to take the bait and prop­a­gate these nonex­is­tent rifts by repeat­ing them over and over again as they did in 2016.

Amidst all of that Joe Biden needs to con­sid­er a run­ning mate, and that is the focus of this arti­cle today.
Pundits and prog­nos­ti­ca­tors have always held that the choice of a run­ning mate that a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date makes, is his or her first pres­i­den­tial deci­sion.
Let it be remem­bered that Joe Biden’s very exis­tence as a Presidential can­di­date did not come just from Jim Clyburn & black vot­ers sav­ing his hide in South Carolina, it start­ed with Barack Obama’s pres­i­den­tial deci­sion in choos­ing him as his run­ning mate in 2008.
Prior to this black revival of Joe Biden, he had twice before run for the Democratic nom­i­na­tion for pres­i­dent.
On nei­ther of the two pre­vi­ous occa­sions had Joe Biden won a sin­gle state pri­ma­ry or cau­cus.
The knack on the Democratic Party from some young peo­ple in the African-American com­mu­ni­ty, is that the par­ty has repeat­ed­ly tak­en the black vote for grant­ed.
They argue that the Democratic Party only gives a fleet­ing acknowl­edg­ment to African-Americans when it’s time to vote, after which it is back to the sta­tus quo.
There is much truth to that, nev­er­the­less, that does not mean that blacks have an option­al home or even a tem­po­rary sanc­tu­ary in the Republican Party. The Republican par­ty that has demon­stra­bly been hos­tile to us and the issues we care about.

Joe Biden’s choice of a VP can­di­date will reveal Joe Biden’s char­ac­ter, not just whether he is capa­ble of mak­ing sol­id pres­i­den­tial choic­es but whether he can make choic­es that are both hon­or­able and pres­i­den­tial.
At present, he has been say­ing all the right things, but pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates gen­er­al­ly have advis­ers and spe­cial inter­ests pulling and tug­ging at them to do what they want, some­times based on the checks they are writ­ing.
It is for that rea­son that he should nev­er for­get who got him here, and oh, by the way, win­ning the pri­ma­ry is not win­ning the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions.
Already some in the peanut gallery are push­ing names like Sally Yates, the for­mer deputy assis­tant gen­er­al who was fired in 2017 for refus­ing to imple­ment Trump’s anti-immi­grant exec­u­tive order.
Democrats Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan from the state of New Hampshire are also two of the names being bandied about by the main­stream media. 

I am yet to under­stand the rea­son behind their names being float­ed oth­er than that they are women, and God for­bid that any­one neglect to bow down to the fem­i­nist agen­da.
African-American women are the most loy­al vot­ing bloc in the Democratic par­ty. For that rea­son, Joe Biden must choose a black woman as his run­ning mate. It does not mat­ter that he said that a Biden admin­is­tra­tion would look like the coun­try. Talk is cheap actions mat­ter.
There is no short­age of emi­nent­ly qual­i­fied black women who are ready to step into the role of pres­i­dent, much less vice pres­i­dent.
In fact, after 2016 the pres­i­den­cy holds no mys­tique any more, at least not for me.
Biden’s choice of a run­ning mate should be a black woman, not because she is a [woman], but because loy­al­ty and com­mit­ment to the par­ty have earned them that right.

(Including Abraham Lincoln’s let­ter to New York Tribune’s Horace Greeley on the civ­il war and slavery)

Last December I wrote that African-Americans should take over the Democratic Party.
What does take over the Democratic Party mean? Glad you asked.
African-Americans have now estab­lished with­out a doubt (a) as we saw in the Senatorial race in Alabama, in which Doug Jones was able to win in a ruby-red state, (b) the Gubernatorial race in Georgia in which Stacy Abrams near­ly defeat­ed the Republican can­di­date,© in Florida where Andrew Gillum nar­row­ly lost to the Republican, (d) and in South Carolina where African-American vot­ers gave life to Joe Biden’s pres­i­den­tial hopes which were all but on life sup­port until the Clyburn endorse­ment and Biden’s sub­se­quent wins on super Tuesday. That the Black vote is the most solid­ly depen­dent base of sup­port the Democratic par­ty has.
According to a recent sur­vey, 70% of respon­dents say they will vote for the Democrat, regard­less of who the nom­i­nee is in the upcom­ing gen­er­al elec­tions.
No oth­er group can claim such loy­al­ty to the par­ty.
This time around, the con­cept of America laid out in the dec­la­ra­tion of inde­pen­dence will be saved if African-American people(the con­science of America) turns out to vote.

African-Americans have not always been the back­bone of the Democratic par­ty, and yes, we must con­cede that not all of the peo­ple with­in the par­ty love black peo­ple. Let us dis­pense with the pre­tense and face real­i­ty.
The exis­ten­tial threat to black men and even our women and chil­dren, is the threat posed by white suprema­cists wear­ing police uni­forms with the back­ing and pow­er of the laws at their com­mand.
At the same time, that this threat as been entrenched from as far back when blacks first walked off the plan­ta­tions, the Democratic par­ty has been eeri­ly silent on the issue.
Today the Democratic par­ty is as silent on race as is the Republican par­ty.
Nevertheless, blacks can hard­ly be mad at the Republican par­ty, the par­ty has made it clear it does not want the black vote. It has made it clear from its purg­ings, it’s utter­ances, and its silence, that blacks are not wel­come, it has not tried to hide its dis­dain for African-Americans.
Sure, there is a sin­gle Republican US Senator, Tim Scott in South Carolina and not a sin­gle black in the house on the Republican side after Will Hurd departs.
Apart from the seem­ing­ly lost Tim Scott, a self-hat­ing Candace Owens and a cou­ple oth­er black crack­pots like the com­i­cal car­ni­val bark­er of a for­mer sher­iff from Wisconsin who awards him­self medals, blacks have avoid­ed the par­ty like it is the plague.
But the dis­dain Republicans har­bor for the 40 plus mil­lion black peo­ple in this coun­try goes far­ther than a lack of rep­re­sen­ta­tion in their par­ty, it goes to the racist exclu­sion­ary and destruc­tive poli­cies they have enact­ed in local & state leg­is­la­tures and the US con­gress.
Voter sup­pres­sion laws. Laws giv­ing police depart­ments cov­er even when they mur­der inno­cent unarmed blacks. Onerous vot­er ID laws. Supporting police mis­con­duct against African-Americans, regard­less of bla­tant police crimes. The list is long and var­ied so when peo­ple ask why do black peo­ple over­whelm­ing­ly vote Democratic, they are either being face­tious or they are being ridicu­lous, in light of the evidence.

Make no mis­take about the facts here when it comes to the exis­ten­tial cri­sis blacks face, the Republican par­ty is at the heart of every issue that has caused pain to the African-American com­mu­ni­ty.
Unfortunately, like in every issue, we can think of on this sem­i­nal issue, there are many peo­ple in black skin who will quick­ly tell you that Donald Trump has done great things not just for America, but for the African- American com­mu­ni­ty.
One such [coon] told Trump to his face at a sit-down that he was the best pres­i­dent for blacks since Abraham Lincoln.
Comedian Jimmy Kimmel laughed at him upon which he did a video detail­ing why he believes Trump has been good for black peo­ple.
The met­ric that the “pas­tor” used to define Trump’s great­ness, just hap­pened to be Barack Obama’s econ­o­my.
I found it amus­ing that these very same black pas­tors found it incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to give pres­i­dent Barack Obama any cred­it for being a [great and exem­plary pres­i­dent], but is will­ing and eager to heap on Trump acco­lades he has­n’t earned and does­n’t deserve.

YOU WOULD THINK THAT BEFORE HE FURTHER EMBARRASSES HIMSELF HE WOULD DO THE RESEARCH?

THOSE WHO MAKE THESE SCURRILOUS UNEDUCATED COMMENTS DO THE BLACK COMMUNITY NO GOOD. THEIR COMMENTS GIVE OUR ENEMY FODDER TO FURTHER ABUSE US, AS CAN BE SEEN BY THOSE WHO ARE USING THIS VIDEO TO GIVE THE IMPRESSION THAT LIES ARE IN FACT TRUTH 

But then I remem­bered that when Moses led our peo­ple out of Egypt they turned on him because they did not have meat or leeks.
I remem­bered that Harriet Tubman car­ried a pis­tol, report­ed­ly for the negroes who would run back to the slavers and report on where the safe hous­es were.
So I am not sur­prised by the so-called pas­tors who could not sup­port Barack Obama because he did not come from the trench­es like a Jesse Jackson, or Al Sharpton.
Neither am I annoyed that because of Religion, not know­ing who they are, they cling to a brand of Christianity that enslaved them, and still have them men­tal­ly shack­led to the very par­ty which hous­es en-masse, the descen­dants of their ances­tor’s tor­men­tors.
Most impor­tant­ly I am not both­ered by them, because they could not both­er to edu­cate them­selves out­side the the­o­log­i­cal brain­wash­ing they were giv­en to learn some American his­to­ry, rather than bow down to [his-sto­ry]. To learn how the Democratic par­ty trans­formed from the par­ty of the Dixiecrats. To learn how the Democratic par­ty gave Blacks the civ­il and vot­ing rights act.
To learn how the Republican par­ty has become a white nation­al­ist par­ty.
Or both­er to learn that the so-called great­ness of Lincoln was cen­tered on the preser­va­tion of the Union, and not on free­ing a damn enslaved black.

Letter to Horace Greeley

Written dur­ing the heart of the Civil War, this is one of Abraham Lincoln’s most famous let­ters. Greeley, edi­tor of the influ­en­tial New York Tribune, had just addressed an edi­to­r­i­al to Lincoln called “The Prayer of Twenty Millions,” mak­ing demands and imply­ing that Lincoln’s admin­is­tra­tion lacked direc­tion and resolve.

President Lincoln wrote his reply when a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation already lay in his desk draw­er. His response revealed his con­cen­tra­tion on pre­serv­ing the Union. The let­ter, which received acclaim in the North, stands as a clas­sic state­ment of Lincoln’s con­sti­tu­tion­al respon­si­bil­i­ties. A few years after the pres­i­den­t’s death, Greeley wrote an assess­ment of Lincoln. He stat­ed that Lincoln did not actu­al­ly respond to his edi­to­r­i­al but used it instead as a plat­form to pre­pare the pub­lic for his “altered posi­tion” on emancipation.

Executive Mansion,
Washington, August 22, 1862.

Hon. Horace Greeley:
Dear Sir.

I have just read yours of the 19^th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any state­ments, or assump­tions of fact, which I may know to be erro­neous, I do not, now and here, con­tro­vert them. If there be in it any infer­ences which I may believe to be false­ly drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be per­cept­able in it an impa­tient and dic­ta­to­r­i­al tone, I waive it in def­er­ence to an old friend, whose heart I have always sup­posed to be right.

As to the pol­i­cy I “seem to be pur­su­ing” as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.

I would save the Union. I would save it the short­est way under the Constitution. The soon­er the nation­al author­i­ty can be restored; the near­er the Union will be “the Union as it was.” If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slav­ery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slav­ery, I do not agree with them. My para­mount object in this strug­gle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slav­ery. If I could save the Union with­out free­ing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by free­ing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by free­ing some and leav­ing oth­ers alone I would also do that. What I do about slav­ery, and the col­ored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I for­bear, I for­bear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less when­ev­er I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do morewhen­ev­er I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to cor­rect errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

I have here stat­ed my pur­pose accord­ing to my view of offi­cial duty; and I intend no mod­i­fi­ca­tion of my oft-expressed per­son­al wish that all men every where could be free.

Yours,
A. Lincoln.
(From​-Abrahamlincoln​.org)

Yea.…
A lit­tle per­spec­tive is some­times refresh­ing. Will it change minds, will the truth alter long-held ide­al­is­tic mis­con­cep­tions?
Probably not, nev­er­the­less, even if now revealed truths are not enough to erase past lies and mis­in­for­ma­tion, the truth will from hence­forth stand as a light for future gen­er­a­tions not yet exposed to man­u­fac­tured truths.
As the moral con­science of the Democratic Party, it is now time for African Americans to take hold of this par­ty and ensure that they lever­age it for what they are worth, not just to the par­ty, but also to America.
No amount of roman­ti­cized white­wash­ing can change the facts that Abraham Lincoln did not free the enslaved peo­ple out of moral con­vic­tion he did what he had to do to save the Union. 

Wall Street suf­fered its biggest one-day loss since the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis on Monday and reces­sion wor­ries loomed large as tum­bling oil prices and ongo­ing coro­n­avirus fears prompt­ed investor pan­ic on the anniver­sary of the U.S. stock mar­ket’s longest-ever bull run.

By Stephen Culp

NEW YORK, March 9 (Reuters) — Wall Street suf­fered its biggest one-day loss since the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis on Monday and reces­sion wor­ries loomed large as tum­bling oil prices and ongo­ing coro­n­avirus fears prompt­ed investor pan­ic on the anniver­sary of the U.S. stock mar­ket’s longest-ever bull run. So deep has fear per­vad­ed that you will rarely see some­one with­out an N95 Safety Face Mask saun­ter­ing the streets. 

All three major U.S. stock aver­ages plunged sharply at the open­ing bell, trig­ger­ing trad­ing halts put in place in the wake of 1987’s “Black Monday” crash. The Dow plum­met­ed a record 2,000 points out of the start­ing gate on a day that marked the cur­rent bull mar­ket’s 11^th year.

S&P 500 futures declined about 1% after the bell, briefly extend­ing their loss to just over 20% from their record high on Feb. 19 and sug­gest­ing the bull mar­ket may have end­ed. Investors gen­er­al­ly con­sid­er a drop of 20% from a recent high to sig­ni­fy a bear mar­ket, rais­ing the expec­ta­tions of a drawn out peri­od of neg­a­tive sentiment. 

“There’s a lot of fear in the mar­ket and if the price of oil con­tin­ues to move low­er it’s an indi­ca­tion that a glob­al reces­sion is not far away,” said Peter Cardillo, chief mar­ket econ­o­mist at Spartan Capital Securities in New York.
Read the full sto­ry here: https://​www​.nas​daq​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​w​a​l​l​-​s​t​r​e​e​t​-​c​l​o​b​b​e​r​e​d​-​a​s​-​c​r​u​d​e​-​p​l​u​m​m​e​t​s​-​v​i​r​u​s​-​c​r​i​s​i​s​-​d​e​e​p​e​n​s​-​2​020 – 03-09 – 0

THIS WAS A PROFOUND ADMISSION OF FAILURE, COMPARABLE ONLY TO PETER BUNTING’S DIVINE INTERVENTION PLEA.

For years I have pil­lo­ried the People’s National Partys fail­ure to do some­thing about the seri­ous prob­lem of vio­lent crime in our coun­try.
I argued then that if allowed, vio­lent-crime, like a can­cer­ous tumor, would become intractable, and there­fore expo­nen­tial­ly more dif­fi­cult to remove.
I also argued, that even if even­tu­al­ly removed, the cost to the coun­try, (as the effects of remov­ing can­cer from the body are) would be too great, and there­fore would be a pyrrhic victory.

It was for that rea­son that I want­ed a change for our coun­try and believed at the time that Andrew Holness would car­ry on the same no-non­sense poli­cies of Hugh Lawson Shearer and to a less­er extent Edward Seaga.
My per­son­al sup­port for Andrew Holness’s can­di­da­cy to lead Jamaica, has been my great­est regret and since he has tak­en office I have not been shy in mak­ing that regret known.
His atti­tude toward crime has been one of elit­ism, the type of know-it-all dis­re­spect­ful (elit­ism) that has char­ac­ter­ized many of Jamaica’s peo­ple who have been blessed to have set foot in an insti­tu­tion of high­er learn­ing.
Unfortunately for the coun­try, that Institution has indoc­tri­nat­ed those who have man­aged to get in, with the most regres­sive left­ist ide­ol­o­gy that has not only been bad for Jamaica but the entire Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty through which it’s ten­ta­cles has reached and cor­rod­ed.
That left­ist ide­ol­o­gy has not worked for any coun­try, and it cer­tain­ly has­n’t worked for Jamaica. 

That insti­tu­tion has made Andrew Holness a dif­fer­ent leader than for­mer lead­ers of the Jamaica Labor Party. Truth is, Holness is hard­ly any dif­fer­ent ide­o­log­i­cal­ly than Peter Phillips, or any of the oth­er obnox­ious morons in the PNP who pre­tend to be lead­ers. The com­mon denom­i­na­tor between all of them is that incu­ba­tor of regres­sive-ism, known as the University of The West Indies.
Arrogance, has char­ac­ter­ized Holness’s approach to the crime fight.
He threw his sup­port behind INDECOM, the agency cre­at­ed by the dis­graced, and failed Former Prime Minister Bruce Golding, (remem­ber baby-bruce?)
Not behind the Nation’s law enforce­ment heroes.
He went out of his way to dis­re­spect the Island’s less-than-per­fect police, even when there was no need for the slights and the snipes.
He made sure that he sent them a strong mes­sage that he did not val­ue their efforts by nam­ing the for­mer head of the three thou­sand man army, Antony Anderson, the nation’s first nation­al secu­ri­ty advi­sor. (Take that cops).
He then short-cir­cuit­ed the upward mobil­i­ty of every sin­gle cop on the force, by appoint­ing Anderson Commissioner of Police. How did he do that, you ask?
When a mem­ber of the force is appoint­ed com­mis­sion­er of police, oth­ers move up the pyra­mid, it is that sim­ple.
His actions basi­cal­ly killed morale, but he was­n’t done.
He went ahead and allowed Antony Anderson to bring his for­mer (JDF) dri­ver ( a for­mer sergeant in the army) over to the JCF and made him an assis­tant super­in­ten­dent of police, fur­ther erod­ing morale.

Andrew Holness’s tight embrace of the Army was in and of itself a very clear mes­sage, that he had zero regards for the men and women of the con­stab­u­lary who were the real heroes hold­ing up the coun­try from falling.
He berat­ed them about there will be no more kick­ing down doors on his watch.
He gave INDECOM carte blanche to harass and per­se­cute police offi­cers, to the point, our police offi­cers basi­cal­ly threw up their arms in dis­gust and said: “to hell with it”.
And why not, why would they risk their lives to go after dan­ger­ous demon­ic killers at the risk of get­ting sec­ond-guessed and per­se­cut­ed by a state-fund­ed agency?
The unde­ni­able truth is that INDECOM’s record has fall­en woe­ful­ly short of that of the for­mer CCRB, when it comes to inves­ti­gat­ing alleged police mis­con­duct.
With none of the ran­cor, bad-blood and the grand­stand­ing that has char­ac­ter­ized INDECOM’s exis­tence under Terrence Williams and British cop Hamish Campbell.
I am ashamed of my coun­try’s plan­ta­tion men­tal­i­ty.
Aa a con­se­quence, offi­cers start­ed beat­ing down the doors to leave the depart­ment, to the tune of well over fifty per month.
In typ­i­cal dic­ta­to­r­i­al fash­ion, Holness caused his lack­eys in the hier­ar­chy of the JCF, to insti­tute uncon­sti­tu­tion­al mea­sures aimed at pre­vent­ing mem­bers from resign­ing with­out first giv­ing the depart­ment months-long heads up.
But that did not stop the mass exo­dus, and so now the depart­ment is forced to use untrained stu­dent con­sta­bles to do police work for a frac­tion of what they should be paid.
This has placed the lives and safe­ty of their trained col­leagues, the stu­dent-con­sta­bles them­selves, and the wider pub­lic at risk. All of this could have been avoid­ed.
I have con­sis­tent­ly warned this gov­ern­ment, that I agree that the police need fix­ing from the top, but that its approach would be ruinous to the depart­ment, and cat­a­stroph­ic to the coun­try.
That moment is here!

In an inter­view with a local medi­um, the Jamaican Prime Minister final­ly admit­ted, what many peo­ple, includ­ing this writer, have warned about repeat­ed­ly.

‘The coun­try’s crime prob­lem has “evolved cur­rent­ly, over and above our estab­lished capac­i­ty to address it”.(Andrew Holness said)

This is what I have been writ­ing would hap­pen for years, long before he took office, but more so, after he did.
I thought the Jamaican peo­ple vot­ed him into office because he told them they would be able to sleep with their doors open if he was elect­ed.
Now, we all knew that this was an over­state­ment to which we could not rea­son­ably hold the Prime Minister.
But nev­er­the­less, it made us believe that there would be a new and deter­mined focus on this exis­ten­tial cri­sis.
I knew that there was always a silent major­i­ty of good decent law-abid­ing peo­ple who want­ed peace and secu­ri­ty.
As a police offi­cer, I met them across the length and breadth of our coun­try. As a detec­tive, I knew their gra­cious­ness. They were nev­er shy to tell me what I need­ed to know, because they knew they could trust me nev­er to divulge their names to any­one.
Sure pros­per­i­ty is impor­tant, but there was nev­er going to be any pros­per­i­ty on piles of dead Jamaican bod­ies.
I warned that ZOSOs & SOEs would not help the crime fight. I warned the Prime Minister to embrace the police &military and give them the tools they need­ed to fight for Jamaica, as they fought for Jamaica in 2010, as they fight for Jamaica every day.
No, the Prime Minister threw his sup­port behind INDECOM, and a lying ego­ma­ni­a­cal, self-serv­ing bas­tard.
A bas­tard who said that Jamaican cops should adopt the crime-fight­ing strate­gies of the Latin-American coun­try of Nicaragua.….…… a failed left­ist state.

The killings are unchecked because of the arro­gance of Holness and the major­i­ty of the Island’s politi­cians. But that arro­gance is cer­tain­ly not con­fined to the two polit­i­cal par­ties. It is endem­ic in the so-called acad­e­mia, and it bleeds all the way down to the least edu­cat­ed.
It is the mis­guid­ed notion that naive­ly believes because some­one man­aged a degree of sorts, they are now qual­i­fied to over­see any­thing.
You know, like putting Bankers, Botanists, Medical Doctors, and Army brass over nation­al secu­ri­ty.
It is the same as ask­ing the Janitor to per­form heart surgery.
I did warn that this was going to hap­pen, that we would find our­selves at this point, because of the Prime Minister’s arro­gance and the stu­pid­i­ty of those who fol­low blind­ly behind the polit­i­cal class.
It requires strong laws, strong effi­cient police, effec­tu­at­ing manda­tor min­i­mum for cer­tain cat­e­gories of vio­lent crimes and yes, stand­ing INDECOM down.
It is hard for a small coun­try the size of Jamaica to absorb so many con­vict­ed depor­tees, to be flushed with so many weapons, not to have strong effec­tive lead­er­ship on crime.

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.

I want to make it abun­dant­ly clear that (a) when I write about crime in Jamaica, and (b) when I crit­i­cize this Government, © it should nev­er be seen as an endorse­ment of, or sup­port for the People’s National Party.
The ( PNP) was in office for an unprece­dent­ed ¹⁸¹⁄₂ years. The degra­da­tion of our coun­try, phys­i­cal­ly, cul­tur­al­ly, eco­nom­i­cal­ly, and moral­ly must be laid square­ly at the feet of that polit­i­cal par­ty.
As a pre-emp­tive shot across the bow of the bleed­ing heart apol­o­gists let me just stop you right there.……People’s atti­tudes and behav­iors are influ­enced by poor, weak, acqui­es­cent and feck­less lead­er­ship.
Let me be abun­dant­ly clear, vio­lent crimes sta­bi­lized under the Edward Seaga’s gov­ern­ment which com­menced in 1980 and end­ed in 1988.
Edward Seaga was no saint, he main­tained the moth­er of all gar­risons, (Tivoli Gardens) out of which emerged, Jim Brown, Duddus, Blood, Livity and a host of oth­er blood-thirsty sociopaths.
I hope that I have made myself clear in the fore­gone, I do not spend my time writ­ing in sup­port of either of the two polit­i­cal par­ties that share pow­er in our coun­try, I call balls and strikes straight down the mid­dle the way I see them.

Seaga’s love for Tivoli Gardens could be viewed as a moth­er who was will­ful­ly blind to the demons with­in her child.
Though Edward Seaga may nev­er be absolved from his role in the Island’s gar­ri­son cul­ture, his record must be bal­anced with the real­i­ty that at the very least, when he real­ized that some of the crim­i­nals in his domain were out of con­trol, he nev­er wavered in pro­vid­ing their names to the police.
Whether this is enough to redeem Edward Seaga’s lega­cy is not for me to decide, his con­tri­bu­tion, how­ev­er, must be hon­est­ly assessed with­in the broad­er con­text of the gang-land pol­i­tics which exist­ed then, and to some extent exist to this very day.


What I do know is that this admin­is­tra­tion has its head up its own ass on the exis­ten­tial issue of vio­lent crime.
One mem­ber of the par­ty, Fayval Williams a Saint Andrew MP touts the val­ue of peace march­es on her Facebook page.
When polit­i­cal lead­ers are forced to march for peace, (as if vio­lent crime is a war to be end­ed through détente’), it is a white flag of sur­ren­der.
It is telling the crim­i­nal mur­der­ers that as a gov­ern­ment, you are out of options, you are beg­ging them to behave. Under what sce­nario is it okay to beg crim­i­nals to behave?
Why are the lead­ers bow­ing down to mur­der­ers instead of get­ting out of the way so that the secu­ri­ty forces can do their jobs?
The chal­lenge for the coun­try is that it cre­at­ed mon­sters, INDECOM, and allowed so-called human rights groups life JFJ & the IACHR total access to the coun­try’s process of leg­is­la­tion and law enforce­ment.
INDECOM is now an out of con­trol mon­ster par­tial­ly fund­ed by shad­owy for­eign forces.
The unit is total­ly out­side the con­trol of the gov­ern­ment. It works as a sort of watch­dog on the gov­ern­ment itself, on behalf of its for­eign fun­ders and han­dlers.
Years ago, as he berat­ed the Police in the media, the rabid attack dog that heads INDECOM point­ed to the [Nicaraguan polic­ing mod­el] as one that Jamaica should be fol­low­ing.
I will just let that sink in for a minute.….…..
Nicaragua is a fuck­ing failed state!!!

At present, our coun­try is drift­ing aim­less­ly with­out deci­sive lead­er­ship on the exis­ten­tial and crit­i­cal issue of crime. The Government of the day has made it clear that walk­ing and chew­ing gum is not a thing it can do.
It is clear that it only intends to walk, to hell with chew­ing gum.
There is a rea­son that the admin­is­tra­tion gets away with the cha­rade it is present­ly engaged in, on the one hand, there are the par­ti­san PNP sup­port­ers, and on the oth­er, there are the par­ti­san JLP. sup­port­ers. There is not much for ratio­nal think­ing in the mid­dle. Is there even a mid­dle any­more?
The thing is, that at present the pop­u­lar sen­ti­ment seems to be with the JLP, and so for those sup­port­ers, the gov­ern­ment can do no wrong.
As a con­se­quence, the admin­is­tra­tion does not feel any pres­sure to move deci­sive­ly to rem­e­dy the crime sit­u­a­tion, because for it’s sup­port­ers, crime was here under the PNP.
Because of that mind­set, the admin­is­tra­tion of the day does not need to wor­ry about account­abil­i­ty.
The econ­o­my is doing okay, but it bears men­tion­ing that there is an across-the-board fair eco­nom­ic con­di­tion glob­al­ly.
As for the stock mar­ket which is doing great, the vast major­i­ty of Jamaicans, as in the United States, does not under­stand what the stock mar­ket is, much less to have mon­ey invest­ed in it.

The nation’s unem­ploy­ment rate is pret­ty low. According to (Statista), in 2019, the unem­ploy­ment rate in Jamaica was approx­i­mate­ly 9.52 per­cent, a decrease from pre­vi­ous years. 
Imagine where the coun­try would be if we had polit­i­cal lead­er­ship that stood deci­sive­ly behind the rule of law?
Imagine if the coun­try was ready to absorb its return­ing res­i­dents and investors, (not just Chinese peas­ants) who would love to invest and live in our coun­try?
Imagine where the coun­try would be if we had lead­ers who were pre­pared to dis­card polit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions and stand up for the coun­try?
Imagine if the coun­try had decent men & women of hon­or and courage who stood up for social order and the rule of law? And tell the know-it-all pun­dits and prog­nos­ti­ca­tors to shut the fuck up?
Imagine if we had lead­ers who under­stood that we can­not build pros­per­i­ty on the bod­ies of dead cit­i­zens?
Imagine if there was con­sci­en­tious lead­er­ship that shuts out the noise about [human-rights] because it under­stood that dead peo­ple have lost their most fun­da­men­tal right.…… the right to life?
And, imag­ine if that lead­er­ship under­stood that stand­ing up for the rule of law, and enforc­ing the nation’s laws is not anti­thet­i­cal to human rights?

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.

NEW YORK, New York — Leaders in Haiti must step up and end the polit­i­cal impasse between President Jovenel Mose and a surg­ing oppo­si­tion move­ment that has par­a­lyzed the island nation since July 2018, the top UN offi­cial there said on Thursday in a brief­ing to the UN Security Council in New York.

UN Special Representative Helen La Lime updat­ed ambas­sadors on lat­est devel­op­ments in the pro­longed divide which has left Haiti with­out a func­tion­ing gov­ern­ment, deflat­ed the econ­o­my, and fueled insecurity. 

“Haiti is about to enter in its sec­ond year with a care­tak­er gov­ern­ment, its econ­o­my is fore­cast to sink deep­er into reces­sion, and 4.6 mil­lion of its cit­i­zens are now esti­mat­ed to require human­i­tar­i­an assis­tance,” she said, speak­ing via video­con­fer­ence from the cap­i­tal, Port-au-Prince. 

“To avoid a greater dete­ri­o­ra­tion, Haitian lead­ers need to rise to the occa­sion and com­mit to a way out of this impasse that will best serve the inter­ests of their people.” 

Threat of prolonged stalemate 

Ms. La Lime was intro­duc­ing the first report on the UN Integrated Office in Haiti, which she heads.

Known by the French acronym BINUH, it was estab­lished last October, fol­low­ing the end of 15 years of UN peace­keep­ing operations. 

Its man­date includes strength­en­ing polit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty and good governance. 

During the past months, Ms. La Lime and inter­na­tion­al part­ners the Organization of American States and the Holy See have been sup­port­ing nego­ti­a­tions to forge con­sen­sus on a polit­i­cal agreement. 

However, talks failed to yield progress on the for­ma­tion of a new gov­ern­ment and the des­ig­na­tion of a “con­sen­su­al” Prime Minister by the President. 

“The lack of agree­ment on this mat­ter, as well as on the remain­ing length of President Mose’s term, threat­ens to need­less­ly pro­long a sit­u­a­tion that has already last­ed too long,” she told the Council. 

‘Rising tide of cruelty’ 

In the inter­im, Haitians are being sub­ject­ed to wide­spread human rights vio­la­tions as armed gangs now con­trol around a third of the coun­try, gen­er­at­ing “a ris­ing tide of cru­el­ty,” accord­ing to Marie Yolne Gilles, Executive Director of the non-prof­it Fondasyon Je Klere, who also spoke from the cap­i­tal city. 

“We have wit­nessed odi­ous killings, decap­i­ta­tions, rapes, rob­beries, embez­zle­ment and the diver­sion of sup­plies, abduc­tions and kid­nap­pings,” she report­ed, lat­er adding “we have death squadrons, and that’s a form of state terrorism.” 

As Ms. La Lime told ambas­sadors, the ongo­ing impasse and eco­nom­ic trou­bles risk fur­ther affect­ing the integri­ty of the nation­al police and oth­er key insti­tu­tions.
Read full arti­cle here: https://​www​.caribbean​news​.net/​n​e​w​s​/​2​6​4​0​9​9​6​1​0​/​h​a​i​t​i​-​a​t​-​t​h​e​-​c​r​o​s​s​-​r​o​a​d​s​-​g​o​v​e​r​n​m​e​n​t​-​u​n​d​e​r​-​p​r​e​s​s​ure

THE POLITICS

JAMAICA is being read­ied for yet anoth­er gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign sea­son, and yet, despite the maneu­ver­ing by both polit­i­cal par­ties, the lying, and the infan­tile brava­do, the sem­i­nal issue of vio­lent crime is ignored.
Just today one dai­ly pub­li­ca­tion had as one of its head­lines the words, “Bloody 24 Hours”.
The fact is, that kind of head­line could eas­i­ly be pre-writ­ten each day and it would be accu­rate every day.
What dif­fer­en­ti­ates this one or should I say what neces­si­tates it, is the num­ber of peo­ple killed or injured with­in a small win­dow of time.
In this case, it was Thirteen (13) peo­ple shot, nine (9) fatal­ly. Among the wound­ed, a two-year-old (2) baby boy.

THE GANGSTERS

As the gang­sters move away from the tra­di­tion­al mur­der zones of Saint James, parts of Saint Catherine and Clarendon as a result of the ZOSO’s and SOE’s, the homi­cide num­bers have decreased to some degree. In Saint James new police reports indi­cates that mur­ders have decreased expo­nen­tial­ly.
The unfor­tu­nate real­i­ty is that in oth­er areas crime has increased not just to the degree it has gone down in Saint James but across the board, vio­lent crimes includ­ing mur­ders, have increased by over 10% when com­pared to the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od last year.
The unof­fi­cial num­ber of mur­ders so far this year stands at 181 in just 51 days.
That is a rate of 3.54 per­sons dying vio­lent­ly at the hands of crim­i­nals, send­ing the Islands kill-rate high­er than the present 47 per 100,000, one of the high­est in the world.
The les­son inher­ent in this process of trans­plant­i­ng & prop­a­ga­tion of crime from areas with ZOSO’s and SOE’s to oth­er areas, is that the afore­men­tioned ini­tia­tives are not real solu­tions to the crime epi­dem­ic, they are mere organs for the growth of crime in dif­fer­ent areas.

THE POLICE

The Police force of today is far bet­ter equipped than when I served between the ear­ly ’80s to ear­ly 90s. Officers now have util­i­ty belts, pep­per spray, bal­lis­tic vests, etc.
The best we could man­age back then was pep­per spray in some Mobile Reserve units.
At the same time, offi­cers are lack­ing the train­ing they need and deserve in order to do a half-way decent job.
Absent from their util­i­ty belts are two com­po­nents, (a) Tasers, (b) a set of balls, to make it clear they are police offi­cers not to be tri­fled with.
Hesitancy when effect­ing arrests, is a clear invi­ta­tion for (a) a sus­pect to resist arrest (b) for bystanders to inter­vene.
Those opposed to a Jamaica in which the rule of law was the law of the land all but evis­cer­at­ed the idea of the no-non­sense cop.
Ironically, the vio­lence-pro­duc­ers always knew the no-non­sense cops and that in and of itself was a deter­rent and a vio­lence sup­pres­sant.
On the one hand, those who chose to be gang­sters were afraid they would get caught in the act and they also knew that as soon as we found out who did what it was game over. And find out we did.
Today between the Labor Party and the PNP the police is a shell of its for­mer self.
Blatantly trans­par­ent acts like dis­band­ing the Mobile Reserve (the Backbone of the Force) was a solu­tion seek­ing a prob­lem.
Andrew Holness and his cohorts long want­ed to ren­der the Unit impo­tent, one alleged inci­dent linked to the Unit was enough for him to move in and dis­band the Mobile Reserve under the guise of root­ing out cor­rup­tion.
Today the crim­i­nals rule the street and it seems that the peo­ple are resigned to the killings. They wait their turn to be mas­sa­cred like fish in a bar­rel, and that is exact­ly how the gang­sters treat them.

SOLUTION

This Administration has a three-tiered strat­e­gy (a) tie the hands of the police, (b) give the nation false hope that its strate­gies will pro­duce results just around the cor­ner, © give more sup­port to INDECOM to harass and per­se­cute law-enforce­ment offi­cers.
I am well aware that stat­ing the facts can be shock-induc­ing. The nation needs to be shocked by the truth.
At present this admin­is­tra­tion has stu­dent con­sta­bles work­ing for a pit­tance with­out ade­quate train­ing.
Yes, there is cred­i­ble evi­dence that stu­dent con­sta­bles are being deployed with­out the ben­e­fit of a full con­sta­ble’s salary.
Worse yet they are being required to do police work in haz­ardous con­di­tions in which their lives will be threat­ened.
We are reli­ably informed that many of these stu­dent offi­cers have not even received basic firearms or field­craft train­ing.
At the same time if these stu­dent con­sta­bles take action using lethal force with­out the train­ing this Government will walk away and leave them to the rabid dogs at INDECOM.
This is not right and we are ask­ing the Andrew Holness admin­is­tra­tion to cease and desist from endan­ger­ing the lives of these young peo­ple, the lives of their col­leagues and the lives of the gen­er­al pub­lic.
Speaking to these con­cerns recent­ly the police high com­mand said they were kept in the field basi­cal­ly because of the exi­gen­cies of the service(basically they are need­ed).
None of this mat­ters if they do their jobs and are accused of wrong­do­ing, this Government will not defend them, and so what the gov­ern­ment is doing is bla­tant­ly improp­er.
It is not out of the ordi­nary for stu­dent con­sta­bles to get some real-time expe­ri­ence before grad­u­at­ing from basic train­ing. Many police depart­ments do it includ­ing the NYPD.
What is wrong about it, is hav­ing them deployed as trained offi­cers, doing the job of ful­ly trained offi­cers, with­out the req­ui­site train­ing for pro­tract­ed peri­ods of time.
Putting those young peo­ple in such tenous no-win sit­u­a­tions is express­ly wrong and it should not be allowed to continue.

We are now clear that a mas­sive dis­play of police offi­cers and sol­diers does noth­ing to reduce crime over­all. Sure, some crimes with­in the space the secu­ri­ty forces occu­py will be reduced, notwith­stand­ing, the over­all crime sta­tis­tics will only change for the worse when vio­lence pro­duc­ers are forced into oth­er com­mu­ni­ties.
It is time to stop with this cha­rade and end the states of emer­gen­cies and zones of spe­cial oper­a­tions.
It is time for the Government and oppo­si­tion to get togeth­er like adults and work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly on this issue. There is more than enough praise to go around for both par­ties.
Release the ties that bind the hands of the police, [stand INDECOM down], and to hell with the crit­ics.
This is the only way to attack the vio­lence pro­duc­ers, both par­ties must come togeth­er. That way there is no polit­i­cal mileage to be gained from hav­ing tak­en action.

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.

Yesterday I talked about the fact that the Jamaican Media has been noth­ing but syco­phan­tic cheer­lead­ers, unwill­ing to pro­fes­sion­al­ly hold the polit­i­cal class account­able for the actions they take.
My com­ments were par­tic­u­lar­ly aimed at what I thought was the mis­char­ac­ter­i­za­tion by the media of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s vis­it last January.
The Media col­lec­tive­ly billed Pompeo’s vis­it as one aimed at (strength­en­ing the bond between two friend­ly nations)[sic].
That was the expla­na­tion out of Jamaica House. It was the sto­ry the Media pro­mul­gat­ed.
There was zero crit­i­cal think­ing as to the real rea­son the US Secretary of State vis­it­ed the Country at the time he did.

(1) No one won­dered whether or not the United States had a vest­ed inter­est in a frac­tured CARICOM, or that China’s influ­ence in JAMAICA and the region need­ed to be blunt­ed.
(2) No one thought it odd that the vis­it was done at a time when the United States des­per­ate­ly need­ed some­thing of a con­sen­sus of region­al play­ers against the Maduro gov­ern­ment in Venezuela, even as it lines up a pup­pet to take over in that coun­try?
(3) There were no ques­tions as to why it took the Secretary of State of the United States to vis­it to shore up a rela­tion­ship that has exist­ed for as long as Jamaica has been a nation?
(4) There were no raised eye­brows at the idea that Pompeo would decide that he would only meet with cer­tain lead­ers of the CARICOM com­mu­ni­ty and not oth­ers.
(5) No one asked what was gained from the vis­it of such a high pro­file mem­ber of the American Administration, that could not be worked out at the Ambassadorial lev­el.
(6) And it cer­tain­ly did not perk any­one’s inter­est that the Jamaican Prime Minister out of the blue just decid­ed, “Ah, I think I will just skip this 31^st CARICOM con­fer­ence in Barbados.
(7) What did Pompeo offer the Government to stay away from Barbados? After all, a frac­tured CARICOM region is a region less sus­cep­ti­ble to China’s roman­tic entreatments.

Look, Andrew Holness is not a hor­ri­ble Prime Minister, he is arguably run­ning neck and neck with Edward Seaga for who is the bet­ter of the lot that suc­ceed­ed Michael Manley.
Kinda like a nov­el line from Kris Kristofferson’s clas­sic,[ Sunday morn­ing com­ing down].

“Then I fum­bled in my clos­et for my clothes and found my clean­est dirty shirt.“

He may be the best of a bad lot. His eco­nom­ic poli­cies are not bad. As it relates to infra­struc­tur­al devel­op­ment, he is sec­ond only to Hugh Shearer who built the most schools and oth­er infra­struc­tur­al projects per capi­ta than any oth­er Prime Minister in the Nation’s brief his­to­ry.
Holness’s short­com­ings are National secu­ri­ty, like many of his com­pa­tri­ots he believes he knows enough to insert him­self into the intri­ca­cies of polic­ing, to the detri­ment of the coun­try.
As a con­se­quence, vio­lent crimes have con­tin­ued to esca­late on his watch.
It bears men­tion­ing that the Prime Minister’s most impor­tant func­tion is the secu­ri­ty of the nation.
It is incom­pre­hen­si­ble that any­one would give him a pass­ing grade con­sid­er­ing that he is fail­ing at his core responsibility.

Andrew Holness is not out of time, he may yet become a great Prime Minister. In Fact, I am root­ing for him, for the coun­try’s sake.
That is, if peo­ple are will­ing to for­give the thou­sands of peo­ple who have been mur­dered on his watch, who need­n’t have died.
If the local media has some­thing to do with it he may very well be san­i­tized and made a nation­al hero.
The local Observer who cheer led Mike Pompeo’s vis­it with flow­ery non­sense, also explained away Holness’s absence from the 31^st CARICOM Conference in Bridgetown Barbados.
In response to ques­tions raised by us and oth­ers about the real rea­sons that Holness, the leader of the largest Nation with­in CARICOM was not in Barbados, the Observer’s Editors decid­ed to take on the role of Spokesperson for Jamaica House on Thursday.
“Caricom meet­ing: The sky is not falling” they declared.

Some are view­ing his deci­sion to stay away as his refusal to delib­er­ate­ly walk into the lion’s den of angry lead­ers who are in Bridgetown with more than the usu­al agen­da. The fret­ting about the Jamaican lead­er’s absence, and the refusal to take his expla­na­tion at face val­ue, is clear­ly relat­ed to the tim­ing, because the recent con­tretemps regard­ing the vis­it of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has not yet com­plete­ly sim­mered. That vis­it to Jamaica by Mr. Pompeo was crit­i­cized by the Caricom Chairman and Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley and a hand­ful of oth­er lead­ers as an attempt to divide Caricom, while Mr. Holness explained it was a nor­mal bilat­er­al meet­ing between two friend­ly coun­tries. The sus­pi­cions about Jamaica’s motives as being nation­al­is­tic per­sist and nerves are still raw. As we say in Jamaica, some of the Caricom heads are just being ‘jumpy’. But we believe in this space that too will pass.(Observer)

What a load of crock. The Jamaican Prime Minister had a duty to attend the con­fer­ence. The Editors, act­ing as the Jamaica House offi­cial organ, and by its own admis­sion, agree that Jamaica needs CARICOM despite what some sil­ly polit­i­cal min­ions have been say­ing.
[Jamaica is sen­si­ble and prac­ti­cal enough to under­stand that the coun­try is bet­ter off with Caricom than with­out it. indeed, Canada has just announced it wants an annu­al meet­ing with Caricom lead­ers to strength­en its rela­tion­ship with the 15-mem­ber region­al inte­gra­tion group­ing. Why would Jamaica not want to be part of that? The Editorial con­ced­ed.
The region­al alliance is a net pos­i­tive for all sig­na­to­ries, even as mem­ber states retain their cher­ished sov­er­eign­ty. The ben­e­fits of trade, trav­el, and oth­er coop­er­a­tions can­not be overem­pha­sized in the 21^st cen­tu­ry.
The idea that Jamaica can stand on its own and does not need part­ners, is the kind of think­ing that has got­ten the coun­try into this death spi­ral of crime it is now in.
What the Jamaican Prime Minister must be care­ful of, is not to allow him­self and our coun­try to be used as a pawn against our neigh­bors with­in CARICOM by those with sin­is­ter motives.
Even as the drum­beats con­tin­ue about the ben­e­fits of the rela­tion­ship between the USA & Jamaica, the human car­go of depor­tees con­tin­ues from the United States to Jamaica.
Many of those being deport­ed are inno­cent of the crimes they were con­vict­ed of. Many left Jamaica as babies. Many com­mit­ted sim­ple infrac­tions American tourists to Jamaica com­mit dai­ly.
None of that mat­ter to American Authorities, not in State, and damn sure no one in the so-called Department of Justice.

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.

The Jamaican media has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to inves­ti­gate and report the news. It has a duty to inves­ti­gate and ana­lyze events and where pos­si­ble present to the Jamaican peo­ple, rea­soned and intel­li­gent analy­sis of events, in a man­ner that every­one can under­stand.
Unfortunately for the Jamaican peo­ple, the media has opt­ed to engage in sala­cious non­sense, cheap par­ti­san pun­dit­ry, and juve­nile cheer­lead­ers to the dance­hall cul­ture.
As a con­se­quence, the vast major­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion does not get qual­i­ty ana­lyt­i­cal infor­ma­tion upon which it can make bet­ter-informed deci­sions.
Because of that, the Jamaican peo­ple are kept in the dark and in most cas­es, they have no idea what their gov­ern­ment is doing in their name.

Take for instance the January vis­it to Jamaica of the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo.
The vis­it was billed as an attempt to solid­i­fy the long­stand­ing ties between the two nations.
One Editorial gushed; we should grasp the oppor­tu­ni­ty for the region to fur­ther strength­en its rela­tion­ship with our long-stand­ing friend, the United States”.
This, even as Pompeo’s vis­it drew

as was

crit­i­cisms that it was intend­ed to divide the CARICOM alliance.
Even while speak­ing about Caribbean uni­ty, Pompeo decid­ed to meet with only eight Caribbean coun­tries him­self. This maneu­ver was unique­ly Trumpian. Doing one thing and say­ing anoth­er. Preaching uni­ty while dri­ving the wedge of dis­uni­ty.
The fol­low­ing were the Islands on Pompeo’s itin­er­ary.
1. Jamaica
2. The Bahamas
3. Belize
4. St Kitts
5. Haiti
6. Dominican Republic
7. St Lucia
8. St Marteen
One can extrap­o­late from this list the coun­tries that chose not to sup­port Pompeo’s vis­it, and with whom he chose not to meet, that list includes Trinidad & Tobago as well as Barbados.
This was a clas­sic attempt at divide and con­quer by Mike Pompeo. The Islands that chose not to play ball were exclud­ed.
Pompeo’s boss Donald Trump report­ed­ly asked a con­fi­dant in ref­er­ence to the United States, “have you ever seen a coun­try so divid­ed”?
The con­fi­dant replied, “no”.
Trump report­ed­ly respond­ed; “I love it.” Pompeo’s actions were clear as day.

Mike Pompeo was doing exact­ly what I said in an arti­cle I penned at the time.
He was using Jamaica to counter China’s grow­ing influ­ence in the region and to build sup­port against Venezuelan President Maduro. If that meant destroy­ing the CARICOM alliance, nei­ther Pompeo nor Donald Trump was going to be con­cerned about that.
Trump, Pompeo’s boss has done every­thing in his pow­er to weak­en NATO, why would he care about a bunch of tiny black-ruled (shit­hole-coun­tries)?
Jamaica is the largest English-speak­ing island in the Caribbean it has always been seen as the cen­ter of deci­sion mak­ing in the region.
Unfortunately for Jamaica, because of the Island’s crime epi­dem­ic, much of the Island’s man­u­fac­tur­ing has moved to Trinidad.
Today Jamaica may be the most pop­u­lous Island but it does not have the wealth to back up its numer­ic strength.
Trinidad & Tobago the wealth­i­est Islands, and Barbados, the most edu­cat­ed in the region, form­ing their own alliance against what they saw as American manip­u­la­tion, was noth­ing to scoff at.

They’re not wrong in their oppo­si­tion to Pompeo, but the Jamaican Media, the cheer­lead­ers they are, com­plete­ly missed what was occur­ring with Pompeo’s vis­it.
We did not.
And so Andrew Holness’s deci­sion to skip the 31^st Conference of Heads of Government of CARICOM, in Barbados, and send­ing Kamina Johnson Smith to lead the Jamaican del­e­ga­tion was an action that expos­es why Mike Pompeo was in Jamaica in January.
Holness’s excuse is that he has press­ing mat­ters to attend to. Oh, give me a damn break.
What the hell does he have to do that is more press­ing than meet­ing with Jamaica’s CARICOM col­leagues?
Jamaica House issued a state­ment on behalf of Holness which stat­ed that Holness did not make the engage­ment due to “press­ing nation­al mat­ters and to ensure the con­sti­tu­tion­al com­po­si­tion of the Cabinet”.
What cocka­mamie? What a dis­re­spect­ful slap to the faces of Jamaica’s CARICOM part­ners.
And for what, but to car­ry out the dic­tates of the most cor­rupt and dan­ger­ous American régime in history? 

In the mean­time, Barbados Prime Minister and CARICOM Chairman Mia Mottley, warned against Nationalism in the region.
Ironically, White Nationalism is what Trump preach­es and what Mike Pompeo rep­re­sents.
Small Caribbean nations should be bond­ing togeth­er, not car­ry­ing out the dic­tates of the racist and divi­sive régime in Washington DC.
This pub­li­ca­tion sup­ports the stance tak­en by Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago and oth­ers.
The actions of the Jamaican Prime Minister was pre­dictable, it is trans­par­ent, and not in the long-term inter­est of Jamaica.
No Jamaican should take pride in this.
No Jamaican should excuse Holness’s actions. He act­ed like a servile syco­phant to a cor­rupt, racist, and law­less régime. Not a good look.

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.

“Why don’t peo­ple who emi­grate stay in their own coun­try and cre­ate the coun­try they want to live in”?
Whichever way you look at this ques­tion it has legit­i­ma­cy. And so as an Immigrant myself, I too have strug­gled with this ques­tion…
I want­ed to explore the sub­ject out­side the default response that every­one wants a bet­ter life.
Sure, every­one wants a bet­ter life but some peo­ple who are not wealthy or well to do,-do have the abil­i­ty to emi­grate and they some­times opt not to.
Does that make them patri­ots for decid­ing not to leave, and does it make peo­ple like me who decid­ed that enough was enough, trai­tors to our coun­try of birth?

I have giv­en this sub­ject some thought, and I must con­fess that I do not have an answer to this ques­tion. Life is short, peo­ple have fam­i­lies to whom they are com­mit­ted, they want to give their chil­dren a good edu­ca­tion so they may com­pete in this ever-chang­ing world in which we live.
It seems to me that in many cas­es peo­ple emi­grate for those rea­sons rather than the mis­con­cep­tion that peo­ple do so because they are seek­ing wealth. (not that any­thing is wrong with chas­ing wealth in my opin­ion)
For the most part, emi­grat­ing to anoth­er coun­try means liv­ing in a rel­a­tive shad­ow, being treat­ed, not as (sec­ond ‑class cit­i­zens) as some have sug­gest­ed, but as alien crea­tures from anoth­er world, the word “cit­i­zen” does not come into the pic­ture at all.
This is not true in all cas­es, but the black-white racial dynam­ic makes the fore­gone an ever-present reality.

More than 400 died try­ing to make it to the USA last year, accord­ing to the United Nations’ migra­tion agency. Why do they risk their lives and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of being sep­a­rat­ed from fam­i­ly?
As I allud­ed to in the pre­vi­ous para­graph, peo­ple leav­ing their home coun­tries today are not doing so because they are chas­ing wealth as explained by Sofia Martinez, a Guatemala-based ana­lyst for the International Crisis Group, “It’s about escap­ing a death sen­tence.”
“This isn’t about immi­grants chas­ing the American dream any­more.“
As it is in South and Latin America a region that encom­pass­es the Caribbean, vio­lence and the resul­tant eco­nom­ic chaos has been a cat­a­lyst for mass migra­tion of peo­ple to oth­er shores.

Violence and war across the Middle East and Africa as well as in Latin and South America have not only cre­at­ed eco­nom­ic chal­lenges for those regions it has also cre­at­ed envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges as well.
The move­ment of peo­ple to oth­er coun­tries does not always mean that peo­ple are always seek­ing to emi­grate to Europe or North America.
As we have seen over the years peo­ple will move from their hor­rid sit­u­a­tion to one that is far from per­fect, and from which many peo­ple have fled and would flee giv­en a chance.
Many Haitians have moved from Haiti to Jamaica and oth­er Islands in the Caribbean.
Many peo­ple have fled Syria to oth­er mid­dle east­ern coun­tries. Many have fled vio­lence in Sudan to oth­er African nations and so on.

The les­son to be learned it seems, is that peo­ple are will­ing to stay in their coun­try of ori­gin if there are peace and safe­ty. This has been true for all of record­ed his­to­ry.
The chal­lenge in all of this is that where there is cor­rupt and weak lead­er­ship few­er and few­er peo­ple are will­ing to risk their entire lives wait­ing for their gov­ern­ment to stand up to the forces which cre­ate unsafe envi­ron­ments, to begin with.
As we have seen in regions through­out the world, whether we agree with the meth­ods uti­lized or not, where gov­ern­ments find a way to pro­tect their cit­i­zens, no-one is break­ing down the doors to leave.

The New York Times Nicholas Kristof wrote in 2012; Generations of Americans have learned to pity Africa. It’s main­ly seen as a quag­mire of famine and geno­cide, a des­ti­na­tion only for a sybarit­ic safari or a masochis­tic aid mis­sion. So here’s anoth­er way to think of Africa: an eco­nom­ic dynamo. Is it time to pre­pare for the African tiger econ­o­my? Six of the world’s 10 fastest-grow­ing economies between 2001 and 2010 were in Africa, accord­ing to The Economist. The International Monetary Fund says that between 2011 and 2015, African coun­tries will account for 7 of the top 10 spots.
There is a new dynamism across the African con­ti­nent with the excep­tion of a few sore spots, peo­ple are not run­ning away as they did before.
In fact, nations like Ghana, Rwanda, and oth­ers have sim­ply rolled out the red car­pet to peo­ple of African ances­try, and oth­ers to come to Africa and settle.

Conversely, Doctors with­out bor­ders have report­ed that every year, an esti­mat­ed 500,000 peo­ple from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras flee extreme vio­lence and head north through Mexico to find safe­ty. The high lev­els of vio­lence in the region, known as the Northern Triangle of Central America (NTCA), are com­pa­ra­ble to that in war zones where MSF has worked for decades.
The coun­tries of the NTCA have long been bur­dened by deep social inequal­i­ty, polit­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty, and con­flict — and in some cas­es have been fur­ther desta­bi­lized by US inter­ven­tions in the region over the past 40 years. Now, these coun­tries are also con­tend­ing with the rapid expan­sion of transna­tion­al orga­nized crime, which has explod­ed over the past decade. Across this region, drug and human traf­fick­ing by crim­i­nal groups known as maras, cou­pled with wide­spread cor­rup­tion and weak law enforce­ment, have result­ed in an envi­ron­ment where civil­ians face the ever-present threat of violence.

Back in our own coun­try of Jamaica, both the gov­ern­ment and the peo­ple would do well to under­stand these trend lines and stop play­ing games with those who would ren­der our coun­try a bat­tle­field waste­land.
The bul­let-points in Doctors with­out bor­ders reports are already a prob­lem in our coun­try. Drug & human-traf­fick­ing, deep social inequal­i­ty, polit­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty as always been there, though some­what less a prob­lem today than it was three decades ago. , And desta­bi­liza­tion by US inter­ven­tions in the region over the past 40 years has not gone away.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid 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.

From time to time I myself have chas­tised oth­ers for engag­ing in ad hominem attacks on mes­sen­gers because they dis­agree with the mes­sage.
At the same time, I have also reserved the right to ques­tion the right of cer­tain mes­sen­gers to car­ry a cer­tain mes­sage because of the lev­el of taint on them, (lack of moral author­ity), and in par­tic­u­lar, the mes­sen­ger’s lack of (stand­ing) to car­ry that mes­sage.

In the United States, for exam­ple, a per­son may file a claim in court that is a per­fect­ly legit­i­mate claim to be adju­di­cat­ed. Nevertheless, that case may very well get tossed by a judge because the peti­tion­er did not have “stand­ing” to file the claim.
Standing in the legal sense is the abil­i­ty of a par­ty to bring a law­suit in court based upon their stake in the out­come. A par­ty seek­ing to demon­strate stand­ing must be able to show the court suf­fi­cient con­nec­tion to and harm from the law or action challenged.

It is for that rea­son that I find the US Ambassador to Jamaica, Donald Tapia’s con­sis­tent inser­tion of his opin­ions into Jamaican mat­ters increas­ing­ly offen­sive & wor­ri­some.
I must reit­er­ate, as I have done every time that I broach this sub­ject of Jamaica’s sov­er­eign­ty, “Jamaica is not the 51^st state of the United States, and nei­ther should Jamaica seek to become that”.
As a diplo­mat, Tapia has no right dis­cussing inter­nal Jamaican pol­i­tics, not with Journalists, not with any­one.
But that is exact­ly what Tapia did while speak­ing to Jamaica Observer Editors at the Beechwood Avenue Headquarters on the sub­ject of cor­rup­tion with­in the Jamaica Constabulary Force.
Naturally, cor­rup­tion is a burn­ing issue across the length and breadth of Jamaica, not just in the JCF but across all pub­lic and pri­vate bod­ies.
Why the Observer Editors decid­ed to dis­cuss the JCF and the use of Polygraph with a for­eign diplo­mat is any­body’s guess.
Donald Tapia’s boss at State Pompeo oper­ates out­side the laws and could do well with a poly­graph test.
The larg­er fish at 1600 Pennsylvania avenue is so cor­rupt that he could not be trust­ed to give a depo­si­tion in his own defense by his bat­tery of lawyers, out of fear that he would com­mit perjury.

Donald Tapia echoes what I have con­sis­tent­ly writ­ten, that when it comes to police cor­rup­tion in Jamaica the issue must be broached from the head. That process if attacked from the top is the best way to begin to have senior offi­cers that new recruits to the force can look up to. It also pro­duces a cadre of lead­ers who set good exam­ples of integri­ty but on lead­er­ship over­all.
As a for­eign diplo­mat, Tapia has absolute­ly no stand­ing to be inter­ven­ing in the inter­nal work­ings of Jamaica, much less in how our police depart­ment is man­aged.
This should alarm every Jamaican that a for­eign diplo­mat is allowed to inter­act with Jamaica’s law enforce­ment, (least of all an American diplo­mat).
The United States has some of the most cor­rupt police depart­ments in the world. In most cas­es, entire depart­ments oper­ate as a law unto them­selves. Groups of cops and indi­vid­ual offi­cers, assault cit­i­zens, fal­si­fy reports, plant evi­dence, kill unarmed cit­i­zens based on their race, and com­mit all sorts of egre­gious crimes, they are hard­ly ever held account­able for these crimes against entire com­mu­ni­ties.
As a con­se­quence, no American politi­cian has the moral author­i­ty, much less the stand­ing to give advice to any coun­try on police cor­rup­tion or how to fix it.
For decades and decades, America has turned a blind to the killings, abuse and mass incar­cer­a­tion of its black cit­i­zens by cor­rupt police departments 

According to the Jamaica Observer, Tapia dis­closed that in a sit-down with the police it was made clear that the poly­graph test­ing of new recruits and rank-and-file mem­bers was not enough to ensure the trans­for­ma­tion of the 152-year-old force.
“…Today to become a JCF offi­cer you have to take a poly­graph test. I think it was last year it was 150 peo­ple that applied to become a JCF [mem­ber], only like 75 of them actu­al­ly passed the poly­graph test to move on. So that 75, or what­ev­er the num­ber is, those are all clean offi­cers. But, my point to them is the fact is, okay, so they’re clean, [but] what about this sec­tion up here? They’ve been here for five years. They did­n’t take a poly­graph test,” Tapia said, refer­ring to the force’s offi­cer lev­el, “They did­n’t take a test.”

Of course, it goes with­out say­ing that fish rots from the head. Of course, in this medi­um, we have long point­ed out that cor­rup­tion should be tack­led from the top.
What we can­not sub­scribe to, is peo­ple with­out a moral com­pass and lack of stand­ing preach­ing to us how to fix cor­rup­tion in our coun­try.
I find it incred­i­ble that the Jamaican gov­ern­ment would see this as some­thing it wants to engage in, not to men­tion with this American admin­is­tra­tion of all pos­si­bil­i­ties.
While we are on the sub­ject of poly­graph test­ing, It must first be under­stood that it is not a sci­ence, nei­ther are the results of poly­graph test­ing admis­si­ble in American courts.
Polygraph test­ing will not deter­mine the qual­i­ty of the JCF, or any gov­ern­ment body.
It is sim­ply one more tool giv­en to those who are tasked with select­ing good qual­i­ty can­di­dates for sen­si­tive posi­tions.
If mem­bers of the JCF are sub­ject­ed to poly­graph test­ing so too should all oth­er pub­lic sec­tor employ­ees.
Law enforce­ment web­sites argue, it is impor­tant to note that the poly­graph test is not always 100% accu­rate and you may “false­ly fail” the test.
They also pro­vide guide­lines on how to pre­pare for a poly­graph test and how to be suc­cess­ful at pass­ing them.
By virtue of this, less empha­sis should be placed on Polygraph tests and more on pay­ing qual­i­fied can­di­dates a liv­able wage and insti­tut­ing appro­pri­ate super­vi­sion at all lev­els. Check out the link below on the poly­graph.
https://​golawen​force​ment​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​h​o​w​-​t​o​-​m​a​s​t​e​r​-​t​h​e​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​o​f​f​i​c​e​r​-​p​o​l​y​g​r​a​p​h​-​t​e​st/

Massachusetts Senator and Presidential can­di­date Elizabeth Warren in 2019 blast­ed Donald Tapia and oth­ers cho­sen by Donald Trump as woe­ful­ly unqual­i­fied for there posi­tions.
On her offi­cial twit­ter account sen­a­tor Warren said, “For decades, admin­is­tra­tions of both polit­i­cal par­ties appoint­ed big donors as ambas­sadors. They’re usu­al­ly not experts in the coun­try, for­eign pol­i­cy — or any­thing else rel­e­vant to the job. But, Donald Trump per­fect­ed the act of sell­ing swanky diplo­mat­ic posts to rich buf­foons.”
Senator Warren named Gordon Sondland, Robert ‘Woody’ Johnson, Doug Manchester, and Kelly Knight Craft as donor ambas­sadors, along with Trump’s ambas­sador appoint­ment to Jamaica – Arizona busi­ness­man Donald Ray Tapia.
Not only does Tapia not have stand­ing or moral con­vic­tion to speak on cor­rup­tion, but his very ambas­sador­ship is also a prod­uct of cor­rupt prac­tices.
One of the most dif­fi­cult mes­sages to com­mu­ni­cate with Jamaicans liv­ing at home who have strong views on American pol­i­tics, is that even though they may fol­low the news, they do not have the lived expe­ri­ence.
Jamaica should not be tak­ing advice on polic­ing, much less on cor­rup­tion from an unqual­i­fied neo­phyte who comes from one of the most cor­rupt regimes in American history.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid 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.

“It all start­ed back when there was a lot of pres­sure on banks to make loans to every­one.”
And then Congress got involved ― local elect­ed offi­cials, as well ― and said, ‘Oh that’s not fair, these peo­ple should be able to get cred­it.’ And once you start­ed push­ing in that direc­tion, banks start­ed mak­ing more and more loans where the cred­it of the per­son buy­ing the house wasn’t as good as you would like.”
[Michael Bloomberg] was Speaking to the mort­gage melt­down of 2008. And more to the point, endors­ing the process known as redlin­ing.
According to (Huffingtonpost) “Redlining, was the term where banks took whole neigh­bor­hoods and said, ‘People in these neigh­bor­hoods are poor, they’re not going to be able to pay off their mort­gages, tell your sales­men don’t go into those areas.’”

Huffingtonpost also detailed how Michael Bloomberg was a mem­ber of some lily-white social clubs before he decid­ed to run for the may­oral­ty of New York City.
Those clubs includ­ed the Century Club, a pre­dom­i­nant­ly white club in Purchase, New York, & the Brook club — an élite, secre­tive social club in mid­town Manhattan. According to the same report­ing, Bloomberg resigned his mem­ber­ship in both clubs but rejoined after com­plet­ing his three terms as Mayor of New York City.
This seems to be stan­dard oper­at­ing prac­tice for Micahel Bloomberg who was a strong advo­cate for the con­tro­ver­sial pro­gram used by the NYPD called ‘Stop & Frisk.
The con­tro­ver­sial prac­tice which dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly tar­get­ed African-Americans was intro­duced by Bloomberg’s pre­de­ces­sor Republican Rudolph Giuliani.
The prac­tice was wide­ly panned and was even­tu­al­ly dropped by the NYPD. Even so, Michael Bloomberg praised the pro­gram and crit­i­cized those who fought to stop it, even after he left office.

The New York Times Ashley Southall said in Never of 2019; During Michael R. Bloomberg’s tenure as may­or of New York City, police offi­cers stopped and ques­tioned peo­ple they believed to be engaged in crim­i­nal activ­i­ty on the street more than five mil­lion times. Officers often then searched the detainees — the vast major­i­ty of whom were young black and Latino men — for weapons that rarely mate­ri­al­ized.
“The tem­per­a­ture in the city at the time was that the police were at war with black and brown peo­ple on the streets,” said Jenn Rolnick-Borchetta, the direc­tor of impact lit­i­ga­tion at the Bronx Defenders, one of the groups that have suc­cess­ful­ly sued the Police Department over the prac­tice. “And that is how peo­ple expe­ri­enced it.”
At the time the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLY) said, the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk pro­gram con­tin­ues to dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly tar­get, stop, and frisk peo­ple of col­or, espe­cial­ly young black and Latino men and boys, the vast major­i­ty of whom have done noth­ing wrong. 

The New York Daily News report­ed that in 2011, the peak year of Stop Question & Frisk (SQF) in NYC, 84% of those stopped were either black or Hispanic — a fig­ure well above black and Hispanic rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the city.
Six per­cent of those stops result­ed in an arrest while an addi­tion­al 6% result­ed in a tick­et. This means there was no fur­ther police action tak­en in 88% of cas­es. 
Despite the fail­ure of the prac­tice to (a) pro­duce results that could be point­ed to ‑to off­set the out­cry, and (b) despite the dis­pro­por­tion­ate way in which it was exe­cut­ed, and © despite the ten­sions it cre­at­ed between the police depart­ment and Black and Hispanic peo­ple in the city, Michael Bloomberg dou­bled down­ing on his defense of the ini­tia­tive.
That, of course, was until he decid­ed he want­ed to run for the Presidency of the United States.

As soon as he saw an open­ing to run for President, Michael Bloomberg imme­di­ate­ly had a come to Jesus moment and decid­ed, “maybe stop & frisk was not such a good pol­i­cy after all”. It is the very same way that Bloomberg decid­ed to quit his mem­ber­ships in the all-white clubs when it suit­ed his inter­est and rejoined when he was no longer under the glare of the spot­lights as a politi­cian.
And so Bloomberg, the recent con­vert to civ­il rights, ready to sing kum­baya, has been doing the rounds in the African-America church­es.
Bloomberg may be an ego­ma­ni­a­cal oppor­tunist but he is no fool, he knows no Democrat can win the white house with­out win­ning the black vote.
He start­ed off with his friend A R Bernard’s church in Brooklyn which is the largest meg-church in the north­east, boast­ing a mem­ber­ship of about 40,000.
In a kind of mea-cul­pa tour, Bloomberg has set out to win black vot­ers to his side, even if he has to bold-faced­ly lie to them.

As more and more voic­es have been raised about his record when it comes to Black America, Michael Bloomberg has launched an all-out charm offen­sive to con­vince African-Americans that he is a changed man.
As his redlin­ing com­ments and stop and frisk poli­cies gath­er steam against his pres­i­den­tial ambi­tions Michael Bloomberg told reporters in Tennessee Thursday that he intends to launch “Mike for Black America”. Hahaha.…..Really now?
Bloomberg must know that win­ning over Black peo­ple real­ly does not require much more than promis­es and a pat on the back, unless you are also Black your­self.

“I apol­o­gized for the prac­tice and the pain that it caused,” he said Wednesday. “It was five years ago. And, you know, it’s just not the way that I think, and it doesn’t reflect what I do every day.”
Oh my God, if only life was that sim­ple, despite the pain he has caused he demands for­give­ness on the basis that it has been five years ago.
If only the peo­ple who have been abused by Bloomberg’s police and framed could have it that easy and have their good names restored.
They too should claim it’s been five years and then some. But those priv­i­leges are reserved for the rich and pow­er­ful like Michael Bloomberg and Donald Trump. 

Introducing Michael Bloomberg at an event in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Dr. Elenora Woods, pres­i­dent of the city’s NAACP chap­ter, (a black woman) said Bloomberg would be a tire­less fight­er for eco­nom­ic jus­tice for black Americans.
Sure thing I sup­pose, she is prov­ing a neg­a­tive, Bloomberg has yet bought the Democrat nom­i­na­tion, but she already knows that he will be a tire­less fight­er for Black Americans.
You sim­ply can­not make these things up.
“Look, I know what racism looks like,” woods went on, “I know what it looks like, and that’s not Mike Bloomberg.”
I don’t know whether Michael Bloomberg is a racist or not, in fact, that is hard­ly the point. He has demon­strat­ed through his poli­cies, that he is dan­ger­ous to the inter­ests of black peo­ple, that is the issue in front of us.
I have been think­ing about join­ing the NAACP but Nah .….…I’m good.

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.

The choice of for­mer Contractor General Greg Christie to lead the Integrity Commission of Jamaica should offer some hope to peo­ple of hon­or in the coun­try.
The for­mer Contractor General has been one of the most out­spo­ken offi­cials on the issue of cor­rup­tion ever to hold pub­lic office.
Greg Christie would have been expo­nen­tial­ly more suc­cess­ful dur­ing his time as head of the Contractor General’s Department, if he had pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al powers.

During his 7‑year stint as Contractor General, Christie was accused by the JLP, that some of his com­ments would cause com­pe­tent and skilled Jamaicans to think twice before join­ing the pub­lic sec­tor for fear that their rep­u­ta­tion could be dam­aged beyond repair.
The equal­ly pathet­ic PNP accused the then Contractor General of being overzeal­ous.
The fact that Greg Christie would be attacked by both polit­i­cal par­ties is indeed evi­dence that he was step­ping on their toes.
Jamaica needs more Greg Christies, not fewer.

The peo­ple can only pros­per when there is a moral and hon­est Government. One of the most debil­i­tat­ing chal­lenges our coun­try faces, is the deca­dent issue of across the board cor­rup­tion.
By him­self, Greg Christie can do lit­tle, but togeth­er we all can do a lot.
Even as the cor­ro­sive influ­ence of mor­bid cor­rup­tion has tak­en over the Governments of larg­er more pow­er­ful nations, it still behooves Jamaica to con­tin­ue to strive for clean and hon­est lead­er­ship in gov­ern­ment.
It is for that rea­son that we ful­ly endorse the appoint­ment of Greg Christie to head the Integrity Commission.

A few arti­cles ago I spoke to the sys­tem the Democratic Party has in place which gives an unfair advan­tage to white can­di­dates in the ear­ly cau­cus and pri­ma­ry process.
In a September 11, 2018, arti­cle in the con­ser­v­a­tive National Review, JJ McCullough wrote;( The 26 small­est states, which togeth­er elect a major­i­ty of Senate seats, make up only 18 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion). 
In sim­ple math­e­mat­i­cal terms, rough­ly 52 US sen­a­tors out of the 100 are indeed select­ed by 18% of the pop­u­la­tion, (57,600,000) peo­ple.
Conversely, the oth­er 82% per­cent of the 320 mil­lion (262,400,000) peo­ple are sub­ject­ed to the dic­tates of the 18%, assum­ing those sen­a­tors from small lily-white states vote the wish­es of their con­stituents.
They do!

It is not dif­fi­cult to under­stand why Republicans would be hap­py with this struc­tur­al imbal­ance, it has allowed the Racist con­ser­v­a­tive agen­da of whites to dom­i­nate the nation­al con­ver­sa­tion. It has not only shaped Federal pol­i­cy towards a less inclu­sive America, but it has also placed high­ly par­ti­san judges in place all across the Federal judi­cia­ry.
In addi­tion to the huge advan­tage the right has from those struc­tur­al imbal­ances, the Electoral College has had dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for the left, already cost­ing the major­i­ty two pres­i­den­cies.
Both Al Gore & Hillary Clinton won the raw vote, in both cas­es the per­son who got few­er votes end­ed up becom­ing the pres­i­dent of the United States.
This skewed con­cept of Democracy is lost on some Americans and no one else.

The sta­tus quo works for an America in which the rights of white con­ser­v­a­tives are guar­an­teed at the expense of every­one else includ­ing pro­gres­sive whites.
Which begs the ques­tion I asked before the start of this Democratic nom­i­na­tion process.
Why is the Democratic Party pur­su­ing a pol­i­cy that allows two lily-white states, Iowa & New Hampshire to go first, essen­tial­ly giv­ing an unfair advan­tage to white can­di­dates in the ear­ly cau­cus & pri­ma­ry process?
African American vot­ers sup­port the Democratic Party with about 88% of their votes, depend­ing on the can­di­date run­ning for office. That makes African-American vot­ers not just the base of the Democratic par­ty but its very foun­da­tion.
Why then are two states, Iowa with African-Americans mak­ing up only 3.8% of the state’s total pop­u­la­tion, & New Hampshire far­ing even worse, with only 2% of its pop­u­la­tion being African-American get­ting to decide first?

Momentum is every­thing, sec­ond only to mon­ey, when a white can­di­date gets the nod in Iowa, then moves to New Hampshire with the prover­bial wind behind his back, what chance does a Black or Latino Candidate have even though they may have lots of sup­port in the big states with mil­lions of Democratic pri­ma­ry vot­ers?
Roughly 60% of the vot­ers in the state of North Carolina are African-Americans. Because of the con­tin­ued pol­i­cy of the Democratic Party to con­tin­ue to pan­der to white vot­ers in Iowa and New Hampshire African-American can­di­dates does not have the abil­i­ty to reach their base of sup­port in states like North and South Carolina, much less the big states like California, New York and oth­ers that vote lat­er on in the process. 

It is for this rea­son that many peo­ple of col­or balk at the idea of vot­ing for the Democratic Party. It is for those same rea­sons that many peo­ple of col­or com­plain that when the rub­ber meets the road the Democratic Party has a long way to go toward tear­ing down the ves­tiges of white priv­i­lege even though it gets its sup­port from peo­ple of col­or and inter­est groups.
It is time for the Democratic Party to place some­one of the stature and com­pe­tence of Stacy Abrams in charge of the nation­al par­ty.
This Democratic Party is no longer a par­ty of old white Dixiecrats.
It is a par­ty of black brown and white peo­ple, union work­ers, and women, gays and les­bians, work­ing peo­ple and peo­ple from all back­grounds.
It is time to start the nom­i­na­tion process where these peo­ple live.

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.

A DAY THAT WILL LIVE IN INFAMY

One thing is sure about the 63 loud-mouthed Jackasses in Gordon House, is that what­ev­er we say about them, they are sure to prove us right.
Collectively, they are a bunch of incom­pe­tent bozos, who shout at each oth­er as they try to score cheap, inane, polit­i­cal-points against each oth­er, rather than act as dig­ni­fied stew­ards of the peo­ple’s trust.
Banging on the desks, and hurl­ing insults and deroga­to­ry remarks at each oth­er from their respec­tive sides, are the norm rather than the excep­tion.
The crit­i­cal issue of vio­lent crime in our coun­try, is inex­tri­ca­bly tied to every aspect of what occurs among this band of incom­pe­tent and cor­rupt morons. 

No one among the 63, is more rep­re­hen­si­ble than the (JLP) St Catherine South West Member of Parliament Everald Warmington, by virtue of his dis­gust­ing­ly coarse and malig­nant behav­ior.
In a sub­mis­sion in the peo­ple’s house, Warmington found com­mon cause with Opposition mem­bers of the House when he berat­ed the police for clos­ing down dances and wakes with­in the pre­scribed time.
Said Warmington to much applause from the PNP members;“The only thing that the police in Old Harbour do effec­tive­ly is to shut down birth­day par­ties and set-up.
“I have been to two set-ups (wake)recently and the police arrive at 10:15 p.m. to lock down the set-up, and I made it clear that the set-up naw lock down, dem have to lock me up first.” 

We talk about the inef­fec­tive­ness of the police in this medi­um with much fre­quen­cy. We also talk about the many ways in which politi­cians have con­tributed to the state of law­less­ness in our coun­try.
Strangely, many Jamaicans fail to hold politi­cians account­able for the state of affairs in the coun­try.
Instead of hold­ing them account­able, they engage in nar­row par­ti­san (what about-isms).
Did you speak out when the oth­er par­ty was in pow­er?
Yes we did, we have over a decade of doing so, read for your­self.
Now can we talk about the issue at hand in a sub­stan­tive way?
Nah, I’m not inter­est­ed in facts, I just want to score polit­i­cal points for my par­ty.
And so despite the fact that these incom­pe­tent crime gen­er­at­ing bozos are in charge of our coun­try, many peo­ple stead­fast­ly refuse to hold them account­able as if fish does not rot from the head.
If we do not hold them account­able, who should we hold accountable?

This brings me to the next issue which is the incom­pe­tent piss-scared key­stone cops oper­at­ing in Jamaica under the guise that they are real police offi­cers.
If you arrive at a loca­tion to car­ry out a law­ful func­tion, and some­one steps up and obstructs you in the exe­cu­tion of those func­tions, why was he not arrest­ed?
Don’t both­er to answer, you are scared shit­less of this punk.
Rather than swift­ly place him in cuffs, and haul his ass off to jail you allow him to break the law, by pre­vent­ing you from car­ry­ing out your law­ful duties, and poten­tial­ly incit­ing a riot that would have placed your lives in jeop­ardy.
And to the ever-grow­ing bunch of apol­o­gists who claim that the police did the right thing to avoid a riot, please spare me that non­sense.
Allowing that kind of behav­ior to con­tin­ue because police offi­cers are scared of reprisal is a self-ful­fill­ing endeav­or that brings more law­less­ness.
If you make the deci­sion not to arrest him on the spot, then arrest him before he gets home and place him in jail where he belongs.
This kind of [man-rule] must stop and it must stop now. Everald Warmington should have been in jail, and even if he brags about it after­ward, it should have been while he awaits his day in court.

Everald Warmington was bemoan­ing the mur­der sta­tis­tics in the peo­ple’s house, what he and the cheer­ing PNP failed to grasp as they cheered him on for their own polit­i­cal rea­sons, is that Warmington is a fire­man who uses gaso­line to put out fires. The PNP mem­bers lat­er feigned dis­gust when Warmington bragged about obstruct­ing the police but for me, their con­cerns rang hol­low.
Everald Warmington is the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of what is wrong with pol­i­tics in Jamaica. He is the face of what is wrong with our coun­try polit­i­cal­ly.
This admin­is­tra­tion must forth­with stop its inter­fer­ence in polic­ing.
The Prime Minister pre­tends to care about the homi­cides, but it is his actions that have fur­ther ham­strung the police through his sup­port for INDECOM and his shame­ful dis­re­spect for the police, which has led us to this.
It is exact­ly Andrew Holness’ pos­ture that has embold­ened Everald Warmington. It is his pos­ture that has embold­ened INDECOM & Jamaicans For Justice(JFJ). It is his pos­ture that has fur­ther erod­ed pub­lic respect and embold­ened attacks on our police offi­cers. It is his con­tin­ued sup­port for the rights of crim­i­nals over the rights of law-abid­ing Jamaicans, that have made the police ten­ta­tive and afraid to do their jobs.
And sad to say, it is his actions cumu­la­tive­ly, that has pro­vid­ed fuel to the expand­ing infer­no of crim­i­nal­i­ty which is tak­ing over our country.

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.

Given cri­sis sit­u­a­tions, nor­mal reac­tions are usu­al­ly to (a) pan­ic, (b) take dras­tic cor­rec­tive mea­sures, © ask for help. There may be oth­er options, but these three are the options that read­i­ly come to mind. You may notice that my first reac­tion was pan­ic.
This, how­ev­er, is no time to pan­ic, it is a time to take dras­tic cor­rec­tive mea­sures and ask for help in the process.
I speak of the cri­sis of mur­ders in Jamaica, and the fail­ure of the author­i­ties to see it for what it tru­ly is, a house on fire.

There were more mur­ders in 2019 than there were in 2018. The year 2018 had seen a slight drop off form 2017, as I point­ed out in a pod­cast months ago, the slight reduc­tion in mur­ders in the year 2018 was kind of an anom­aly which had no log­i­cal expla­na­tion.
As I point­ed out then, since the slight drop-off of 2018 had no clear artic­u­la­ble for­mu­la, the num­bers were prone to go either way.
My log­ic then was that since the Zones Of Special Operations (ZOSOs) & States Of Emergencies (SOEs) would have lost what­ev­er shock val­ue may have emanat­ed from them, the num­bers would most like­ly trend upwards.
They did.
Constantly say­ing that ZOSOs and SOEs are not the answer to the nation’s crime cri­sis is a fore­gone con­clu­sion. Any fur­ther con­tin­u­ance of these mea­sures is pun­ish­ment on the mem­bers of the Security forces, and to no one else.

We are present­ly just over a month into the new year and already it seems that we are on a killing-tear. The Gleaner report­ed that up to Saturday night, 116 peo­ple were killed since the start of the year.
According to the same report­ing, Jamaica’s mur­der rate has risen by 43 per­cent already.
But that is hard­ly the full sto­ry, as I wrote days ago, there is cred­i­ble evi­dence that some of the homi­cides nev­er make it into the report­ing, much less into the papers or on tele­vi­sion. Which means they do not make it into the nation­al con­ver­sa­tion.
For exam­ple, the bru­tal mur­der of my child­hood friend Elvis Richards over a week ago, nev­er got a men­tion in any of the nation­al pub­li­ca­tions as far as we know.
It is as if this dis­tin­guished hard­work­ing Jamaican nev­er existed.

In most oth­er soci­eties, author­i­ties would have tak­en dras­tic mea­sures to stem the tide of vio­lence, but this is not so in Jamaica, the strat­e­gy is two-fold. (1) paper over the mur­der num­bers with polit­i­cal talk­ing-points, and (2) apply the same old band-aid approach­es hop­ing for dif­fer­ent out­comes.
In the mean­time experts have sprung up all across the nation­al secu­ri­ty space, usu­al­ly, they are know-it-alls from the University of the West Indies. They trot out all kinds of con­vo­lut­ed the­o­ries that they swear will lead to mag­i­cal utopi­an out­comes. None of those sug­ges­tions con­tain the hard fac­tu­al real­i­ties which must be faced in bring­ing to heel Jamaica’s blood­thirsty killers .

The Island’s default propen­si­ty to empathize with crim­i­nals is a huge part of the rea­son the coun­try is inun­dat­ed with vio­lent crimes.
Someone post­ed on a social media plat­form a sto­ry of a teacher/​senior jus­tice of the peace who was arrest­ed for sex­u­al­ly assault­ing a stu­dent recent­ly.
He was Immediately blast­ed for not includ­ing the word “alleged­ly.“
As impor­tant as it is to remem­ber that a per­son is pre­sumed inno­cent until proven guilty, and even though some­times there are doubts even when con­vict­ed, I was struck that the default option was to defend the per­son accused of the crime rather than empathize with the under­age vic­tim.
That has been the men­tal­i­ty of Jamaicans for as long as I have been alive.
A weak man decides to spend his liveli­hood on a woman he believes to be out of his league, because to him that is the way to own her. She even­tu­al­ly decides to leave him because he is (a) abu­sive, (b)controlling, or ©she just wants out, so he mur­ders her.
The default option, even of oth­er women, is to ratio­nal­ize away her mur­der, say­ing she brought it onto herself. 

I under­stand that it was nor­mal for Jamaicans to revere and wor­ship the likes of the ban­dit Three-Finger-Jack. Since then they have lion­ized ever scum­bag mur­der­er that has man­aged to evade the law for a time, even as they con­tin­ue to take inno­cent lives.
But lion­iz­ing crim­i­nals in Robin Hood fash­ion has sim­ply got to stop. Jamaica is a very small coun­try, much of the ter­rain is rugged and moun­tain­ous. Even if mur­der­ers are able to oper­ate in places like Warieka Hills, as they have for decades, it has been the sup­port of fam­i­ly mem­bers that have allowed them to stay one step ahead of the law for as long as they have been able to do so.
For the most part, these gang­sters are oper­at­ing in plain sight today, they are among the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. It is the fear of com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers and the com­plic­i­ty of their fam­i­ly and asso­ciates which allow their blood-stained ram­page to continue.

It is a nation­al dis­grace that there are so many Jamaicans walk­ing around know­ing full well that their fam­i­ly mem­bers are mur­der­ing oth­er Jamaicans, and are doing noth­ing about it.
But it is the fail­ure of the lead­ers of the nation that is most appalling. Real lead­ers do not piss in the wind to see where it is blow­ing, nei­ther do they take polls to decide on what’s right.
Leaders look at data, con­sult with experts and make the right deci­sion for the pop­u­la­tions. No one does that in Jamaica, every­thing is done based on polit­i­cal cal­cu­la­tions.
It will get much worse until some­thing gives.

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.

There are sem­i­nal his­tor­i­cal moments that indeli­bly etch them­selves into our sub­con­scious minds. Moments that are sig­nif­i­cant enough to war­rant the ques­tion, “where were you when this hap­pened”?
Historical events like the mur­ders of John F Kennedy & Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The moon land­ing. The death of Bob Marley, Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. The September 11^th attack on the World Trade Center.
Each event was sig­nif­i­cant enough to jog the mem­o­ries of those who lived in those moments and take them back in time to exact­ly where they were when they unfolded.

I under­stand that some peo­ple may be dis­tract­ed, or more to the point, dis­in­ter­est­ed, and may not find the for­gone events mean­ing­ful or wor­thy of rec­ol­lec­tion the way I see them.
And so, I also under­stand that some may scoff at the notion that the United States Senate’s deci­sion not to call wit­ness­es in the impeach­ment tri­al of Donald Trump is one such moment. Nevertheless, for those who have been pay­ing atten­tion, this isn’t very com­fort­ing.
It is a clear and unequiv­o­cal depar­ture from what was once expect­ed of the United States Senate. The sen­ate has enjoyed a billing as the world’s great­est delib­er­a­tive body, and the body which is sup­posed to keep the rau­cous house in check.
Some have even ped­dled the non­sense that the Senate was designed to keep Presidents in line; that’s out the win­dow.
Those fal­lac­i­es were nev­er true; nei­ther does the Senate live up to any of those billings.

By that vote not to call wit­ness­es, the Republican-con­trolled sen­ate exposed to a trans­fixed world, that every­thing that the United States pon­tif­i­cat­ed about pre­vi­ous­ly, regard­ing the rule of law, was all a load of crock.
No longer can America talk about spread­ing democ­ra­cy around the globe. Those far­ci­cal premis­es does­n’t sell any­more. By its abdi­ca­tion of demo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples in the open, the Senate sent a strong mes­sage to the rest of the word, that Trump’s crimes are accept­able. By that token, the goal-posts are for­ev­er moved for pres­i­dents, Republicans, and Democrats alike.
By that token, despots and degen­er­ates have a free hand to engage in ille­gal acts with­out America lec­tur­ing them.
Maybe that’s not such a bad thing for world peace on the one hand, because the fraud­u­lent nar­ra­tive of spread­ing democ­ra­cy has been dis­cred­it­ed, it should be off the table.
Yet on the oth­er, there is no longer a pow­er­ful voice to keep despots in check, if not for its moral author­i­ty, for its strength and might.

Understandably, Republicans feel that they have the right to stop a sit­ting Democratic pres­i­dent from fill­ing a supreme court vacan­cy. Because, of course, that President would not replace Antonin Scalia, [a right-wing ide­o­logue], with anoth­er right-wing ide­o­logue; worse yet, that pres­i­dent is black.
[Moscow] Mitch McConnell has said that if a vacan­cy comes up, Trump has every right to replace that Justice, elec­tion year or not.
So as far as the Republicans are con­cerned, the rules do not apply to them.
They are also say­ing that a Republican pres­i­dent can­not be indict­ed, [regard­less of his crimes], he can­not be impeached. His lawyer Allan Dershowitz even argues in the sen­ate that Donald Trump can break the law to have him­self elect­ed, and there would be noth­ing wrong with that.
Literally, every one of the 51Republican sen­a­tors, except Susan Collins and Mitt Romney, believed in that con­cept.
The aver­age observ­er may be miss­ing because the United States of America, under those events, has already crossed the Rubicon. There will be no going back.
From Moscow, to Constantinople, From Beijing to Baghdad, From Riyadh to Caracas, and cap­i­tals beyond, what­ev­er moral high ground America thought it had has been bull­dozed into a val­ley.
America is no dif­fer­ent than a banana repub­lic many in the Republican Party love to belittle.

For starters, the United States Senate’s arro­gant brand­ing as the World’s great­est delib­er­a­tive body is now a lie, an incred­i­ble lie, and a far­ci­cal mis­nomer.
A body that would vote to sup­press direct evi­dence that would shed light on whether truth is the endgame, can in no like man­ner ever claim valid­i­ty, much less rel­e­vance.
Whether the United States Senate vote to remove Donald John Trump from office on Wednesday, February 5^th, (which it most cer­tain­ly won’t), is hard­ly the point.
Republican Senators, except for Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah, vot­ed en-masse to sup­press crit­i­cal evi­dence which would most cer­tain­ly bol­ster Democratic House man­ager’s case against Trump, and make it more dif­fi­cult for them to vote to acquit.
Rather than being con­front­ed with the moun­tain of evi­dence, they turned off the pipe. How can this body ever again claim credibility?

The vote to come Wednesday to acquit Donald John Trump of the two charges laid against him by Democratic Hose man­agers will be aca­d­e­m­ic.
It has been clear from the begin­ning that there would only be one out­come. That out­come being, that Donald Trump will be allowed to tear away at the demo­c­ra­t­ic frame­work of the United States, because Republicans are will­ing to aid and abet his efforts.
We can lament that for­mer Republicans wrapped them­selves in the American flag and feigned loy­al­ty, feal­ty, and patri­o­tism to America.
What has become evi­dent is that this is not the Republican Party of yes­ter­year.
Aiding Russia is now no big deal. Destroying America is now a‑okay as long as a Republican chief exec­u­tive does it.

Many peo­ple argue that we are where we are because Republicans want to hold onto pow­er, but that is not so.
Despite the cult-like stran­gle­hold that Donald Trump has on the Republican Party, House and Senate Republicans had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to join House Democrats in send­ing Donald Trump pack­ing. It would not be a Democrat replac­ing Trump as the 46^th pres­i­dent; Mike Pence would.
Republicans had a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty to send a strong mes­sage, not just to Trump, but to future Presidents, that they would not be allowed to usurp the United States’ con­sti­tu­tion.
They could have sent Donald Trump pack­ing and still con­trolled the White House. They chose to empow­er the despot­ic Trump and shred the constitution.

Their fail­ure to use this moment to stand up against Donald Trump and his crim­i­nal strong­man ten­den­cies indi­cates that their feal­ty to Trump has noth­ing to do with main­tain­ing pow­er.
Whether or not there is com­pro­mis­ing infor­ma­tion on many of these Republican politi­cians is any­body’s guess. However, there is a stronger moti­va­tion than hang­ing onto pow­er or fear of his base, about 35% of the pop­u­la­tion.
The fact is that Donald Trump is a White Supremacist who stacks the courts with unqual­i­fied white suprema­cists, tells abu­sive, vio­lent cops to abuse cit­i­zens, and spews hatred and dis­dain on peo­ple of col­or.
That is the fuel that dri­ves the zealotry of Trump’s sup­port. It is also what moti­vates Republicans to bow down in absolute sub­mis­sion to Donald Trump.

The Republican Party has long left (Mitt Romney).
Willard Mitt Romney ran against Barack Obama and lost in 2012.
As bad as his par­ty was then, it had not yet reached this stage. Mitt Romney is a Trout swim­ming in a pool filled with Piranhas. On the oth­er hand, Susan Collins from Maine only vot­ed along­side Romney to hear evi­dence because her polling num­bers are in the tank.
When push comes to shove, nei­ther Lamar Alexander, Susan Collins, nor Lisa Murkowski cares about the con­sti­tu­tion. Party comes before Country, and that’s the bot­tom line.