Everything Bill Clinton said Thursday to defend his 1996 wel­fare reform law was false.

Clinton claimed that he left the pro­gram with plen­ty of mon­ey for poor peo­ple, sug­gest­ed that it helped reduce black pover­ty and that it was only the mean, nasty Republicans from the George W. Bush era who gut­ted it and hurt the poor. Clinton’s dis­tor­tions of eco­nom­ic his­to­ry and his own record are so out­ra­geous that — you will be shocked — it is dif­fi­cult to believe he was being honest.

Here’s what he told pro­test­ers at a cam­paign ral­ly for Hillary Clinton in Philadelphia:

“They say the wel­fare reform bill increased pover­ty. Then why did we have the largest drop in African American pover­ty in his­to­ry when I was pres­i­dent? The largest in his­to­ry. What hap­pened was, all these Republicans got into — the Supreme Court elect­ed President Bush 5 to 4, then all these Republicans took over state leg­is­la­tures. We left ‘em with enough mon­ey to take care of all the poor peo­ple who couldn’t go to work on wel­fare. We left ‘em with the mon­ey they had before the wel­fare rolls went down 60 per­cent. The Republicans took it away, and [these pro­test­ers are] blam­ing me.”

This is not true. Poverty dropped dur­ing the Clinton years not because of wel­fare reform, but because the entire American econ­o­my was being juiced by a mas­sive stock mar­ket bub­ble. No cred­i­ble econ­o­mist even dis­putes this. The Clinton bub­ble was fueled by the aggres­sive finan­cial dereg­u­la­to­ry poli­cies of Clinton and his Federal Reserve chair­man, Alan Greenspan. When the stock mar­ket bub­ble burst, mil­lions of peo­ple who pre­vi­ous­ly would have received wel­fare fell into poverty.

Welfare reform was an inten­tion­al effort to curb finan­cial assis­tance to poor peo­ple, on the grounds that many were sim­ply too lazy to get a job. Clinton turned over a fed­er­al pro­gram to states, which were effec­tive­ly allowed to slash wel­fare fund­ing and impose new work require­ments on peo­ple who received assis­tance. Even Republican co-archi­tects of wel­fare reform con­cede that the pro­gram end­ed up hurt­ing the poor.

“In a reces­sion, it doesn’t work,” for­mer GOP staffer Ron Haskins told The Huffington Post in 2012 about the wel­fare reform bill, which he helped shape. “Even in 2001, which was a rel­a­tive­ly mild reces­sion, we saw a lot of these sin­gle moth­ers leav­ing the work­force because they just couldn’t find a job and being forced off the wel­fare rolls.”

Let’s be clear about the time­line here. The econ­o­my went into reces­sion in March 2001, two months after Clinton left office. This was not because George W. Bush had just moved into the White House. It was because Clinton had left the coun­try with a fun­da­men­tal­ly unsta­ble econ­o­my and a social safe­ty net that had been weak­ened by his own bill.

This wasn’t an acci­dent or an unin­tend­ed con­se­quence. The whole point of wel­fare reform was to kick peo­ple off the wel­fare rolls. Clinton had cam­paigned on it in 1992. “When I ran for pres­i­dent four years ago, I pledged to end wel­fare as we know it,” he said on the day the bill passed. “I have worked for four years to do just that.”

In 1996, the year Clinton signed the law, the pover­ty rate was 13.7 per­cent. At the close of 2014 — the most recent avail­able annu­al cen­sus data — it was 14.8 per­cent. But wel­fare rolls have declined rough­ly 70 per­cent, from a peak of 14.2 mil­lion in 1994 to 4.2 mil­lion today.

Maybe that’s because 70 per­cent of the peo­ple on wel­fare were all lazy moochers.Republicans who con­tin­ue to applaud Clinton’s actions sug­gest just that. But even Clinton him­self didn’t make that (ridicu­lous) argu­ment on Thursday. He instead insist­ed that the GOP was to blame for unnec­es­sar­i­ly cut­ting off aid to needy peo­ple, not he.

That’s an aston­ish­ing claim for a bill that — again — was lit­er­al­ly designed to kick peo­ple off wel­fare rolls. Clinton turned over the fed­er­al government’s bud­get­ing author­i­ty for wel­fare to the states and now has the audac­i­ty to argue that he couldn’t have expect­ed them to slash fund­ing. What, then, was the pur­pose of hand­ing them bud­getary power?

Clinton’s sign­ing-day rhetoric about “depen­den­cy” and “respon­si­bil­i­ty” is eeri­ly sim­i­lar to Paul Ryan’s 2012 pover­ty-sham­ing lan­guage about the social safe­ty net becom­ing “a ham­mock.” People who receive gov­ern­ment assis­tance are lazy, the argu­ment goes. It has noth­ing to do with a soci­ety that sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly denies them eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties and finan­cial secu­ri­ty. At least Paul Ryan has apologized.

But hey, it was the ‘90s, right? Everyone was doing it? Nope! Poverty advo­cates had plead­ed with Clinton, urg­ing him to veto the bill. Peter Edelman, an assis­tant sec­re­tary at the Department of Health and Human Services, even resigned in protest. His 1997 essay for The Atlantic titled “The Worst Thing Bill Clinton Has Done” is a classic.

Clinton is fab­ri­cat­ing polit­i­cal his­to­ry for a rea­son. His wife, then-first lady Hillary Clinton, was an aggres­sive cham­pi­on of his wel­fare reform agen­da. She is now run­ning for pres­i­dent at a time when the Democratic Party is under­go­ing a mass re-eval­u­a­tion of his pres­i­den­cy. Many of those vot­ers are con­clud­ing that Bill Clinton’s time in office was an eight-year dis­as­ter for pro­gres­sive ideas. And they want to know whether Hillary Clinton still backs the poli­cies that she and Bill Clinton advanced dur­ing the 1990s.

When she sends Bill out on the cam­paign trail and he bla­tant­ly mis­leads his audi­ence to defend his record, it’s hard to con­clude that Hillary Clinton doesn’t still believe in that agen­da. Nothing Bill Clinton Said To Defend His Welfare Reform Is True

Never one to trust only in my own ideas without hearing that of others I did a search to see what was the best way to explain what a political Party is, at least which would fit into what I wanted to convey.
This is what I came away with. In a Democracy (particularly in the Westminster system) a government is formed by the person or party who can show that they have the majority of votes in the House of Representatives and can create a Government. It is much easier and practical for a group of people who have very similar outlook on policy to combine to gain power so those policies can be implemented by a majority vote in the House.

I par­tic­u­lar­ly want­ed to look to this type of def­i­n­i­tion in light of what has been hap­pen­ing to a young politi­cian who has shown some tal­ent, made some mis­takes , but have also exer­cised tremen­dous vision, matu­ri­ty and intelligence.
I refer to for­mer People’s National Party Member of par­lia­ment Damion Crawford.
Damion Crawford has cer­tain­ly placed his foot in his mouth in the past but as Jesus once said “whomev­er hath no sin let him cast the first stone”. We Jamaicans are know for doing just that , speak­ing off the cuff and some­times hav­ing to retract some of the things we said when we take the time to exam­ine our­selves , or when oth­ers chas­tise us.
Lord knows I have had more intem­per­ate out­bursts which I had to retract than what should have been allowed ten persons.
So when Crawford referred to sup­port­ers of the JLP as “dut­ty laborites” I was nat­u­ral­ly dis­s­a­point­ed in him because he had pre­vi­ous­ly demon­strat­ed some qual­i­ties I thought nec­es­sary if the Cultist nature of his par­ty was to change in the inter­est of our country.
I was not sur­prised when Damion Crawford walked those unfor­tu­nate com­ments back.

Facts On The Side Of Those Opposed To (inde­com)

Damion Crawford has shown Independence which is a rare qual­i­ty in Jamaican pol­i­tics. The trib­al nature of our pol­i­tics does not allow for Bi-Partisanship. The oth­er par­ty is the ene­my, not only are we repulsed by their poli­cies and ideas we hate them too.
This type of cor­ro­sive pol­i­tics cre­ates gridlock,it seeps out into the body politic cre­at­ing enmi­ty between neigh­bors and fam­i­lies alike.
In the United States over the last ⁷¹⁄₂ years the same type of pol­i­tics caused a total log-jam in the con­gresss to the detri­ment of the nation. It result­ed in the rise of a far right ide­o­log­i­cal lunatic and a clown­ish fas­cist as the stan­dard bear­ers for the Republican party.
Jamaicans know all too well the count­less loss of lives which occurred based on that style of pol­i­tics since we began our jour­ney of self-governance.

Damion Crawford Continues Anti-INDECOM Campaign

On more than one occa­sion I have found com­mon cause with Damion Crawford , not because we agree on some issues but because he has shown the capac­i­ty to un-teth­er him­self from the talk­ing points of par­ty and allowed him­self to think as an intel­li­gent human-being.
True to form as a result of his inde­pen­dent spir­it Damion Crawford fell out of favor with his par­ty. Like the American Republican Party , Jamaica’s People’s National Party insists on strict adher­ence to par­ty talk­ing-points. Any devi­a­tion is seen as wor­thy of expulsion .
In the United States Republicans who dared to work with President Obama or even as much as agree with a com­ment the pres­i­dent made were sum­mar­i­ly pri­maried and replaced with more hard right ideologues.
The stat­ed goal of repub­li­cans was to stri­dent­ly and blind­ly obstruct Obama’s agen­da which ulti­mate­ly would cause him to fail.
This after the new President was just elect­ed with a plu­ral­i­ty of the votes by the American peo­ple to exe­cute the agen­da he placed before them.
In the case of Jamaica an inde­pen­dent thinker like Crawford who dared depart from par­ty ortho­doxy it was career suicide.
Crawford was not allowed to con­test the St Andrew East Rural seat he had won for his par­ty the pre­vi­ous elec­tion cycle. Many peo­ple on the ground said Crawford was dumped because he refused to play the old cur­ry-goat style pol­i­tics and was more focused on edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple in his constituency.
Crawford was replaced in East rur­al St Andrew by Imani Duncan Pryce the Daughter of 70’s hyper par­ti­san ide­o­logue and com­mu­nist sym­pa­thiz­er DK Duncan.
On February 25^th 2016 the seat went to Juilet Holness the 43 year-old wife of Jamaica’s new Prime Minister Andrew Holness.
I have no way of know­ing whether Damion Crawford would have retained the seat for his par­ty had he not been removed. However it has to at least be a sub­ject of thought for the par­ty big-wigs in light of the Labor Party’s sin­gle seat major­i­ty in the 63 seat Legislature.
That is of course if they allow them­selves the right to think.

Recently Damion Crawford tweet­ed out his thoughts on the denial of a job by the NSWMA to the son of Desmond McKenzie under whose min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lio the agency falls.

See also : WHEN GOING OVER AND BEYOND TO DO RIGHT BECOME A FUTURISTIC PATH TO WRONGDOING ….

“So are we say­ing a politi­cian son should not be able to work with gov­ern­ment even if he is qual­i­fied for the Job? #Rubbish,” Crawford began his series of tweets all accom­pa­nied by the hash­tag #FreelittleMckenzie. 
Naturally this kind of ratio­nal think­ing would nev­er go down well with sup­port­ers of his par­ty > Crawford has been brand­ed a trai­tor and worse as far as his par­ty is con­cerned ‚he has been labeled a clos­et Laborite.
The noise has got­ten so loud Crawford felt oblig­ed to respond to his detrac­tors using social media.
Here’s how Crawford respond­ed to his detractors.

Over the last 48 hrs I have observed with concern an effort by some comrades to “manufacture a beef” with me. It seem the new form of attack to those that refuse to participate in political opportunism is to label that individual a labourite. It is my opinion that Desmond Mckenzie’s son should not be disqualified from working at the NSWMA simply because he is the minister’s son. Indeed it is also my opinion that he should not be appointed to a position simply because he is the minister’s son either.

I have no problem with anyone disagreeing with my opinions it is their right to do so but understand that simply because you disagree does not suggest that my opinion would change. If however you have new information deemed by you to be necessary for consideration you may provide that information and I will gladly consider it and if necessary change my mind. However to this point i have no information that nepotism was involved so as far as i am concerned none was. Further i disagree with the position that ethics have anything to do with how something looks that’s optics instead in my opinion ethics only consideration is what is.

I see on a particular in a group titled Jamaicans for Truth some “social media warriors” claiming I should not be doing interviews with Emily Crooks, Cliff hughes nor Abka Fitz Henly as in their opinions these as “labourite journalist” I have and will continue to do interviews with any journalist that ask as long as i feel comfortable that the topic is not outside of my of capacity to comprehend and thus comment. I have no reservation in saying Abka is a friend of mine and a great KC alumnus, nor do I have any reservation in stating that I have had a good relationship with Emily crooks since Taylor Hall when we were both students at the University. I have no intention to malice journalist nor anyone for that matter on the simple basis that that are or are perceived to be JLP leaning. In fact my uncle in whom I am well pleased is a JLP senator and I am definitely not malicing him for his political leaning.

I have always advised political participants not to be a tool to be used by political parties but instead to be a builder that used politics as a tool to build your communities and your country. I pass that advice to the vocal few who seek to bully others who don’t share their opinions from the safety of their keyboards.

In closing for those insistent on labeling me a labourite ask yourself one simple question who is leaking all these things from PNP meetings to the media? It could not be me, because as they have often repeated and in some cases lamented I go to no meetings. Who is it that leaked PNP polls to Daryl Vaz, not me up to todays date I have not seen those polls. Who has engineered a transformation of the PNP into something Micheal Manley would not recognize,not me I have been a constant voice in the wilderness. So maybe just maybe those are the ppl you should be targeting for public ridicule.

If it walks like a duck , quacks like duck, maybe it is a duck. Remember part of the def­i­n­i­tion for polit­i­cal par­ty ?  It is much eas­i­er and prac­ti­cal for a group of peo­ple who have very sim­i­lar out­look on pol­i­cy to com­bine to gain pow­er so those poli­cies can be imple­ment­ed by a major­i­ty vote in the House, hmmm.
Since it has become clear even to sup­port­ers of his own polit­i­cal par­ty that com­mon sense and the abil­i­ty to be ratio­nal is syn­ony­mous with being a Laborite Damion Crawford must now eval­u­ate his posi­tion and deter­mine whether he wants to go down with a sink­ing ship out of blind loyalty.
Crawford’s com­mon-sense approach­es have been anti­thet­i­cal to his par­ty’s ide­o­log­i­cal stubbornness.
Maybe the time has come for Crawford to unshack­le him­self from ide­ol­o­gy and join oth­ers with whom he shares sim­i­lar ideas and a com­mon purpose.

In what amount to an extreme case of juvenile Editorial lunacy the Jamaica Gleaner’s Editorial page made a total mockery of rational thinking as it seeks to play politics where frankly it should be heaping praise.
The issue involve the Minister of local government Desmond McKenzie’s son applying for a job at the National Solid Waste Management Agency(NSWMA).

♦The edi­to­r­i­al stat­ed quote: It has emerged that Desmond McKenzie’s 35-year-old son, some­time in the recent past, and at his own voli­tion, applied for a vacant posi­tion at the NSWMA, was inter­viewed, and deter­mined suit­able for the post. “His expe­ri­ence would also do well for the posi­tion, so we offered him the job,” said Colonel Pryce.

Colonel Daniel Pryce, is the act­ing CEO of the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA).
♦From all appear­ances the junior McKenzie applied for the post while the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion was in power.
♦The NSWMA con­clud­ed that the appli­cant, mis­ter McKenzie , based on his expe­ri­ence would do well in the posi­tion and as a result the posi­tion was offered to him.
♦Out of an abun­dance of cau­tion so as not to engage in any action which could be con­strued to be Nepotism, the Chief Executive offi­cer of NSAWA Colonel David Pryce sought approval from the Minister under whose port­fo­lio the NSWMA falls and who hap­pen to just be the father of the applicant.
♦Correctly and most refresh­ing­ly min­is­ter Desmond McKenzie gave instruc­tions that his son not be hired by the Agency.

The Gleaner argues that the NSWMA has a board appoint­ed by the min­is­ter, to which the exec­u­tive direc­tor reports. The min­is­ter estab­lish­es broad pol­i­cy, which is left to the board to refine and trans­mit to the man­age­ment and staff for imple­men­ta­tion. In day-to-day oper­a­tions, the buck ought to stop with the CEO.

That is exact­ly what the CEO David Pryce did.

Yet in a shock­ing turn­about the Editorial unwit­ting­ly went on quote: Colonel Pryce, out of what he believed to be “an abun­dance of cau­tion”, but which was tan­ta­mount to a weak abro­ga­tion of respon­si­bil­i­ty, advised nei­ther his chair­man nor the board about the prospec­tive hire, but the port­fo­lio min­is­ter. He sought approval three rungs up the chain of com­mand. But worse, Desmond McKenzie assumed that his role includ­ed involve­ment in mid-lev­el human-resource employ­ment mat­ters. “I gave imme­di­ate instruc­tions that the trans­ac­tion should be dis­con­tin­ued immediately,”.
It went on :“But what­ev­er his moti­va­tion, Mr McKenzie only suc­ceed­ed in impos­ing him­self in an area of gov­ern­ment in which he has no place, there­by set­ting a dan­ger­ous prece­dent from which, we hope, he is will­ing to retreat. At the same time, the mat­ter to which we refer demon­strat­ed both poor judge­ment and a lack of appre­ci­a­tion of func­tion­al author­i­ty on the part of Colonel Daniel Pryce, the act­ing CEO of the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), for which he deserves a severe rep­ri­mand from his board of gov­er­nors” .Editorial: Mr McKenzie, The HR Man

In an effort to appear less ridicu­lous­ly juve­nile the Editorial argues that Quote:  We believe that the deprived job seek­er, depend­ing on the state of the trans­ac­tion, may be enti­tled to legal relief for breach of con­tract, which he should pur­sue against the min­is­ter as well as Colonel Pryce and the board of the NSWMA.

This has got to be the most extreme exam­ple of Orwellian log­ic ever. The Minister in keep­ing with the theme of the new admin­is­tra­tion stat­ed inten­tions to eschew cor­rup­tion and have max­i­mum trans­paren­cy , went over and above to ensure there was no nepo­tism, not in actu­al­i­ty , Not in perception.
Not only should the Minister be com­mend­ed, the CEO of the NSWMA should be com­mend­ed for his vig­i­lance and lead­er­ship in inform­ing the Minister or any­one above him of the neg­a­tive optics of a poten­tial hire of the younger McKenzie could con­vey. Jamaica is a small coun­try it is almost assured that the CEO of the NSWMA knew McKenzie before he took over respon­si­bil­i­ty for the NSWMA. The CEO may have known the Minister before the min­is­ter was the Minister,
Whats wrong with the CEO of the Agency inform­ing the Minister that this may not look good?
What would be the reac­tion of the Editorial board had this hire materialized?
Is the Gleaner mad that cor­rec­tive steps were tak­en to ward off appear­ances of Nepotism which it would most assured­ly use to exco­ri­ate the new Administration?
The Gleaner Editorial went on “We hope that this is not the start of a pat­tern of oper­a­tional inter­ven­tion by Minister McKenzie into agen­cies with­in his port­fo­lio. Such behav­ior tends to go ter­ri­bly wrong. Discrimination, then, may be of a more sin­is­ter kind.”

Not only have the Editorial made the Author seem sil­ly and pathet­ic it made him/​her out to be a sooth­say­er who can see into the future. Forecasting future and poten­tial bad behavior.
The Gleaner sim­ply can­not wait for bad behav­ior it is mak­ing good behav­ior bad.
In the bib­li­cal book of Luke begin­ning in verse 37 a woman broke an alabaster box of pre­cious oint­ment and washed Jesus’ feet she also used her tears to wash his feet while using her hair to dry them.
The Pharisees in atten­dance were beside them­selves in anger at what they thought was a waste of a box of pre­cious oint­ment. Jesus chas­tised them and their nar­row argu­ments that the oint­ment could have been sold and the pro­ceeds giv­en to the poor. In response Jesus told them the poor would be here for all time but he would be gone soon.
I use this metaphor because as the Pharisees failed to see the wom­an’s sin­cer­i­ty and love for Christ so does the Gleaner’s Editorial fail to see the good of the actions of the CEO of the NSWMA and the Minister.
The Editorial con­firm my belief that in our quest to effect change we will some­time have to ignore the noise of even the peo­ple we aim to help.
Jamaica is no dif­fer­ent , entrenched polit­i­cal patri­o­tism and nepo­tism is a large part of every­day life. It has been a part of the land­scape for so long that many peo­ple are shocked that it is some­thing good.

Unfortunately for the Gleaner’s Editorial it too has lost it’s moral com­pass. Wrong is now right,attempts to avoid those wrongs are por­trayed as wrong, or in the Gleaner’s case, a poten­tial­ly futur­is­tic path to wrong. Yea I know it’s convoluted.….
You know we have lost our way when we are chastis­ing seri­ous attempts to do what’s right. As was in the Bible not much has changed with mankind despite the pass­ing of Millenniums humans remain hypocrites.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz dou­bled down on his New York val­ues insult Wednesday, attack­ing Donald Trump and a string of “lib­er­al Democrats” for poli­cies and posi­tions that have been “ham­mer­ing” the state. Cruz had harsh words for Mayor de Blasio, Gov. Cuomo, Rep. Charles Rangel and even dis­graced pols Eliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner in his solil­o­quy about all that is wrong with New York. Asked what he meant by “New York val­ues,” a phrase he coined months ago in an attack on Donald Trump, Cruz defined the term as val­ues held by lib­er­al politi­cians who reject char­ter schools, school choice and sup­port for fear­less police officers.

“Those are the val­ues, the val­ues of the New York lib­er­al politi­cians that have been ham­mer­ing the peo­ple of this great state,” Cruz said after a cam­paign event in the Bronx. Cruz sin­gled out de Blasio as the worst offend­er. “Every time there is a con­fronta­tion between crim­i­nals and cops he sides with the crim­i­nals, loot­ers and riot­ers instead of the police officers.”

Cruz said he was proud of cops who turned their backs on de Blasio at a police officer’s funer­al last year. “I cheered for those New York cops and peo­ple across America did,” Cruz said. Cruz also blast­ed de Blasio for try­ing to close char­ter schools in Harlem. “He is cap­tive to the union boss­es that con­trol him,” Cruz said. Cruz said Trump has sup­port­ed a num­ber of the lib­er­al politi­cians on his list, and shares the blame for their failed policies.

If you want to know what lib­er­al demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues are fol­low Donald Trump’s check­book,” Cruz said. “Donald Trump has been fund­ing those lib­er­al demo­c­ra­t­ic politicians.”Earlier Cruz got the Bronx cheer Wednesday dur­ing a cam­paign stop from pro­test­ers upset about his con­tro­ver­sial immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy. The Cruz pres­i­den­tial cam­paign even took a page out of rival Trump’s book, remov­ing one demon­stra­tor from the Bronx event when the crit­i­cism got too loud. The heck­ler got the heave ho from Sabrosura restau­rant on Westchester Avenue after shout­ing that Cruz had no busi­ness in the Bronx. “You’re run­ning on an anti-immi­grant plat­form, and you’re speak­ing in the Bronx,” the demon­stra­tor said. “You should not be here.”

The demon­stra­tor was cheered like a Yankee out­field­er by fel­low pro­test­ers after Republican par­ty staffers removed him from the restau­rant. Cruz was in the Bronx cam­paign­ing ahead of New York’s April 19 pri­ma­ry. Cruz insult­ed the city when he derid­ed “New York val­ues” in an attack on Trump.

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. slammed Cruz Wednesday as a hyp­ocrite — just hours before Cruz was set to meet with the bor­ough president’s father in the Bronx. “Ted Cruz is a hyp­ocrite. He not only offend­ed New Yorkers, he offend­ed Bronxites, and now he’s here today in New York and in the Bronx look­ing for mon­ey and votes,” Diaz said.“We in the Bronx know how offen­sive he’s been. We know the truth about our bor­ough.” Cruz, a Texas Republican, drew the ire of New York Democrats after bash­ing the Bronx at an event in 2014. “I under­stand that Manhattan is very con­cerned with their secu­ri­ty with the Bronx,” Cruz said “But it’s a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent on 2,000 miles of the Rio Grande.” Diaz said Cruz is out of line.

“Everything good we’ve done, we’ve done it with New York val­ues. Our val­ues are strong in New York and for him to come here look­ing for votes and com­ing for mon­ey is at the high­est lev­els of hypocrisy,” Diaz said dur­ing a press con­fer­ence of Latino law­mak­ers from the Bronx in sup­port of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-run­ner. “Hopefully he’ll learn a les­son about how wrong his words are.” Cruz is count­ing on sup­port from New York evan­gel­i­cals, which is why he met with the bor­ough president’s father, Ruben Diaz Sr., a state sen­a­tor who is also a con­ser­v­a­tive min­is­ter. Ted Cruz stands by ‘New York val­ues’ insult as he slams lib­er­al Democrats includ­ing Mayor de Blasio after Bronx cam­paign stop

Vocal team mem­bers of the People’s National Party’s (PNP) Council of Spokespersons yes­ter­day cho­rused con­cerns about the “infor­ma­tion gap” mar­ring governance.

“It is clear that we are going to have a lot of work to do,” declared Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller as she addressed jour­nal­ists at the PNP’s Old Hope Road, St Andrew, head­quar­ters after the coun­cil’s first meet­ing yes­ter­day. “We will be keep­ing the Government on its toes,” assert­ed Simpson Miller as Opposition Spokesman on Finance Dr Peter Phillips rapped the Government for keep­ing qui­et on crit­i­cal mat­ters since tak­ing office a lit­tle over a month ago. Phillips sug­gest­ed yes­ter­day that lack of trans­paren­cy on the part of the Government was hav­ing a crip­pling effect on pub­lic con­fi­dence. Simpson Miller and Phillips were accom­pa­nied by sev­er­al mem­bers of the 22-strong coun­cil. The oppo­si­tion leader said mem­bers assigned to port­fo­lios have been man­dat­ed to estab­lish task forces in each area. But the focus was cen­tred on claims the Holness admin­is­tra­tion had already fall­en down on the job.

Focus On Drought

Simpson Miller urged the Government to imme­di­ate­ly focus on drought-strick­en areas, a sen­ti­ment that was echoed by Ian Hayles, the new spokesman on water.

Phillips zoomed in on what he described as mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions from Finance Minister Audley Shaw. He high­light­ed con­cerns a per­cep­tion that the Government was ill-pre­pared to car­ry out its man­date. He stressed that Shaw, as a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, must be cir­cum­spect in lan­guage and trans­par­ent and accu­rate in action. “The uncer­tain­ty and fail­ure to com­mu­ni­cate will not be good for pub­lic con­fi­dence,” he warned. Phillips stressed that the coun­cil was deter­mined that the gains made under the PNP’s watch would not be sac­ri­ficed. He said there were signs of a slow­down of eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty, evi­dent in a slight upward move­ment in inter­est rates, reflect­ing some uncer­tain­ty and rip­ples in the retail sec­tor. Peter Bunting, the for­mer nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter, returned to his pet peeve — con­cerns about a spike in mur­ders that he said, appeared to have bro­ken a four-month trend.

He said he expect­ed the Government to pro­vide addi­tion­al resources for crime-fight­ing and urged care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion about its plans to pur­chase sec­ond-hand vehi­cles for the police. “Proceed very care­ful­ly, as this may be short-term val­ue, as police vehi­cles are used exten­sive­ly,” stressed Bunting. He also called for National Security Minister Robert Montague, his suc­ces­sor in the post, to dis­cour­age the politi­ciz­ing of crime-fight­ing. Story orig­i­nat­ed here: PNP Raps Gov’t For Failure To Communicate

The United States is a country of 308 million people, Blacks are reported to be around 12% of the general population, That’s somewhere between 36 and 37 million people. Black Americans were projected to spend approximately 1.1 and 1.5 trillion dollars on goods and services for the year 2015 . Yet estimates projected the bulk of that money would be spent in businesses not owned or operated by other Blacks. In fact the dollar circulates numerous times in the white community. In the Hispanic community the group nearest to Blacks in terms of the dollar circulation the dollar circulates eight (8) times and improving.
In the Black community it circulates less than one time (0). That is a direct sign that we do not own business and we do not support the few black businesses which do exist.

There is a gen­er­al feel­ing in some quar­ters that many of our peo­ple are not inter­est­ed in their own lives. Other crit­ics sug­gest too many of us are com­fort­able in our medi­oc­rity , and to some degree our con­di­tions of depen­dence and a sense of com­fort­a­bil­i­ty may tran­scend Geography as it relates to our people.
There is a cer­tain sense that some of us have no desire to increase our cir­cum­stances beyond the point where we are per­pet­u­al­ly scratch­ing in the dust to main­tain our survival.

After unprece­dent­ed turns at the helm of gov­ern­ment in Jamaica the People’s National Party (PNP) was final­ly vot­ed out of office on the 25^th of February, replaced with the Jamaica labor Party(JLP).
The Island reg­is­tered dra­mat­ic changes in the stan­dard of liv­ing since the 1960’s, Unfortunately for the peo­ple their stan­dard of liv­ing has­n’t changed for the bet­ter . The great­est peri­od of pros­per­i­ty was record­ed under the (JLP’s) Leadership of Donald Sangster who died after a brief stint in office and was suc­ceed­ed by High Lawson Shearer.
In 1972 under a bom­bard­ment of hype which con­vinced the Jamaican peo­ple their lives were in bad shape and they need­ed to change course, the Socialist (PNP) was elect­ed in a land­slide and Michael Manley became prime Minister. That 1972 vote effec­tive­ly changed Jamaica in a way that it has not recov­ered from. By 1980 the vot­ers were so dis­il­lu­sioned with Manley and the state of our coun­try that the PNP was boot­ed from office in a 51 – 9 route in the then 60 seat legislature.
The JLP Edward Seaga took the reins and skill­ful­ly turned the econ­o­my around . Many Jamaicans now talk about the 80’s with glazed eyes , hop­ing there could be a return to those days of low crime , low food prices and jobs. Under Edward Seaga a sense of eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty returned and once again Jamaicans were comfortable.
By 1988 they were once again in a flir­ta­tious mood , utter­ly, com­plete­ly and reck­less­ly dis­re­gard­ing the tragedy of the 70’s they returned Manley to power.

Manley did not serve out that term , ill-health forced him to turn over pow­er to his deputy Percival James Patterson. Patterson was to become the longest serv­ing Prime Minister in our young Nation’s his­to­ry. The PNP would remain in office for an unprece­dent­ed ¹⁴¹⁄₂ years between Patterson and Portia Simpson Miller.
Patterson’s long tenure was not made pos­si­ble by his good han­dling of the econ­o­my, low crime sta­tis­tics or any oth­er indi­ca­tor, . Conversely peo­ple just gave up on Jamaica , a sense of apa­thy set in. Poverty, decay , and a sense of malaise became the new normal.
It can rea­son­ably be argued that it was under Patterson that Jamaica took a final turn for the worse and has nev­er recovered.

In 2007 Bruce Golding of the JLP won a slim major­i­ty over the PNP’s Portia Simpson Miller. Golding steered the econ­o­my skill­ful away from the brink. He did it with­out an agree­ment with the International Monetary Fund. A series of seem­ing­ly periph­er­al issues eject­ed Bruce Golding from pow­er and by December 29^th 2011 the PNP was back in pow­er. The United States demand­ed that under­world fig­ure Christopher (dud­dus) Coke be extra­dit­ed to the United States to stand tri­al and a British inter­view of Golding in which he said no gays would ever be in his cab­i­net result­ed in Golding’s res­ig­na­tion from office.

It did not take long for the PNP led admin­is­tra­tion to be back on it’s knees beg­ging the IMF for an agree­ment . The admin­is­tra­tion secured an IMF deal yes, but meet­ing IMF tar­gets became the new met­ric of the Government’s suc­cess. There was no met­ric which involved growth and devel­op­ment. Passing IMF tests was the high water mark> This had dis­as­trous con­se­quences for work­ers who had to live through wage freezes for the much of the PNP’s term while con­tend­ing with mas­sive price increas­es and high infla­tion. This forced much of the small mid­dle class fur­ther and fur­ther into poverty.
The wage freezes were con­ve­nient­ly lift­ed as soon as it start­ed get­ting close to elec­tion time in 2016.
No one ques­tioned why the very Fund which insist­ed on wage freezes for years was sud­den­ly on board with free­ing the freeze on work­ers salaries.

The PNP admin­is­tra­tion became an IMF dar­ling , why not , whats not to like? The International Monetary Fund is in fact in busi­ness to make mon­ey, the fund does so by extract­ing mas­sive inter­ests on it’s loans from small debtor nations while forc­ing debtor states to adhere to crip­pling poli­cies which brings much pain to their pop­u­la­tions. In the end this is under­stand­able they are in the busi­ness of mak­ing mon­ey I am cool with that .
What may have elud­ed much of the Jamaican peo­ple are the con­di­tions under which Golding was forced from office and how soon after the PNP won the elec­tions of 2011 the new Administration was back beg­ging for a deal.

The Labor par­ty was the par­ty of eco­nom­ic growth, the par­ty of the pri­vate sec­tor, the par­ty of education.….…if these prin­ci­ples are adhered to in small­er debtor nations who would the IMF loan mon­ey to?
If that does­n’t get you think­ing noth­ing will.
Having spent so much time in charge of the coun­try’s affairs the PNP has changed the entire eco­nom­ic, struc­tur­al and moral par­a­digm of the Island and its not for the bet­ter. People no longer aspire to self employ­ment and own­ing their own busi­ness­es as much. Being sup­port­ed by Government and ben­e­fit­ing from some regres­sive gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy are what Jamaicans aspire to nowa­days and these are they who want to walk the straight and narrow.
The once vibrant pri­vate sec­tor which ruled in the 60’s has long been replaced by a small cadre of lack­eys loy­al to the PNP but which is not pro­vid­ing any real jobs for Jamaicans.

Most of the nation’s fac­to­ries and its man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor has long moved to Trinidad and oth­er CARICOM states, many sim­ply closed their doors . Years and years of back­ward social­ist based poli­cies have made it impos­si­ble for com­pa­nies to oper­ate in Jamaica’s cor­rupt, and hos­tile busi­ness envi­ron­ment. Jamaican gov­ern­ment bureau­cra­cy changes on whims, pol­i­cy posi­tions are not laws they change on the whim of min­is­ters of Government rather that be root­ed in law.
In that envi­ron­ment it is no won­der there is a whole gen­er­a­tion which has no real con­cept how a mar­ket econ­o­my works out­side the con­fus­ing, con­vo­lut­ed sys­tem they see play out each day.
The old dinosaurs are quite com­fort­able being decep­tive, after all many of them have grown fat on false indoc­tri­na­tion and manip­u­la­tion of the youth .
In that envi­ron­ment it will be dif­fi­cult to con­vince them that this new path of account­abil­i­ty and tax cuts is the cor­rect path.
For too long they have sucked the sour milk they can­not appre­ci­ate the taste of fresh milk and to some degree it may give many of them the runs. Look for those who grew fat suck­ing the teats for the sour milk to keep com­ing out claim­ing that fresh milk is bad for you.
It’s your call , you vot­ed for fresh milk , now sup­port your gov­ern­ment. Yes hold the Government account­able but do not allow them to con­vince you to go back.

The 200,000-strong Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) Alliance says Finance Minister Audley Shaw should “come clean” and apol­o­gise for giv­ing the coun­try the impres­sion he was not aware the mon­ey col­lect­ed from a spe­cial tax on fuel was placed in the Consolidated Fund instead of being set aside in a spe­cial fund.

Yesterday’s Sunday Gleaner report­ed from Hansard — the offi­cial ver­ba­tim records of Parliament — that Shaw was last year giv­en infor­ma­tion on what was being done with the mon­ey the Andrew Holness admin­is­tra­tion sub­se­quent­ly promised would be used to help finance an income tax break for Jamaicans earn­ing $1.5 mil­lion or less. Donovan Wignal, pres­i­dent of the alliance, said he would not go as far as to say Shaw was mis­lead­ing the coun­try last week when he made the rev­e­la­tions that the mon­ey had been spent or oth­er­wise bud­get­ed. He agreed, how­ev­er, that Shaw should not have been sur­prised giv­en the update he received in Parliament last September. “There is some amount of dam­age con­trol that needs to be done now,” Wignal toldThe Gleaner. “What the peo­ple are look­ing for is hon­esty. Do not come with any excus­es. (But) I would­n’t come out and say the coun­try was being misled.”

He added: “At the end of the day, they (JLP) con­sult­ed with their con­sul­tants. They (were) not in pow­er, but of course they would have been privy to a lot of the dis­cus­sions that would have tak­en place. He (Shaw) should come clean. Shaw should come and pro­vide a ful­some expla­na­tion as to what he meant when he said what he said based on the fact Hansard has proven that he knew some­thing con­trary to what he announced.”

GARNER RESPECT

The MSME Alliance head said Shaw’s com­ing pub­lic to speak to the issue would “gar­ner some amount of respect”. “Do the big man thing. Do the ‘Man a Yard’ (thing) and say ‘I mis­spoke’.” Confronted with Shaw’s claims, for­mer Finance Minister Dr Peter Phillips had rub­bished them as “red her­rings”, argu­ing that the sit­u­a­tion high­light­ed the “imprac­ti­cal­i­ty” of the tax plan. Phillips told The Gleaner that, up to when he left office last month, leg­is­la­tion was not com­plet­ed for the estab­lish­ment of the spe­cial fund, the Energy Stabilisation Fund. He also said approx­i­mate­ly $3 bil­lion from the spe­cial con­sump­tion tax col­lect­ed on fuel was used to finance an insur­ance pro­gramme for oil last July. The Holness admin­is­tra­tion had hoped to get $9.5 bil­lion from the gas tax to fund the income tax pol­i­cy. The Office of the Prime Minister has indi­cat­ed that the issue will be “addressed in the pre­sen­ta­tion of the Budget” lat­er this month.  http://​jamaica​glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​l​e​a​d​-​s​t​o​r​i​e​s​/​2​0​1​6​0​4​0​4​/​2​0​0​0​0​0​-​s​t​r​o​n​g​-​b​u​s​i​n​e​s​s​-​g​r​o​u​p​-​w​a​n​t​s​-​s​h​a​w​-​c​o​m​e​-​c​l​ean200,000-Strong Business Group Wants Shaw To ‘Come Clean’

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC) – The Trinidad and Tobago Government says it had pre­vent­ed 12 Jamaicans from enter­ing the island late last month because they were “deemed like­ly to become charges on pub­lic funds”. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a state­ment said that Foreign and Caricom Affairs Minister Dennis Moses met with Jamaica’s High Commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago, David Prendergast on Tuesday to dis­cuss the issue.
“All relat­ed issues were dis­cussed in an open, frank and cour­te­ous fash­ion befit­ting the strong rela­tion­ship between both coun­tries,” the state­ment noted.

Recently the Minister of Justice Delroy Chuck immediately upon taking office suggested rather stridently that cases on the Circuit court docket not decided after five years be tossed from the docket.

As a for­mer law-enforce­ment offi­cer who under­stand some of the cir­cum­stances which some­times con­tribute to these delays, includ­ing defense maneu­ver­ing, I was shocked that the Minister would ven­ture to sug­gest this. To sug­gest dis­card­ing cas­es on the cri­te­ria of time opens up the process to more manip­u­la­tion and abuse by defense attor­neys while fur­ther vic­tim­iz­ing the fam­i­lies and vic­tims of crime.
Clearly the min­is­ter did not think through the con­se­quences of his suggestion/​order before he opened his mouth or he sim­ply does not care about vic­tims of heinous crimes.

IS DELROY CHUCK KING?

I was moved to respond to the min­is­ter’s posi­tion in an arti­cle I wrote on the sub­ject. It is inter­est­ing also that the Director of Public Prosecution is now push­ing back on this sug­ges­tion as well.
Now there needs to be sig­nif­i­cant changes in the way seri­ous cas­es are approached, least among which is expe­di­en­cy of dis­po­si­tion. However it can­not be approached by way of a fiat on the part of a sin­gle minister.
The crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem in Jamaica is in seri­ous cri­sis that has to be con­sid­ered when we con­sid­er how we approach the dis­po­si­tion of seri­ous cases.
It must be the last option , if at all that we con­sid­er allow­ing mur­der­ers and oth­er seri­ous felons to walk free sim­ply because the sys­tem is inca­pable of dis­pens­ing jus­tice or worse, because a crim­i­nal cod­dling politi­cian say so.

Nearly a quar­ter of the more than 500 cas­es before the Home Circuit Court could be tossed out if a call by Justice Minister Delroy Chuck for judges to dis­miss crim­i­nal cas­es that have been in the sys­tem for a min­i­mum of five years is heed­ed. There were 522 cas­es on the court list at the start of the Hilary term in January, and, accord­ing to Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Paula Llewellyn, 127 of them are five years or old­er — all mur­der cases.

Llewellyn, who was speak­ing at the start of the Easter term yes­ter­day, said 96 of these cas­es are down for tri­al dur­ing this term and that her office is ready to pro­ceed with 51. Her dis­clo­sure comes days after Chuck called for judges to dis­miss cas­es that have been before the courts for five years or more by the end of this year.

The min­is­ter argued that the cas­es should be dis­missed unless there are rea­son­able grounds to con­tin­ue with the pros­e­cu­tion, sug­gest­ing that it was unfair for an accused per­son to go to court for five years hop­ing to prove his inno­cence. It was one of sev­er­al mea­sures that are aimed at reduc­ing the huge back­log of cas­es that have swamped the judi­cial system.

ABSOLUTE RULE

According to Llewellyn, 526 cas­es are on the Circuit Court list for this Easter term. That num­ber includes the 504 cas­es that were rolled over from the pre­vi­ous term, 328 of which were for mur­der. However, while acknowl­edg­ing the need to clear the back­log sti­fling the judi­cial sys­tem, Llewellyn warned of the dan­gers of imple­ment­ing an “absolute rule” that cas­es be dis­missed after a min­i­mum of five years before the court. “If you are going to have a five-year lim­it, the sys­tem would be open to abuse, manoeu­vring, and con­trivance, where one side could seek to play musi­cal chairs with the sys­tem,” she warned.

Citing as an exam­ple an accused per­son who has been charged with mur­der and released on bail, she ques­tioned: “He is held after three years [on the run]. Let’s say it takes anoth­er two years to round up the wit­ness­es, are you say­ing he should not be tried again?” Noting that the cir­cum­stances of a pet­ty ses­sion case are dif­fer­ent from those of a mur­der case, the DPP cau­tioned that each case must be assessed on its own mer­it. Tread Cautiously With Five-Year Cases, Warns DPP

After being in bondage for centuries Ramesses the Pharaoh released the children of Israel into the hands of the Prophet Moses. Biblical accounts of the event said that the Lord God intended for the former slaves a life of prosperity in the Land of Canaan. The children of Israel were not deserving of this act of kindness from God they had not earned it. But through God’s abounding grace and love they were liberated.

Nevertheless it did not take long for them to start show­ing just how ungrate­ful they could be. Despite the cen­turies of back-break­ing servi­tude to which they were sub­ject­ed they still lament­ed that at least they had meat. This after the Lord pro­vid­ed heav­en­ly man­ner to sus­tain them for the trip to their new home.
The dis­tance from Egypt to the land of Canaan was a mere eleven days journey.
Despite this the ungrate­ful Israelites rebelled against Moses com­plain­ing about the lack of meat , com­plain­ing about the lack of water, com­plain­ing about the lack of crea­ture comforts.
The Bible accounts that in exas­per­a­tion and human anger Moses struck the rock and said “drink ye hea­thens” water gushed from the rock and they drank to their hearts con­tent after which they resumed com­plain­ing. They were told not to store up the man­ner because the same God who pro­vid­ed for them today is faith­ful and mind­ful to pro­vide for them tomorrow .
They did not trust God to be faith­ful so they stored up the man­na and God ren­dered it ined­i­ble , the man­na became mag­got infested.
The chil­dren of Israel wan­dered around in the desert for 40 years with­out set­ting foot in the land of Canaan. According to scrip­ture not a sin­gle per­son who left Egypt set foot into the promise land.
A jour­ney which ought to have tak­en a mere eleven days end­ed up in a 40 year night­mare like a dog chas­ing it’s own tail.
Such are the con­se­quences of dis­obe­di­ence and rebellion.

A STRIKING PARALLEL

Over the last 44 years the People’s National Party (PNP) has held office for a record 32 to the Jamaica Labor Party’s (12) twelve. The JLP was final­ly returned to office in a record tight elec­tion on February 25^th .
The new admin­is­tra­tion cam­paigned on a slo­gan of ” from pover­ty to pros­per­i­ty” , on that slo­gan it won a one seat major­i­ty in the 63 seat leg­is­la­ture which gives it the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to form the Government which it did.
The one seat major­i­ty is the slimmest ever in Jamaica’s polit­i­cal his­to­ry. According to the Electoral office the vot­er turnout was the low­est it has ever been .
The low vot­er turnout may be attrib­uted to vot­er apa­thy , but vot­er apa­thy is a wide umbrel­la which may not ful­ly explain why huge chunks of the elec­torate sat on their hands.
The many scan­dals and cor­rup­tions asso­ci­at­ed with the PNP , the refusal to account or even speak to the media and final­ly refus­ing to engage in a pre-elec­tion debate with the oppo­si­tion is a more real­is­tic rea­son for the par­ty’s loss.

The one seat major­i­ty of the JLP should nev­er be con­fused with any sug­ges­tion of a lack of enthu­si­asm for the labor party.
The Party won a deci­sive 11 seats with­out los­ing a sin­gle seat it pre­vi­ous­ly held. That is no easy feat in a Jamaica which has prob­a­bly twelve seats for the PNP which are nev­er in play. Those seats are called gar­ri­son seats. This is the process where polit­i­cal patron­age cre­ate mono­lith­ic vot­ing. The JLP also has a cou­ple but noth­ing close to what the PNP possesses.

The PNP cam­paigned on the slo­gan “turn up the progress” it lost, and it lost big. The JLP’s one seat major­i­ty is best viewed from where the par­ty climbed to gain the one seat majority.
Voters had a chance to turn up the progress or opt to move from pover­ty to pros­per­i­ty , they chose the latter.
The new admin­is­tra­tion has been in office less than a month yet the Israelites who sup­port the PNP are com­plain­ing that the Government is not ful­fill­ing it’s promise of remov­ing income tax for peo­ple earn­ing a annu­al salary of under 1.5 mil­lion dollars.
The min­is­ter of finance Audley Shaw announced that the monies ear­marked by his par­ty to pay for the tax elim­i­na­tion was non-existent.
Billions of dol­lars is report­ed to have sim­ply dis­s­a­peared. The then min­is­ter of Finance Peter Phillips is report­ed to have said the bil­lions was spent on something.

How can a min­is­ter whose respon­si­bil­i­ty it is to account for every pen­ny of tax­pay­ers mon­ey say mon­eys were spent with­out say­ing how bil­lions of dol­lars could have dis­s­a­peared in the few days between when his par­ty lost the elec­tions and the new admin­is­tra­tion took office?
Why is there no top lev­el audit and Phillips made to account ?
Strikingly with all of the theft , cor­rup­tion and scan­dals asso­ci­at­ed with the cor­rupt PNP admin­is­tra­tion the hyp­ocrite Israelites have now tak­en to social media talk­ing about watch­ing the new administration.

Where were these hea­thens dur­ing FINSAC, Cuban light bulb scan­dal, OUTAMENI, the Clarendon mar­ket scan­dal , the litany of oth­er thefts and dis­ap­pear­ance of pub­lic funds?
Now these hea­thens want to ques­tion the truth the min­is­ter tells about the dis­ap­pear­ance of bil­lions but have no con­dem­na­tion for those who are respon­si­ble for it’s disappearance.
Even if the monies were used on projects which I do not believe they were, the admin­is­tra­tion just vot­ed out of office had no busi­ness spend­ing those sums after being defeat­ed at the polls.
People who sup­port the PNP does not give a rat’s ass about the direc­tion or sol­ven­cy of the coun­try as long as they can indi­vid­u­al­ly ben­e­fit when their par­ty con­trols things.
These hea­thens mil­i­tate and bet against our coun­try for par­ty sake.
I some­times wish we could split the coun­try into two parts and build a wall , yes I said it , let them them have the kind of coun­try they want and oth­ers have the coun­try we want. In a mat­ter of time they would be bor­row­ing under the wall and try­ing to scale it to flee the disaster.
We are not going to roll over any more and allow anoth­er 32 years of destruc­tion, so all Israelites bet­ter get used to a JLP admin­is­tra­tion in Jamaica house.
Our coun­try deserves a shot, tired failed poli­cies and thiev­ery has come to an end.

At the start of the Republican primary campaign to select a nominee to wrest back the executive branch for their party I told my wife that this would be a rather unusual campaign .
I told her that in a normal situation Ohio’s Governor John Kasich would probably be the last candidate standing. In fact American voters has shown a preference to electing Governors over Senators. But I got the feeling this 2016 season would be anything but a normal cycle.
This does not mean that John Kasich is a good candidate he is just the least vile of a bunch of rotten bunch.
I was mindful of the fact that after seven plus years of FOX and talk radio anti-Obama invective there was a toxic environment out in the heartland which was ready to explode.
President Obama correctly characterized it by saying Republicans parched the earth Trump simply struck the match.

I began hand­i­cap­ping the field this way.
(1) Scott Walker the Republican Governor of Wisconsin was pret­ty good at win­ning elec­tions at home despite wag­ing open war­fare on Unions in favor of the KOCH brothers.

However after being tricked into believ­ing he was speak­ing to one of the Kock broth­ers by two radio pranksters after he won the Governorship , it appeared this guy may have had too much stuff on him to be elect­ed President.
He was the first to drop out of the race.

(2) Former ® Arkansas Governor and Baptist preach­er Mike Huckabee who ran for the nom­i­na­tion before become becom­ing a FOX com­men­ta­tor is only inter­est­ed in keep­ing his name in the husking.

(3) Bobby Jindal Louisiana Governor’s response to President Obama’s state of the Union was wide­ly panned by all . In fact USA Today list­ed Jindal’s appear­ance as one of the five poor­est State of the Union respons­es seen in recent years.
Jindal was seen as not ready for prime-time. Additionally, the Governor’s poor poll num­bers at home make him a less than attrac­tive candidate.

(4) Rick Santorum Former Republican PA US Senator and peren­ni­al jour­ney­man pres­i­den­tial can­di­date did not have any­thing that would have made a dif­fer­ence from the oth­er times he was a can­di­date. Santorum the sweater-vest can­di­date can­di­date seem to rel­ish the process of run­ning to keep his name in the spot­light as well.

(5) Rick Perry Former ® Texas Governor did not bring any­thing new which would have negat­ed the giant “Oops” which char­ac­ter­ized his pre­vi­ous pres­i­den­tial bid.
It appeared top Republican donors were not going to throw much good mon­ey at a bad can­di­date . Rick’s pres­i­den­tial ambi­tions evap­o­rat­ed rather quick­ly as well.
Perry like sev­er­al oth­er can­di­dates may have been embold­ened to run again know­ing they would not have to face Obama.

(6) Carly Fiorina for­mer tech­nol­o­gy busi­ness exec­u­tive, nev­er had a chance as far as I’m con­cerned . Fiorina a for­mer Hewlett Packard CEO was ulti­mate­ly forced to resign from the com­pa­ny amidst a ques­tion­able merg­er she under­took between HP and Compaq. Fiorina lat­er ran a ill-fat­ed Senate bid in her home state of California against Democratic pow­er­house Dianne Fienstien which she lost.

(7) Jeb Bush the Former ®Florida Governor was run­ning against a name head-wind , there was a gen­er­al sense that the nation had had it’s fill of the Bushes. In fact Jeb’s own moth­er said the nation should look to anoth­er fam­i­ly for peo­ple to run for President or some­thing to that effect. Jeb raised tons of mon­ey and launched his cam­paign using his first name and stat­ing he was his own man.
In the end no amount of mon­ey or run­ning from his fam­i­ly name could save Jeb Bush . Primary vot­ers were clear­ly in no mood for anoth­er Bush and Donald Trump did the rest by defin­ing Jeb as low energy.
Jeb would lat­er embrace his fam­i­ly name by bring­ing his broth­er , for­mer President George W Bush to stump for him , as well as his moth­er the matron­ly Barbara Bush. Trump again ridiculed Jeb laugh­ing that he brought out his mom­my to defend him. Jeb even­tu­al­ly dropped out.

(8) George Pataki the for­mer new York Republican Governor may have decid­ed to take a long-shot grab at the rung . For all intents and pur­pos­es Pataki’s polit­i­cal ship had long sailed , in fact hard­ly any­one remem­bered who George Pataki includ­ing in his home state of New York. But with Barack Obama dis­qual­i­fied by term lim­its , oh why the hell not?
With a fiz­zle pop, pop Pataki’s cam­paign end­ed before it began.

(9) Ben Carson the renowned pedi­atric brain sur­geon’s cam­paign was based on the ridicu­lous things he said about President Barack Obama the nations first black pres­i­dent. Carson likened the President’s sig­na­ture Affordable Care Act to slav­ery. He con­tin­ued to make out­landish state­ments about the pres­i­dent which endeared him to the most vile ele­ments of the polit­i­cal right .
In the end Carson suc­ceed­ed in estab­lish­ing that though a brain sur­geon he was not very smart , he’s out and now he may have all the time he needs to sleep and pon­der the idio­cy of his state­ments about the president.

(10) Chris Christie the ram­bunc­tious New Jersey Governor said in 2012 he was not ready to run for pres­i­dent . At the time there was much hype sur­round­ing his sup­posed ris­ing star in the GOP. I was nev­er one who thought that Christie’s style of lead­er­ship was going to fly on the nation­al lev­el. He was far too loud , abra­sive, dis­mis­sive, and dis­re­spect­ful to be President. Embracing President Obama after the President vis­it­ed his state after the hur­ri­cane in 2012 may have been the death-knell for his chances.

With the bridge gate scan­dal and the loud obnox­ious Donald Trump in the pack this cycle it was clear that Christie was not going to out Trump Trump.
before long Christie was a Trump cheer-leader.

(11) Like his father Ron Paul the for­mer Texas con­gress­man ‚Kentucky Senator Rand Paul decid­ed to throw his hat into the crowd­ed GOP ring . But in a year when the loud mouth brava­do of the likes of Cruz, Christie, and Trump are dri­ving the debate about who can kill more peo­ple by car­pet-bomb­ing or tor­tur­ing them the mild man­nered Kentucky US Senator’s mes­sage of non-inter­ven­tion had no res­o­nance and he too was out.

(12) South Carolina ® Senator Lindsay Graham anoth­er also ran also seem to lose sleep at night think­ing about how to be pres­i­dent of the United States . They say nev­er say nev­er but the Senator with the deep south­ern drawl would prob­a­bly be bet­ter served if he enjoy being one of a very spe­cial club , the US Senate.
I hard­ly believe Lindsay Graham is going to be President of the United States and nei­ther does Republican Primary voters .

(13) Former Virginia ® Governor Jim Gilmore not a bad Governor but no one knew who he was and with a crack and a fiz­zle out went the Governor’s chance of becom­ing President.

(14) Marco Rubio ® Florida of all of the can­di­dates for President I abhorred him the most. The son of Cuban immi­grants he turned his backs on immi­grants plac­ing repub­li­can far right xeno­pho­bic rhetoric over peo­ple. Rubio once said “Barack Obama has no class” in ref­er­ence to the pres­i­dent of the United States. President Obama was twice elect­ed and has had a scan­dal free admin­is­tra­tion. The first fam­i­ly has been an exer­cise in class and grace.
Additionally Rubio was dis­re­spect­ful, arro­gant, and cocky to say the least. He referred to the pres­i­dent by his name only with­out men­tion­ing that he is the pres­i­dent of the United States. This I though was a clear attempt to de-legit­imize the duly twice elect­ed pres­i­dent of the United States of America.
I could tol­er­ate that from a white Anglo-Saxon, they start­ed that , I expect noth­ing less from them, but I would not tol­er­ate it from a Cuban who want­ed to pass him­self as a white Anglo-Saxon.
In the end the peo­ple of the great state of Florida agreed with me Rubio could­n’t even win Florida.

(15) John Kasich ® Governor of Ohio vet­er­an GOP politi­cian a sit­ting Governor of a major indus­tri­al state , a swing state. In a year when vot­ers are not con­sumed with Trumps fas­cism Kasich would be a good bet for nom­i­nee of his par­ty. He is not a ide­o­logue hes is prob­a­bly the best of the sor­ry lot.
John Kasich has no viable path to secur­ing the req­ui­site del­e­gates to win the repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion , but he sol­diers on nonethe­less, hop­ing that through some stroke of mir­a­cle he will pre­vail in a bro­kered convention.
That is as like­ly to hap­pen as I am like­ly to win the lot­to (I nev­er buy a tick­et) Of the three remain­ing GOP can­di­dates Kasich has the least num­ber of delegates.

(16) Ted Cruz ® Texas , is a first term sen­a­tor born in Canada to a Cuban father and he claims a Welsh moth­er, Cruz was a Canadian cit­i­zen util two yeras ago when he real­ized he want­ed to run for pres­i­dent and he could­n’t do so while being a Canadian cit­i­zen. Then and only then did Cruz denounce his Canadian citizenship.
Does any­one recall the stink sur­round­ing Barack Obama’s cit­i­zen­ship? Obama was born in Hawaii which is the United States. The Cuban Canadian Ted Cruz who pass­es him­self as a white south­ern neo­con does not men­tion that he should not be run­ning for pres­i­dent, and nei­ther does the oth­er lying republicans.
In the sen­ate where Ted Cruz is one of one hun­dred peo­ple he is hat­ed by his peers, even though this guy is still in the race it’s dif­fi­cult to envis­age enough peo­ple hold­ing their noses and vot­ing for this pre­ten­tious self absorbed twit.

(17) Donald Trump the self described New York bil­lion­aire devel­op­er and real­i­ty Television star has been the lead­ing GOP can­di­date from the start of the 2016 cycle , recent events seemed to have slowed the jug­ger­naut known as the Trump Campaign a bit .
The Candidate is run­ning to make America great again a poor­ly dis­guised dog-whis­tle which real­ly means, make America white again.
His cam­paign has been xeno­pho­bic, Islama-pho­bic- nar­cis­sis­tic, misog­y­nis­tic, racist, and every­thing in between .
Nevertheless he has found favor with a seg­ment of the GOP which find com­mon cause with his mes­sage of divi­sive­ness and enmity.
It is yet to be deter­mined how this spec­ta­cle will turn out , nev­er­the­less I am hav­ing loads of fun at what is occur­ring in the par­ty which has side­lined Colin Powell , Michael Steele and oth­er black con­ser­v­a­tives for rabid racist crea­tures like Trump and fakes and frauds like Rubio and Cruz.

On March 17^th I wrote that the new Administration in Kingston should have a comprehensive Audit of each ministry and release it’s findings as quickly as possible. It’s important that the true state of the Jamaican economy be made known as quickly as possible , because the longer it takes to do so the less credible it’s report will be and the administration will invariable own the PNP’s foul-ups.

NEW GOVERNMENT BETTER TELL THE JAMAICAN PEOPLE THE TRUE STATE OF AFFAIRS AND QUICK…

At the time I wrote the Article it was a full 20 – 21 days after the Elections of February 25^th. Today more than a full month after the elec­tions the Jamaica Observer reports that the Administration is now say­ing that the out­go­ing PNP admin­is­tra­tion used up funds ear­marked to finance $1.5‑m tax break promised by the JLP dur­ing the campaign.
In that arti­cle I cau­tioned the new admin­is­tra­tion to quick­ly tell the nation whether alle­ga­tions that out­go­ing mem­bers of gov­ern­ment had gone on a spend­ing spree was cor­rect. I also asked that the new admin­is­tra­tion tell the nation whether any laws were broken.

Minister of Finance and Public Service, Audley Shaw, a short while ago dis­closed that funds that should have been set aside from the exist­ing gas tax have already been used up in the con­sol­i­dat­ed funds under the pre­vi­ous People’s National Party (PNP) admin­is­tra­tion. The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), in mak­ing its elec­tion promise to imple­ment a thresh­old of $1.5 mil­lion for Pay as You Earn (PAYE) con­trib­u­tors planned on using an esti­mat­ed $9.5 bil­lion from the gas tax to assist in fund­ing the expect­ed $12.5 bil­lion that the tax plan would cost the coun­try. The dis­clo­sure means that the Government has to insti­tute oth­er plans to fund the loss from the real­lo­ca­tion of rev­enue from the exist­ing gas tax. Shaw is how­ev­er reas­sur­ing the coun­try of the Government’s com­mit­ment to pro­vid­ing the pro­posed tax break to employ­ees. He was speak­ing at the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) President’s Forum this morn­ing. Shaw said the Government will present new plans to address the issue in the upcom­ing bud­get debate.PNP used up funds ear­marked to finance $1.5‑m tax break – Shaw

Did it take a full month for the new Government to find this infor­ma­tion out?
Does the Administration believe this will be an expla­na­tion which will hold off the tide of expec­ta­tions it cre­at­ed with this cam­paign promise?
I hope for the par­ty’s sake that the min­is­ter do have a bet­ter plan to fund this promise over and beyond that state­ment that it will present a plan in the upcom­ing budget.
Even if those funds were ear­marked men­tal­ly by the JLP while in oppo­si­tion and the monies were spent by the los­ing admin­is­tra­tion it cer­tain­ly could not have been a one-off fund­ing source. Secondly there is no laws which makes it a crime to spend monies on allo­ca­tions and projects dur­ing lame-duck status.

With that in mind the admin­is­tra­tion and the min­is­ter would be best advised to find the mon­ey forth­with to off­set those sav­ings for the peo­ple who qual­i­fy for them.
Explanations no mat­ter how cred­i­ble will not cut it. The peo­ple will have none of it.
This one promise is one the gov­ern­ment can­not renege on. If it does on this par­tic­u­lar promise the time spent in obliv­ion will be a cake-walk when com­pared to where it will find itself in the future. It will be gen­er­a­tions before it gets a chance to enter Jamaica house, if ever again.

Delroy Chuck has not even warmed the seat in the Justice Ministry and already he is acting like a Monarch . This is nothing new for Chuck who has a penchant for grandstanding and an over-sized impression of self.

According to Jamaican Media Chuck was speak­ing at a forum on the Justice Undertakings for Social Transformation (JUST) pro­gramme, held recent­ly, at the Pegasus Hotel in New Kingston. 
Delroy Chuck, is call­ing on judges to move to dis­miss cas­es that are in the sys­tem for five years and more by the end of 2016. He insists that cas­es must be dealt with with­in months, sim­i­lar to pro­ce­dures in oth­er jurisdictions. 
According to Chuck, unless there are rea­son­able grounds for them con­tin­u­ing, he would urge that this year, those cas­es be dis­missed for want of prosecution.Justice Minister Delroy Chuck says the con­sti­tu­tion pro­vides that a per­son charged should have their case dealt with by fair hear­ing with­in a rea­son­able time. He states that this can­not be years or decades. Chuck adds that it is not fair that any accused per­son, even if he is guilty, has to go to court for five years hop­ing that his inno­cence can be pronounced.

He is right regard­ing speedy tri­al but this is not an issue to be fixed by fiat. Delroy Chuck has no author­i­ty to make such demands.
If he is desirous of see­ing this issue addressed he should have his par­ty which is in Government table a bill on it and allow the issue to be debat­ed and vot­ed on by the house ..The peo­ple should also be allowed a say as they are the ones aggriev­ed by these crim­i­nal actions , .They are also the ones accused of these crimes .
Where does Chuck get the author­i­ty to make such demands?

Here’s the part that absolute­ly gets me with this guy, Quote : “It is not fair that any accused per­son, even if he is guilty, has to go to court for five years hop­ing that his inno­cence can be pronounced”.
Not a thought for the vic­tims of crime. “even if they are inno­cent”? Now does any­one won­der why I abhor this prick? The fact of the mat­ter is that he has nev­er been vic­tim­ized by crim­i­nal action.
He has nev­er been robbed , raped , shot , and he is here so he was nev­er mur­dered. Hence the reck­less talk about even if they are guilty.
Guilty peo­ple deserve no sym­pa­thy after they have com­mit­ted crimes. Arguing that the con­sti­tu­tion pro­vides that a per­son charged should have their case dealt with by fair hear­ing with­in a rea­son­able time in this con­text is a red herring.
Only in a crim­i­nal lov­ing soci­ety would a Minister of Government be advo­cat­ing for turn­ing crim­i­nals lose and absolv­ing them of the heinous crimes they have committed.
This argu­ment is disin­gen­u­ous and patron­iz­ing at best and at worse a crim­i­nal cod­dling attempt to cur­ry favor with crim­i­nal ele­ments which he nev­er shied from.
It’s the let­ter of the con­sti­tu­tion which speaks to a speedy tri­al based on the pre­sump­tion of innocence.
Arguing that even guilty par­ties should be absolved of cul­pa­bil­i­ty defies the intent or spir­it of that seg­ment of the constitution.
One does not have to be a lawyer to know bull­shit when he/​she sees it. Chuck’s decree is exact­ly that, a load of horse manure.

If such a move is to be adopt­ed the peo­ple’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives must be allowed to write that bill and vote it into law . Since these cas­es are already in the sys­tem, a for­mal leg­isla­tive review would be in order. Even then, in a coun­try like Jamaica I would not feel com­fort­able see­ing this done with­out over­sight, there are just far too many oppor­tu­ni­ties for corruption..
It’s incon­ceiv­able that a sin­gle Minister of Government would take it upon him­self to make such a sug­ges­tion which sounds more like a command.

Cuban President Castro on human rights: We have right to health, right to education, women get equal pay; let us work so that we can all comply with all human rights.

President Raul Casto: If Cuba is hold­ing polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, give him names and he will release them -

President Obama says he wel­comes crit­i­cism from President Castro on areas US is falling short ‘because we should not be immune or afraid of crit­i­cism;’ he adds that the issue of human rights is like­ly to still be an ‘irri­tant.’

US President Obama thanks Cuban President Castro; says despite the dif­fi­cul­ties, we will con­tin­ue to

move for­ward.

President Obama says moving ahead with more opportunities for Americans to travel to Cuba, assisting with more internet access for Cubans.

President Obama, in Cuba, says US will continue to speak up on democracy, human rights; says he welcomes constructive dialogue from President Castro as well.

President Obama says it is ‘a new day’ between US, Cuba; tells President Castro, ‘we have a half of cen­tu­ry of work to catch up on’.

President Castro says Cuba defends human rights; says will­ing to con­tin­ue dia­logue on topic.

A chance to talk directly to Cubans

President Obama’s his­toric trip to Cuba comes with all the trap­pings of an offi­cial vis­it. There’s the meet­ing with a country’s leader (President Raúl Castro), a friend­ly chat with a high-rank­ing reli­gious offi­cial (Cardinal Jaime Ortega), a pho­to op at a his­toric loca­tion (his­toric Havana) and even a state din­ner. But for the White House, the real­ly impor­tant work of the trip, which begins Sunday, will take place in between, in those moments when Obama has a chance to inter­act with every­day Cubans. This is a coun­try where the media is strict­ly con­trolled by the gov­ern­ment. So when Obama meets with a select group of Cuban entre­pre­neurs, talks with human rights activists and gives a broad address to the Cuban peo­ple, he’ll have a rare oppor­tu­ni­ty to send his mes­sage direct­ly to the country’s citizens.

“We see this speech as a unique moment obvi­ous­ly in the his­to­ry between our coun­tries,” Senior Advisor Ben Rhodes said ahead of the trip. “This is the first vis­it of a U.S. President in near­ly 90 years, cer­tain­ly the first speech giv­en by a President on Cuban soil in near­ly 90 years and an oppor­tu­ni­ty for the President to engage the Cuban peo­ple with his vision for the future.” The Cuba trip is also aimed at an audi­ence back home. The rap­proche­ment has only just begun, but many Republicans hope to delay or even reverse it, and there is lit­tle sup­port in Congress for end­ing the Cuban embar­go, which dates back to the 1960s. House Speaker Paul Ryan said last week that the embar­go remains the law despite Obama’s exec­u­tive actions on Cuba. (Current GOP front-run­ner Donald Trump, who is sup­port­ive of re-estab­lish­ing rela­tions, nonethe­lesssaid at the last debate that he would close the embassy until a bet­ter deal could be made.) “Part of the rea­son for going on the trip and for going on the trip ear­li­er in the year is to uti­lize it to accel­er­ate the process of nor­mal­iza­tion, to speak direct­ly to the Cuban peo­ple about what the President’s vision for nor­mal­iza­tion is, and to con­tin­ue to cre­ate open­ings for greater engage­ment between the American and Cuban peo­ple,” Rhodes said.

The First Family has a full sched­ule in Cuba, which kicks off a week-long trip to Latin America. After land­ing on Sunday after­noon, they’ll tour Old Havana and meet with Cardinal Ortega, a Catholic leader who worked with Pope Francis on the effort to bring the two coun­tries to the nego­ti­at­ing table. On Monday, the pres­i­dent will attend a bilat­er­al meet­ing with President Raúl Castro to dis­cuss the nor­mal­iza­tion process and strife in Colombia. Later that evening, the Obamas will attend a state din­ner. Before leav­ing the coun­try, Obama will watch a base­ball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban nation­al team. President Obama Makes Historic Trip to Cuba

With the greatest of intentions and the support of Jamaicans of good faith and will, Jamaica’s new Prime Minister and his Administration will have a difficult time in carrying out it’s task of transforming the Island from Poverty to prosperity.

All Jamaicans have a vest­ed inter­est in the suc­cess of our coun­try yet at this point our coun­try is posi­tioned as a bar­rel at the edge of a clif­f’s being rolled uphill by the gov­ern­ing admin­is­tra­tion and Jamaicans hop­ing for a bet­ter nation. Unfortunately there is the lit­tle issue of huge swaths of peo­ple who sup­port the los­ing par­ty who are on the oth­er side of the bar­rel who are push­ing back hard, hop­ing to push the coun­try over the cliff to prove their par­ty is bet­ter. Pushing the bar­rel down-hill is always going to be an eas­i­er task and there­in lies the chal­lenge for our country.

It pains me to say it but there are Jamaicans who are active­ly cheer­ing for the fail­ure of the new admin­is­tra­tion. They do so with­out an con­sid­er­a­tion that fail­ure of the Administration means fail­ure of their country.
Is it fair to say that these Jamaicans favor par­ty over coun­try? If we answer yes we must exam­ine the rea­son why these peo­ple are so endued with their par­ty at the per­il of country.

Like many Jamaicans liv­ing in the dias­po­ra I hope and pray for a new Jamaica which will offer the Jamaican peo­ple oppor­tu­ni­ties to take care of their fam­i­lies and edu­cate their chil­dren with­out hav­ing to strug­gle against impov­er­ish­ment. It is fair to say that most Jamaicans in the dias­po­ra want a Jamaica not inun­dat­ed with crime. They see crime as the deal-break­er as it per­tains to their return and par­tic­i­pa­tion in the econ­o­my, I share that sentiment.

In 2008 Barack Obama made his­to­ry when he was elect­ed to the pres­i­den­cy of the United States of America.
In a scin­til­lat­ing book author Robert Draper detailed that on the night of January 20^th 2009 a group of Republicans gath­ered at the Caucus Room in Washington, an upscale restau­rant where a New York strip steak costs $51.
The pur­pose of the dinner/​meeting was to dis­cuss ways in which Republicans would obstruct the new pres­i­dent and bring him down , the idea was to obstruct on every bill.

They would take back the House in November 2010, which they did, and use it as a spear to mor­tal­ly wound Obama in 2011 and take back the Senate and White House in 2012, Draper writes.
According to Draper Congressman Kevin McCarthy told the group, “If you act like you’re the minor­i­ty, you’re going to stay in the minor­i­ty,” “We’ve got­ta chal­lenge them on every sin­gle bill and chal­lenge them on every sin­gle cam­paign.” On the more imme­di­ate future, they dis­cussed tar­gets such as Charlie Rangel, chair­man of the House ways and means com­mit­tee, who Gingrich said was vul­ner­a­ble over his per­son­al tax­es. They would also tar­get Treasury sec­re­tary Tim Geithner, demon­strate unit­ed and unyield­ing oppo­si­tion to the pres­i­den­t’s eco­nom­ic poli­cies, and release neg­a­tive ads against vul­ner­a­ble Democratic mem­bers of Congress.

Attending the din­ner were House mem­bers Eric Cantor, Jeb Hensarling, Pete Hoekstra, Dan Lungren, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan and Pete Sessions. From the Senate were Tom Coburn, Bob Corker, Jim DeMint, John Ensign and Jon Kyl. Others present were for­mer House Speaker and future – and failed – pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Newt Gingrich and the Republican strate­gist Frank Luntz, who organ­ised the din­ner and sent out the invi­ta­tions. Democrats con­demn GOP’s plot to obstruct Obama as ‘appalling and sad’.

One of the neg­a­tives which arose from the strat­e­gy meet­ing is the total grid­lock in the Nation’s cap­i­tal and the rise of Donald J Trump. People’s National Party sup­port­ers are not the only polit­i­cal ani­mals who are more invest­ed in the suc­cess of their par­ty over the suc­cess of their coun­try. Neither are the Republicans in the United States. In twist­ed ways many peo­ple I have spo­ken to , includ­ing PNP and Republican sup­port­ers , argue that they hope that the par­ty in pow­er fail so their par­ty can take the reins and succeed.
It’s a con­vo­lut­ed rea­son­ing which defies ratio­nal thought or rea­son. If the par­ty in pow­er suc­ceeds , isn’t that a good thing, isn’t that the end game? Obviously not so for Republicans or many PNP supporters .

If suc­cess , regard­less of which par­ty’s poli­cies ensures it is not the endgame then obvi­ous­ly suc­cess of the nation is not para­mount to Republicans and it cer­tain­ly is not to PNP supporters.
Which brings us to the real issue which seem to be con­trol and pow­er over state resources. Over the last two or three elec­tion cycles less and less Jamaicans have lost their lives to polit­i­cal vio­lence. In fact polit­i­cal killings has dropped pre­cip­i­tous­ly when com­pared to pre­ced­ing cycles.

Some ana­lysts have con­tend­ed that this may be due to dimin­ished clout of politi­cians over tra­di­tion­al enforcers. They argue that mem­bers of par­lia­ment has less and less tax-pay­ers funds to dole out to con­stituents for their support.
Some have also con­tend­ed that many young men who would nor­mal­ly be out com­mit­ting vio­lent acts on behalf of their par­ties are engaged in more lucra­tive crim­i­nal activ­i­ties like scam­ming and robberies.
I am inclined to believe over­all that there are sim­ply not enough slush mon­ey in the hands of par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to inspire the kind of loy­al­ty that once exist­ed. That’s a good thing .

Shockingly though not sur­pris­ing­ly it appears that the gen­er­al con­sen­sus of the los­ing par­ty’s sup­port­ers is a fer­vent desire to see the new admin­is­tra­tion in Kingston fail.
How does this young new leader assure and con­vince those peo­ple that if he and the gov­ern­ment fail they fail? How does he con­vince them con­trary to what they were reared to believe, that polit­i­cal par­ties are tools to nation-build­ing and not the ulti­mate goal.
Could it be that the past ungra­cious behav­ior of the los­ing par­ty’s lead­er­ship has poi­soned the well of good­will which ought to exist when one par­ty leaves office and anoth­er take over?

If lead­ers lead the peo­ple will fol­low. Yet what appears to be hap­pen­ing is a sense of nit-pick­ing at the new admin­is­tra­tion which has­n’t yet ful­ly warmed the seats on the gov­ern­ment side of Gordon House.
I under­stand the Labor Party has always been held to a high­er stan­dard but the par­ty deserves the oppor­tu­ni­ty to set­tle into office and a chance to exe­cute it’s agenda.
The par­ty cam­paigned on a plat­form of “from pover­ty to pros­per­i­ty” , it must have a chance to execute.
If the peo­ple believe they can con­tin­ue busi­ness as usu­al with the sense of chaos which exist then that bat­tle is already lost.

One of the lure of the People’s National Party to the mass­es is it’s any­thing goes style of Governance.
That gov­er­nance style which has been in place and con­trolled pow­er for 32 of the last 44 years has seen a mas­sive rise in urban sprawl. Massive increase in pover­ty. A mas­sive increase in squat­ter com­mu­ni­ties which have encir­cled once pris­tine com­mu­ni­ties. Potentially most dam­ag­ing is the mass pro­lif­er­a­tion of vend­ing stalls which take over entire streets pre­vent­ing the free-flow of traf­fic plac­ing the lives of entire com­mu­ni­ties at risk.

There is a gen­er­al sense on the part of many Jamaicans that the rule of law is not impor­tant or at best it’s sec­ondary to their means of mak­ing a liv­ing. The People’s National Party main­tained a form of qua­si gov­er­nance amidst the chaos which nev­er addressed the rot but allowed it to metastasize.
No hig­gler believe he/​she should be removed from the streets, or in front of tra­di­tion­al busi­ness­es where they sell the same things inside the stores but pay no taxes.
No squat­ter believes the auto-repair shop he ille­gal­ly cob­bled togeth­er beside some­one’s home which depre­ci­ates that prop­er­ty own­ers home is a prob­lem. Moving him away is a major prob­lem, it demon­strates that the Government is against poor peo­ple. Such is the Jamaican men­tal­i­ty and the PNP thrives in that chaos.

Republican obstruc­tion pre­cip­i­tat­ed the rise of a fas­cist called Donald J Trump. The par­ty is now stuck in a quandary unsure how it will han­dle the threat Trump pos­es to it’s legit­i­ma­cy. Many argue the estab­lish­ment has already lost con­trol of the par­ty to the unsta­ble bigot.
The Leader of the Opposition par­ty has cre­at­ed a so-called Council of advis­ers which has turned some heads , this is a depar­ture from the role the oppo­si­tion par­ty tra­di­tion­al­ly plays in mon­i­tor­ing the activ­i­ties of Government and report­ing to the people.
We will be keep­ing an eye on this coun­cil to point out to the peo­ple whether or not we believe it is an organ of obstruc­tion instead of a legit­i­mate oppo­si­tion as is pro­vid­ed for in the constitution.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid ripped Republican lead­ers Thursday for set­ting the con­di­tions for Donald Trump to thrive — and called on them to reject him.

“The Republican Party has become with­out ques­tion the par­ty of Trump,” Reid said. House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell should now say “enough” and “do it now,” the Nevada Democrat said. Trump’s rise has unset­tled many Republican lead­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly on Capitol Hill, who remain deeply leery of the real-estate billionaire’s poten­tial for divi­sive and inflam­ma­to­ry state­ments. But they have been unable to uni­fy behind an alter­na­tive, which has left many Republicans in Congress try­ing to dis­tance them­selves from Trump while say­ing they will sup­port who­ev­er wins the nom­i­na­tion. Reid used his fiery speech at the Center for American Progress Action Fund in Washington to make the case that Republicans need to own up to their role in Trump’s suc­cess. “If Senator McConnell won­ders from where Donald Trump came from — he should look in the mir­ror,” said Reid.

Both Ways

Reid said that if McConnell dis­agrees with Trump’s “racist” state­ments, he should say so and reject him out­right. The Nevada Democrat accused Republican lead­ers of want­i­ng to have it both ways for too long. Reid argued that Republicans, with sev­en years of obstruct­ing President Barack Obama and refus­ing to reject the more extreme ele­ments of their par­ty, set the stage for Trump. “Republican lead­ers cre­at­ed the drought con­di­tions,” he said. “Trump sim­ply struck the match.” Reid said Republican lead­ers chose obstruc­tion and “scorched-Earth” tac­tics even before Obama took office. “What thrived in the waste­land Republican lead­ers cre­at­ed? Resentment, hatred,” Reid said.

Pattern Continues

He said that pat­tern con­tin­ues, as evi­denced by the Republican treat­ment of Obama’s Supreme Court nom­i­nee Merrick Garland. Republican lead­ers have said they will not con­sid­er any nom­i­nee for the high court from Obama. “That’s how they’ve treat­ed him for his entire pres­i­den­cy,” Reid said. Republicans also have reject­ed sci­ence and oth­er evi­dence that sup­port­ed Democratic poli­cies, such as on cli­mate change and gun vio­lence, he said. “Even basic facts about the state of the econ­o­my,” he said. “It’s no won­der Americans feel pow­er­less.” Reid added that he believes this all helped to fos­ter the rise of the Tea Party — a wave he said is dri­ven by “some of the dark­est forces in our culture.”

Birther Movement

And there have been oth­er byprod­ucts of Senate Republican actions, said Reid, that have helped kick off what he called “the Donald Trump move­ment.” Those includ­ed, he said, push­ing the idea that Obama’s pres­i­den­cy was some­how ille­git­i­mate, includ­ing through the birther move­ment, which pro­mot­ed the false sto­ry that Obama was born in Kenya. “And who was the most promi­nent Republican in the birther move­ment? Yeah, Donald Trump,” said Reid. “The Republican Party has become with­out ques­tion the par­ty of Donald Trump.” “If McConnell and Ryan think that Donald Trump’s racist, xeno­pho­bic dem­a­goguery is wrong, they should not sup­port him — peri­od,” Reid said. “If they refuse to revoke their sup­port for Trump, they should both put on ‘Make America Great Again’ hats, and stand behind Trump at his next press con­fer­ence.” But they haven’t reject­ed Trump, he said. “This is pre­cise­ly the type of moral cow­ardice” that led to Trump’s rise, he added.
See more her : Reid Says Republican Party Begat Trump and Should Reject Him

There is talk that despite directives given by Prime Minister elect Andrew Holness that vehicles assigned to outgoing Ministers not be sold to them, that some vehicles were indeed sold .

After the new PNP Administration took office in 2011 ‚Jamaica House respond­ed to queries sur­round­ing the pur­chase of new Sport Utility Vehicles for Ministers of Government to the tune of US$694.000 or J$60 mil­lion. According to pub­lished reports the vehi­cles pur­chased were a shade below or at the lev­el of the max­i­mum allow­able spend on gov­ern­ment vehi­cles. The max­i­mum amount allowed is US$35,000 per vehi­cle. The cheap­est vehi­cle pur­chased for new gov­ern­ment min­is­ters was a 2012 Audi for Finance Minister Dr Peter Phillips. The car cost US$32,327.96. The oth­er vehi­cles, all SUVs, were a shade under from the US$35,000 upper limit.

I am not in a posi­tion to say one way or the oth­er whether the sell-off was good pol­i­cy or whether the new admin­is­tra­tion over spent on pur­chas­ing new vehicles.

LEAVE THE KEYS ON YOUR WAY OUT AND DON’T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU WHERE …

On the face of it there does­n’t seem to be any­thing wrong with the deci­sion to pur­chase new vehi­cles for min­is­ters of Government. Practically speak­ing the prices quot­ed seemed con­ser­v­a­tive inso­far as the cost of vehi­cles go in today’s mar­ket. Neither would I chal­lenge the deci­sion of the then Government to pur­chase Sport Utility Vehicles when the qual­i­ty of the Island’s roads and ter­rain is considered.
It would be spec­u­la­tive and prob­a­bly disin­gen­u­ous to lit­i­gate those expen­di­tures then and could eas­i­ly be brushed aside as partisan.
Government Minister should have vehi­cles as one of the tools in their tool-box­es in order to do the jobs they are asked to do.

In the same breadth it is also with­in the purview and right of the new­ly elect­ed Administration to say even though we have ben­e­fit­ed from this prac­tice in the past we are going to dis­con­tin­ue this prac­tice. In light of this it is impor­tant that if true the Jamaican peo­ple are made aware of what for­mer Ministers was allowed to pur­chase the vehi­cles, and on whose author­i­ty the sales were car­ried out?
The JLP cam­paigned on it’s core prin­ci­ples of fis­cal con­ser­vatism, good stew­ard­ship of the pub­lic’s trust under the slo­gan “from pover­ty to pros­per­i­ty”. On that basis the Prime Minister elect was with­in his right to ask that no vehi­cle be sold as was cus­tom­ary. This was par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant when the crit­i­cal state of the Island’s econ­o­my is considered.
One of the fail­ures of the pre­vi­ous Administration was it’s refusal/​inability to com­mu­ni­cate with the Jamaican people.
It is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant that Prime Minister Holness acquit him­self and his admin­is­tra­tion of that bag­gage before it becomes his and his admin­is­tra­tion’s crit­i­cism as well.

The People’s National Party is mas­ter­ful at cre­at­ing illu­sions and smear using lies and innu­en­dos. It is impor­tant that the new Administration speak with max­i­mum clar­i­ty and due dis­patch on the true state of the Jamaican economy>
With each pass­ing day the chance that the new admin­is­tra­tion can lay blame for prob­lems left by the PNP at the feet of the PNP becomes less doable, less credible.
That is why this medi­um sug­gest­ed a quick audit of each min­istry and a a full dis­clo­sure to the peo­ple as soon as the new admin­is­tra­tion takes office.
The new Government must have an open line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Jamaican peo­ple, fail­ing which it must pre­pare itself to be del­uged with lies and claims that all of the fail­ures of the past admin­is­tra­tion are it’s own.
It’s not good enough to have good inten­tions and be work­ing for the com­mon good alone. It’s impor­tant that the peo­ple be made aware of the true sit­u­a­tion the new admin­is­tra­tion inherited.

There are rum­blings as well that monies avail­able to Ministries were deplet­ed rapid­ly as soon as it became clear that there would be a change in Government. We have heard no word from the new admin­is­tra­tion on whether there is any truth to these sto­ries or whether there was any­thing crim­i­nal or uneth­i­cal about this.
The JLP did a great job of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with Jamaicans at home and abroad while it was in cam­paign mode. It makes a crit­i­cal error if it fail to con­tin­ue to apprise the peo­ple of the facts now that it is in Government.
The peo­ple must feel this new admin­is­tra­tion is their admin­is­tra­tion or it won’t be long before it finds itself on the out­side look­ing in again.
The PNP is mas­ter­ful at reas­sign­ing blame for it’s incom­pe­tence and corruption.