Did you watch the Florida Republican debates? well too bad if you did­n’t because this was one of the best com­e­dy shows I have seen in a long time.

There are only four men left in the run­ning, and by the way they are all white, not that it’s cru­cial­ly impor­tant to you but con­sid­er­ing that the coun­try has become so diverse I would have thought that the Republican Party would field a bet­ter non-white can­di­date than Herman Caine, but that’s just my opin­ion , you may have a dif­fer­ent view.

CANDIDATES

(1) Ron Paul:

This live­ly old­er gen­tle­man seem like a lov­able grand­fa­ther who speaks in cir­cles, he is wit­ty, fun­ny and real­ly has a great plat­form that res­onates with well with younger more ide­al­is­tic vot­ers, his chal­lenge is, is the sup­port he has enough to con­vince the Republican estab­lish­ment to adopt parts of his plat­form into the repub­li­can gen­er­al elec­tion plat­form? Dr. Paul a med­ical Doctor and con­gress­man from Texas real­ly is a lib­er­tar­i­an, he favors small gov­ern­ment and argues stri­dent­ly for indi­vid­ual rights, repub­li­cans for the record favors states rights not indi­vid­ual rights. The largest hand­i­cap to Paul’s break­ing through the glass ceil­ing in his par­ty, is his belief that America’s mil­i­tary should not be used in for­eign inter­ven­tions, he wants all wars end­ed and all of Americas ser­vice mem­bers abroad brought home. This does not res­onate well with The neo-cons in the repub­li­can party.

(2) Rick Santorum:

Rick Santorum two-time United States Senator from Pennsylvania is an ultra con­ser­v­a­tive who believes strong­ly in the pro­tec­tion of the state of Israel,he argues for a super pow­er­ful mil­i­tary and stat­ed unabashed­ly that he would not cut a pen­ny from the pen­tagon’s bud­get, even has he argues vocif­er­ous­ly for cuts in sec­tors that impacts the lives of the most vul­ner­a­ble amongst us. Santorum a devout Catholic is bull­ish on Immigration , he seem to talk him­self into rages of anger as he address­es the caus­es he believe in, one won­ders if Santorum’s total­i­tar­i­an all or noth­ing views, are not his great­est imped­i­ment to being tak­en seri­ous­ly, and by the way even though he claims he is a devout chris­t­ian Santorum is a liar, he cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly claimed he did not say black peo­ple while address­ing the top­ic of food stamps in Iowa, when there is ample video evi­dence that he did just what he says he did not do, I can under­stand a thief, I can always pro­tect my valu­ables from a thief , I absolute­ly can­not stand a liar.

(3)Newt Gingrich:

Newt Gingrich for­mer Republican con­gress­man from Georgia and speak­er of the House of Representatives for four years of the Clinton Presidency, a man wide­ly believed to be a gringe, and a sour-puss. Republican estab­lish­ment oper­a­tives believe Gingrich if nom­i­nat­ed by the Republican Party would be a train wreck for Republicans come November. Many believe if Gingrich is nom­i­nat­ed , not only will President Obama be returned to the White House, but it would be a dis­as­ter for down tick­et can­di­dates on the bal­lot all the way down to munic­i­pal­i­ties. Gingrich through­out his polit­i­cal car­rear has been bedev­iled with accu­sa­tions of infi­deli­ty and has even been accused to have served his wife with divorce papers whilst she was in a hos­pi­tal recu­per­at­ing from an ill­ness. Gingrich has vehe­ment­ly denied these accu­sa­tions, Gingrich has been mar­ried three times. In fair­ness to Newt it is not out of the ordi­nary for some­one to be mar­ried mul­ti­ple times, the dis­con­nect is not with the amount of times he was mar­ried but with the rea­sons for the three Marriages. There are oth­er bag­gage in Gingrich’s back­ground includ­ing his threats to lock down the Federal Government over bud­get talks with the Clinton White House, many argue that it was a ego­ma­ni­a­cal tem­pera­men­tal out­burst from Gingrich because he was not invit­ed by then President Clinton to the front of Air Force One nei­ther on the way to, or back from Israel where they attend­ed the funer­al of slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Gingrich had all but agreed that he was peev­ed at the President and as such decid­ed to pun­ish the whole coun­try because he was slight­ed. Gingrish was harsh­ly crit­i­cized bu many even in his own par­ty for being child­ish and petty.

(seat­tle sun​times​.com)

Gingrich is also accused of hypocrisy for per­se­cut­ing President Clinton for a sex­u­al dal­liance with White House Intern Monica Lewinsky while he was also cheat­ing on his wife. According to Marianne Gingrich Newt’s sec­ond wife when she brought up Gingrich’s hypocrisy to him, he report­ed­ly told her,” peo­ple should do as I says not as I do”. That air of supe­ri­or­i­ty has been a part of Gingrich’s per­sona to the point Santorum accused him of always being grandiose. In the end Gingrich was lit­er­al­ly ran out of the House of Representative by his own cau­cus over ethics vio­la­tions. His arch neme­sis Mitt Romney likes to remind every­one of the lat­ter on the cam­paign trail.

(4)Willard Mitt Romney

Then there is for­mer ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist and ex Massachuset Governor Mitt Romney. Mister Romney did very well for him­self in the busi­ness world, as a result he has pegged his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign on his expe­ri­ence and suc­cess­es in busi­ness, he brags that as a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist he has cre­at­ed over a hun­dred Thousand Jobs. The prob­lem with Mitt’s strat­e­gy is that experts are com­ing out of the wood-work explain­ing that what Romney did at Bain Capital, as a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist had every­thing to do with gut­ting busi­ness­es, tak­ing all Bain could get then forc­ing the com­pa­ny into bankruptcy,and noth­ing to do with job creation.Texas Governor and for­mer repub­li­can can­di­date char­ac­ter­ized what Romney did as quote ” vul­ture cap­i­tal­ism“end quote. inter­est­ing­ly enough Romney does not talk about his record as gov­er­nor of Massachuset one of the nation’s most lib­er­al states​.One won­ders whether Governor Romney feels the nation will sim­ply ignore that he is run­ning as a con­ser­v­a­tive after being the Governor of one of America’s most lib­er­al states. President Obama has repeat­ed­ly said his Federally man­dat­ed health-care plan was craft­ed from Governor Romney’s health plan in Massachuset. Romney has vehe­ment­ly argued that he would not have imposed his plan on the entire coun­try, whether this will gain trac­tion in a gen­er­al elec­tion I don’t know, what I do know is that it makes it increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult for Romney to draw a sharp enough con­trast between him­self and pres­i­dent Obama in an elec­tion year when the coun­try is deeply polar­ized and the repub­li­can par­ty has been pushed far to the right by the tea par­ty. Romney’s repub­li­can rivals for the nom­i­na­tion are not mak­ing it any eas­i­er for him, Santorum in par­tic­u­lar , has made it the cor­ner­stone of his attack on Romney. Santorum feels that soon­er or lat­er Newt Gingrich will implode and he will be seen as the con­ser­v­a­tive alter­na­tive to Gingrich, hence he con­tin­ues to plug away at the con­nec­tion between pres­i­dent Obama’s health planned dubbed Obama-care and Mitt Romney’s plan in Massachuset dubbed Romney-care.

CONCLUSION

While the pres­i­dent was criss­cross­ing the coun­try talk­ing to work­ers about income inequal­i­ty, and high­light­ing the inher­rent injus­tice in the tax code which has Warren Buffett pay­ing a low­er tax rate than his sec­re­tary, repub­li­can mega mil­lion­aire Mitt Romney Newt Gingrich and the rest of the repub­li­cans were argu­ing about who had mil­lions invest­ed in Fannie May and Freddie Mac, or who would have a colony of Americans liv­ing on the moon by 2020 ‚nev­er mind we are broke and bor­row­ing mon­ey from the Chinese to pay our bills.

President Obama has posi­tioned him­self as a cham­pi­on and a fight­er for the 99%, whether his fresh­ly pop­ulist mes­sage will res­onate with a pub­lic weary from a slug­gish econ­o­my, lay-offs, and for­clousures is yet to be decided,there are many events  which may beat Obama in the fall of 2012 , Europe melt­ing down, Israel attack­ing Iran, a ter­ror attack on the home­land, a major blun­der on Obama’s part and a pletho­ra of oth­er events. If none of the afore­men­tioned hap­pen, President Obama will be guar­an­teed anoth­er term in the white house if this is the best the repub­li­can par­ty can do.

What is it that makes so may repub­li­cans such racist repug­nant liars ? I am not say­ing that all peo­ple who vote for that par­ty are racists or indeed liars, but damn have you heard the things they say about President Obama? How do they feel that this path advances the his­to­ry or the integri­ty of America? The fact is this is exact­ly what they did to Dr. King in this coun­try, now every lying repub­li­can gets up on stage and invokes the name of Dr. the rev­erend Martin Luther King. In fact some of them vot­ed against a fed­er­al hol­i­day in hon­or of Dr. King.

It does seem to me that repub­li­cans are engaged in a race to the bot­tom, many Americans white and oth­ers read­i­ly agree and attest to the fact that slav­ery was an ugly blight on America, many read­i­ly agree that Jim Crowe was a shame­ful scar. People not stuck in the past who have the ben­e­fit of edu­ca­tion are ashamed of peo­ple like Bull O’Connor, George Wallace, and a pletho­ra of oth­er faces of the shame of America. I almost feel ashamed as a mem­ber of the human race for peo­ple like that woman in Florida who had this to say to Rick Santorum:

“I nev­er refer to Obama as ‘President Obama’ because legal­ly he is not,” the uniden­ti­fied woman told Santorum. “He con­stant­ly says that our Constitution is passé and he total­ly ignores it, as you know. He does what he darn well pleas­es. He is an avowed Muslim. And my ques­tion is, why isn’t some­thing being done to get him out of our gov­ern­ment? He has no legal right to be call­ing him­self President.”http://​www​.youtube​.com

Rick Santorum is irrel­e­vant and des­per­ate­ly look­ing for some trac­tion so when asked by Journalists why he did not cor­rect the woman he respond­ed thus.

“Why do you guys ask these ‘gotcha’ ques­tions, like it’s my job to go out and cor­rect every­body who says some­thing I don’t agree with?” Santorum said to reporters after the event. “I don’t think it’s my respon­si­bil­i­ty. Why don’t you go out and cor­rect her? It’s not my respon­si­bil­i­ty as a can­di­date to cor­rect every­body who makes a state­ment that I dis­agree with.”(abc​c​news​.com)

Here’s a fact for Santorum and that woman in Florida who claim the pres­i­dent is a mus­lim, Article 6 of the con­sti­tu­tion says that there shall be no reli­gious test for pub­lic office, and yes that includes the Presidency, and while we are at it , it is fun­da­men­tal­ly un-American for any­one to be dis­crim­i­nat­ed against because of their religion.

Prehistoric igno­rant relics of the past and their can­di­dates who take dead babies home and plays with the corpse, some sup­port priests who molest lit­tle boys and think it is ok as long as the Pope bless­es it. They must be stopped and the filthy ran­cid rhetoric they ped­dle shoved into their faces. They have the nerve to sug­gest that this pres­i­dent is divid­ing the coun­try with the pol­i­tics of envy, some nerve. When Barack Obama was elect­ed to the pres­i­den­cy he took with him a tor­rent of good will , as a result of the good will peo­ple felt towards Obama, they also gave the House and Senate to democ­rats. Not since Bill Clinton’s first term did democ­rats have such pow­er in Washington. if Barack Obama was a European style pres­i­dent as the talk­ing points of the repub­li­can par­ty sug­gest, would he not ram through his agen­da? For over a year Democrats con­trolled the House, Senate, and the Executive Branch, this pres­i­dent made repeat­ed over­tures to repub­li­cans to work with him to move the coun­ty for­ward. He did so to the extent that many in his own par­ty thought his lev­el of benev­o­lence and com­mit­ment to bi-par­ti­san­ship was anti­thet­i­cal to their objec­tives. Many in the pres­i­den­t’s base was mad as hell at him for what they con­strued to be weak­ness for his con­tin­ued over­tures to repub­li­cans. Time and again The pres­i­dent tried to work with house repub­li­cans only to have his over­tures rebuffed and his hand slapped away. I for one thought that his con­tin­ued attempts to work with repub­li­cans was weak­ness, and the pres­i­dent lost some of the belief I had in him. This I might add is the feel­ing of a lot of peo­ple I talk with.

President Obama deliv­er­ing the state of the Union Address/​Raleigh Telegraph photo:

One may not like the pol­i­tics of for­mer pres­i­dent George Bush, but he was decid­ed­ly focused on what he want­ed accom­plished , and democ­rats were not going to obstruct his agen­da. Americans like their pres­i­dent deci­sive , they attribute deci­sive­ness with strength, it may not nec­es­sar­i­ly be cor­rect but that is how we judge strength. In the end pres­i­dent Obama have been forced to use exec­u­tive orders to get any­thing done. This is exact­ly what the racist lunatic right want­ed from the begin­ning, they begun to label Obama as “oth­er” from the start, as they engaged on a cam­paign of obstruc­tion, prob­a­bly nev­er before seen in this coun­try. Many, prob­a­bly includ­ing the pres­i­dent would like to cov­er their eyes to the stark real­i­ties of the rea­son behind this assault.

RACE

What would com­pel chief Republican cur­mud­geon Mitch McConnell to say that his num­ber one pri­or­i­ty is to make the pres­i­dent a one term president?

What com­pels lunatic fringe nut wind-bag Rush Limbaugh to say he hopes the pres­i­dent fail?

I could go on and on detail­ing the rancid,vile and vit­ri­olic lan­guage that is a sta­ple of lit­er­al­ly all repub­li­cans when­ev­er they dis­agree with the pres­i­dent, but you get the pic­ture. These are peo­ple who claim to love their coun­try, they wrap them­selves in the flag and berate oth­ers with faux accu­sa­tions of not lov­ing America, yet they say they want the pres­i­dent to fail, these peo­ple are trai­tors , they are quite will­ing to see their coun­try destroyed because there is a black guy at the helm of the Executive branch of Government. There are oth­er cur­mud­geons , it is instruc­tive that the only black mem­ber of the supreme court, asso­ciate jus­tice Clarence Thomas does not see fit to attend a joint sit­ting of con­gress for the state of the nation address from the pres­i­dent of the United States.

Bush appointee Samuel Alito has aligned him­self square­ly on the side of the neo-cons on that body , a body where all Americans once felt they had a chance to get final and impar­tial jus­tice. This group now con­sist of Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas. To his cred­it Chief Justice Roberts irre­spec­tive of his pol­i­tics have cho­sen not to play those games. One would have thought that Someone like Mitch McConnell’s job would have been to serve the peo­ple of the state of Kentucky and the nation and not to set­tle pri­vate hatred or to indulge in spite­ful tit for tat ini­ti­at­ed by the right-wing fringe.

I can under­stand Tim Thomas goalie of the NHL’s Boston Bruins, or NASCAR’S Greg Biffle and Tony Stewart crass­ness in not turn­ing up to the white House to be con­grat­u­lat­ed by President Obama. This is to be expect­ed from those two sports, any­one sur­prised by that is divorced from real­i­ty in America. The tra­di­tion of sports stars get­ting invit­ed to the White House to be con­grat­u­lat­ed by the sit­ting pres­i­dent is a time-hon­ored tra­di­tion, mem­bers of sports teams are usu­al­ly thrilled to get invit­ed to the white House to be con­grat­u­lat­ed by the pres­i­dent, irre­spec­tive of their pol­i­tics. It’s respect for the pres­i­den­cy, its respect for the pres­i­dent. Opting out demon­strates a gut­ter coarse­ness that is rem­i­nis­cent of what would have been expect­ed of the peri­od between slav­ery and the 1960’s.

What I can­not under­stand is the dis­re­spect and lack of civil­i­ty of the likes of Colorado Republican rep­re­sen­ta­tive Doug Lamborn who did not show up for the state of the Nation address by pres­i­dent Obama. As I point to these repub­li­can hacks who will inevitably be mere igno­ble foot­notes in his­to­ry, I must piv­ot and use this oppur­tu­ni­ty to segue and pay my respects to Arizona Democratic con­gress-woman Gabrielle Gifford, a tru­ly patri­ot­ic America who turned up to lis­ten to the coun­try’s chief exec­u­tive tell the coun­try about the state of affairs and where he intends to take the country.

See more here: (abc​news​.com)

The brave and indomitable Gabrielle Gifford.

Congress-woman Gifford was crit­i­cal­ly wound­ed when an assailant shot her as she attend a meet and greet in her district.Several peo­ple were killed and injured in that assault and even though crit­i­cal­ly wound­ed from a bul­let to her head Mrs Gifford fought her way back and valiant­ly showed that she would not be defeat­ed by ter­ror. A true American hero if ever there was one.

SUCCESS AFTER SUCCESS

Pompous self-aggran­diz­ing Newt Gingrich and flip-flop­ping liar Mitt Romney trot from state telling repub­li­can pri­ma­ry vot­ers that when the pres­i­dent talks about fair­ness in the income tax struc­ture in this coun­try he is actu­al­ly engag­ing in class war­fare. This is irony of the worst kind, because repub­li­cans are the par­ty that is locked in a strug­gle with the White House over not rais­ing tax­es on aver­age mid­dle class and work­ing Americans,but refus­es even to approach the table to dis­cuss repeal­ing Bush-era tax cuts for mil­lion­aires and bil­lion­aires. If ever there was class war­fare in this coun­try this is it, the arro­gance of repub­li­cans and those who pay to put them in pow­er to take care of their inter­ests and the insult­ing notion that if we con­tin­ue to make the super rich even more rich we will all be bet­ter from the crumbs that fall off their tables. The fact is it has been tried since Nixon to Reagan to Bush and still we have not seen where that works, the truth is the reverse is true the poor gets poor­er and the rich gets rich­er. Experts declare there are over two tril­lion dol­lars in the hands of rich busi­ness peo­ple, yet we do not see them rush­ing to hire, so that peo­ple’s lives can be bet­ter in this coun­try. con­verse­ly when we put mon­ey into the hands of aver­age peo­ple they go out and spend that mon­ey , it cre­ates jobs, brings more mon­ey into the trea­sury, and invari­ably finds its way back to the top as it always does. That’s the way to empow­er peo­ple not to make them beg­gars wait­ing for crumbs from the tables of the rich.

While the repub­li­can machine was gear­ing up to dis­re­spect where they should dis­agree if war­rant­ed, the pres­i­dent of the United States was issu­ing orders to US Navy seal team 6 to go res­cue two Americans held for ran­som in Somalia by pirates. Navy seal team 6 is report­ed­ly the same élite team of seals who elim­i­nat­ed Osama Bin Laden. We give the Seals the great­est respect they deserve and as pres­i­dent Obama says his detrac­tors should learn from these heroes on how to work togeth­er to build America. Republican can­di­dates run­ning for pres­i­dent and the sur­ro­gates who appear on cable tele­vi­sion par­rot­ing the lies they adopt as talk­ing points does­n’t even have the integri­ty to give cred­it where cred­it is due, do they think that all Americans are total­ly stupid/​Do they not know that despite a strug­gling econ­o­my peo­ple are cog­nizant of the fact that Osama Bin Laden is dead: most of Al Qaeda’s top oper­a­tives are dead: Libya is lib­er­at­ed with­out one American life lost: three mil­lion jobs cre­at­ed and the econ­o­my pulled back from the brink of the precipice: General motors and Chrysler saved from bank­rupt­cy and returned to prof­itabil­i­ty after just 3 years , con­trary to what Mitt Romney Vulture Capitalist said should be done: Romney said they should be allowed to go into bank­rupt­cy. Never mind the total destruc­tion that would have been wrought on state economies. The list of accom­plish­ments of this pres­i­dent is aston­ish­ing­ly incred­i­ble con­sid­er­ing that he is work­ing with a racial­ly obstruc­tion­ist congress.

WHERE IS THE REPUBLICAN PARTY GOING?

It’s impos­si­ble to see what the strat­e­gy is for the repub­li­can par­ty going forward,they have repeat­ed­ly dis­re­spect­ed black peo­ple and as a con­se­quence they have lit­er­al­ly giv­en up on win­ning any sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the black vote. To his cred­it Former President Bush our 44^th President made over­tures to the African-American com­mu­ni­ty as well as the Hispanic com­mu­ni­ty, this was not fol­lowed upon or encour­aged by his par­ty after he demit­ted office. With the excep­tion of a few uncle tom self hat­ing blacks there real­ly is no black sup­port for repub­li­can can­di­dates that would make much of a dif­fer­ence. Newt Gingrich famous­ly stat­ed that Spanish is the lan­guage of the ghet­to, he is now try­ing to woo lati­no vot­ers in the state of Florida, he should find it an uphill bat­tle with Puerto Ricans liv­ing in that state, but it will prob­a­bly be a wash tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion the Cuban-American pop­u­la­tion in Florida that gner­al­ly align itself with Republicans. Recent indi­ca­tions how­ev­er indi­cate that there are sig­nif­i­cant shifts in the lati­no vote in Florida as there is a size­able influx of more demo­c­ra­t­ic lean­ing Puerto Ricans and oth­er lati­no immi­grants from oth­er coun­tries. see sto­ry here: (huff​in​g​ton​post​.com)

Mitt Romney has stat­ed stri­dent­ly he would veto the dream act if he is elect­ed pres­i­dent. The dream act if passed would have allowed chil­dren of immi­grants who entered the coun­try ille­gal­ly with them as babies to go to school and become assim­i­lat­ed into American soci­ety. Despite the fact that these chil­dren could not seri­ous­ly be pun­ished by any­one with an iota of brain-cell in their cra­ni­um, repub­li­cans call it amnesty and has stead­fast­ly refused to sup­port this piece of com­mon sense leg­is­la­tion. As com­mon sense as this bit of leg­is­la­tion is, there is an even big­ger issue which will deve­l­ope into a seri­ous and unten­able prob­lem as time pro­gress­es. Children who are not able to go school to get the edu­ca­tion they need,so that they may live out their God giv­en tal­ents will be angry. they will be angry because the only coun­try they have ever known has dis­tinct­ly said to them we do not want you here , we do not want you in our schools, and we do not care about you. these will be some very angry peo­ple who will invari­ably feel that their lives have been severe­ly ham­pered, America will have a prob­lem with these peo­ple and bet­ter be pre­pared for the con­se­quences. Dogma and ide­ol­o­gy can­not be that impor­tant that it elim­i­nates intel­li­gent dis­course, or lim­its com­mon sense deci­sions. If America has learned any­thing it should be that America got great because of it’s immi­grant com­mu­ni­ty, it’s diver­si­ty, and it’s con­stant stream of fresh ener­getic crop of hard work­ing immi­grants enter­ing it’s shores, not despite it. President Obama made that absoloute­ly clear in his recent state of the union speech. As a River becomes a rag­ing infer­no from the mul­tutide of trib­u­taries and streams that dumps into it, so does America con­tin­ue to grow from the con­stant infu­sion of tal­ent , intel­lect, and ener­gy. Given a chance repub­li­cans would build a wall around America close her ports to all but white peo­ple and take America back to the dark ages of slav­ery. they ought to be ashamed of themselves. 

Where are the Colin Powel’s and the Chuck Hagels , where is even John Mc Cain who told that woman “no maam, no maam he is a decent fam­i­ly man, cit­i­zen we just have dis­agree­ments ?(youtube​.com)

Yesterday I told you the truth about (JEEP) the crash pro­gramme acronym the Government of Jamaica rode to pow­er on December 29^th of 2011.

Today we learn there is a prob­lem with the design of JEEP, in that the Labor Party now say the blue print for the pro­gramme was theirs.

According to Samuda, the Ministry of Finance had ini­ti­at­ed a loan from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), fol­low­ing upon which a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing was signed on December 5 last year by the Ministry of Transport and Works, National Works Agency (NWA) and the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) to imple­ment a com­pre­hen­sive road main­te­nance pro­gramme on the north­ern coastal high­way from Negril to Port Antonio.“Participating in the sign­ing were the then min­is­ter of trans­port and works, Shahine Robinson; the act­ing head of NSWMA, Colonel Allan Douglas; and Earl Patterson, [act­ing] CEO of the NWA,” Samuda said..jamaicaob​serv​er​.com.

It this sto­ry is true and from all indi­ca­tions it is, then the Jamaican peo­ple just got duped. I am not sure what the impact this pro­gramme will have on the coun­try’s unem­ploy­ment, what I do know is that the longer this pro­gramme lasts the worse off the coun­try will be. There are indi­ca­tions the Government wants this hand­out pro­gramme to run for two years , it is imper­a­tive that the gov­ern­ment lay out with speci­fici­ty what the cost will be before one gul­ly is bushed or one drain cleaned. It is impor­tant that the peo­ple are aware of how much in the hole they will be for this with noth­ing tan­gi­ble to show for it.

The clean­ing of drains,or the removal of growth from gul­lies should be either addressed with resources in the sol­id waste bud­get, or should be done with a set-asides, which deals specif­i­cal­ly with those func­tions. Those func­tions are impor­tant for secu­ri­ty rea­sons, as well as pro­tec­tion of the envi­ron­ment. However as impor­tant as they are those func­tions can­not be paid for with bor­rowed money.

How will this Government square what is a trans­par­ent act of pork bar­rel give-away with lend­ing insti­tu­tions which will stri­dent­ly demand cuts in the pub­lic sec­tor in order that the coun­try may qual­i­fy for loans? I warned that this par­ty was not a changed par­ty, I warned they had no new ideas, what they were obsessed with was attain­ing pow­er. If this is the best this par­ty has to offer the coun­try then Jamaica is in for a seri­ous time going for­ward. The tragedy in all of this many as can be seen from the blog posts feel that this is a net pos­i­tive for the coun­try, of course most of our peo­ple are inher­ent­ly inca­pable of mak­ing informed deci­sions with­out the dis­tor­tion of polit­i­cal taint.

Countries that want to be sol­vent must oper­ate like well run busi­ness­es and homes, most busi­ness­es and fam­i­lies are not allowed to car­ry deficits. If the electricity,water cable, or phone is not paid for it gets turned off. The same rules should apply to gov­ern­ment, I am not advo­cat­ing turn­ing out the lights , but gov­ern­ments should live with­in their means. If one con­tin­ue to throw mon­ey into projects which yield no returns on those invest­ments it’s just a mat­ter of time before he runs out of mon­ey. This is as sim­plis­tic as it gets, do not throw bor­rowed mon­ey away doing what ought to have been done with nor­mal resources from reg­u­lar taxation.

The PNP clear­ly had no plan to run on with the excep­tion of the Emergency Employment Programme. The ques­tion is ‚if as the Labor par­ty stat­ed it was their plan all along and that the fund­ing for it would have come from the (IDB) bor­rowed mon­ey , but not mon­ey siphoned from Infrastructural devel­ope­ment, why did the for­mer Government not acti­vate the plan? Whether this fias­co was dreamed up by the JLP,or the PNP is imma­te­r­i­al it does not mat­ter. Whether it was dreamed up to get votes,ease the unem­ploy­ment prob­lem, or as we have seen thus far, pay­ment to be doled out by politi­cians to par­ty hacks, it will be one more nail in the cof­fin of our coun­try that will sell us down the destruc­tive path of servi­tude to the resur­gent Chinese.

Jamaica’s new­ly elect­ed Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller told that coun­try she is ready to launch cer­tain aspects of the Jamaica Emergency employ­ment Programme (JEEP) .Miller rode to vic­to­ry on the promise she would be using this pro­gramme much vaunt­ed by her par­ty, to pro­duce jobs for unem­ployed peo­ple in the coun­try. Simpson Miller address­ing mem­bers of the exec­u­tive coun­cil of her par­ty told them that she would like­ly launch cer­tain aspects of the pro­gramme on Wednesday of this week.

Simpson Miller Azan: MP’s to select JEEP employ­ees. Jamaicagleaner​.com

Miller went on to say that the roll out would like­ly see 700 hun­dred jobs cre­at­ed over sev­en parish­es that’s 100 jobs per parish.

What is the cri­te­ria that will be the qual­i­fi­er for secur­ing those jobs?

What kinds of jobs will they be?

Will the jobs, irre­spec­tive of kind or qual­i­ty, be doled out to par­ty hacks?

One hun­dred jobs per parish will not ease the chron­ic unem­ploy­ment in the coun­try, it is how­ev­er a step in the right direc­tion. The source of my wor­ries is not with how many jobs will be cre­at­ed, or who will get those jobs, impor­tant though those two con­sid­er­a­tions are.

HERE’S THE PROBLEM:

In January, the Government held talks with China regard­ing re-direct­ing mon­ey from funds loaned for the Jamaica Development Infrastructure Programme towards JEEP .

This is astound­ing in my esti­ma­tion, it is arguable a bad pol­i­cy that Jamaica have been pur­su­ing when it decid­ed to bor­row mon­ey from China as part of its devel­ope­ment goals, the fact is China is awash with cash and as part of any loan guar­an­tee demands that coun­tries bor­row­ing its mon­ey actu­al­ly use some chi­nese work­ers on projects in order to put Chinese work­ers to work. This is sound pol­i­cy for China , it lends mon­ey, col­lects inter­est on its mon­ey, and puts its work­ers to work, it is a win , win for China. There is real­ly not a lot of choice in this regard as unpalat­able as it is for Jamaica as it is for oth­er coun­tries like the United States. The Chinese have the cash and we need money.

AS BAD AS IT IS THOUGH

: As bad as bor­row­ing mon­ey from the Chinese and employ­ing their nation­als is, it is par­tic­u­lar­ly alarm­ing to me that now these funds will be mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed from doing tan­gi­ble infra­struc­tur­al work that will be part of the cat­a­lyst that must pro­pel Jamaica into the first world. Let me say this, this is clear and unequiv­o­cal crash pro­gramme dis­guised as some­thing else, it will be dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly giv­en to PNP sup­port­ers as pay­ment for their vote, and to buy vote for future elec­tions, this is vin­tage PNP strat­e­gy, this JEEP pro­gramme is dif­fer­ent in that we will have used the Chinese’ mon­ey we will have noth­ing to show for it , no roads no bridges, and we will be slaves to them for this money.

The coun­try’s Transport and works Minister Richard Azan revealed that Members of Parliament will play what he called an inte­gral part in select­ing employ­ees of (JEEP). Are you kid­ding me? I have been warn­ing long before the elec­tions of 2011 that Miller has no under­stand­ing of how a mar­ket econ­o­my works , she under­stands very lit­tle about what is required to pre­pare the coun­try for the 21^st cen­tu­ry , as such it would be impos­si­ble for her to come up with ideas or strate­gies which would pro­pel the coun­try into the 21^st cen­tu­ry. Miller under­stands the pol­i­tics of the 70’s, patron­age pol­i­tics, gar­ri­son pol­i­tics, nepo­tism, (her fam­i­ly mem­bers in her cab­i­net) she can­not help her­self that is who she is, the only prob­lem is that her time has come and gone. I stat­ed in no uncer­tain terms that this much hyped JEEP would be noth­ing more than a return of crash pro­gramme, as an Elementary school stu­dent in the 70’s, I was a wit­ness to his­to­ry, I saw the Armies of PNP sup­port­ers sit­ting on walls, rid­ing around on motor­cy­cles, and lean­ing on brooms, wait­ing for their cheques for doing noth­ing . Manley bank­rupt­ed the coun­try with this mon­ey give-away to PNP sup­port­ers .Miller is here to fin­ish the destruction.

CRASH PROGRAMME WORK CAN NEVER BE THE SOLUTION TO OUR COUNTRY’S DILEMA, IT IS PAYMENT FOR VOTES PLAIN AND SIMPLE.

As I point­ed out on many occa­sions in these blogs this is what Portia Simpson Miller was up to, it was what she cam­paigned on , it is pol­i­tics at its most base, most crass and most parochial. It wa designed to pay for votes, it is not a seri­ous attempt at job cre­ation, it is a bud­get bust­ing give-away. Money in JDIP will even­tu­al­ly run out, after all it is not an infi­nite source, bor­row­ing to build and repair infra­struc­ture is some­thing we can live with. Infrastructure built and main­tained is an asset, Politicians dol­ing out bor­rowed mon­ey to par­ty hacks as pay­ment for vot­ing for them is the most despi­ca­ble act the Miller Government could vis­it on the Jamaican peo­ple. Those who vot­ed for this gov­ern­ment are not fools, many peo­ple are hun­gry or with­out jobs. To some­one with­out a job or food on the tables it is rather appeal­ing when some­one promis­es the prospect of a job. This approach how­ev­er is an affront and a slap in the face of Jamaicans. On the face of it there seem to be legit­i­ma­cy how­ev­er when looked at in a his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive there is a les­son all of us must have learned from the mis­takes of the past . Those who for­get the mis­takes they made are bound to repeat them.

Portia Simpson Miller have had 4 years after her par­ty lost to the labor par­ty to avail her­self to the real­i­ties of the 21^st cen­tu­ry, crash pro­gramme hand­outs and “shar­ing man­goes with the rest of the world” can­not be the path for­ward for Jamaica. We live in the age of infor­ma­tion tech­nolo­gies , math and sci­ence must be in the fore­front of what we teach in our schools and uni­ver­si­ties. If our young peo­ple are going to com­pete in the world polit­i­cal lead­ers must under­stand that our peo­ple must be edu­cat­ed and pre­pared for the jobs in com­put­er engi­neer­ing, research,and writ­ing soft­ware programmes.

If the monies to be used for JEEP was not bor­rowed mon­ey I would still have prob­lem with the return of this pro­gramme to Jamaica . It is an affront and an insult to the intel­li­gence of all Jamaicans, and is noth­ing more than a cheap insult­ing abuse of the Jamaican peo­ple by cor­rupt manip­u­la­tive politi­cians who take the Jamaican peo­ple for absolute fools.

The Republican pri­maries are on in earnest, the only woman who entered the pri­maries exit­ed after a dis­mal show­ing in the Iowa cau­cus­es, Iowa of course is the state in which she was born. I always won­dered about Michelle Bachman and her iron-lady approach but I’ll come back to her lat­er .It seem that after all of the can­di­dates have had their brief romance with repub­li­can pri­ma­ry vot­ers the field is down to Romney , Santorum, Paul, and to a less­er extent Gingrich , the lat­ter is now wag­ing a kamikaze cam­paign against Romney for his neg­a­tive ads against Gingrich in Iowa, which lit­er­al­ly knocked him out of con­tention for the Republican nom­i­na­tion . Gingrich pret­ty much knows he can­not win the nom­i­na­tion but seem quite will­ing to go down in flames , tak­ing Willard Mitt Romney with him.

I pre­dict­ed the implo­sion of Herman Caine long before he actu­al­ly implod­ed and point­ed to the rea­sons he would implode, the truth of the mat­ter is that repub­li­cans can­not stom­ach pow­er­ful black peo­ple, yes „ yes I know , what are you talk­ing about? the last repub­li­can admin­is­tra­tion had pow­er­ful black peo­ple , remem­ber Powell and Rice? Yes I remem­ber Powell and Rice very well , Powell was shut out of Bush’s inner cir­cle and lit­er­al­ly lost the President’s ear for the greater part of his tenure as Secretary of state. Dick Cheney won that tus­sle, Powell lost most of the lus­ter and shine he had as the sole mem­ber of Bush’s admin­is­tra­tion who could gar­ner any respect in the world when he told the United Nationsthat Iraq had weapons of mass destruc­tion, and that the Iraqi’s were oper­at­ing mobile labs which they moved from place to place to avoid detec­tion . Powell’s grave brief­ing came replete with maps and graphs detail­ing how the Iraqis were deceiv­ing the world while at the same time were in pos­ses­sion of weapons that could result in a mush­room cloud. Wooooo I shud­der just think­ing about it , well we all know those were fig­ments of the imag­i­na­tion of the hawks in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion who want­ed war at all cost and would not be stopped in their drum­beat and march to war with the peo­ple of Iraq. lat­er as that lie unrav­elled the nar­ra­tive became one of Régime change. Those out­right lies and dis­tor­tions has cost America count­less bil­lions in trea­sure, thou­sands of ser­vice men and women killed and maimed and noth­ing to show for it, make no men­tion of the hun­dreds of thou­sands of Iraqis who were killed for no oth­er rea­son oth­er than they were liv­ing in their own coun­try. The nar­ra­tive is now that the Iraqi peo­ple were lib­er­at­ed and are bet­ter now that Saddam Hussein their pres­i­dent who was hanged, is gone. Never mind that the Iraqi peo­ple nev­er asked for help in remov­ing their sup­posed despot­ic leader.Dick Cheney in his book lam­pooned both Powell and Rice with a kind of dis­re­spect that one would expect to hear lev­eled at a Democrat, in his book Dick Cheney for­got all about Ronald Reagan’s 11^th com­mand­ment , “nev­er speak ill of anoth­er repub­li­can” oth­er so-called black repub­li­cans have been treat­ed hard­ly any bet­ter Michael Steele was boot­ed as head of the Republican National com­mit­tee imme­di­ate­ly his par­ty won back the House from democ­rats in 2010.

Powell

But I am not here to talk about black repub­li­cans and their fol­lies today, what I real­ly want to talk about are the repub­li­can can­di­dates. I must say that even though I am repulsed by Republicans, and I have no stom­ach for Democrats , I do admire Ron Paul for his lib­er­tar­i­an phi­los­o­phy. I too believe in small gov­ern­ment, and less or no mil­i­tary inter­ven­tions in for­eign lands,I am not sure of some of the peo­ple who sup­port Doctor Paul who seem to believe in seg­re­ga­tion, in fair­ness Dr. Paul stood up at the debate sat­ur­day night January 7^th and declared Dr. King and Rosa Parks to be his heroes for stand­ing up to seg­re­ga­tion, none of the oth­er jok­ers stand­ing on the stage offered a sin­gle word in sup­port of Paul’s full-throat­ed dec­la­ra­tion of love for Dr. King, and Rosa Parks. Whether Dr. Paul’s state­ments reflect­ed an epiphany or reflect­ed a depar­ture from views he orig­i­nal­ly held is imma­te­r­i­al in my view. The fact that he had the con­vic­tion of char­ac­ter to make that state­ment in that forum I thought was a coura­geous act.

Paul

Of course Ron Paul’s com­ments came while the newest dar­ling of repub­li­can pri­ma­ry vot­ers Rick Sontorumhas deter­mined that he would get noticed that he would dis­re­spect African-Americans as much as pos­si­ble if that is what it takes to get noticed by the nut jobs on the right. Santorum clear­ly said in rela­tion to wel­fare at a lily-white event in Iowa “I don’t to make black peo­ple’s lives bet­ter by giv­ing them oth­er peo­ple’s mon­ey , I wan­na give them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to go out and make their own mon­ey”. Never mind that 84% of wel­fare recip­i­ents in the state of Iowa are white, and Santorum was­n’t even asked about black peo­ple.http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​v​=​y​Y​S​P​q​s​V​R​M​t​g​&​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​=​p​l​a​y​e​r​_​d​e​t​a​i​l​p​age

Sontorum

Quite the oppo­site to Ron Paul’s brav­ery , Santorumlied out­right about being caught between two sen­tences, two thoughts, two words,he said quote I have watched the tape and I am quite sure I nev­er said black ‚no one in the room heard me say black peo­ple ‚end quote. As a for­mer detec­tive I tell my wife all the time that the best way to get real truth­ful infor­ma­tion from crim­i­nals is to let the perp speak with as lit­tle inter­rup­tion as pos­si­ble from the inter­view­er, crim­i­nals will tell on them­selves giv­en a chance. Even if we allow lying Santorum to con­vince us that he was caught between thoughts , why would black be in his thoughts at the time the issue of wel­fare come up? The truth is that is their nar­ra­tive, they found out dur­ing the Clinton years and Newt Gingrich’s con­tract on America that the bulk of wel­fare recip­i­ents were actu­al­ly white mid­dle age women, despite this hate mon­gers like Santorum and oth­ers con­tin­ue to wage this cam­paign of false­hood and lies.I have watched and list­ed to the tape over and over and over numer­ous times and the only thing I came away with is how could Santorum come away from watch­ing this tape and claim that he did not say black peo­ple. He revealed him­self to be noth­ing more than a despi­ca­ble racist liar. Maybe vot­ers should take a clos­er look at this freak fringe can­di­date who wants to wage war on oth­er coun­tries, take away a wom­ans right to choose , dis­crim­i­nate against gays and les­bians, and give away cor­po­rate wel­fare to the filthy rich and large cor­po­ra­tions. This guy is not only dan­ger­ous but freakish.

Most of us have respect admi­ra­tion and love for women , we cheer when women accom­plish feats that were once thought to be only achiev­able by men, we love them , they are our wives, girl­friends, sis­ters, mothers,aunts , teach­ers and our nurs­es, we love them because they com­fort us, we have grown accus­tomed to her lov­ing ten­der care , but we also make the grave mis­take in believ­ing that they would take that car­ing ten­der touch to lead­er­ship posi­tions in pol­i­tics or busi­ness. Many have felt the hands of a female boss­es and have no such mis­con­cep­tion. Michelle Bachman it appeared, felt that she should launch a cam­paign of dis­re­spect against President Obama from day one of the pres­i­den­t’s term, her approach was to refer to the pres­i­dent as Barack Obama no men­tion of the title “President“Even the most ardent haters of for­mer pres­i­dent Bush acknowl­edged him as pres­i­dent. This approach by Bachman served as a tem­plate for the rest of repub­li­can whack jobs when refer­ring to the pres­i­dent not to refer to him as President Obama, but as sim­ply Barack Obama. Make no mis­take that dis­re­spect­ful approach is anoth­er in the series of acts aimed at de legit­imiz­ing the pres­i­dent which fol­lowed the failed brither débâ­cle which revealed pro­po­nents as igno­rant racist neanderthals.

It is com­mon now even for mem­bers of the media, except when they are report­ing the news to sum­mar­i­ly refer to the pres­i­dent as sim­ply Barack Obama, the com­man­der-in-chief of the most pow­er­ful nation pos­si­bly in the his­to­ry of this plan­et, gets no respect. yet any small town may­or is duly ref­ered to as may­or fol­lowed by his or her name, even an alleged racist sher­iff from Arizona is giv­en mas­sive air­time and addressed by his title even though he is under fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tions for all kinds of breech of con­duct vio­la­tions as it relates to detainees and how they are appre­hend­ed and incarcerated.

Bachman

Willard Romney the can­di­date that says any­thing what each crowd or inter­view­er wants to hear said recent­ly , “We have been fight­ing over the last three years to make sure that this pres­i­dent does not get to enact his agen­da”. This is in line with Mitch McConnell’s state­ment that his pri­ma­ry func­tion is to ensure that pres­i­dent Obama is a one term pres­i­dent, the grand poo­ba of repub­li­can , wind-bag Rush Limbaugh said at the onset of pres­i­dent Obama’s term he hopes the pres­i­dent fails, nev­er mind that if the pres­i­dent fails the coun­try fails, how does repub­li­cans who pre­tend to have a monop­oly on patri­o­tism explain these dia­met­ri­cal­ly oppos­ing posi­tions. The real prob­lem with the com­ments of snake oil sales­man Mit Romney is that he stat­ed cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that he and oth­ers have been fight­ing to ensure that the pres­i­den­t’s agen­da does not get enact­ed, refer­ring to John Huntsman being in China car­ry­ing out the agen­da of the Obama admin­is­tra­tion. I have just one ques­tion regard­ing this state­ment , was­n’t the pres­i­dent elect­ed to exact­ly enact the agen­da he put for­ward to the American peo­ple? If the answer is yes, whose inter­est does Mit Romney rep­re­sent if he does not want the agen­da of the vast major­i­ty of the American peo­ple who elect­ed Barack Obama enacted?

With The first pri­ma­ry of the sea­son com­ing up Tuesday January 10^th in the Granite State of New Hampshire and South Carolina fast approach­ing it seem there is hard­ly any com­pe­ti­tion left for Willard Mitt Romney. Romney has been run­ning for President for the last 6 years, he has lots of mon­ey , and his super pacs are spend­ing mil­lions more with­out Romney hav­ing to declare where the mon­ey is com­ing from. In all fair­ness democ­rats pres­i­dent Obama also have super pacs that rais­es and spend mon­ey on his behalf.

Romney

Mitt Romney has been able to assail pres­i­dent Obama’s record with­out any push­back from the lily liv­er­ied demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty that has stead­fast­ly refused to stand with this President. The media for its part has been com­plic­it in let­ting Romney get away with not tak­ing ques­tions from the press, and not ask­ing ques­tions of him that are mean­ing­ful on the rare occa­sions they have a chance to ques­tion him. He has been allowed to con­tin­ue to recite the same tired old attack lines against the pres­i­dent , cliché after cliché with­out being forced to defend the myr­i­ad flip-flops he has done on lit­er­al­ly every issue, one moment he is on record for a wom­an’s right to choose the next he is pro-choice, one moment he is for civ­il unions, the next moment he is not. For this guy it sim­ply is a mat­ter of where he is and to whom he speaks. He is like liq­uid , he takes the shape of what­ev­er con­tain­er he is poured into. Is that what America wants in her President?

It will be inter­est­ing to see what the win­ner of this car­ni­val will run on as the econ­o­my is rebounds, because as sure as night fol­lows day they dare not open their mouths about for­eign pol­i­cy with this pres­i­dent. I am just not sure hatred of Barack Obama and obstruc­tion­ist tac­tics will be enough to win for Republicans.

Below are two excerpts from the man­i­festos of the Jamaica Labor par­ty and the People’s National Party of Jamaica as usu­al we choose to show you the evi­dence tell you what we think , but we also under­stand that you are much smarter and much more capa­ble of assess­ing the infor­ma­tion, and inform­ing your­selves. This infor­ma­tion mas made pos­si­ble by the Jamaica Observer​.com.

THE JLP ON CRIME

One can­not fix what one does not under­stand to be a prob­lem. Jamaica’s People’s National Party as a par­ty nev­er ful­ly under­stood the con­cept of free mar­ket . They built their par­ty on pop­ulism and the charis­ma of their leaders.

The prob­lem with the People’s National Party is not that they do not mean well, it’s not that they do not care, the prob­lem is the method­olo­gies they employ in their stat­ed quest to improve the lives of Jamaicans actu­al­ly has kept the poor­est peo­ple enslaved in their own pover­ty. I was not around at the time of Norman Manley , but my curios­i­ty about his­to­ry has revealed the true nature of Manley’s con­tri­bu­tion to Jamaica and the pop­ulism he used to deliv­er said ben­e­fits. Norman Manley’s pop­u­lar­i­ty and pop­ulism and that of his son Michael gave birth to an almost cult-like genre of the Jamaican pop­u­la­tion that per­sists to this day despite the PNP’s short-com­ings, and cor­rup­tion over the last three decades. One could rea­son­ably argue that the cult-like loy­al­ty the most­ly poor­er under­class have for the PNP , some­thing the Jamaica Labor Party can only dream of , is anchored large­ly in their inabil­i­ty to under­stand that real change in their lives will come only through hard-work, sac­ri­fice, and nation­al pride. National pride by the way does not mean wear­ing com­mu­nist red, salut­ing with clenched fist, or from those who run around call­ing each oth­er com­rade but has nev­er read a line of Lenin or Marx’s phi­los­o­phy. Today​.Today despite the fall of the Berlin Wall result­ing in the reuni­fi­ca­tion of an impov­er­ished com­mu­nist East Germany with a thriv­ing West Germany over two decades lat­er, the breakup of the for­mer Soviet empire, and the death of com­mu­nism as an organ of empow­er­ment, the PNP is still stuck advo­cat­ing the same regres­sive com­mu­nal poli­cies that caused those occur­rences in these larg­er geo­graph­ic loca­tions in the first place, poli­cies they have since dis­card­ed and are now rac­ing to catch up with the rest of the indus­tri­al­ized world which opt­ed for free mar­ket pol­i­cy, trust­ing in the inge­nu­ity of their peo­ple to dri­ve growth and devel­op­ment through their God-giv­en talents.

Miller

The People’s National Party President Portia Simpson Miller recent­ly chid­ed Prime Minister Andrew Holness for stat­ing that Government real­ly can­not be the prime cre­ator of jobs.This crit­i­cism ought to have been a warn­ing to an informed pop­u­lace that this per­son may mean well but lacks a basic under­stand­ing of what real­ly is required to change the dynam­ics in the coun­try , which will in turn affect their lives in a pos­i­tive way. Alas Jamaica does not have an informed pop­u­la­tion, what we have is a deeply dived peo­ple who bleed red/​orange or green when they are cut. Government’s job is to pro­vide a safe envi­ron­ment, that includes ade­quate infra­struc­ture which in turn gives peo­ple a chance to get the edu­ca­tion they need in the field of their choice to bet­ter their lives. How can gov­ern­ment which does earn rev­enue large­ly through tax­a­tion be the engine that dri­ves sus­tain­able job cre­ation or growth? Unfortunately the PNP is still enshrined in the socialist/​communist dog­ma that is embraced by only North Korea , even Cuba is look­ing to move to a mar­ket econ­o­my. Portia talks about China , brag­ging that the PNP embraced China when it was not pop­u­lar to do so , well the truth of the mat­ter is that the PNP did not embrace China for it’s now diver­si­fied cap­i­tal­ist eco­nom­ic push , they embraced China on ide­o­log­i­cal grounds . Holness missed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to dri­ve this fact home, chalk that up to his youth. In the 21^st cen­tu­ry the PNP is still refer­ring to them­selves as com­rades, that train has long left the sta­tion the only ones who has­n’t real­ized this is them.

As I have allud­ed to in these blogs time and again when asked what her pri­or­i­ty would be if elect­ed Prime Minister Miller stat­ed that she would endeav­or to col­lect man­goes that we can­not eat,process them,eat what we can and share the remain­der with the rest of the world . a sup­port­er of Miller famous­ly stat­ed in a blog that Miller is respect­ed and loved all around the world . I thought about that claim as I remind­ed myself that in the same way coun­tries do not share friend­ships they share com­mon inter­ests, women laud each oth­er com­pli­ment each other,celebrate each oth­er, praise each oth­er, claim to sup­port each oth­er for no oth­er rea­son but that they are women. On the world stage polit­i­cal lead­ers tol­er­ate each oth­er. In an appar­ent open mike foul up recent­ly at a gath­er­ing of world lead­ers, French President Nicholas Sarkozy report­ed­ly told President Obama he could­n’t stand Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because he was a liar, to which Obama retort­ed “You can’t stand him , how do you think I feel hav­ing to deal with him every day”? I am sure both gen­tle­man warm­ly greet­ed and chat­ted with Mister Netanyahu ear­li­er that day.

It’s the sil­ly sea­son in Jamaica. Once again Jamaicans allow them­selves to be whipped into a fren­zy in sup­port of one of the two polit­i­cal gangs that take turns ruin­ing .… I mean run­ning Jamaica. This hap­pens every four or five years despite protes­ta­tions from many that they do not see nei­ther the win­ners or losers in their com­mu­ni­ties after the elec­tions untill the next cycle comes around. So the sto­ries have start­ed com­ing in about the ston­ing of busses filled with peo­ple on their way home from a meet­ing held in Mandeville Manchester called to announce the date of the elec­tions. There are also reports of one man being shot and killed after that same meet­ing, I mean, seri­ous­ly people?

The Jamaican Dollar fluc­tu­ates some­where between 83 – 85 to one US$ this means the dol­lar is real­ly worth­less, even in Jamaica traders and ped­dlers ask for US dol­lar in pay­ment for goods and ser­vices, infla­tion has dri­ven the price of food and oth­er con­sumer goods through the roof, crime cor­rup­tion and ter­ror are rampant.These are just some of the issues plagu­ing our once beau­ti­ful par­adise. Many argue they don’t care what’s going on Jamaica is nice, and I con­cur of course our coun­try the beau­ti­ful land of wood and water is just as beau­ti­ful, if of course one choos­es to ignore the fact that too many of our trees has been cut down so we have small­er rivers and streams as a result of less rain­fall when com­pared to three decades ago , but I digress.

It is not the coun­try it’s always the people.

The Observer Editorial of today Tuesday December 20^th prais­es RJR for not air­ing the JLP’s adver­tise­ment show­ing Portia Simpson Miller rant­i­ng and rav­ing about not being afraid of quote “no bwoy, nu gal, nowhere” .

RJR right to sus­pend Portia trac­ing ad.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com.

In his Editorial the writer went to pains to try to absolve Portia of respon­si­bil­i­ty for the words com­ing from her very lips.

These com­ments were not untrue quotes assigned to her mali­cious­ly, they were not doc­tored and damn sure are not incor­rect , yet this opin­ion shaper went to lengths to con­vince vot­ers that quote ” The peo­ple will judge Mrs Simpson Miller as to her char­ac­ter, as they did in 2007. The JLP needs to have a lit­tle more faith in the good sense of the Jamaican vot­er. What a load of crock the actions of chil­dren from as far back as grade school now forms part of that child’s per­ma­nent record, it deter­mines what high school or col­lege that child is accept­ed into , it deter­mines what that child will be when he/​she grows up , yet some­how the words and actions of Portia Simpson should be ignored and cov­ered up. Portia Simpson Miller has allowed the ghet­to to shape her as much as any­thing else, as a young detec­tive I observed her in front of the Whitehall Avenue school roll and bawl in the mid­dle of the streets because her red ban­dan­na wear­ing thugs were not allowed to steal bal­lot box­es from the school, nev­er mind that her con­stituen­cy is bor­der­ing Spanish Town Road, and White Hall Avenue is in Saint Andrew North. Whatever we do in life fol­lows us for the rest of our lives Simpson Miller is no excep­tion. Gary Allen and oth­ers are noth­ing more than lit­tle Gods in their lit­tle ponds in Jamaica , small fish in their lit­tle holes mak­ing deci­sions of what peo­ple are allowed to hear and what they aren’t allowed to hear , for­tu­nate­ly there are choic­es now , peo­ple do not have to lis­ten to RJR now do they?

Jamaicans will go to the polls on December 29^th 2011.

December 29^th is a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for me as that is the date of my birth. I have a prob­lem with Prime Minister Holness call­ing elec­tions on my birth­day, I’m not hap­py about that kind of mad­ness on my spe­cial day. Ok that was a joke, but seri­ous­ly though over the years I have added my voice in the call for fixed elec­tion dates. It seem juve­nile and almost child­ish for some­thing as seri­ous and Jermain to our coun­try’s sta­bil­i­ty as elec­tions to be left to the whim and fan­cy of one per­son. I am yet to hear a rea­son­able argu­ment that sup­ports the sta­tus quo.Conversely it has been a tool for Prime Ministers to use when it suits them , and at a time when the polls are in their favor.

In the greater scheme of things it real­ly is not as seri­ous as some who argue against it would have you believe, at least in my mind , and I would be open to hear­ing and assim­i­lat­ing more argu­ments in sup­port of our posi­tion. It is impor­tant but for me it does not par­al­lel the need for con­sti­tu­tion­al reform and a com­plete de-annex­a­tion from Britain. I do believe a date cer­tain would be more ben­e­fi­cial to the finan­cial mar­kets and the busi­ness sec­tor, nei­ther of which par­tic­u­lar­ly likes dis­qui­et or uncer­tain­ty. It seem to me it would also cause those han­dling the peo­ple’s busi­ness to bring greater stew­ard­ship and pro­fes­sion­al­ism to their jobs, unless of course they choose to com­mit polit­i­cal suicide.

One thing is cer­tain as a specie we con­tin­ue to give up free­doms that made our lives fun and inter­est­ing, the lat­i­tude a prime Minister has in call­ing elec­tions with­in a cer­tain time but not a spe­cif­ic date will prob­a­bly be tak­en away because of the games­man­ship that has become syn­ony­mous with that lat­i­tude. Simple lux­u­ries like hav­ing a cell phone in one’s car has been abused by those who talk and text while they dri­ve , has attract­ed sig­nif­i­cant penal­ties to those conveniences.

So as we pay a price for talking/​texting while dri­ving, our Prime Ministers may very soon lose the lat­i­tude of being the decider of when elec­tions are called.

I want to bring a cou­ple of thoughts to the atten­tion of Jamaicans and oth­ers who have an inter­est in whats going on in our country.

THE QUESTION OF THE GARRISON MARCH

Gleaner pho­to

The first is the offer Prime Minister Holness has made to the leader of the Opposition Portia Simpson Miller to walk in some com­mu­ni­ties char­ac­ter­ized as gar­ri­son com­mu­ni­ties or zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sions. There has been many and var­ied opin­ions on whether this pro­posed sym­bol­ic ges­ture will accom­plish any­thing. Some have argued that time has passed and what is need­ed now is con­crete action. Those are legit­i­mate arguments,but are not argu­ments that negates the pos­i­tive out­come for the coun­try that would emanate from peo­ple liv­ing in the inner cities and all over Jamaica to see the top two polit­i­cal lead­ers walk­ing and talk­ing as friends. Some have argued that Bob Marley brought Manley and Seaga togeth­er yet polar­iza­tion per­sists, what they fail to under­stand or acknowl­edge is that events would have poten­tial­ly been vast­ly dif­fer­ent and many more lives lost had that event not occurred. We are not going to try to nuance that to death what we will say is that if it does­n’t hurt whats the prob­lem in doing it for the coun­try? To date Mrs. Simpson Miller has not seen fit to engage this new Prime Minister in the hand of fel­low­ship that he extend­ed to her, choos­ing to attach a bunch of pre­req­ui­sites before her par­tic­i­pa­tion in any march.

PORTIA’S NON CONCESSION TO BRUCE

Bruce Golding

Former Prime Minister Bruce Golding lashed out at Portia Simpson Miller at the JLP con­fer­ence at the National Arena on Sunday November 20^th. In an address Golding lashed Miller for what he char­ac­ter­ized as a breach of pro­to­cols estab­lished by all for­mer Prime Ministers gone before in call­ing the win­ner and con­ced­ing defeat when they lost .Golding went on to say that the media had grown impa­tient with him not arriv­ing at the Belmont Road Head quar­ters of the JLP on the night he won the elec­tion. he stat­ed he held back from going to Belmont Road as the nor­mal con­ces­sion phone call did not come from Mrs. Simpson Miller.

Mrs. Miller for her part shot back that she had always treat­ed Mister Golding with respect through­out his time as Prime Minister , and empha­sized that she even attend­ed his inau­gu­ra­tion. She stat­ed that because of the close­ness of the race and oth­er issues which she intend­ed to address in the courts she decid­ed not to concede.

Portia Simpson Miller

Supporters of Mrs Miller con­tend this is sour grapes on the part of Golding, and that this is in the past. Is it

On the night after she lost the elec­tions Portia Simpson Miller in a rather bel­li­cose and bel­liger­ent speech stat­ed that she would con­cede noth­ing to the labour par­ty and that she would be their worst night­mare. Presumably Mrs Miller was refer­ring to the dual cit­i­zen­ship issue with three of the JLP’ can­di­dates which was an issue as far as the con­sti­tu­tion of the coun­try is con­cerned. Jamaica’s con­sti­tu­tion clear­ly states that any­one hav­ing alle­giance to a for­eign pow­er can­not sit in Parliament. The PNP which Miller heads also had can­di­dates that had dual cit­i­zen­ship. Mrs Millers argu­ments are legit­i­mate but did not pre­clude her from con­ced­ing to the Prime Minister elect whilst let­ting him know that she intend­ed to see the mat­ter through in court.

In fact con­ced­ing vic­to­ry in no way takes away her right to chal­lenge the results of the elec­tion in a court of law,neither does it pre­vent her from receiv­ing her just redress should a court find in her favor. The fact is it was a bad deci­sion ‚one which I am sure Portia regretted.

POLITICAL DEBATES

There is still sub­stan­tial squab­bling going on about the for­mat of debates by the can­di­dates, or even whether there should be any debates at all. The new­ly installed Prime Minister has indi­cat­ed his will­ing­ness to debate the leader of the oppo­si­tion before a nation­al tele­vised audi­ence. Now grant­ed there is no law that dic­tates that can­di­dates seek­ing the high­est elect­ed office in the coun­try should debate. It should not be a prob­lem for any­one want­i­ng to lead the coun­try to let peo­ple know how they will han­dle the job. Detractors of the debate that every­one seek­ing a job has to inter­view for that job , some­times doing two or there inter­views in the process before being seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered for that posi­tion. What makes politi­cians any dif­fer­ent? no won­der when they are elect­ed they believe the laws do not apply to them.

From all indi­ca­tions Mrs Miller would like a debate where she is a part of a team of can­di­dates where she can be shield­ed by her col­leagues, the leader of the coun­try must be smart and assertive he/​she will have no cov­er in seri­ous inter­na­tion­al nego­ti­a­tions, Portia must debate the issues one and one with Andrew Holness and let the chips fall where they may, she does not get to say what she will or will not do.

have your say

Conventional wis­dom amongst Jamaicans is that ever per­son from Jamaica sees pol­i­tics through green or orange lens­es . Even the most casu­al com­ment or obser­va­tion in a pub­lic forum draws the most stark and angry attack.

For decades after our so-called inde­pen­dence our peo­ple have slaugh­tered each oth­er to keep politi­cians in office, this is true of sup­port­ers of both polit­i­cal par­ties, hav­ing spent a decade on the front lines dodg­ing bul­lets from the weapons both sides sup­plied to young une­d­u­cat­ed and vul­ner­a­ble youths, I am not par­tic­u­lar­ly endeared to either polit­i­cal gang. At the same time I am rather intol­er­ant of fly by night vil­lage lawyers who have opin­ions based on noth­ing more than par­ty alle­giance. Having spent so much of my life liv­ing and work­ing in Jamaica I am acute­ly aware of the chal­lenges inher­ent in try­ing to change or alter the opin­ions of many Jamaicans, the truth is too many are lost to igno­rance, arro­gance, or both. As a nation, the next best thing is to try to impact the chil­dren in a pos­i­tive way in an effort to change the mind­set going for­ward if the coun­try is to be com­pet­i­tive, or even main­tain some resm­blance to a demo­c­ra­t­ic nation going for­ward. I read sev­er­al blogs and pub­li­ca­tions dai­ly, some of them includes the Jamaican dai­ly and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions from the United States and oth­er parts of the world, on the occa­sions where Jamaicans are allowed to com­ment, I am always dis­ap­point­ed by their inabil­i­ty to sep­a­rate them­selves from the blink­ered hand­i­cap of the nar­row parochial con­straints of PNP,JLP pol­i­tics. Clearly the Orange and Green has evolved from a fun­gus that was vis­i­ble from the out­side to a dis­ease that is now in their blood stream. Those of us who dare point out the prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with their polit­i­cal idols are attacked as sup­port­er of the oth­er side, even if one has a record of point­ing to the prob­lems of both sides. It is inescapable then to avoid being labeled a par­ti­san, so I am pre­pared when­ev­er I write to be labeled a par­ti­san as long as the argu­ments I put for­ward are sup­port­ed by data and facts.

Miller 

As I have said pre­vi­ous­ly, know­ing this makes me res­olute about not wor­ry­ing about the cyn­ics, and the crit­ics, I remain com­mit­ted to work­ing with and dis­cussing ideas with intel­li­gent open-mind­ed Jamaicans in the dias­po­ra and at home.

Holness

On Sunday October 23^rd 39-year-old Andrew Michael Holness was installed in a cer­e­mo­ny at Kings House as Jamaica’s 9^th and youngest ever Prime Minister. Holness gave a lengthy speech lit­tered with obser­va­tions and vision for the coun­try. One of the things he said he would do is ask the leader of the Opposition to walk with him in a sym­bol­ic show of uni­ty toward dis­man­tling (Garrisons), zones of polit­i­cal exclusions,with a view to end­ing gar­ri­son pol­i­tics once and for all in Jamaica. Garrison Politics has been a shame­ful blight on the country.

WHAT ARE GARRISONS ?

1.

a body of troops sta­tioned in a for­ti­fied place.

2.

the place where such troops are stationed.

3.

any mil­i­tary post, espe­cial­ly a per­ma­nent one.

verb (used with object)

4.

to pro­vide (a fort, town, etc.) with a garrison.

5.

to occu­py (a fort, post, sta­tion, etc.) with troops.

6.

to put (troops) on duty in a fort, post, sta­tion, etc .(source dic​tio​nary​.com)

A gar­ri­son in the Jamaican sense ful­fill all of the char­ac­ter­is­tic com­po­nents stip­u­lat­ed in these definitions,in Kingston and Saint Andrew, as also Saint Catherine, these zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sion lit­ter the land­scape, and as it would for an oppos­ing army breech­ing a gar­ri­son as stip­u­lat­ed above, the con­se­quence of such actions will­ful or unwit­ting will almost result in death. The dif­fer­ence between Jamaican Garrisons and the for­ti­fi­ca­tions men­tioned in the def­i­n­i­tion is that the gar­risons in Jamaica do not need walls, how­ev­er the lines of demarka­tion are fierce­ly guard­ed by well armed punks with high-pow­ered weapons, and a seem­ing­ly unend­ing sup­ply of ammu­ni­tion sup­plied by their bene­fac­tors. The leader of the polit­i­cal Opposition famous­ly said her con­stituen­cy has no walls, in her mind the absence of a wall means it isn’t a gar­ri­son! We’ll get back to that.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF A GARRISON IN THE JAMAICAN SENSE?

The year 1980 saw one of the great­est peri­od of polit­i­cal upheaval in Jamaica’s his­to­ry, over 800 peo­ple were report­ed­ly killed as a result of polit­i­cal vio­lence, these num­bers attrib­uted to any oth­er coun­try would be char­ac­ter­ized as civ­il war in pro­por­tion, not so in Jamaica, killing is a way of life, it is accept­ed , pro­mot­ed in music, glo­ri­fied in the media and on polit­i­cal cam­paign stumps. Killing and maim­ing is a cel­e­brat­ed way of show­ing one’s girth and clout in the streets, this vio­lence begets more vio­lence in order to sus­tain itself, the result up to the end of 2009 by police sta­tis­tics is over 1600 mur­dered in a coun­try of under 2.8 mil­lion peo­ple. So what is a Garrison in the Jamaican sense ? Well after Jamaica was uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly cut from the apron strings of England her colo­nial mas­ter, our peo­ple were asked to gov­ern them­selves after hun­dreds of years of colo­nial dom­i­na­tion, the coun­try received no repa­ra­tions for the assault and abuse , Jamaica like oth­er for­mer colonies was sim­ply cast aside to fend for itself. Scarce resources like hous­ing, and jobs became a bar­gain­ing chip for politi­cians to dole out to those who showed alle­giance to their polit­i­cal par­ty depend­ing on which par­ty is in pow­er, in oth­er word a pseu­do colo­nial depen­den­cy , just on a dif­fer­ent scale.

This manip­u­la­tion of scarce resources for polit­i­cal gain cre­at­ed enmi­ty between the fac­tions aligned to the two polit­i­cal par­ties ‚the (PNP)People’s National Party the brain child of National Hero Norman Washington Manley whose son Michael Manley as Prime Minister was to lead Jamaica through its rough­est polit­i­cal peri­od, and the (JLP) the brain child of his cousin Alexander Bustamante, also one of Jamaica’s nation­al heroes.

Norman Manley a Queens Counsel british trained lawyer and Bustamante a street savvy Trade Unionists are seen as the found­ing fathers of the coun­try after Independence, many old­er Jamaicans devel­oped a love and undy­ing alle­giance to both men depend­ing on their beliefs many would die for them, as that gen­er­a­tion passed a more mil­i­tant gen­er­a­tion of politi­cians emerged in the per­sons of Michael Manley and Edward Seaga, the polit­i­cal rhetoric was ramped up and became more bel­li­cose, this hard­ened the posi­tions of both camps, and their fol­low­ers became more vio­lent, the lines of demar­ca­tion became more stark, and as before many would die for them and many has killed for them. It became com­mon­place for pub­lic funds to be used by those in office to take care of those who did the grunge work to put them in pow­er, this cre­at­ed a vicious sys­tem where peo­ple saw their very sur­vival, their very abil­i­ty to be able to afford food as tied to their par­ty get­ting in pow­er and stay­ing there. Needless to say those on the oppos­ing side are quite pre­pared to do what it takes to expel those in pow­er and install their bene­fac­tors. Politicians of both par­ties were more than hap­py to deliv­er the means for the peo­ple to kill oth­ers who were opposed to their brand of pol­i­tics, as a result the streets were flood­ed with guns and entire areas became no go for any­one even sus­pect­ed of being a sup­port­er of the oth­er side. An inno­cent exer­cise as the wear­ing of the wrong col­or can get one rid­dled with bullets.

Criminal thugs who deliv­er votes to the polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives by means of intim­i­da­tion, arson, rape, and mur­der became a part of the cul­ture ‚they are accept­ed cel­e­brat­ed and revered, ref­ered to as com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers, and even Dons, when in truth these men were lit­tle more than mur­der­ing punks who preyed on the inno­cent and the defense­less. they received Government con­tracts even though they knew noth­ing about con­struc­tion or in most cas­es had no train­ing in the dis­ci­pline for which they received the con­tracts, this has become a cesspool of cor­rup­tion and an immense drain on the scarce resources of the coun­try. Jamaica is in debt to the tune of Billions of American dol­lars, yet the aver­age per­son on the streets has no way of mea­sur­ing how those monies they, their chil­dren and their chil­dren’s chil­dren will have to pay back has pos­i­tive­ly impact­ed their lives. As we speak the Contractor General Greg Christie is fight­ing a los­ing bat­tle in get­ting both par­ties to enact leg­is­la­tion giv­ing teeth to the office of Contractors General , which would enable him to effec­tive­ly inves­ti­gate, issue sub­poe­na and arrest trans­gres­sors in the award­ing of pub­lic con­tracts. They stead­fast­ly refuse to give him and future CG’s that pow­er, the fact is they are the ones who are ben­e­fit­ting from these nefar­i­ous and dis­gust­ing acts of thiev­ery that is bank­rupt­ing the coun­try and are not about to grant any­one the pow­er to arrest them or quote“stop dem food”.

As time pro­gressed the thugs who run the com­mu­ni­ties on a day to basis real­ized they real­ly did not need the politi­cians for any­thing more than polit­i­cal cov­er from law enforce­ment, this result­ed in a dan­ger­ous flip in the bal­ance of pow­er between the don and the politi­cian, the tail was effec­tive­ly wag­ging the dog. The Jamaican film Shottas par­o­dies the sit­u­a­tion per­fect­ly, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of ille­gal drugs , mar­i­jua­na and cocaine changed the dynam­ics in the 1980’s and 90’s many com­mu­ni­ty enforcers became rot­ten rich men who need­ed no hand­outs from politi­cians and as such did not have to lis­ten to them. they con­trolled the politi­cians, hand­ed out treats to com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, whilst at the same time exert­ing tight con­trol over the peo­ple liv­ing with­in these communities,the con­trol includ­ed rape of their chil­dren boys and girls, many peo­ple sent their chil­dren from their com­mu­ni­ties and report­ed them miss­ing to the police in order to save them from vicious sex­u­al abuse at the hands of com­mu­ni­ty enforcers. The pow­er cre­at­ed an aura and a mys­tique of invin­ci­bil­i­ty than caused one Don to over-reach, which may have cul­mi­nat­ed in the untime­ly depar­ture of a Prime Minister from Office. He found out too late that his abil­i­ty to pro­tect an enforcer did not extend beyond Jamaica’s shores.

Golding

Being a Garrison mem­ber of Parliament has sev­er­al perks, some of which means nev­er hav­ing to wor­ry about relin­quish­ing pow­er, con­stant­ly feed­ing at the pub­lic trough. receiv­ing un-earned nation­al hon­ors, con­stant­ly being show­ered with adu­la­tion and praise, and all that politi­cian has to do is pre­tend to care and offer plat­i­tudes to mem­bers of the con­stituen­cy. There is no one that this char­ac­ter­i­za­tion fits more than the leader of the oppo­si­tion Portia Simpson Miller, she insists there are no walls in the con­stituen­cy of south-west St Andrew she has rep­re­sent­ed for over 35 years, from majes­tic Gardens to Whitfield Town, to the bot­tom of Maxfield avenue, west along Spanish Town Road the rot and decay is pal­pa­ble, I am told the con­stituen­cy was a pris­tine place pre-Portia, how­ev­er the brand of pol­i­tics she brought to that area has turned the area into a ghost town that remains so to this day, it has how­ev­er kept her in office, notice I omit­ted the word “elect­ed” .She and her hus­band has also been bestowed with the high hon­or of “Most Honorable”. Only in Jamaica.

This brings us to the Prime Minister’s sym­bol­ic ges­ture to Miller, a let­ter ask­ing her to walk the gar­risons with him, a first step that would show that there is no need to kill each oth­er in the name of politics.

Miller hes­i­tat­ed, I pre­sumed untill some­one must have coined a response for her, in response here’s what she told the Prime Minister, Quote“a mere walk through the com­mu­ni­ties would not achieve the desired out­comes ‚while I am not opposed to par­tic­i­pat­ing in the tour with the prime min­is­ter, such an ini­tia­tive should be sup­port­ed by a pro­gramme of social trans­for­ma­tion.”

Hah pre­con­di­tions ! Simpson Miller has been in rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al pol­i­tics from I was a child, she has risen to the top of the food chain to being Prime Minister the high­est elect­ed office in the land. Even though she attained the Office the same way Holness did , by default she was in office for two years. She has been a part of sev­er­al PNP admin­is­tra­tions , the last last­ed for ¹⁸¹⁄₂ years. Throughout all of this she nev­er saw fit even when she had the ulti­mate pow­er as Prime Minister of the coun­try to effect change, Miller was unable to show the nec­es­sary lead­er­ship that would affect social trans­for­ma­tion.

Andrew Holness has been in office for all of 3 weeks, yet Portia Simpson Miller wants him to ensure social trans­for­ma­tion before she can agree to a sim­ple and sym­bol­ic walk of unity.

Portia Simpson Miller has rep­re­sent­ed the south St Andrew con­stituen­cy since Andrew Holness was 4 years old, today the peo­ple in that con­stituen­cy who may have sur­vived the killings and pover­ty that is the norm there are worse off than they were 35 years ago before the arrival of hur­ri­cane Portia. Miller has had the lead­er­ship reins of the coun­try and we have seen noth­ing to point to that would cause us to believe she under­stand the chal­lenges of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry or has the req­ui­site skills to nav­i­gate the com­pli­cat­ed waters of inter­na­tion­al diplo­ma­cy nec­es­sary to secure fund­ing, and devel­ope­ment for our people.
Social trans­for­ma­tion is impor­tant, it was impor­tant when Miller entered the polit­i­cal game, it is impor­tant today, but it cer­tain­ly will not be achieved overnight, nei­ther will launch­ing a so-called ini­tia­tive change the cir­cum­stance of peo­ple need­ing inter­ven­tion in their com­mu­ni­ties. A leader must be able to attend to sev­er­al things at the same time, a sym­bol­ic walk through the gar­risons and a social inter­ven­tion pro­gramme are not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive, they can be accom­plished simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, (ride and whis­tle). This leads us to the con­clu­sion that Portia Simpson Miller talks the talk but when the time comes for her to walk the talk she is nowhere to be found. It is imper­a­tive that the Jamaican peo­ple and more so those who are encap­su­lat­ed with­in those zones of exclu­sions under­stand that their future is, as it has always been, in their hands and their hands alone. Neither Sister P nor Prince Andrew has the solu­tion to their prob­lems, peo­ple liv­ing there for over 50 years have seen Andrew Holness come into this world and attain the office of Prime Minister at the ten­der age of 39 and their cir­cum­stance remains the same , it is time for them to shrug off the bondage of alle­giance they have to both par­ties and decid­ed­ly carve a path for them­selves and their children.

As I have stat­ed before, Garrisons are the same as slav­ery, those caught with­in the psy­cho­log­i­cal walls of those com­mu­ni­ties are deprived of the every­day ameni­ties oth­ers take for grant­ed. clean drink­ing water, afford­able hous­ing, education,health-care, clean air, prop­er police and fire ser­vices, these are some of the most basic things that most peo­ple take for grant­ed but are absent from most gar­ri­son com­mu­ni­ties, in Jamaica gar­ri­son com­mu­ni­ties and the police have a need­less acri­mo­nious rela­tion­ship that is built on dis­trust of each oth­er, a dis­trust foment­ed and fed by the very politi­cians who rep­re­sent the garrisons.

Poverty is not hered­i­tary, it is not genet­ic, peo­ple from the rur­al parts of the coun­try has proven that, left alone to be all they can be Jamaicans from all parts of the coun­try have escaped pover­ty , and have risen to the halls of pow­er and the zenith of suc­cess in Education and Business, cows do not feed and wait for the grass to grow under their feet so they can eat again, they keep mov­ing, no one should allow geo­graph­i­cal bound­aries set by oth­ers who do not live with­in those said bound­aries to dic­tate how they live their lives. Untill peo­ple edu­cate them­selves and make politi­cians like Simpson Miller per­sona non gra­ta (not wel­come) in their com­mu­ni­ties they will con­tin­ue to be behold­en to the dic­tates of those invis­i­ble walls. And yes Portia your con­stituen­cy has walls you are just unable to see them.

Andrew Holness if he is seri­ous must under­stand that the change he seek will not come from the likes of Simpson Miller ‚the old guard,they were schooled in the old ways , they are a part of the prob­lem ‚not the solu­tion , if progress is to be made the train must be rolled around them,begin with a mas­sive pro­gram of mobi­liza­tion to a nation­al awak­en­ing, love of God pride in coun­try and duty to our fel­low-man , if you can inspire the nation you will have a chance to make difference,do not wait on Portia, or you wait in vain , Portia is the Garrison, the gar­ri­son is Portia.

have your say.