DECEMBER 1991: Minister of Mining and Energy Horace Clarke resigned over the scan­dal involv­ing a waiv­er of $29.5 mil­lion in duties that Shell Company West Indies should have paid to the Government on import­ed gaso­lene. He remained a mem­ber of parliament.

MAY 2001: Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance Errol Ennis resigned on May 29, fol­low­ing rev­e­la­tions that at least sev­en cheques he had ten­dered to set­tle gam­bling debts had bounced. A state­ment from the Office of the Prime Minister said that Ennis had resigned his min­is­te­r­i­al post with imme­di­ate effect.

APRIL 2002: Dr Karl Blythe resigned as min­is­ter of water and hous­ing in the wake of a report from a four-mem­ber com­mis­sion that sug­gest­ed that he act­ed improp­er­ly as min­is­ter with respon­si­bil­i­ty for the Operation PRIDE pro­gramme. The report said Blythe inter­fered in the day-to-day man­age­ment of the Operation PRIDE schemes and flout­ed guide­lines. He resigned on April 13, 2002.

OCTOBER 2006: Information and Development Minister Colin Campbell was forced to resign from the Cabinet and as gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the People’s National Party in October 2006, approx­i­mate­ly a week after Opposition Leader Bruce Golding divulged infor­ma­tion that Trafigura Beheer, a Dutch com­pa­ny with busi­ness arrange­ments with the Government, made a $31-mil­lion trans­ac­tion to an account called CCOC Associates which bore Campbell’s sig­na­ture. Campbell’s res­ig­na­tion took effect on October 9, 2006.

OCTOBER 2007: Kern Spencer resigned as par­lia­men­tary sec­re­tary in the Ministry of Science and Technology, fol­low­ing ques­tions over the Cuban light bulb pro­gramme when it was divulged that the People’s National Party spent more than $276.5 mil­lion to dis­trib­ute four mil­lion free light bulbs donat­ed by the Cuban gov­ern­ment. Spencer open­ly wept in Parliament upon hear­ing news that the Fraud Squad and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions were inves­ti­gat­ing the inci­dent. Years lat­er, he was freed of the charges after the pros­e­cu­tion failed to prove its case against him and then co-accused Coleen Wright.

JULY 2009: Jamaica Labour Party’s State Minister for Transport and Work Joseph Hibbert resigned six months after he was named a sub­ject in a cor­rup­tion probe by inves­ti­ga­tors in the United Kingdom. Hibbert, in a let­ter to Prime Minister Bruce Golding, said: “This res­ig­na­tion will allow me the time and free­dom to clear my name and my integri­ty as for­mer chief tech­ni­cal direc­tor in the Ministry of Transport and Works dur­ing the 1990s to which the alle­ga­tions refer.”

MAY 2010: Government Senator and State Minister in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Dr Ronald Robinson, resigned as sen­a­tor and junior min­is­ter in wake of the Manatt, Phelps & Phillips affair that dogged the Government of Jamaica in rela­tion to the Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke extra­di­tion affair. In his res­ig­na­tion let­ter to the prime min­is­ter, dat­ed May 20, 2010, Robinson apol­o­gised for his role in the Manatt scan­dal and not­ed his wife’s ill health as anoth­er rea­son for his resignation.

NOVEMBER 2011: Transport and Works Minister Mike Henry sub­mit­ted his res­ig­na­tion to Prime Minister Andrew Holness due to con­cerns over the man­age­ment of projects by the National Works Agency (NWA). Henry’s res­ig­na­tion fol­lowed rev­e­la­tions that more than $60 mil­lion was spent on fur­ni­ture for the NWA’s offices. This was in addi­tion to a $102-mil­lion refur­bish­ing project that sparked con­tro­ver­sy when it was revealed in the audi­tor general’s spe­cial report on the Jamaica Development Infrastructure Programme.

SEPTEMBER 2013: Richard Azan, junior min­is­ter in the Ministry of Transport, Works and Housing, resigned in September 2013 under pub­lic pres­sure over his role in the improp­er con­struc­tion of shops on land owned by the Clarendon Parish Council. Within two months, he was rein­stat­ed by Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller after the direc­tor of pub­lic pros­e­cu­tions announced that no crim­i­nal charges would be laid.

JULY 2018: Science, Energy and Technology Minister Dr Andrew Wheatley resigned in the wake of scan­dals that erupt­ed at state-run enti­ties Petrojam and the National Energy Solutions Limited that fell under his portfolio.

MARCH 2019: Minister of Education, Youth and Information Ruel Reid was forced to resign over alle­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion and mis­use of pub­lic funds involv­ing a num­ber of insti­tu­tions tied to the min­istry. That inves­ti­ga­tion is ongoing.

Facts do not lie sim­ply because some peo­ple would pre­tend that facts do not mean anything.

Jamaica’s politi­cians, includ­ing those at the local gov­ern­ment lev­el, are set to ben­e­fit from mas­sive increas­es in their salaries over three years end­ing April 2025. In some cas­es, salaries have been increased three-fold.
Amidst out­cry from many Jamaicans about what they con­sid­er to be an unjus­ti­fi­able increase in the salaries of politi­cians, there is also the con­ve­nient assess­ment and scruti­ny for pure­ly polit­i­cal purposes.
I have not seen the entire pack­age, so I will refrain from speak­ing to the sense that it is unfair as some seem to believe. Nevertheless, it is dif­fi­cult to ratio­nal­ize away the enor­mi­ty of the increas­es allo­cat­ed to politi­cians if oth­er pub­lic sec­tor work­ers are [not] afford­ed the very same per­cent­ages in their wage increas­es. A pound of flour or rice is the same for the well-to-do as it is for the poor.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness argues quote, “I want you to under­stand that as the stew­ard that you elect, I don’t go there to argue for myself.” 
“We know and respect the sen­si­tiv­i­ties over salaries, so we did not go out as a Government and try to say to the coun­try that every­body is get­ting basi­cal­ly a 20 per cent increase in their salaries as a base in the com­pen­sa­tion review.”
“There is a sense in Jamaica that we must not take on new chal­lenges, that we must not be delib­er­ate in chal­leng­ing the old norms and ways of think­ing. Any time you try to do some­thing dif­fer­ent, any time you try to take on those things that have fun­da­men­tal­ly defined our fail­ures as a coun­try, there is a choir that comes out very loud­ly to say leave things as they were.“You know what is going to hap­pen as a result in the increase in pay…all of a sud­den the best tal­ents that would have over­looked pol­i­tics, that would have migrat­ed,” argued Holness as he point­ed to a bright young man who said he would not enter pol­i­tics because he could not see an eco­nom­ic future in that profession.

The Prime Minister had much more to say as he sought to brush back the crit­i­cisms against what some peo­ple saw as an unjust increase grant­ed to them­selves by the polit­i­cal class.
Several peo­ple have asked me for my opin­ion; some have even asked me how come I have been so silent on the mat­ter, pure­ly out of polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy, of course. The real­i­ty is that I have not seen the pack­age to date, and so it is dif­fi­cult to speak with any depth with­out hav­ing all of the infor­ma­tion avail­able to me. What I will say in this brief arti­cle is that noth­ing that the Prime min­is­ter said in response to his crit­ics seemed to jus­ti­fy the increases.
Notwithstanding, the People’s National Party’s few mem­bers in the House, Senate, and the local gov­ern­ment who would seek to crit­i­cize these increas­es have every right to do so as long as they are pre­pared to give back the increas­es in salaries they receive or donate the increas­es to rep­utable char­i­ties. If they are unable or unwill­ing to do so, they should shut the fuck up.

As I said before, the gov­ern­ment of the day, regard­less of which polit­i­cal par­ty forms the admin­is­tra­tion, has a moral duty to be fair and just with the Jamaican peo­ple. There is hard­ly any­thing polit­i­cal about those truths. It seems how­ev­er that truth is A virtue no longer avail­able in our world. Instead, polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy and dog­ma have replaced the vir­tu­os­i­ty of truth.
I was remind­ed of that just a few nights ago while hav­ing a casu­al con­ver­sa­tion on some of these ordi­nary issues with some asso­ciates. No one was pre­pared to do the most basic thing, which was to admit to truths. Instead, they glossed over truths and plain old lied to make them­selves feel good.
The issue of par­i­ty in salaries is a legit­i­mate one, but my ques­tion to the bud­get hawks and the many Economic PhDs is sim­ple, where were you when the PNP had carte blanch to do as they damn well pleased for 22 ¹⁄₂ years? Did you not receive your doc­tor­ate in eco­nom­ics yet? The PNP and its func­tionar­ies are hard­ly any dif­fer­ent from the Fascists Republicans in the United States. 
I’m old enough to remem­ber what Jamaica looked like for that unbro­ken peri­od of des­ti­tu­tion and despair while the very same loud mouths were con­ve­nient­ly silent as the PNP raid­ed and dec­i­mat­ed the pub­lic cof­fers. Now all of a sud­den, every­one is a fis­cal con­ser­v­a­tive. If this weren’t so offen­sive, it would be freak­ing laugh­able. Give me a damn break.

Politicians have no more right to a large pay increase than the low­est pub­lic sec­tor work­er. If the gov­ern­ment is giv­ing politi­cians a 300% pay hike over a cer­tain peri­od of time, all pub­lic sec­tor work­ers should receive the same 300% wage increase over the same peri­od. Politicians have no more impor­tance than the guys who col­lect the garbage.
The Prime Minister’s dia­tribe that the nation can­not retain qual­i­ty lead­ers because of the low remu­ner­a­tions is balder­dash, and he knows it. Politicians are some of the most priv­i­leged peo­ple in our country. 
If there is a need to wor­ry about retain­ing politi­cians, the need should be just as great for our teach­ers, police offi­cers, nurs­es, doc­tors, and every cat­e­go­ry of pub­lic sec­tor employ­ees, includ­ing garbage collectors.
We need to move our think­ing from this clas­sist, col­orist mind­set we refuse to eschew.
So let us begin that legit­i­mate con­ver­sa­tion on the mer­its and not the froth­ing-mouth hys­ter­ics born out of rabid polit­i­cal allegiance.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

NBA leg­ends Dwyane Wade and Grant Hill have rock­et­ed to the top of the recruit­ment lists for some Florida Democrats look­ing for a strong can­di­date to run against Sen. Rick Scott in 2024.
There have been sep­a­rate active efforts to get both to con­sid­er for­ays into state pol­i­tics, which have not been dri­ven by either the state or nation­al par­ties, three sources famil­iar with the sit­u­a­tion said. 
The par­ty oper­a­tives and donors see the need for a moon­shot-type can­di­date to reverse the trend of Republican dom­i­nance in the state, in which most recent­ly Gov. Ron DeSantis won re-elec­tion by a dou­ble-dig­it mar­gin. Yet even they acknowl­edge that get­ting either one of them is a long shot. “Grant Hill has great name ID. He would raise a boat­load of mon­ey and is one of the smartest guys you will ever meet,” said John Morgan, an Orlando-based tri­al attor­ney and nation­al Democratic donor, who has spo­ken direct­ly with Hill about his desire for him to run. “Grant Hill would beat the s— out of Rick Scott.”

There is no way to make this make sense. Police offi­cers are pub­lic ser­vants paid by the pub­lic; they are sup­posed to do what the cit­i­zen­ry says or find alter­nate employ­ment. Yet when their actions neces­si­tate they wear cam­eras, they demand more mon­ey and the polit­i­cal fools in lead­er­ship hand over more of the cit­i­zen’s tax dol­lars to the thugs. (MB)

Worcester Massassachutes — Following a wide-rang­ing dis­cus­sion with ques­tions about the City Council’s role in col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing, coun­cilors vot­ed 8 – 3 to trans­fer fund­ing for police offi­cers to receive an annu­al stipend of $1,300 for body cameras.
The change amends the salary ordi­nance cov­er­ing offi­cers rep­re­sent­ed by NEPBA Local 911, the patrol­men’s union. 
The first pay­ment of $650 will be made with­in 30 days of the effec­tive date of the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ment and will cov­er the peri­od between Jan. 1 and June 30 of this year. Effective July 1 and annu­al­ly there­after, mem­bers of the bar­gain­ing unit will receive a $1,300 gross stipend. The stipend would be count­ed toward mem­bers’ retire­ment and would not be relied upon for pur­pos­es such as the cal­cu­la­tion of the mem­bers’ over­time rate, accord­ing to the agreement.

After news of the stipend had drawn some ques­tions from the com­mu­ni­ty, at-large City Councilor Kathleen Toomey, chair of the pub­lic safe­ty com­mit­tee, post­poned the item for a week dur­ing last week’s coun­cil meet­ing. Toomey said Tuesday that she held the item so more clar­i­ty could be pro­vid­ed on the process that got to the issue appear­ing before the City Council. The two unions rep­re­sent­ing police offi­cers in the city argued cam­eras were a change in work­ing con­di­tions and required a rene­go­ti­a­tion of the con­tract. Contract nego­ti­a­tions delayed a City Council vote on the pol­i­cy in February.

Negotiations with IBPO Local 504, the offi­cials union, on the mat­ter remain ongo­ing. Following the April 25 Council meet­ing, Mayor Joseph M. Petty told host Hank Stolz on Talk of the Commonwealth that the City Council was some­what oblig­at­ed to approve the stipend as City Manager Eric D. Batista nego­ti­at­ed the con­tract that was already signed. City Solicitor Michael Traynor also pro­vid­ed a legal opin­ion which stat­ed that City Council was “legal­ly oblig­at­ed” to approve the amend­ment. Traynor wrote that the state Supreme Judicial Court has ruled leg­isla­tive bod­ies have the pow­er to deter­mine the pur­pos­es with which mon­ey can be spent, but not the pow­er to deter­mine the exact spend­ing for a spe­cif­ic pur­pose. The pow­er of spend­ing mon­ey is an exec­u­tive task per the Supreme Judicial Court, Traynor wrote.
Read the full sto­ry here: https://​news​.yahoo​.com/​c​i​t​y​-​c​o​u​n​c​i​l​-​a​p​p​r​o​v​e​s​-​w​o​r​c​e​s​t​e​r​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​1​0​5​3​1​3​5​4​0​.​h​tml

If you go to the farm mar­ket or the super­mar­ket to buy toma­toes and some of the toma­toes are rot­ten, would you choose that rot­ten bas­ket of toma­toes? I believe the answer to that ques­tion is obvious.
Why do white peo­ple expect Black peo­ple who have borne the brunt of racist, mur­der­ous police abuse in the United States, to accept the rot­ten bas­ket of cor­rup­tion called policing?
It mat­ters not that not all police offi­cers are bad; the issue is the per­cep­tion is that they are all bad, so as far as 41.7 mil­lion African-Americans in the US are con­cerned (minus the sell-out house slaves), polic­ing does­n’t work for us; per­cep­tion is reality…
I brack­et­ed house slaves and includ­ed the caveat sell-out because not all house slaves were sell­outs; some were actu­al intel­li­gence gath­er­ers for the cause.

Policing was nev­er designed for the use and ben­e­fit of Blacks; from the cot­ton fields and cane­fields emerged the con­cept of a force to sep­a­rate the races and to keep Blacks sub­servient and contained.
If the pow­ers that be had the pow­er to abra ka dabra and make extinct the black pop­u­la­tion after the so-called eman­ci­pa­tion dec­la­ra­tion, they would have done it. They did not have the pow­er to shaz­am and make black folks dis­ap­pear, but they damn sure tried to exter­mi­nate the Black pop­u­la­tion since emancipation.
No place in mod­ern his­to­ry oth­er than Hitler’s per­se­cu­tion of his own peo­ple who claim the Jewish faith and what hap­pened to Muslims in Serbia in the 90s, (both events on a much small­er scale), has there been this geno­ci­dal action to wipe out one race by anoth­er, as the geno­cide against Blacks.
For those rea­sons, we say ‘f*ck you’ to those who have the chutz­pah to tell us how to define what we have gone through as a peo­ple. It is bad when the white per­pe­tra­tors of geno­cide against us tell us to move on or for­get what they have done. But imag­ine the dam nerve when fake ass wannabe whites like Nicky Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy have the audac­i­ty to chime in against wokeness.
Who the hell do those coolies think they are?

Listen, Black folk has no prob­lem with you Indian, whites in wait­ing, eschew­ing your her­itage to assim­i­late into the American con­struct of white­ness. Given time, Indians and the Cubans in Florida will even­tu­al­ly be assim­i­lat­ed into American white­ness as the Irish and dark-skinned Italians were. The white pop­u­la­tion is shrink­ing, and it does not seem like stop­ping immi­grants of col­or from enter­ing the coun­try and forc­ing white women to bring to term their rapist babies will change that.
We don’t have a prob­lem with you being pros­e­ly­tized into white­ness if that’s your goal, and it does seem that’s your goal, but please leave us out of your shit. Do not attack us like your white mas­ters have done to get to where you want to be.
Run for office but leave us Black folks alone because if you attack us, we will not sit idly by. We are not our par­ents and grandparents.

You do not get to tell us our his­to­ry when you obvi­ous­ly do not know or care about your own. If Vivek Ramaswamy, Nicky Haley, et al. knew their his­to­ry, they would not be wag­ing this fruit­less cam­paign for the American pres­i­den­cy by try­ing to climb on the backs of Black people.
It is per­fect­ly fine that the two Indians run­ning on the Republican tick­et for the American pres­i­den­cy are suf­fer­ing from Stockholm syn­drome, but please don’t assume that it’s our fault. Kiss all the white ass­es you want but do not come for us because we do not care about you.
It is point­less to explain to coolies the likes of the two pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates that they can run for the pres­i­den­cy of the United States because of the blood, sweat, and tears of Black people.
Without the strug­gles waged and the vic­to­ries won by Blacks, Nicky Haley would be a house­maid and Vivek Ramaswamy, a field hand.
I under­stand this prob­lem is not only with fake ass Vivek Ramaswamy and Nicky Haley, who grew up dirt poor in South Carolina.
On a trip to Panama last year, I had a con­ver­sa­tion with an Indian guy who works as a pros­e­cu­tor in New Jersey; his view of American soci­ety seemed bereft of any under­stand­ing of American his­to­ry. It took tremen­dous restraint for me not to sock the pompous fool in his mouth.
It seems like a thing with these Indian peo­ple, edu­cat­ed in one dis­ci­pline but total­ly lack­ing in intel­li­gence or the abil­i­ty to think crit­i­cal­ly. Cognitive dis­so­nance, maybe!!!!

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

For the whites and wannabe whites in this coun­try, the recent uncer­e­mo­ni­ous fir­ing of Journalist Don Lemon from CNN after 17 years of ser­vice was music to their ears. Don Lemon had turned into a woke man of integri­ty who stood up to loud­mouth racists and racial assas­sins whose idea of America is a Utopian enclave of peace and har­mo­ny for everyone.
To those intel­lec­tu­al embryos, black peo­ple have no right to con­tin­ue to speak about five hun­dred years of geno­cide which con­tin­ue to the present day.
Not just that, they go as far as to speak to our sto­ry with­out our per­mis­sion and have the gall to tell us our sto­ry with­out liv­ing in our skin.

Don Lemon’s fir­ing report­ed­ly came after doing a morn­ing inter­view with Vivek Ramaswamy, an Indian run­ning for the pres­i­den­cy on the Republican tick­et. To sug­gest that Ramaswamy has no chance of assum­ing the pres­i­den­cy of the United States is to state the obvi­ous. However, like Nicky Haley, Bobby Jindal, and oth­ers of Indian ances­try, it appears there is a strate­gic per­sis­tence by these East Asians to be the most super­flu­ous in praise of America and its sup­posed inher­ent virtues as a way of assim­i­lat­ing in the con­struct of American white­ness despite their black skin.
I under­stand the val­ue of social climb­ing and ass-kiss­ing, but these peo­ple we referred to as co*l*es take brown-nos­ing to a whole oth­er lev­el. They damn sure know how to kiss ass. Compare them with the Cubans in Florida, and it’s dif­fi­cult to tell which is worse.

CNN’s chair­man Chris Licht a Trump sup­port­er was hired to do exact­ly what he did, get rid of lib­er­al voic­es and replace them with con­ser­v­a­tive ones.
Licht arrived at CNN, claim­ing he wants the net­work to be objec­tive again. Obviously, telling the truth is not objec­tive, so he intends to turn the net­work into a new ver­sion of FOX. Objectivity is ampli­fy­ing right-wing talk­ing points.
One of Licht’s first moves was to embark on what Axios described as a “Capitol Hill diplo­ma­cy tour,” and oth­ers described as a Republican boot-lick­ing tour. Licht met with law­mak­ers who had become wary of cable news and promised them that CNN was mov­ing away from “alarmist” pro­gram­ming towards more neu­tral, objec­tive reporting.
Licht began by fir­ing Brian Steltzer, a harsh Trump crit­ic. He then fired John Harwood for call­ing Trump a dis­hon­est dem­a­gogue.
The Guardian Arwa Mahdawi argued It’s not just who was fired that is alarm­ing – it’s the abrupt man­ner in which they were fired. As the media ana­lyst Josh Marshall not­ed, “The most strik­ing thing about Licht’s fir­ings to date is how they are chore­o­graphed for … right-wing media con­sump­tion and designed to gen­er­ate mass schaden­freude on the right:
He then went ahead and hired John Miller, a loud-mouthed for­mer NYPD deputy com­mis­sion­er of intel­li­gence and counter-ter­ror­ism as a law enforce­ment and intel­li­gence analyst.
John Miller autho­rized spy­ing on Muslims in New York City after the September 11^th attack. 

So, no one should be sur­prised that Don Lemon was fired after he engaged in a heat­ed debate with Ramaswamy, who demon­stra­bly had the gall to think he can define the black expe­ri­ence in America even as he jock­eys for hon­orary whiteness.
Licht had an itch to fire Don Lemon, a Trump crit­ic, and so any­thing that Lemon did or said would have been deemed offen­sive by the immoral right-wing cabal and peo­ple like Chris Litcht Warner Brothers placed in posi­tions of power.
I nev­er both­ered to watch CNN, but now they won’t have to wor­ry about me. My tele­vi­sion will nev­er be turned to CNN ever again. 

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.
Subscribe to Mike’s Youtube @ Mikebeckles

They will go on sling­ing lies and dis­in­for­ma­tion, but every time that they defame some­one, they should be tak­en to court until they are shut down. In fact, every pen­ny that the dis­in­for­ma­tion cor­po­ra­tion made should be tak­en away from them and donat­ed to char­i­ties and peo­ple they slan­dered. (mb)

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Fox News and its par­ent com­pa­ny Fox Corp. have struck a deal avert­ing a tri­al in the block­buster defama­tion suit filed by the elec­tion-tech com­pa­ny Dominion Voting Systems over spu­ri­ous claims of fraud in the 2020 pres­i­den­tial race.

Judge Eric M. Davis of the Delaware Superior Court announced the set­tle­ment from the bench on Tuesday after­noon ahead of the tri­al’s sched­uled start.

The par­ties set­tled for $787,500,000 — about half of Dominion’s orig­i­nal $1.6 bil­lion ask.

The amount “rep­re­sents vin­di­ca­tion and account­abil­i­ty,” said Dominion lawyer Justin Nelson. “Lies have consequences.”

Dominion CEO John Poulos told reporters, “Fox has admit­ted to telling lies about Dominion that caused enor­mous dam­age to my com­pa­ny, our employ­ees and the cus­tomers that we serve. Nothing can ever make up for that. Throughout this process, we have sought account­abil­i­ty,” he said. “Truthful report­ing in the media is essen­tial to our democracy.”

Fox News released a state­ment short­ly after a set­tle­ment was announced.

“We acknowl­edge the Court’s rul­ings find­ing cer­tain claims about Dominion to be false,” the state­ment said. “This set­tle­ment reflects FOX’s con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to the high­est jour­nal­is­tic stan­dards. We are hope­ful that our deci­sion to resolve this dis­pute with Dominion ami­ca­bly, instead of the acri­mo­ny of a divi­sive tri­al, allows the coun­try to move for­ward from these issues.”
Read the full sto­ry here:https://​www​.npr​.org/​2​0​2​3​/​0​4​/​1​8​/​1​1​7​0​3​3​9​1​1​4​/​f​o​x​-​n​e​w​s​-​s​e​t​t​l​e​s​-​b​l​o​c​k​b​u​s​t​e​r​-​d​e​f​a​m​a​t​i​o​n​-​l​a​w​s​u​i​t​-​w​i​t​h​-​d​o​m​i​n​i​o​n​-​v​o​t​i​n​g​-​s​y​s​t​ems

The First Amendment pro­vides sev­er­al rights pro­tec­tions: to express ideas through speech and the press, to assem­ble or gath­er with a group to protest or for oth­er rea­sons, and to ask the gov­ern­ment to fix prob­lems. It also pro­tects the right to reli­gious beliefs and prac­tices. It pre­vents the gov­ern­ment from cre­at­ing or favor­ing a religion.

Republicans hate every­thing in the Bill of Rights except for the 2^nd Amendment, the right to bear Arms.
They hate that ordi­nary American cit­i­zens are free to express their ideas through free speech and the rights guar­an­teed the Press. Except if the press report­ing is def­er­en­tial and slant­ed, like FUAX news and the wide net­work of right-wing dis­in­for­ma­tion organs through­out the country.
They oppose the teach­ing of American his­to­ry. Desantis is remov­ing the teach­ing of African-American his­to­ry in Florida’s high schools and col­leges. They are burn­ing books that they dis­agree with and much more.

The Second Amendment pro­tects the right to keep and bear arms.

This they agree with. They believe in unbri­dled access to guns of all types, includ­ing assault-style weapons that have been used in the almost dai­ly mas­sacres of American citizens.

• US has 120.5 firearms per 100 res­i­dents, report finds
• The only coun­try with more civil­ian-owned firearms than people(Bloomberg)
  There are a report­ed 400-plus mil­lion guns in the hands of Americans. However, those weapons are con­cen­trat­ed in the hands of only about 32% of the peo­ple, large­ly white Republicans.

The Third Amendment pre­vents the gov­ern­ment from forc­ing home­own­ers to allow sol­diers to use their homes. Before the Revolutionary War, laws gave British sol­diers the right to take over pri­vate homes.

Republicans are for the rich and pow­er­ful, so it is not a stretch to under­stand their sup­port for laws like immi­nent domain that allows the Government to appro­pri­ate the prop­er­ty of cit­i­zens under the guise that it is for the com­mon good. They have sup­port­ed even large cor­po­ra­tions forcibly acquir­ing the prop­er­ty of cit­i­zens using immi­nent domain as justification.

The Fourth Amendment bars the gov­ern­ment from unrea­son­able search and seizure of an indi­vid­ual or their pri­vate property.

Republicans are for the police state as long as it does not apply to them. They are com­fort­able with Police abus­ing the rights of poor Black Americans by forcibly enter­ing their homes and motor­cars with­out legal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. They have no prob­lem with gov­ern­men­tal pow­er as long as it does not affect them.

The Fifth Amendment pro­vides sev­er­al pro­tec­tions for peo­ple accused of crimes. It states that seri­ous crim­i­nal charges must be start­ed by a grand jury. A per­son can­not be tried twice for the same offense (dou­ble jeop­ardy) or have prop­er­ty tak­en away with­out just com­pen­sa­tion. People have the right against self-incrim­i­na­tion and can­not be impris­oned with­out due process of law (fair pro­ce­dures and trials.

The Fifth Amendment is one of the rights most Americans have come to depend on against Government over­reach and abuse. Notwithstanding, Republicans like Donald Trump do not believe these rights should extend to peo­ple of color.
He want­ed the Central Park five exe­cut­ed, even though it turned out they were all inno­cent of the charges against them.
Republicans like Sarah Huckabee Sanders have just signed into law sweep­ing changes to parole laws in the state of Arkansas. 

The Sixth Amendment pro­vides addi­tion­al pro­tec­tions to peo­ple accused of crimes, such as the right to a speedy and pub­lic tri­al, tri­al by an impar­tial jury in crim­i­nal cas­es, and to be informed of crim­i­nal charges. Witnesses must face the accused, and the accused is allowed his or her own wit­ness­es and to be rep­re­sent­ed by a lawyer.

Their Fascist mes­si­ah Donald Trump fac­ing a 34-count felony indict­ment filed by the New York City District Attorney’s office is ask­ing a court for a cool­ing off peri­od as anoth­er case, this time a civ­il rape case, is get­ting ready for trial.
His accuser is enti­tled to a speedy res­o­lu­tion in this mat­ter as the alleged aggriev­ed and injured par­ty. In this case, Trump is ask­ing to slow things down, arguably he believes, as he has always telegraphed, that he can drag court cas­es out to frus­trate his oppo­nents. His cal­cu­lus is his hope that he will once again become pres­i­dent, where­upon the lat­ter case will nev­er see the light of day.

The Seventh Amendment extends the right to a jury tri­al in Federal civ­il cases.
This amend­ment is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant for poor defen­dants, par­tic­u­lar­ly peo­ple who are in the minority.
Imagine get­ting a fed­er­al judge appoint­ed by Donald Trump in a bench tri­al. This is an impor­tant amendment.

The Eighth Amendment bars exces­sive bail and fines and cru­el and unusu­al punishment.

This amend­ment gives some cov­er to minori­ties accused of crimes. In most cas­es, they are unable to afford the exor­bi­tant bail that uneth­i­cal racist judges would impose. Republicans have long railed against the amendment.

The Ninth Amendment states that list­ing spe­cif­ic rights in the Constitution does not mean that peo­ple do not have oth­er rights that have not been spelled out.

This is one of the rights in the Bill of Rights that Police depart­ments and their offi­cers, and their Republican sup­port­ers need to be remind­ed of on a reg­u­lar basis.

The Tenth Amendment says that the Federal Government only has those pow­ers del­e­gat­ed in the Constitution. If it isn’t list­ed, it belongs to the states or to the people.

This may be one amend­ment they are not too opposed to. They have con­sis­tent­ly railed against the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment begin­ning with Nixon, more so with Ronald Reagan and oth­er states’ rights pro­po­nents like Newt Gingrich and the entire mod­ern Republican party.
Understand, of course, that when they advo­cate for more rights for the states and less fed­er­al inter­ven­tion, they are advo­cat­ing for the right to bru­tal­ize and do as they please to Black cit­i­zens as they have done for hun­dreds of years.

The Bill of Rights: How Did it Happen?

Writing the Bill of Rights

The amend­ments James Madison pro­posed were designed to win sup­port in both hous­es of Congress and the states. He focused on rights-relat­ed amend­ments, ignor­ing sug­ges­tions that would have struc­tural­ly changed the government. 

Opposition to the Constitution

Many Americans, per­suad­ed by a pam­phlet writ­ten by George Mason, opposed the new gov­ern­ment. Mason was one of three del­e­gates present on the final day of the con­ven­tion who refused to sign the Constitution because it lacked a bill of rights.

James Madison and oth­er sup­port­ers of the Constitution argued that a bill of rights was­n’t nec­es­sary because — “the gov­ern­ment can only exert the pow­ers spec­i­fied by the Constitution.” But they agreed to con­sid­er adding amend­ments when rat­i­fi­ca­tion was in dan­ger in the key state of Massachusetts.

Introducing the Bill of Rights in the First Congress

Few mem­bers of the First Congress want­ed to make amend­ing the new Constitution a pri­or­i­ty. But James Madison, once the most vocal oppo­nent of the Bill of Rights, intro­duced a list of amend­ments to the Constitution on June 8, 1789, and “hound­ed his col­leagues relent­less­ly” to secure its pas­sage. Madison had come to appre­ci­ate the impor­tance vot­ers attached to these pro­tec­tions, the role that enshrin­ing them in the Constitution could have in edu­cat­ing peo­ple about their rights, and the chance that adding them might pre­vent its oppo­nents from mak­ing more dras­tic changes to it.

Ratifying the Bill of Rights

The House passed a joint res­o­lu­tion con­tain­ing 17 amend­ments based on Madison’s pro­pos­al. The Senate changed the joint res­o­lu­tion to con­sist of 12 amend­ments. A joint House and Senate Conference Committee set­tled the remain­ing dis­agree­ments in September. On October 2, 1789, President Washington sent copies of the 12 amend­ments adopt­ed by Congress to the states. By December 15, 1791, three-fourths of the states had rat­i­fied 10 of these, now known as the “Bill of Rights.”

An arraigned criminal…

Many of you who both­er to pay atten­tion or are old enough will remem­ber the so-called cen­tral park five. It was a case on April 19, 1989, in which a white woman Trisha Meili was sex­u­al­ly assault­ed as she jogged in New York’s Central Park. The New York Police Department arrest­ed five young black and Latino teenagers.
Donald Trump took out ads in local papers demand­ing the death penal­ty for teenagers. They were con­vict­ed for a crime they did not com­mit and were released years lat­er after the real assailant was arrest­ed and convicted.

Donald Trump called for lock­ing up Hillary Clinton, his Democratic oppo­nent in the 2016 pres­i­den­tial cycle. Even though there have since been sev­er­al fish­ing expe­di­tions in the Republican-con­trolled House, most notably the so-called Benghazi hear­ings spear­head­ed by fas­cist pit bulls Trey Goudy and Gym Jordon[sic], there has emerged not one scin­til­la of evi­dence to charge for­mer Secretary Clinton with any crimes.
Whether one believes in God or a high­er pow­er or not, it does­n’t change the fact that our world is set up on prin­ci­ples that keep things even keel.
Whatever you sow, that shall you also reap. Whether Donald Trump will be con­vict­ed on any of these 34 felony charges is a long way off, and whether The Fulton County Georgia Grand Jury will indict him is yet to be determined.
And final­ly, whether the United States Attorney General will indict Donald Trump in the myr­i­ad inves­ti­ga­tions into his con­duct in Classified Documents, Espionage, Seditious con­spir­a­cy, or any oth­er is up in the air.
One thing is cer­tain; the twice-impeached sin­gle-term los­er will go down in infamy as the first to be indict­ed for any offense, much less 34 felonies.

I have heard some ludi­crous rea­sons com­ing from the polit­i­cal right as to why this Teflon slith­er­er should not have been indict­ed, includ­ing one froth­ing-mouth mon­grel who asked, ‘How dare DA Alvin Bragg indict a for­mer pres­i­dent, how dare he indict some­one who sat in the chair occu­pied by Lincoln, Reagan and others”?
My response to the froth­ing-mouth idi­ot­ic big­ot is this; it always takes a black man or woman to do what’s right. None of the pres­i­dents of the past you named were men of hon­or or char­ac­ter, so suck it.
The fact that you find it more impor­tant to demo­nize the uphold­er of the law than the vile crea­ture who breaks them tells us all we need to know about you.
Finally, the coun­try is becom­ing a bet­ter ver­sion of itself with this indict­ment. Oh, did I say suck it?

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

An indict­ed Donald Trump is set to be arraigned in Manhattan On Tuesday after­noon on charges hand­ed down by a Manhattan Grand Jury. This will be the first time a for­mer President of the United States will be arraigned. Donald Trump is no stranger to firsts, however.
He is the only pres­i­dent in his­to­ry to insti­gate a Coup d’é­tat to hold onto pow­er after he lost the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, fair and square. He is still to face jus­tice for those acts of sedi­tion and treason.
He was the first to get indict­ed in his­to­ry, and while we are on the sub­ject of firsts, the main­stream media can now drop the term unprece­dent­ed. There is prece­dent for it now, so please stop already with the ‘this is unprece­dent­ed.’ Donald Trump made sure of that.
Trump loves to be first; in fact, he rel­ish­es the idea that he is con­stant­ly talked about in the media, even if the cov­er­age is neg­a­tive. To him, there is no such thing as bad publicity.
How else are we to define this guy who man­aged to get him­self impeached twice in a sin­gle four-year — term, anoth­er first?
Look, one does­n’t have to be a clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist to under­stand that there is some­thing fun­da­men­tal­ly wrong with Trump.
If you set aside his hatred for Black peo­ple, Muslims, Mexicans, the poor, immi­grants, and every­one, not a rich Caucasian will­ing to kiss his bul­bous ass, I guess some­one may find some­thing redemp­tive about the guy.

The Racist zealots who bow down to him arguably believe that this guy is some Messiah sent to them by some god. I kid you not. At the same time, it is impor­tant to remem­ber that this con artist could care less about them. They are only use­ful to him because they count numer­i­cal­ly; their num­bers are impor­tant for him to threat­en the rest of the coun­try with vio­lence. He fundrais­es from them and pock­ets the mon­ey. I guess every idiot has oth­er idiots under them.
So I heard that he would be fin­ger­print­ed at his arrange­ment but not pho­tographed. (spe­cial priv­i­leges oth­er Americans who alleged­ly break the laws are not allowed to have. Whether this is true or not, I can­not ver­i­fy; I guess we will see; of course, the very rich and pow­er­ful are always known to have spe­cial priv­i­leges, usu­al­ly old white men.
It will come as no sur­prise if he is arraigned with­out a mugshot.
Oh, don’t for­get that the lying syco­phants who drink at the bit­ter well of deceit and racist big­otry will tell you that America has one sys­tem of jus­tice- you know, because they are smarter than you are, and you should not believe your own eyes.

The idea that a sit­ting pres­i­dent can­not be indict­ed for alleged crimes, a for­mer pres­i­dent should not be pros­e­cut­ed for alleged crimes, and a per­son run­ning for the pres­i­den­cy should not be pros­e­cut­ed for alleged crimes lays bare the idea of equal treat­ment under the laws. It is time that they under­stand we are not all fools.
The peo­ple who vote for this grab­ber of female gen­i­talia who brags about it may be a god to them, but he isn’t one to the rest of us.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

The United States is arguably the most pow­er­ful nation in the his­to­ry of the world. There have been pow­er­ful empires in the dis­tant past and near mod­ern history. 
The Mongols, Ottoman, Spanish, Roman, Russian and British empires read­i­ly come to mind. However, in terms of raw pow­er, glob­al reach, and the abil­i­ty to destroy human­i­ty, no oth­er empire has come close.
According to the Institute for pol­i­cy stud­ies, the world spent over $2 tril­lion on mil­i­taries for the first time in 2021. Of those 2 tril­lion dol­lars, the United States spent more than the next nine (9) coun­tries combined.
That expen­di­ture on defense rep­re­sents 39 per­cent of the world’s mil­i­tary spending.
If mil­i­tary spend­ing were the only cal­cu­lus that defines secu­ri­ty, the United States would have noth­ing to wor­ry about because it has dom­i­nat­ed defense spend­ing since the fall of the Soviet Union.
In fact, some have argued that Ronald Reagan helped to accel­er­ate the fall of the for­mer Soviet Empire by accel­er­at­ing mil­i­tary spend­ing here at home.
That may have some truth, as the Soviets did not have the econ­o­my to sus­tain the mas­sive mil­i­tary buildup that the Americans had ini­ti­at­ed. The Soviet Union became a top-heavy brass mon­ster on legs of clay, so it collapsed.

The United States, with its bloat­ed mil­i­tary bud­gets, along with the rest of the west­ern world, can arro­gant­ly pre­tend that this alliance between China and Russia is noth­ing to wor­ry about. Still, deep down, they under­stand what Xi’s vis­it means.
Long before Vladimir Putin invad­ed and annexed Crimea, politi­cians and talk­ing heads in the United States arro­gant­ly made the case that Russia was a weak region­al pow­er with an econ­o­my the size of Italy’s.
The state­ment was­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly all wrong. Russia’s econ­o­my is about that of Italy’s, but they nev­er both­ered to men­tion that Russia has the world’s largest nuclear arse­nal. That is the game chang­er, and even as they sought to min­i­mize the pow­er of Vladimir Putin and Russia, Putin invad­ed and annexed Crimea.
When Putin amassed his mil­i­tary on the Ukrainian bor­der, they made the same pre­dic­tions, ‘this was only a show of force.’ ‘Putin will not invade.’ Until he did.
Vladimir Putin may have mis­cal­cu­lat­ed to some degree, arguably a con­se­quence of bad intel­li­gence and bad advice, which gen­er­al­ly affect total­i­tar­i­an lead­ers who sur­round them­selves with yes-men and lackeys.
Nevertheless, a year and a month after Russian Tanks rolled over the bor­der into Ukraine, the war still rages; large­ly because of help from the Americans and oth­er west­ern pow­ers, Ukraine has some­how man­aged to stay in the fight.
Even so, much of Ukraine has been reduced to rubble.
Putin still has not con­quered the nation of Ukraine, but nei­ther has Ukraine been able to expel Russian forces despite west­ern help.

It is fair to say that the United States and NATO are not engaged in a full-scale war with Russia. Still, no one can deny that they are fight­ing a proxy war with the same region­al pow­er with the weak econ­o­my they ridiculed. Despite mil­i­tary help and mas­sive eco­nom­ic sanc­tions, a year lat­er they have not forced Russia to back down. Additionally, the rigid sanc­tions the west­ern nations imposed against the Russian econ­o­my have not achieved the imme­di­ate results they hoped to see.
Instead, Russia has forged new alliances with Iran, China, and oth­ers in defi­ance of west­ern help toward Ukraine. Militaries do not fight wars the way they are used to, so man­pow­er is not as impor­tant as it used to be. Nevertheless, human resources are still an impor­tant part of war­fare today.
The United States had a pop­u­la­tion of 331.9 mil­lion (2021). China had a pop­u­la­tion of 1.412 bil­lion (2021). Russia had a pop­u­la­tion of 143.4 mil­lion (2021). Iran had a pop­u­la­tion of 87.92 mil­lion (2021). And North Korea’population was 25.97 mil­lion (2021)
These are the nations that the world needs to pay atten­tion to as this new align­ment begins to take shape and as China and Russia assert their alliance and power.

If the Americans learned any­thing, they should have learned from the many lost wars. From Korea to Vietnam to Iraq, and the dis­as­trous with­draw­al that fol­lowed the Vietnamese and Afghan conflicts.
During the three years of the Korean con­flict, the Americans failed to rec­og­nize that it was not only fight­ing the North Koreans but the Chinese military.
The demil­i­ta­rized zone that sep­a­rates the two Koreas is a tes­ta­ment to the fact that the United States did not win that conflict.
The North Koreans, between June 25, 1950 – July 27, 1953, were able to stave off the pow­er­ful American mil­i­tary and South Korea with the help of light Chinese infantry units result­ing in the stale­mate that has been in effect for sev­en decades.
In the 1950’s China was an impov­er­ished so-called third-world nation. Today, China stands mighty as it fooled the west­ern world into think­ing it was a behe­moth but one dis­in­ter­est­ed in world affairs. Consequently, the world moved its man­u­fac­tur­ing to China, mak­ing that nation a rich and pow­er­ful play­er on the world stage.
China mod­ern­ized its mil­i­tary, includ­ing its nuclear forces, and went around the world build­ing new alliances using dol­lars as opposed to the west­ern pow­ers who believed alliances were built using bullets.

Instead of under­stand­ing the immi­nent threat posed by this bur­geon­ing alliance between China, Russia, and oth­er play­ers like Iran and South Korea, the United States is embroiled in divi­sion, racial ani­mus, and hatred.
No sin­gle nation can out-mil­i­ta­rize the United States, but they do not need to. America is destroy­ing itself from the inside with Russian dis­in­for­ma­tion and pro­pa­gan­da insert­ed in its eco-sys­tem and the racial seg­re­ga­tion that has char­ac­ter­ized America’s DNA from its founding.
Instead of cel­e­brat­ing its diver­si­ty, America is weak­en­ing itself along racial, gender,s sex­u­al, reli­gious, and oth­er defin­ing lines.
In that regard, America is its own worst enemy.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

In July 2022, I went on a fam­i­ly trip to the coun­try of Panama. It was fas­ci­nat­ing from start to fin­ish. Here are some images I brought back.
I love to take out my cam­era and cap­ture some of the scenes; truth be told, I no longer use a reg­u­lar cam­era because my kids shamed me into using my iPhone instead. I hope my boys are proud of them­selves because these pic­tures look like they were tak­en using an old iPhone 7 plus.
They were.
Full dis­clo­sure, I was forced to ditch my 7plus just days ago as it had reached the end of the road and sim­ply refused to con­nect calls anymore.

And our guide to the village.

I was impressed with the knowl­edge of all of the peo­ple we inter­act­ed with. The Panamanians we inter­ract­ed with seemed to take great pride in their coun­try and were well-versed in its history.
This remind­ed me of the guides at the Bob Marley Museum in my own Jamaica, awe­some, informed delight­ful and super informed.

mm

There is a very good rea­son that I could not hold pub­lic office. I just do not have the patience for BS, and nei­ther do I have the patience to sit and lis­ten to loads of excre­ment try to sound impor­tant so they can run to FAUX news to be pat­ted on the back.
But as you know, Raphael Cruz, who would not defend his own wife when Donald Trump dissed her has an insa­tiable desire to act and sound like the whitest of the white right-wing Republicans. Oh, so too is his lit­tle com­padre, down in Florida, Liddle Marko.
Oooh, I would have told this lit­tle clown where to go stick his stu­pid face.…

For the record, this is pure the­ater; this clown is pon­tif­i­cat­ing, audi­tion­ing to see his face on FAUX pro­pa­gan­da net­work. My only ques­tion is why is Merrick Garland such a nice, easy-going man?

The deci­sion by the Andrew Holness Government to push through a bill that post­pones local gov­ern­ment elections.…..again, to February 28, 2024, high­lights the glar­ing real­i­ty that elec­tions have consequences.
Over the angry protests of Mark Golding People’s National Party’s oppo­si­tion to the bill and the oblig­a­tory walk-out, the bill was pushed through on a 20 to 8 vote.
The Holness Administration post­poned the local gov­ern­ment elec­tions due in February 2021 dur­ing the height of the COVID pan­dem­ic. The oppo­si­tion PNP argued that they did not oppose putting off those elec­tions at the time as it made sense.
The oppo­si­tion is angry, how­ev­er, that this was the third post­pone­ment since 2021. Moreover, the oppo­si­tion is not buy­ing the rea­sons for this lat­est post­pone­ment. Local Government Minister Desmond McKenzie, who made the case for the Government’s posi­tion, argued that the Government had weighed the bal­ance. We believe at this time where the coun­try is, the fact that we have to con­sid­er impor­tant issues — an elec­tion is impor­tant — but I urge the coun­try’s patience to under­stand and respect the deci­sion of the Government”.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​-​c​o​u​l​d​-​c​o​p​y​-​p​a​s​t​e​-​f​r​o​m​-​o​t​h​e​r​s​-​t​h​a​t​-​d​i​d​-​i​t​-​b​e​f​o​r​e​-​b​u​t​-​e​v​e​n​-​t​h​a​t​-​i​s​-​t​o​o​-​d​i​f​f​i​c​u​lt/

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​c​r​i​s​i​s​-​o​f​-​l​e​a​d​e​r​s​h​i​p​-​m​a​k​e​s​-​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​n​s​-​v​u​l​n​e​r​a​b​l​e​-​t​o​-​a​l​l​-​k​i​n​d​s​-​o​f​-​i​l​ls/

“We are in a bet­ter posi­tion than last year, but it is clear that we are not yet out of the woods. The Government is focused on build­ing nation­al resilience against fur­ther eco­nom­ic shocks and expand­ing and main­tain­ing strong eco­nom­ic growth.” According to the min­is­ter, hold­ing the munic­i­pal elec­tions at this time car­ried sig­nif­i­cant risk of divert­ing the coun­try from these two tasks.
If ever there was a load of pop­py­cock, this is it. Using this log­ic, there would nev­er be elec­tions in Jamaica ever. In fact, any admin­is­tra­tion in pow­er in any coun­try could use that log­ic to post­pone elec­tions they fear may be unfa­vor­able to them.
Here again, is a case for Jamaica to adopt a Republican gov­er­nance mod­el through a new con­sti­tu­tion­al order and one that has set elec­tion dates.
Elections are the most vital ele­ment in a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety, and they should not be left up to the whims of the par­ty in pow­er to manip­u­late them to suit their needs.
Fixed elec­tions allow the peo­ple (the real boss­es) to deter­mine who they choose to lead.
The oppo­si­tion par­ty does­n’t always get it right, and although the par­ty is whol­ly craven about gain­ing pow­er for pow­er’s sake, its argu­ments are no less reasonable.

Having said that, it is impor­tant to draw atten­tion to the lack of use­ful­ness of the local gov­ern­ment, and some will argue the cen­tral gov­ern­ment as well. Jamaica’s roads are a lit­tle more than don­key tracks in many cases.
Growing up in the District of Bonnett North East St Catherine in the 70s, a paved road was some­thing we saw in Benbow, Guys Hill, and oth­er more well-known areas. The road from Benbow into Bonnett was a dirt track cov­ered in stones and trenches.
North East Saint Catherine, from as far as I can remem­ber, sup­port­ed the Jamaica Labor Party; from John Percival Gyles to E K Powell, the con­stituen­cy remained JLP except lat­er when the PNP won, and Phillis Mitchell rep­re­sent­ed the constituency.
As a school­boy grow­ing up there, E K Powell was very acces­si­ble as a Member of Parliament. He was active in encour­ag­ing youth sports and was instru­men­tal in facil­i­tat­ing cross-dis­trict crick­et­ing rivalries.
We lob­bied Mister Powell inces­sant­ly as a col­lec­tive of young peo­ple, and indi­vid­u­al­ly I lob­bied the gov­ern­ment uti­liz­ing Ronnie Thwaites and Wilmott Perkins’s dai­ly radio shows.

The road into Bonnett was even­tu­al­ly paved. The road into Bonnett today is once again a dirt track. I sat down with a friend and a fam­i­ly mem­ber last November and rem­i­nisced about how we were instru­men­tal in get­ting the road paved. I was stunned that one friend was quick to take cred­it for hav­ing some­thing to do with it while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly join­ing with my rel­a­tive to tell me noth­ing could be done to fix the road today, over four decades lat­er, as it is con­sid­ered a sec­ondary road.
The road was a sec­ondary road forty-plus years ago when I inces­sant­ly lob­bied and shamed them into fix­ing it as a schoolboy.
The road that was beau­ti­ful­ly paved well over four decades ago is now a dirt track, and noth­ing will be done about it because some peo­ple there lack imag­i­na­tion and are sat­is­fied with the sta­tus quo. 

I chopped a few choice pieces of Jamaican fab­ric dur­ing that con­ver­sa­tion with my friend and fam­i­ly mem­ber. I was total­ly pissed that peo­ple could be that com­fort­able with mediocrity.
When I inquired about rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the local gov­ern­ment, I was told that some guy named [Dunn] was the coun­cilor there. He is not from there but had fam­i­ly from there.
On my last trip home last November, the SUV I drove sus­tained a flat tire from falling into the craters that are impos­si­ble to nav­i­gate with­out falling into some of them.
I am call­ing on the Jamaica Labor Party Member of Parliament for North East Saint Catherine, Kerensia Morrison, to fix the road lead­ing into Bonnett From Benbow. Failing this, I will begin a cam­paign for cit­i­zens there to look at the oth­er par­ty not because it is bet­ter but to send a mes­sage that this behav­ior will not be tolerated.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

The safe­ty fea­tures of a for­eign car built for the Jamaican mar­ket are gen­er­al­ly infe­ri­or to those built for the United States, Canada, and Great Britain mar­kets. Of course, even though a car may be from Toyota, Nissan, or Mazda-Japanese brands, they are most like­ly built to a more exact­ing stan­dard in the United States, Canada, and England.
Why is this so? Is it because those are wealthy and pow­er­ful nations? That may be a part of it; nev­er­the­less, the sim­ple answer is that those gov­ern­ments ensure that prod­ucts com­ing into their coun­try are of a stan­dard they are com­fort­able with.
They cre­ate stan­dards for cars enter­ing their mar­kets and all oth­er prod­ucts their con­sumers use. This process is not a one-off process where con­gress or the par­lia­ment pass­es laws, and that’s the end of it. It is a con­tin­u­ous eval­u­a­tion process. In some cas­es, the laws passed have sun­set claus­es, mean­ing after sev­er­al years, con­gress revis­its a law to see whether it has worked the way it was intended.

This is not about cars, the American con­gress, the British House of Commons, or the Canadian Parliament. It is about the peo­ple’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives doing the work they were sent to do.
We live in a world that is con­tin­u­ous­ly chang­ing; our peo­ple are con­nect­ed to oth­ers thou­sands of miles around the globe, all with­in a nano-sec­ond at the click of a mouse. Consequently, the parliament/​congress must be ever vig­i­lant on behalf of their nation.
Old and archa­ic laws must be updat­ed or rewrit­ten as cir­cum­stances change, and new laws must be enact­ed to deal with emerg­ing eventualities.
Can any­one truth­ful­ly say that the Jamaican par­lia­ment has been up to the task laid out in the foregone?
This brings me to the ques­tion of the theft of invest­ment monies belong­ing to for­mer sprint star Usain Bolt and oth­ers. Where there are lax rules gov­ern­ing any part of the pub­lic or pri­vate sec­tor, crim­i­nal ele­ments will sure­ly be pry­ing and prod­ding to exploit those weaknesses. 

Theft, scams, and swin­dling are all too com­mon in the dig­i­tal age, and it is not unique to Jamaica by any stretch of the imag­i­na­tion. The ques­tion, how­ev­er, must be, what are the pro­vi­sions in place statu­to­ri­ly to pro­tect all Jamaicans, not just Usain Bolt?
The theft of monies from Usain Bolt is only news because he is Usain Bolt.
But this is not new; peo­ple have been los­ing their hard-earned sav­ings in insti­tu­tions that strict oper­at­ing pro­ce­dures in law should gov­ern. And what has the Jamaican leg­is­la­ture done about it? What have they done about Jamaica Public Services Company’s monop­oly and how it oper­ates with total impuni­ty and incom­pe­tence in the space?
What has the leg­is­la­ture done about the Registrar General Department or Motor Vehicle Department that has been allowed to con­tin­ue for decades as a cesspool of cor­rup­tion, to the point it is the norm to pay and receive a dri­ver’s license even if you can­not dri­ve an automobile?
Try apply­ing for a birth cer­tifi­cate, and you will prob­a­bly die from old age if not from the coun­try’s inor­di­nate­ly high vio­lent crime rate. These issues can be reme­died with sim­ple leg­is­la­tion that makes it manda­to­ry for Jamaicans to receive the ser­vices they pay for with­in a cer­tain time stip­u­lat­ed in the law.

Knowing how long you will have to wait to receive an answer from a gov­ern­ment agency is not nov­el. Every Jamaican apply­ing to enter the United States, Canada, or Great Britain knows the timeline.
The prob­lem plagu­ing the nation is a cri­sis of lead­er­ship. There is no short­age of pon­tif­i­ca­tors vying in the par­lia­ment for air­time, and there is no short­age of wannabe lead­ers wait­ing for their turn at the slop trough of the pub­lic purse. What the pub­lic receives in return is incom­pe­tence and not much else.
Where is the leg­isla­tive urgency that is required to pro­tect the Jamaican people?
On the oth­er hand, if the peo­ple can­not get pro­tec­tion from the mur­der­ers run­ning wild and killing at will, why would they expect those in pow­er to pro­tect their hard-earned resources?

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.