There is a legit­i­mate debate that has raged qui­et­ly for some­time ‚but now seem to be all out in the open, it has to do with whether or not it is an oxy­moron to be a black Republican. Before we attempt to answer that ques­tion we have to look at the per­cent­age of black peo­ple who vote for the Democratic par­ty, why they do so, and exam­ine whether that means we think mono­lith­i­cal­ly or not. Pundits argue that maybe as many as 99% of black Americans vote for the Democratic Party. The ques­tion then arise as to why such a large per­cent­age of any one group of peo­ple would grav­i­tate to one polit­i­cal par­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly when they have pre­cious lit­tle to show for it? In exam­in­ing the fore­gone one has to ask whether blacks are forced to sup­port the Democratic par­ty because they have nowhere else to go, or is there a defin­i­tive strate­gic advan­tage for them in sup­port­ing the Democrats.

The Democratic Party was once the par­ty viewed as the par­ty opposed to inte­gra­tion, how­ev­er through Civil Rights leg­is­la­tion start­ed under President Kennedy and the instru­men­tal­i­ty of his broth­er Bobby Kennedy, which became law under President Lyndon Johnson has seen blacks move in droves to throw their sup­port to it. Conversely Whites, and in par­tic­u­lar white men ran in droves to the Republicans,obviously look­ing for a place from which to stage their last stand against equal rights , jus­tice, and a fair play­ing field for all. Fifty years lat­er the repub­li­can par­ty still has white male as it’s core base of sup­port­ers. The Democratic par­ty has mor­phed into a par­ty of coali­tions, blacks, gays, les­bians, some lati­no groups, lib­er­als, jews, and a splin­ter of spe­cial inter­est groups. Republicans have demon­strat­ed that they are quite hap­py to be the par­ty of the white male . Former President Bush to his cred­it tried to make the repub­li­can par­ty a place where blacks would be wel­come, how­ev­er fanat­ics on the right have lit­er­al­ly made blacks per­sona non gra­ta (not wel­come) in that par­ty, at the last repub­li­can nation­al con­ven­tion the num­ber of black del­e­gates could be count­ed on one hand with maybe a fin­ger to spare. The sole black mem­ber of con­gress in that par­ty that pre­dates the lunatic tea par­ty was ex foot­ball play­er J C Watts from Oklahoma, and he has since bowed out.

Allen West  Allan Keys Thomas Sowell

Michael SteeleClarence Thomaslar­ry ElderInnisRuben Diaz

JC WattsArmstrong WilliamsTD JakesCondi RiceSheryl UnderwoodLynn Swann

Arrayed above is a pret­ty impres­sive rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of what the face of black repub­li­can­ism looks like in America,I will­ful­ly left out Colin Powell whom I think is the most impres­sive of the lot by far, my deci­sion may have been col­ored by the fact that he is of Jamaican parent­age, or it may be because he came to his sens­es and endorsed can­di­date Obama for President, or both. Ok the truth is I like Colin Powell , he accom­plished much, served under repub­li­cans, but was­n’t behold­en to them to the point he lost his soul. He showed char­ac­ter in endors­ing Barack Obama for pres­i­dent, that I thought showed balls, and a sense of being one’s own per­son. Some argue that Powell was burned by repub­li­cans when they had him address the United Nations detail­ing at length alleged stock­piles of weapons of mass destruc­tion that turned out to be pho­ny as most well think­ing peo­ple knew all along. I saw it dif­fer­ent­ly Powell was the only repub­li­can in the Bush Administration that had any cred­i­bil­i­ty, he was the only mem­ber of that cab­i­net that the world would actu­al­ly lis­ten to giv­en how the world saw the Bush Administration. Who then was bet­ter than the for­mer Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to tell the world of the seri­ous­ness of the threats Saddam Hussein posed alleged­ly to the world? Dick Chaney saw a dou­ble coup in that move, dis­cred­it Powell,and bring him down to size after he had used him to sell the ille­git­i­mate war, Powell knew he got played. 

One of the cen­tral themes that comes from most of those who call them­selves black con­ser­v­a­tives is that some­how there is no racism, or that racism has­n’t pre­vent­ed them from mak­ing it so blacks suf­fer­ing and look­ing for a way for­ward have them­selves to blame. It seem that in order for a black man to make it they have to denounce who they are and some­how pre­tend they are some­one else, there are some who are on University cam­pus­es, as they have been from as far back as when Malcolm and Dr. King were fight­ing for equal­i­ty and Justice for blacks in this country,they can be found as talk­ing heads on cable tele­vi­sion, some claim­ing to be repub­li­can strate­gists, and pro­fes­sors. Everyone has a right to sup­port the par­ty of their choice, blacks who have made it has a right to wear their con­ser­vatism on their sleeve, what they do not have a right to do is to go around the coun­try as Caine is doing dis­parag­ing the pres­i­dent, and mak­ing claims that some­how the pres­i­dent is not black enough. Herman Caine like all oth­er blacks who have made it has ben­e­fit­ed from the sac­ri­fices of those who went before , those who toiled and were bit­ten by Bull O’Connor’s dogs, bat­tered by his water-hoses beat­en sense­less by his goons, and lynched. Caine and oth­ers like him stands on the graves of those who suf­fered and died to make it pos­si­ble for them to stand at all, or even raise their heads to look in the face of the white man, or walk on the same side of the street he is on, or dare look at his woman, while at the same time they dis­re­spect their sac­ri­fice , pre­tend­ing that they would be where they are today with­out those sac­ri­fices. Interestingly enough those who sac­ri­ficed the least are now ben­e­fit­ing the most, Those who occu­pied posi­tions in acad­e­mia, and oth­er posi­tions in sec­ond class American soci­ety were quite con­tent to have things remain the way they were, in fact they were trot­ted out dur­ing the strug­gle to extol the virtues of how great America was , and the won­der­ful lives blacks were liv­ing, Those who dared to chal­lenge the sta­tus quo were deemed to be trou­ble mak­ers and com­mu­nists by the white pow­er struc­ture , usu­al­ly through their black lap dogs.

Where was Herman Caine in the annals of the civ­il rights strug­gle, who ever heard of this lack­ey, he has sat out the strug­gle, yes Caine has every right to brag about his ascen­den­cy , of course it was the stead­fast­ness of his par­ents why both he and his broth­er could attend col­lege and make some­thing of them­selves, what he does not have a right to do is to sug­gest that some­how he has the for­mu­la for black­ness. There have always seem to be a resid­ual hatred on the part of many black Americans when it comes to the achieve­ments of oth­er blacks who do not share their experience,painful as this trait is, it offers those who wish­es us ill a per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to attack us by using cer­tain mem­bers of the black com­mu­ni­ty as proxy. Michael Steele became chair­man of the repub­li­can nation­al com­mit­tee because Obama was elect­ed pres­i­dent, once he won back the house they boot­ed him, Caine is trot­ting around attack­ing the pres­i­dent does any­one real­ly think this man will be elect­ed pres­i­dent on the repub­li­can tick­et? No ! but they get to say all the nasty things they want by hav­ing some­one in black skin say it. Look how well it has turned out for the black com­mu­ni­ty hav­ing Clarence Thomas on the supreme court. 

It is the same self hate that pre­vents the bulk of us from own­ing and suc­ceed­ing in our own busi­ness­es, instead we spend more mon­ey on con­sumer goods than any oth­er eth­nic group in this coun­try. Everyone now mar­kets to us , we buy any­thing, they curse us , they tell us they nev­er cre­at­ed their mer­chan­dize for us , yet we con­tin­ue to buy and con­sume their prod­ucts at a rate that makes them astro­nom­i­cal­ly wealthy , while we have noth­ing to show for all that mon­ey that pass through our hands annu­al­ly. Why? Because we refuse to show love to our own kind. It seem it would kill us to sup­port black busi­ness­es that are not hair salons and bar­ber­shops, the only rea­son we sup­port those two areas of black entre­pun­ear­ship is pri­mar­i­ly because we can­not get that kind of ser­vice elsewhere. 

The prob­lem with being a black repub­li­can is that the repub­li­can par­ty has not done any­thing to sug­gest that it wel­comes blacks into its ranks, con­verse­ly they are absolute­ly hos­tile to blacks and make no apolo­gies for it, con­sid­er a par­ty that is home to the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, the tea par­ty, Glen Beck, and the Fox mis-infor­ma­tion crowd, con­sid­er the par­ty that is home to ex-clan grand wiz­ard David Duke. It makes per­fect sense that blacks who have tak­en advan­tage of oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able to them,and have got­ten edu­cat­ed to hold them­selves and oth­ers to high­er stan­dards than some of what obtains but not sole­ly con­fined to the black com­mu­ni­ty. As we have said in these posts President Obama can­not change the job­less num­bers in black-America if young black men con­tin­ue to hang out on street cor­ners with their pants sag­ging way below their back-sides, smok­ing weed, when they ought to be in school. The same is true of young black women who at an astro­nom­i­cal rate, con­tin­ue to have chil­dren out-of-wed­lock with­out any fathers for their off­springs, imme­di­ate­ly plac­ing their chil­dren at a disadvantage. 

There is a pre­vail­ing sense with­in our com­mu­ni­ty at least to my mind, that once we accom­plish some­thing we move dan­ger­ous­ly far away from who we are in order to be noticed , and we stay there until we fall out of favor with those we try to impress, then we come crawl­ing back to the black com­mu­ni­ty look­ing for redemp­tion. Wearing a suit ad occu­py­ing an ele­vat­ed posi­tion in acad­e­mia, and for­get­ting where one come from while pre­tend­ing that all is well with the world , and that all black peo­ple who have not made it as you have are lazy and deserv­ing of their lot in life is haughty, sim­plis­tic ‚and dis­gust­ing­ly phar­isee . It is no dif­fer­ent from some of those who are enter­tain­ers, sports stars rap­pers, and actors who make tons of mon­ey go out and pur­chase the shini­est most expen­sive cars , clothes , and homes and in no time ends up broke and right back where they start­ed, the urge to be seen is the same. In the sev­en­ties eight­ies and nineties an edu­cat­ed black woman could be spot­ted a mile away , her hair was unprocessed , usu­al­ly in a twist of sorts, or had a frizz look, her skirt was long and her atti­tude haughty, it said I went to col­lege. Today the hair­styles have changed some­what , but the anger remains, the men for their part walk around with white wives and align them­selves to the repub­li­can par­ty, even though they are not want­ed real­ly, but are used aus­pi­cious­ly and con­ve­nient­ly when needed. 

The list of black con­ser­v­a­tives is impres­sive and runs the gamut of pro­fes­sions, from Judges to busi­ness peo­ple , from ath­letes to aca­d­e­mics, from the cler­gy to the media there is no short­age of blacks who iden­ti­fy as con­ser­v­a­tives, the truth is blacks have always embraced con­ser­v­a­tive prin­ci­ples, God ‚Country, fam­i­ly, no oth­er eth­nic groups is more reli­gious, or prac­tis­es their reli­gion with more fer­vor, so it is not unusu­al that well to do blacks that are promi­nent­ly exposed would espouse their con­ser­v­a­tive prin­ci­ples, what I do not under­stand is why are they repub­li­cans? Some blacks argue that repub­li­cans end­ed slav­ery, well tech­ni­cal­ly yes,but when the wrap­per is peeled back it seem there was more to abol­ish­ing slav­ery than just moral con­vic­tions. After all the north need­ed soldiers,and Lincoln need­ed to have a greater moral cause for the war oth­er than just keep­ing the union togeth­er, it was imper­a­tive that Europe did not enter the war to pro­tect the ter­ri­to­ry of Louisiana.

As does all Americans have a right to sup­port the par­ty of their choice , so does mem­bers of the black com­mu­ni­ty, it is pre­sump­tu­ous of Herman Caine to tell black America they are brain-washed in vot­ing for democ­rats in the num­bers they do, I could use a lot of adjec­tives to describe Caine , but I will refrain from doing so as he has a right to make an ass of him­self, what he does not have a right to do is to speak for me or any mem­ber of my fam­i­ly, my friends or even my race. Caine is a nov­el­ty , he will dis­cov­er this real soon, the num­bers attrib­uted to him in these ear­ly stages are sim­ply a protest against the slate of repub­li­can can­di­dates whom are at best wishy-washy. Even though the tea par­ty has elect­ed two black mem­bers to the house of rep­re­sen­ta­tives ‚one from in Florida and South Carolina each ‚this does not mean that Herman Caine will be the repub­li­can nom­i­nee for pres­i­dent of these United States, if Caine believes this he is even more stu­pid than I thought.

On the front page of this site I com­ment­ed that Jamaica is at a crossroads,at no time is this state­ment more pro­found than at this moment in time in our coun­try’s history.

The reason/​s behind Prime Minister Bruce Golding’s deci­sion to step down is a mon­u­men­tal one , he is not the first Prime Minister to do so, but he may be the first to do so under total­ly unclear moti­va­tions. In the short peri­od since 1962 there have been cas­es where prime min­is­ters have demit­ted office for one rea­son or anoth­er, Donald Sangster died in office, Michael Manley stepped aside due to ill-health and made way for Patterson, who in turn stepped aside mak­ing way for Simpson Miller before his term expired.

None of these chief exec­u­tives have demit­ted office under the cloud Golding has been under, ever since the débâ­cle involv­ing his alleged bungling of the Christopher Coke extra­di­tion . There has been a sus­tained cho­rus-call for his res­ig­na­tion, we on these blogs has also called for his res­ig­na­tion, not for polit­i­cal rea­sons, but because we val­ue coun­try over all else.

There has also been a sus­tained call from oth­er quar­ters for pure­ly polit­i­cal rea­sons, rea­sons that have noth­ing to do with our coun­try’s well-being, but are genised in a desire to see Jamaica return to the days of crash pro­gramme social­ist hand outs. We are less inclined than oth­ers to sug­gest ulte­ri­or motives for the Prime Minister’s res­ig­na­tion , what we do know is that he just lost his moth­er, a loss which must weigh heav­i­ly on him, we wish mis­ter Golding well and hope that heir appar­ent Andrew Holness will check any ego he has at the door .

We are well aware of the nar­cis­sis­tic ego­ma­nia that is a sta­ple of Jamaica’s politi­cians, Holness would be well advised not to take this to Jamaica House. As we have called on Golding to tran­scend pol­i­tics and be a dif­fer­ent kind of polit­i­cal leader, we also call on young Holness to shed the bag­gage of trib­al pol­i­tics and put coun­try first, oth­er­wise his demise will be assured as is the case with Golding.

We will await fur­ther devel­op­ments before com­ment­ing further.

mike beck­les.

heve your say.

Yesterday President Obama went to the United Nations and offered up a stout defense of the state of Israel. At the heart of this year’s General assem­bly meet­ing is the desire by Palestinians to have a sep­a­rate state of their own, side by side with the Jewish state of Israel. The pres­i­dent went to great lengths to artic­u­late the com­mit­ment of the United States in defense of the state of Israel. Absent from the speech was any par­al­lel com­mit­ment to see the thorny issue of Israel’s con­tin­ued build­ing of set­tle­ments stopped, an issue many objec­tive observers see as a land grab. The Israelis for their part seem to argue that the con­tin­ued build­ing of set­tle­ment is in the inter­est of their own secu­ri­ty, this con­vo­lut­ed argu­ment is part of their response to this issue when they are not argu­ing they have no con­trol over the set­tlers. In fair­ness to Israel some set­tle­ments have been bull­dozed as a sign of good-will by a pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion. This Administration of Benjamin Netanyahu is a less than ready to nego­ti­ate with the Palestinian Authority head­ed by Mahmoud Abbas aka Abu Mazen.

The prob­lems that exist between the Palestinians and Israelis are old and dates back to Biblical times, they were not fixed with any American pres­i­dent since the state of Israel was formed on con­test­ed lands in 1947. Those who pur­port to sup­port Israel on bib­li­cal grounds, argu­ing that God had promised the land to Israel, will find it dif­fi­cult to con­tin­ue to make that argu­ment in the face of Israel’s con­tin­ued occu­pa­tion of a sov­er­eign peo­ple, sub­ject­ing them to mul­ti­ple spot checks just to move or do ordi­nary things dur­ing the course of a day, some­thing we all take for grant­ed. The United States can­not be a cred­i­ble bro­ker for peace in light of its con­tin­ued and sus­tained sup­port for all things Israel even in light of her trans­gres­sions and sub­se­quent con­dem­na­tion by the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. Israel will con­tin­ue to find itself iso­lat­ed as long as she is pro­tect­ed by the United States, and does as she pleas­es out of the reach of nor­mal puni­tive sanc­tions that would have been attached to oth­er states. The sense of enti­tle­ment Israel feels is at the heart of the prob­lems and will not be addressed in our life­time if the process toward peace is the road present­ly being trav­elled. Israel can­not expect to flaunt inter­na­tion­al law and cry anti-Semitism when oth­ers speak out. Despite the noise by those on the cam­paign trail pros­trat­ing them­selves in front of Jewish vot­ers, there are some states­men who have a grasp of some sem­blance of fair­ness. Former pres­i­dent Clinton stat­ed in an inter­view with CNN.” The Israelis should state pub­licly that they do not want a two state solu­tion, let the Palestinian peo­ple get on with their lives, and live with the con­se­quences”. Once again pres­i­dent Obama has reneged on a stat­ed promise; he stat­ed he sup­port­ed a two state solu­tion between Israel and the Palestinian, yet yes­ter­day he explic­it­ly went to the United Nations with the intent to veto any move by Abbas to ask the Security Council for state­hood for the Palestinian peo­ple. Christian fun­da­men­tal­ists in America push for uncon­di­tion­al sup­port for Israel, They do so irre­spec­tive of Israel’s trans­gres­sions against the Palestinian peo­ple, if they are argu­ing from a reli­gious per­spec­tive that God has cho­sen Israel, are we to believe that God favors some peo­ple over oth­ers? Does God not care what his cho­sen peo­ple do unto oth­ers? The Palestinian peo­ple for their part must under­stand that they will, not win a bat­tle of might over Israel, they must approach their cause the way Doctor King and Gandhi approached their prob­lems, their cause as it relates to their oppres­sion and con­tin­ued occu­pa­tion is just . They must use moral per­sua­sion, they will be vin­di­cat­ed only through that path.

mike beck­les”

have your say:

 As some­one who sup­port nei­ther of the two gangs that pass for gen­uine polit­i­cal par­ties in Jamaica. I am nonethe­less left shak­ing my head, won­der­ing just how stu­pid Portia Simpson Miller and her par­ty think Jamaicans are ? We will attempt to answer that ques­tion through out this post , mak­ing all attempts to be fair and objec­tive to Miller, based on her record and that of her par­ty. The People’s National Party (PNP) won the pop­u­lar­i­ty con­test decades ago over their rivals the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP),As a result they arro­gant­ly claim Jamaica is PNP coun­try. arro­gant though that claim is, there is s sig­nif­i­cant amount of truth to it. As a boy my dear grand­dad who did dou­ble duties as my dad, told me numer­ous times that Bustamante said his cousin Norman Manley was like a snake and he did not trust him as far as he could throw him. Both my grand­dad and his broth­er my great Uncle told these sto­ries, my youngest broth­er brings our great-uncle back to life with par­o­dy when he relives those sto­ries. Busta obvi­ous­ly had lit­tle trust for his cousin Norman Manley.

One can rea­son­ably argue that maybe Busta’s dis­trust was para­noia, after all Busta was not the glib artic­u­late British edu­cat­ed Queens coun­cil Barrister his cousin Norman was. Jokes abound, (gen­er­al­ly in the cir­cles of PNP par­ti­sans), about Busta’s lack of intel­lect, Busta hav­ing honed his skills in the rough and tum­ble world of the trade union move­ment in its ear­ly days. Busta is not absolved from the stain of pop­ulism and charis­ma, his cousin was just bet­ter at it . Having been born Alexander Clarke to an Irish planter Robert Clarke and a Jamaican woman Mary Clarke Bustamante report­ed­ly changed his name to Bustamante the name of a Spanish sea-cap­tain whom it is report­ed adopt­ed him. Busta report­ed­ly spent some of his ear­ly years in Spain where he was edu­cat­ed and lat­er joined the Spanish Army. He then went to Cuba and New York after which he returned to Jamaica in ‚1932 he dab­bled in a pri­vate busi­ness he found­ed which spe­cial­ized in lend­ing mon­ey, but poor work­ing con­di­tions , low wages , pover­ty and oth­er social ills cat­a­pult­ed him into writ­ing let­ters, orga­niz­ing protest action, giv­ing speech­es and medi­at­ing on behalf of work­ers. His advo­ca­cy took him all over the Caribbean where he advo­cat­ed on behalf of work­ers, In 1938 the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union was born. I detail these facts to show that on the ques­tion of pop­ulism Bustamante could mix it up with the best of them. The People’s National Party fig­ured out how to win elec­tions, like the JLP they claimed a man­date to defend the rights of the poor, they fig­ured if the poor­er class of peo­ple believe they are on their side they will most like­ly have more peo­ple sup­port­ing them, they have played that card per­fect­ly, they have won more elec­tions since Independence that the JLP has.

Many who sup­port the PNP sim­ply do not under­stand that Government can­not be looked at as a means to bet­ter their lives. Government can be a vehi­cle to effect change , by the laws it enacts, the imped­i­ments to growth it removes , and poli­cies it fol­lows, that are friend­ly to invest­ment. Government how­ev­er can­not be the employ­er of labor in a mean­ing­ful way that is sus­tain­able, Governments take in tax­es from tax­pay­ers , it hires and pays work­ers from those tax­es, it pro­vides ser­vices like police , fire, and pays teach­ers , there can only be real employ­ment and greater pros­per­i­ty when the foun­da­tions are laid that are friend­ly to busi­ness allow­ing them to invest , hire work­ers , and pay takes , that is the way to eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty, not from Government hand-outs through pork bar­rel, or crim­i­nal shov­el­ing of cash to sup­port­ers, those are exact­ly how to dri­ve a coun­try into pover­ty ‚and failed state sta­tus. The PNP has suc­cess­ful­ly done that after ¹⁸¹⁄₂ years in office . I am left pow­er­less, just shak­ing my head that this par­ty which has lit­er­al­ly brought this coun­try to ruina­tion, with uncon­trolled crime , pover­ty, and cor­rup­tion could even be con­sid­ered as a cred­i­ble alter­na­tive to the JLP after less that one term in Office. The JLP has done sig­nif­i­cant harm to the coun­try in it’ han­dling of the Christopher Coke mat­ter, what was revealed to the world is what Jamaicans had already known, that both polit­i­cal par­ties are real­ly just crim­i­nal gangs, just gangs oper­at­ing with dif­fer­ent lay­ers and respon­si­bil­i­ties. The PNP could have done the patri­ot­ic thing and not con­test the next elec­tion. They could use the time to retool the par­ty, get rid of the old bag­gage , Portia, Omar Davies, Nicholson,Knight, Pickersgil, Buntin, etal. Michael Manley did not con­test the gen­er­al elec­tion of 1983, Edward Seaga called that snap elec­tion at a time when he thought he could win , Reagan had just invad­ed Grenada and Seaga had sent Jamaican sol­diers as part of the occu­py­ing force. Manley was caught flat-foot­ed and chose not to con­test the elec­tions, choos­ing instead to run around the world giv­ing speech­es and telling Jamaicans that the Government was ille­git­i­mate. Of course Manley knew he had no legs to stand on , any prime Minister can call elec­tions when­ev­er he choos­es under Jamaican law. Manley chose not to con­test because he felt he would lose, plain and sim­ple. Arguing then that the snap elec­tions were fraud­u­lent, is tan­ta­mount to a box­er get­ting knocked out after fail­ing to pro­tect him­self, then blames his oppo­nent. Portia Simpson Miller and her par­ty have now come up with anoth­er acronym [JEEP] Jamaica Emergency Employment Program.

Portia Simpson Miller

As if we have not had our fill of PNP acronyms, and slo­gans they have now devel­oped this new JEEP. There are how­ev­er a few parts miss­ing from this JEEP. Where are we going to get the mon­ey to fuel this jeep? any­one can make promis­es, Portia knows that there is noth­ing in this JEEP pro­gram that is paid for , If they are to be insti­tut­ed then there would have to be mas­sive tax increas­es or bor­row­ing. There is absolute­ly no way we can enact a social­ist pro­gram that puts peo­ple to work unfund­ed. The peo­ple’s National Party has learned noth­ing from events shap­ing the world over the last two decades. Globalization is the way for­ward, some refer to this new phe­nom­e­non as the new world order. It has at its core seri­ous impli­ca­tions for small nations like Jamaica, small­er nations will have to fig­ure out on whose side they are on and stick to that group. In order to com­pete in the areas of trade, receive con­ces­sions on fuel prices, and oth­er areas of the econ­o­my, small­er nation must be part of a group to real­ize those con­ces­sions and receive those con­sid­er­a­tions. CARICOM by the way is a far cry from being that group, with some mem­bers of CARICOM look­ing out exclu­sive­ly for their indi­vid­ual inter­est. European nations have come togeth­er as the European Union, a counter bal­ance to what they per­ceive to be hege­mo­ny on the part of the United States after the fall of the Soviet Union. The Africans are talk­ing about an African Union or some sort of United States of Africa, of course they can’t even agree to dis­agree. South American nations like Brazil are emerg­ing as dom­i­nant forces on the world stage through pro­duc­tion and their com­mit­ment to using alter­na­tive ener­gy sources like ethanol , leav­ing more mon­ey in their cof­fers to grow their economies. Asia has come of age , China in the lead is ben­e­fit­ing from glob­al­iza­tion , build­ing their econ­o­my on mas­sive pro­duc­tion of cheap and inex­pen­sive goods , manip­u­lat­ing their cur­ren­cy , as well as intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty pira­cy. Other Asian nations like Indonesia, India, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, and even Vietnam are emerg­ing as eco­nom­ic pow­er­hous­es as a result of coöper­a­tion , ben­e­fit­ing from out­sourced man­u­fac­tur­ing by large coun­tries like the United States. These coun­tries have seen their economies take on new life as they attract man­u­fac­tur­ing through cheap labor and less gov­ern­ment bureau­cra­cy. Most impor­tant­ly , at a time when all nations with the excep­tion of stub­born auto­crat­ic few like Cuba, and North Korea, are mov­ing their economies toward free mar­ket and open trad­ing, the PNP is propos­ing a raft of failed Socialist enti­tle­ments. The for­mer bas­tions of Communism/​Socialism China and Russia have now rec­og­nized that the only way to remain rel­e­vant is by open­ing their economies to the pri­vate sec­tor allow­ing for inter­na­tion­al trade and coöper­a­tion, it was what made America great, they made things and sold what they made . Jamaica should now be look­ing to fol­low suit with­out sell­ing off the coun­try to China or any oth­er large Nation with mon­ey. Our posi­tion ought to be, we have labor we are pre­pared to remove bar­ri­ers to invest­ment and trade. We must low­er crime which will see an enor­mous influx of new entrapenurialship,essentially more play­ers will want to come to the table. Instead the People’s National Party is propos­ing to take the coun­try back four decades to the sev­en­ties, with a raft of unfund­ed enti­tle­ment pro­grams that look good to poor peo­ple get­ting a lit­tle mon­ey for doing noth­ing, but it will cer­tain­ly be the death knell of the econ­o­my this time . When you hand out money(paper) that you haven’t earned , you sim­ply print it , it dri­ves up infla­tion, cheap­ens the cur­ren­cy and forces busi­ness­es to fail. One would have thought that by now the pro­po­nents of these pro­grams would rec­og­nize that the way to pros­per­i­ty is not through social­ism, but through edu­ca­tion hard work and inge­nu­ity. It is time for this par­ty of Norman Manley and his son Michael Manley to stop with the (sam­fy) and tell poor work­ing class Jamaicans there are no quick fix­es to their prob­lems, edu­cat­ing them that the only true path is through edu­ca­tion and hard work. That is the decent thing to do, the patri­ot­ic thing to do, fail­ing which we will con­tin­ue to lose gen­er­a­tions after gen­er­a­tions to pover­ty crime and despair. Now is the time Portia, you say you love the poor !If you love the poor now is the time to use your influ­ence to edu­cate them, I know it’s not pop­u­lar to do, I know it’ not in your DNA, but if you want to leave a lega­cy of car­ing, and con­cern for the peo­ple you say you love, use this oppor­tu­ni­ty to tell poor une­d­u­cat­ed Jamaicans that you will not be giv­ing them any more cur­ry goat and rice to secure their votes, tell them you want them to under­stand that they will have to help in nation build­ing, by start­ing now , right here , at this time, in this place. What Simpson Miller should be propos­ing at this junc­ture in the inter­est of our coun­try is a sim­ple plan that offers sus­tain­able jobs, here’s how. Miller would first have to have an under­stand­ing of the debil­i­tat­ing effect crime has on soci­ety, she would have to have a desire and or the will to give law enforce­ment what they need to do their jobs. Will and desire that are nec­es­sary com­po­nents that would enable the coun­try to offer poten­tial investors an envi­ron­ment not steeped in crimes to include extor­tion. Portia has none of those under­stand­ings, in inter­view after inter­view she has demon­stra­bly shown that she does not have a full grasp of the issues , or even under­stand the process nec­es­sary to grow our econ­o­my. The fact that the very vehi­cle she choses to push on the Jamaican peo­ple, the social­ist JEEP was designed by peo­ple oth­er than her or oth­er senior oper­a­tives in the par­ty , sug­gest that this is noth­ing based on core beliefs, but a cam­paign slo­gan designed sole­ly to win office. Here’s an idea, at a time when the world econ­o­my is reor­ga­niz­ing , old norms are out the win­dow, and new real­i­ties have to be embraced Jamaica needs to look to the future to see how we can lim­it the amount of scarce dol­lars we pay out for oil. This is the time for both the Governing par­ty and the Opposition to come togeth­er in the inter­est of the coun­try and see how we can encour­age a mas­sive invest­ment in solar, and wind ener­gy, there is no short­age of either of those two types of ener­gy. Investing in them at this time cre­ates jobs , reduces our car­bon foot­print and ben­e­fits our econ­o­my going for­ward. I would be hap­py to sup­ply a writ­ten plan on how this can be achieved to the Government and the leader of the oppo­si­tion, if they are will­ing to work togeth­er for the ben­e­fit of our coun­try. As Golding found out from the world’s eco­nom­ic down-turn mak­ing promis­es does noth­ing to improve the lives of Jamaicans, we are now liv­ing in an inter­con­nect­ed world where the cough of one coun­try insti­gates the snif­fle of anoth­er . Serious politi­cians must now stop with cheap pos­tur­ing and tell the mass­es of the peo­ple there are no quick fix­es to the coun­try’s fis­cal prob­lems. We are a small coun­try our prob­lems are not insur­mount­able, if we fix our crime prob­lem, fix our bureau­crat­ic prob­lems, we have a chance of once again attract­ing invest­ments into our coun­try. Portia and the PNP does not under­stand this . Bruce Golding the present Prime Minister under­stands this , but was unable to extri­cate him­self from the crim­i­nal ten­ta­cles of Christopher Coke and his Tivoli Empire, he will go down in infamy as the lit­tle train that couldn’t.

President Obama’s approval rat­ing is now at an all time low of 43% accord­ing to a recent CBS poll, his dis­ap­proval now stands at 50 %.

The polit­i­cal vul­tures smell blood and are already cir­cling ready for the car­cass. Many have already giv­en him up as dead.

The best thing this pres­i­dent has going for him is a repub­li­can par­ty that can­not find a seri­ous can­di­date that has half the intel­lect he has.

The ven­omous hate in the blo­gos­phere, radio, and TV caused me to won­der how in hell this man ever got elect­ed pres­i­dent of these United States?

I am remind­ed when­ev­er I see the ran­cid hate filled rants , that there are still a lot of repub­li­cans who did not vote for the pres­i­dent, these are gen­er­al­ly low infor­ma­tion semi /​and illit­er­ates who are real­ly not exposed , they do not care to know any truths beyond what pass­es for it in their lit­tle cocoon.

The house and sen­ate is now pop­u­lat­ed with tea par­ty mem­bers who have tak­en an oath not to work with the pres­i­dent on any­thing, this is sole­ly based on race , the pres­i­dent knows it but won’t say it , mem­bers of the black cau­cus knows it but won’t say it, democ­rats know it but they are most­ly white and will not call out their own . Blood is thick­er than water.

President Obama must take the bull by the horns , his sup­port­ers did not elect him to roll over to racist lying repub­li­cans, they did not elect him to acqui­esce to repub­li­can demands, they vot­ed for him to enact the agen­da he laid out on the cam­paign trail, they did not elect him to give repub­li­cans what they want, nei­ther was he elect­ed only to allow repub­li­cans to gov­ern from the minority.

They have essen­tial­ly been gov­ern­ing from the minor­i­ty from day one of the pres­i­den­t’s term, jam­ming and obstruct­ing at every turn. This has got to stop mis­ter Obama, you have demon­strat­ed that you are will­ing to make peace and work together.

Republicans do not want you to have any accom­plish­ments, they said so, you acknowl­edged it recent­ly , they have said they will not sup­port any bill that could give you a win.

Imagine that, giv­ing you a win , they do not care about the peo­ple or the coun­try, coun­try be damned, as long as they stop you.

Any fur­ther attempts at work­ing with them can only be inter­pret­ed not as con­cil­ia­to­ry but as weakness

Americans want their pres­i­dent to be force­ful, deter­mined and resolute .

Right now this pres­i­dent is kow­tow­ing to the peo­ple who want to wit­ness his demise, for no oth­er rea­son than the col­or of his skin.

I under­stand his stat­ed goal to reach across the aisle and offer a hand of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and compromise.

Mister President there are no hands for you to grasp.

They have pulled their hands away,you are no longer a Senator look­ing for oth­ers to co-sign a Bill, you are the President of the United States of America, act like it.

mike beck­les:

have your say>

The Kingston and Saint Andrew cor­po­ra­tion has been com­plain­ing about ille­gal build­ing in the Kingston and Saint Andrew areas which falls under its sphere of respon­si­bil­i­ty. Interestingly the Mayor of the cor­po­ra­tion Desmond McKenzie is a coun­cil­lor from Tivoli Gardens the epic cen­ter of JLP pol­i­tics and heart of Prime Minister Bruce Golding’s west Kingston Constituency.

If the Mayor as head of the coun­cil, and a close ally of the Prime min­is­ter ‚can­not get the ille­gal build­ing to stop , what chance is there for a res­o­lu­tion to this prob­lem? The truth is Jamaicans were gen­er­al­ly nev­er required to seek gov­ern­men­tal approval for build­ing their homes or oth­er struc­tures, how­ev­er as we move into becom­ing a devel­oped coun­try, we real­ized we have to adhere to codes that are uni­ver­sal with a view to sav­ing lives and ensure rel­a­tive safety.

The prob­lem in Jamaica’s case is that Jamaican laws have not kept pace with the times and as such there is no incen­tive to obey the archa­ic exist­ing laws.

In these blogs we have sought to point this out as it relates to the issue of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty. This prob­lem is how­ev­er not con­fined to crim­i­nal law , but oth­er areas of the laws to include those that cov­ers build­ing con­struc­tion or the pro­tec­tion of tourists com­ing off cruise ships.

McKenzie

Surprisingly The Council’s Mayor told the Jamaica Gleaner that the reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing build­ing con­struc­tion are woe­ful­ly inef­fec­tive, result­ing in many play­ers in the con­struc­tion indus­try ignor­ing the KSAC orders to cease and desist.

Finally a state­ment of truth or com­mon sense from a politi­cian. We have been shout­ing this for years. The rea­son we have the lev­el of crime and dis­re­spect for the rule of law is sim­ply because the laws are old and use­less, and the penal­ties assigned inef­fec­tu­al as deterrent.

This offers us a per­fect segue into anoth­er prob­lem in the heart of the coun­try. The issue of tourist harass­ment in resort towns like Ocho Rios. Nothing new by the way, but some­thing left unchecked, because the mon­ey the cash cow brings in still rolls in.

President of the St Ann Chamber of Commerce, Kumar Sujanani, com­plained that the police were not imple­ment­ing the Prescribed Areas Act, even while the com­plaints of tourist harass­ment per­sist­ed. According to Sujananai, the com­plaint was top of the list from cruise pas­sen­gers who dis­em­bark in Ocho Rios. But accord­ing to Superintendent of Police at Area Two head­quar­ters, Gary Griffiths, who was for­mer­ly in charge of St Ann, the police had, in fact, imple­ment­ed the act in an area stretch­ing from Island Village to Pineapple Place, effec­tive­ly cov­er­ing the major­i­ty of the resort town. Superintendent Griffiths said the mea­sure was dis­con­tin­ued due to non-coöper­a­tion and com­plaints by mer­chants, espe­cial­ly those on Main Street, the main shop­ping area in Ocho Rios.

Here we have peo­ple with pow­er and influ­ence blam­ing the police for doing some­thing the police has very lit­tle pow­er to control. 

Rather than use what influ­ence he has individually,or that of the Chamber he heads, to lob­by Government to pass tougher leg­is­la­tion that would effec­tive­ly deal with the issue of tourist harass­ment, he seeks to lam­bast the police the tra­di­tion­al scapegoat .

From the look on the face of Superintendent Griffith’s face I can see he would like to tell this clown where to go with his nonsense.

As a young con­sta­ble sta­tioned at the Mobile Reserve in St Andrew I spent count­less hours with my col­leagues com­bat­ting the issue of tourist harass­ment in towns like Ocho Rios and Montego Bay. Despite count­less hours of patrol time, thou­sands of arrests, and untold phys­i­cal con­fronta­tions with ped­dlers drug-deal­ers and hus­tlers the prob­lem persisted.

Which must lead to a com­pre­hen­sive review of the reason/​s behind the fail­ure of this project.

If peo­ple are arrest­ed , over and over , and over , yet they per­sist in doing what they did that keep get­ting them arrest­ed, then the blind can see that the prob­lem is with the penal­ty. As is the case with all areas of crim­i­nal­i­ty in Jamaica there are inad­e­quate and archa­ic penal­ties assigned to these crimes .

The truth is some offend­ers were arrest­ed dozens of times each month and released some­times with­out even pay­ing a fine.

No one is sug­gest­ing that peo­ple look­ing to make a few bucks from sell­ing trin­kets be impris­oned for life . What we are say­ing is there must be an under­stand­ing that tourists come to our shores with mon­ey to spend, they deserve to be treat­ed with respect,as we would like to be treat­ed , we should also make sure that the tourism dol­lar not be con­fined to rich hote­liers and busi­ness peo­ple, but must be avail­able to the gen­er­al populace.

There must also be a cumu­la­tive penal­ty that says if you get caught com­mit­ting this offense, after a cer­tain amount of times prefer­ably three (3) you are going to jail for a year.

I guar­an­tee this prob­lem would go away,vendors and ped­dlers would sell in des­ig­nat­ed spaces pro­vid­ed for them.

There has got to be order oth­er­wise it’s chaos , what’s hap­pen­ing now and has been so for decades, it is the drip , drip, slow death of Jamaica’s Tourist industry.

The rise in num­ber of oth­er Caribbean Islands as legit­i­mate tourism des­ti­na­tions is proof pos­i­tive that the coun­try’s tourism prod­uct is get­ting tired and stale. Crime vio­lence and harass­ment to vis­i­tors has con­densed the prod­uct itself ‚lit­er­al­ly rel­e­gat­ing it to all-inclu­sive resorts, with vis­i­tors not get­ting a chance to see the coun­try, and prob­a­bly for the better.

Many cruise ship pas­sen­ger con­fide in me that when docked in Jamaica the stay on board, usu­al­ly out of fear.

There must be a gen­er­al con­sid­er­a­tion for the inter­est of every­one when plans are being draft­ed for Cruise ship ports. These must take into con­sid­er­a­tion craft shops , restau­rants, etc. Essentially they must con­tain a direct com­po­nent that ben­e­fits aver­age Jamaicans over and above the gen­er­al ben­e­fits derived from tax dol­lars collected.

Each per­son with a con­tri­bu­tion should feel he or she may ben­e­fit from what­ev­er they have to offer. there must how­ev­er be a dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion between offer­ing a gen­uine prod­uct in a con­trolled and des­ig­nat­ed locale, against push­ing trin­kets into the faces of peo­ple com­ing off a ship demand­ing they buy them, that to most peo­ple is tan­ta­mount to soft extortion.

People will buy what they want because they want to buy it, not because some­one forces it on them, or intim­i­dates them into buy­ing some­thing that at its gen­e­sis , was always going to be an impulse, dis­cre­tionary purchase.

A friend of mine, a female police offi­cer in the States, told me of a hor­ror inci­dent she and her hus­band encoun­tered in Montego Bay when they refused the advances of a sell­er of trin­kets to pur­chase a piece of trin­ket he pushed on them. The inci­dent she relat­ed esca­lat­ed into threats and ver­bal abuse , which cul­mi­nat­ed with a machete being pulled on them , forc­ing oth­er ven­dors to inter­vene on their behalf. Needless to say they will nev­er be back to Jamaica.

We know that bad news gets dis­sem­i­nat­ed four times faster than good news does, so we have to con­clude that soon­er or lat­er this will invari­ably catch up to the Jamaica tourism indus­try, and the coun­try in gen­er­al. Legislators must acknowl­edge that our laws are old , use­less, and inef­fec­tive, this has had a crip­pling effect on the coun­try’s jus­tice sys­tem because of recidi­vism, and a dev­as­tat­ing over­all effect on our coun­try. Law mak­ers must do some­thing about over­haul­ing our laws, instead of spend­ing their time bang­ing on desks and shout­ing child­ish insults at each other.

Asking this of them may how­ev­er be too much to expect from the losers that make up the coun­try’s polit­i­cal leadership.

mike beckles:

have your say:

There is surprising news coming out of Jamaica’s industrial front, shockingly, employers and entities have asked the island’s national training agency — HEART Trust/​NTA — for brown or light-skinned trainees to fill vacancies at their companies.

“Wow” this can­not be , how could we have missed this in a coun­try like Jamaica that claimed to have been unshack­led from the chains of colo­nial­ist oppres­sion , seg­re­ga­tion, depri­va­tion and dispossession.

I fail to see how this could hap­pen in Jamaica where peo­ple feel they would be bet­ter off under the colo­nial mas­ters, peo­ple who refuse to demand a new con­sti­tu­tion, one that releas­es them from being sub­jects to a for­eign pow­er that cares noth­ing about them , but still swear alle­giance to said sov­er­eign nonetheless.

It bog­gles the mind that this could come up , when for decades only half white women could even think of enter­ing beau­ty con­tests, or have a chance to win the miss Jamaica crown at home , even though the coun­try is approx­i­mate­ly 96% black. How can this be when most com­pa­nies , Organizations, and lit­er­al­ly every enti­ty is owned , run, and staffed by light-skinned peo­ple, thank God for Government jobs and small hus­tle or dark-skinned peo­ple would lit­er­al­ly starve.

How could this be when the tourism Industry is staffed by peo­ple with alien accents, even though some have nev­er set foot on an air­plane? How could this be hap­pen­ing when they did­n’t want Marley’s stu­dio on Hope Road? Yes Hope road , anyway.….

Of course this vir­gin dis­cov­ery has gen­er­at­ed a cho­rus of out­cry from the usu­al quar­ters, the online fra­ter­ni­ty and the old polit­i­cal hands, of course there are none old­er and have greater sleight of hand that Pearnel Charles of the JLP and the one and only Sister P , Portia Simpson Miller the President of the PNP , leader of the Opposition and for­mer Prime Minister.

If it was up to me I would just give one of those nation­al hon­ors they dole out to cronies and friends, you know the type Carolyn Gomes and oth­ers have got­ten? Yes those , just give one of those to Portia, and hope­ful­ly we wont have to hear her pon­tif­i­cate, cry, and shout in anger, when­ev­er the issue of rights, pover­ty, and dis­crim­i­na­tion comes up.

I am all for any such motion on Portia’s behalf, if it means I won’t hear from her again. Mark you I am always left won­der­ing at what stage does Portia get to do some­thing about pover­ty, abuse ‚and vio­la­tion of rights? You know since she has been in rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al pol­i­tics for ever, includ­ing the high­est exec­u­tive office in the coun­try, the Prime Minister.

This is how the Gleaner char­ac­ter­ized Pearnel Charles’ response.

Charles

At first, the labour min­is­ter was flab­ber­gast­ed at the mere sug­ges­tion that Jamaican employ­ers could be using skin tone as a cri­te­ri­on for employ­ment. “No, sir. I don’t believe it,” said a baf­fled Charles before his bemuse­ment turned to anger. If I meet one of those employ­ers, I would per­son­al­ly see to that per­son being pros­e­cut­ed,” said the labour min­is­ter, him­self a vet­er­an trade union­ist. He not­ed that such dis­crim­i­na­tion had no place in the 21^st cen­tu­ry. “hat can’t hap­pen under this Government … not when I am min­is­ter,” said Charles as the notion sank in. e added: “If you can prove it to me, I’ll throw the whole book at such an employ­er in this coun­try.” Carles, who called the colour prej­u­dice expressed by some employ­ers racist, sought to assure the nation that the Ministry of Labour would move swift­ly and deci­sive­ly if it were to receive com­plaints from per­sons who were denied employ­ment on the basis of their skin tone. “Expect imme­di­ate action from me and the Government using every piece of machin­ery to elim­i­nate it from this soci­ety,” he said.

Now I am no lawyer but I am left won­der­ing exact­ly what would Charles do except to advise any such per­son , so trans­gressed against, to seek legal counsel? 

It seem to me that behind all of the com­mo­tion and howls of feign igno­rance and anger that Jamaica has always been a coun­try deeply steeped in racism and Caste-ism.

Simpson Miller, in her angry reac­tion to the report, warned Sunday night that such prej­u­dice against dark-skinned peo­ple would not be tol­er­at­ed in Jamaica “ever again”. She said the prac­tice, report­ed by offi­cials at the HEART Trust/​NTA, is a “pre­scrip­tion for what we do not want in a coun­try like this” and urged the Government to launch its own inves­ti­ga­tions. “We do not want divi­sions … . We are all one,” she told the pub­lic ses­sion of her South West St Andrew con­stituen­cy con­fer­ence at the Haile Selassie High School. “When you come to tell me that you’re going to bring back in Jamaica the days of the colo­nial mas­ters when only peo­ple with fair skin and a cer­tain type of hair can get jobs, I am call­ing on the Government to inves­ti­gate those com­pa­nies,” she said. Simpson Miller also urged con­sumers to be vig­i­lant, warn­ing that “any com­pa­ny we go to do busi­ness and we see only brown peo­ple, and we don’t see a mix­ture of brown and black, then we are going to move our busi­ness”.tyrone.​reid@​gleanerjm.​com

Well what can any­one say about Portia? Portia is Portia , rhetoric, anger, brava­do, emo­tions, heat no light or any­thing of sub­stance, her state­ment speaks for itself.

The truth is, in their haste to cur­ry favor with vot­ers, now that elec­tion is loom­ing ‚both of these sea­soned hands are falling over them­selves to show they are in sync with the peo­ple, they both know how to play that game, a game Charles can nev­er win against Portia, Portia has a monop­oly on car­ing , shed­ding tears, and express­ing anger.

Both of these politi­cians are well aware that the sys­tem they now feign igno­rance of, has ele­vat­ed and kept them and oth­ers like them, in pow­er . The issue of col­or, is only one of the dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices that per­se­vere in the coun­try , there are all kinds of exclu­sion­ary castes based on mon­ey, edu­ca­tion, Politics, etc.

Both politi­cians also know that there is lever­age to be gained from this issue, and as usu­al are play­ing to the most base instincts of the mass­es. So once the masks of brava­do and anger are peeled from the faces of these two actors, we real­ize this issue has been with us for ever, expressed, and implied, for as long as we have been around .

Faux igno­rance and con­coct­ed anger does noth­ing to remove this scourge from amongst us. Many ordi­nary Jamaicans have known this for gen­er­a­tions, hence the songs about brown­ing, and the many and var­ied attempts at bleaching.

mike beck­les:

have your say:

We are left shak­ing our heads at this lat­est state­ment by the People’s National Party , a day after it’s affil­i­ate PNP youth arm stout­ly declared that the par­ty is on elec­tion count-down. One won­ders if the mem­bers of the PNP ever won­der, or is as a col­lec­tive enti­ty , capa­ble of think­ing about Jamaica for a change? The world’s economy,and I dare­say the way things gets done around the world is expe­ri­enc­ing a sys­temic shift, a set­tling if you will, adjust­ing to new real­i­ties. This reset­ting of the world’s econ­o­my will rep­re­sent a shift from tra­di­tion­al norms this is the new world order. Countries all over the world to include the United States of America has seen dra­mat­ic down-turns in eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty. The United States has lost mil­lions of jobs that sim­ply will not return. A tra­di­tion­al fac­to­ry work­er in the US could afford a three bed­room house in the sub­urbs, with a white pick­et fence , a wife and two and one half kids. This work­er could afford to send his kids to col­lege, the fam­i­ly was able to take a vaca­tion annu­al­ly, some of whom as a child I saw in Jamaica.This fac­to­ry work­er is no more. All fac­to­ries are now retro­fit­ted with state of the art robots that do pret­ty much all the work that work­er did. That rep­re­sents the work­ers that glob­al­iza­tion had not already sucked away to coun­tries like Indonesia, China, and the Philipines, coun­tries that have an abun­dance of cheap labor,and are unre­strained by the shack­les of west­ern work­ing stan­dards . As coun­tries like the United States Canada,and England adjust to these real­i­ties the con­se­quen­tial rip­ple effect must rever­ber­ate to small­er coun­tries like Jamaica that are inex­tri­ca­ble linked to the larg­er pow­ers and to some degree depend on them for their lit­er­al eco­nom­ic sur­vival. As fam­i­lies lose their jobs in large indus­tri­alised nations they have much less dis­cre­tionary income to vaca­tion, or to send mon­ey home to loved ones. Jamaica has as it’s num­ber one and two for­eign exchange earn­ers Tourism, and Remittance in that order . It is plain to see how Jamaica’s econ­o­my would be seri­ous­ly neg­a­tive­ly impact­ed in light of this tremen­dous glob­al eco­nom­ic down­turn. There is how­ev­er a glim­mer of hope when­ev­er we expe­ri­ence these re-adjust­ments. They do offer us a oppur­tu­ni­ty to re-eval­u­ate our skill-sets and improve wher­ev­er possible.Doing so enables us to be equipped to meet the needs of the emerg­ing future.

After being in office for ¹⁸¹⁄₂ years , and oppo­si­tion for four, the best the PNP’s pres­i­dent could come up with as a pri­or­i­ty for the coun­try, should she be returned to pow­er as Prime Minister was pro­cess­ing man­goes. This sim­ply must be an affront to Jamaicans, who should by now, start to real­ize that the PNP and it’s affil­i­ates are sim­ply inca­pable of under­stand­ing , much less solv­ing the seri­ous prob­lems that faces the Nation going for­ward. How can they find solu­tions if they are inca­pable of under­stand­ing the problems?

Simpson Miller.

I am both ashamed and infu­ri­at­ed every time I hear the PNP, whether through its pres­i­dent, or the oth­er per­pet­u­al cam­paign­ers ‚recy­cle the same reme­di­al clichés, not tak­ing seri­ous­ly the con­cerns of the peo­ple, or not hav­ing the intel­lec­tu­al capac­i­ty to com­pre­hend the seri­ous­ness of crime, ter­ror, hunger, lack of edu­ca­tion, health care, pover­ty, cor­rup­tion and a pletho­ra of oth­er social ills that have stunt­ed Jamaica’s growth, and threat­ens the very exis­tence of the country.

The PNP has always believed they have a right to gov­er­nance, they arro­gant­ly pro­claim Jamaica to be PNP coun­try. This arro­gance has pre­clud­ed them from com­ing up with work­able Solutions to bet­ter the lives of ordi­nary Jamaicans. Choosing instead time after time to resort to the same tired old clichés that appeal to the base instincts of the un-edu­cat­ed masses.

This time my fel­low Jamaicans is no dif­fer­ent than the oth­er times, same tired old lines, look in her con­stituen­cy and ask your­selves “is this what i want for my country”?

She has rep­re­sent­ed that con­tituen­cy for a very long time.

mike beck­les.

have your say:

I am fas­ci­nat­ed by democ­rats, par­tic­u­lar­ly the black ones , I am total­ly blown away by their inabil­i­ty to stand for something.

This runs the gamut from the low­est to the President him­self . Those who stand for noth­ing falls for any­thing. The pres­i­dent and his par­ty has stood for noth­ing , has allowed them­selves to be pushed around and man­han­dled by the racist tea par­ty, so much so that Americans have very lit­tle hope that the man who cam­paigned on the mantra of hope and change can deliv­er either.

Americans like their President to be deci­sive and firm , wrong or right , con­vic­tion is impor­tant. As a for­mer sup­port­er of President Obama I must say I too am dis­ap­point­ed in the President. Not because I expect­ed him to deliv­er some­thing to ben­e­fit me. But because of his lack of back-bone in stand­ing up to Republicans.

The tea par­ty has lam­bast­ed ‚assailed and car­i­ca­tured this President from day one, dim-wit­ted democ­rats were too pissed scared to open their snivel­ing , quiv­er­ing mouths to push back in defence of our President, this includes the black cau­cus . No one dared crit­i­cize Sarah Palin for her repeat­ed racist attacks on the President and his wife Michelle Obama. Mrs Obama by the way, a Princeton edu­cat­ed Lawyer did not need to attend sev­er­al col­leges before she could earn a bach­e­lor’s degree.

No one dared open their mouths at Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Fox organ of mis-infor­ma­tion, or any of the Republican agents or organs that have been unleashed against President Obama. Not even Obama him­self, too scared to call a spade a spade .

What the hell does Obama and the Democrats think the tea par­ty car­toon car­i­ca­tures of the pres­i­dent in loin cloth by the hut sig­ni­fy? what does all of the oth­er despi­ca­ble depic­tions mean ? does it mean we dis­agree with you? No they mean you are beneath us and we do not want you in the White House , that is what they mean. All of the black politi­cians and oth­ers who should sup­port the pres­i­dent are duplic­i­tous­ly silent behind all of the attacks. 

Cornel West and the President in hap­pi­er times

Cornell West and Tavis Smiley have gone as far as to accuse the pres­i­dent of not doing enough for black peo­ple , seri­ous­ly? what have Cornell West and Tavis Smiley done to push back at the racist reac­tionar­ies in the tea par­ty that has been a thorn in the side of President Obama.

Blacks have long sought to put down their own kind, while mak­ing excus­es, and ratio­nal­iz­ing for those who have enslaved and still keep them in bondage. It is the ” we sick mas­sa syn­drome” . The late great Malcolm X had some choice words for them, whom he char­ac­ter­ized as “negroes”.

Finally a Democrat made the mis­take of open­ing his mouth and speak­ing out , call­ing the tea par­ty what it real­ly is , here’s what Indiana con­gress-man Andre Carson had to say . 

‘The Tea Party wants to see blacks Americans hang­ing on a tree” .Some of the folks in Congress would love to see us as sec­ond class cit­i­zens,” Carson said at a Caucus event in Miami. “Some of them in Congress right now of this Tea Party move­ment would love to see you and me, I’m sor­ry chair­man, hang­ing on a tree.

“Tea Party groups are out­raged and are call­ing for the con­gress­man to resign imme­di­ate­ly. Fellow Congressional Black Caucus mem­ber Allen West says he’s recon­sid­er­ing his mem­ber­ship in the group. Carson told CNN he stands by his com­ments.“I stand on the truth of what I spoke,” he said. “My inten­tions weren’t to hurt any­one or any group”

Ok let me see if I under­stand this cor­rect­ly ! the tea par­ty is demand­ing that a con­gress­man elect­ed by his con­stituents resign for speak­ing out against their racist dem­a­goguery, well I nev­er, these tea par­ty lunatics real­ly have some nerve.

What real­ly gets me is Allen West Black Republican con­gress man stat­ing that he is recon­sid­er­ing his mem­ber­ship in the Black cau­cus. Please do every­one a favor Allen West, leave the Caucus​.You serve no pur­pose in that group and as such. should not have been in it to begin with.

Allen West

Definition of CAUCUS. : a closed meet­ing of a group of per­sons belong­ing to the same polit­i­cal par­ty or fac­tion usu­al­ly to select can­di­dates or to decide on pol­i­cy …

Allen West and the oth­er mem­bers of the black cau­cus are from dia­met­ri­cal­ly dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal per­sua­sions, they share noth­ing in com­mon except the col­or of their skin , they dif­fer on every­thing polit­i­cal­ly. Why is Allen West in the black caucus?

Herman Caine

Then there is Herman Caine, Black repub­li­can can­di­date for pres­i­dent. If this was­n’t so insult­ing it would be com­i­cal. Some of you may be ask­ing Herman Caine? who the heck is this guy? Well Caine is a for­mer CEO of a piaz­za fran­chise, he rose from rags to rich­es and nev­er miss­es an oppur­tu­ni­ty to tell that his father was a chauffer.Cain allows tea par­ty big­ots to absolve them­selves of the shame of their racist iden­ti­ty at his expense . 

They trot this guy out with the tra­di­tion­al refrain, see we are not racist, we have black can­di­dates, bull.

The truth is the for­mer repub­li­can par­ty of peo­ple like McCain, and Chuck Hagel could not attract but a few black del­e­gates to its lil­ly white con­ven­tion, does any­one believe this jok­er stand a chance of being elect­ed pres­i­dent on the repub­li­can tick­et? This guy is a nov­el­ty, com­ic relief like Sarah Palin, Donald trump, and Allan Keyes before him.

Caine claims he knows racism when he sees it , as a con­fessed son of the south, (what­ev­er that means) , and he has seen no racism in the tea par­ty .When one con­sid­ers the amount of black blood that has been shed in the American south. I won­der what the plac­ards depict­ing President Barack Obama as every­thing from a witch doc­tor to a mon­key mean? Whatever shred of cred­i­bil­i­ty this Caine may have had, sim­ply vapor­ized and blew away with that damn lie. Herman Caine has become the lat­est black to be an apol­o­gist for white racists, there are oth­ers like FOX news Juan Williams , and Jessie Petersen, and a slew of oth­er self loathing blacks.

They should ask for­mer Republican National com­mit­tee chair­man Michael Steele how that worked out for him. Republicans hid behind Steele, held their noses, and used him to harass Obama, the net gain for repub­li­cans was a land­slide in the house for them. No soon­er they won the House they showed Steele the door with his tail between his legs.

Colin Powell

Blacks and the repub­li­can par­ty are as oil on water they sim­ply do not mix.

As it was in the days of Malcolm X, the ones lead­ing the charge to lynch Congress-man Carson are blcks, These uncle Toms nev­er saw fit to denounce their mas­ters in the tea par­ty when they sought to demean and degrade President Obama, but are now up in arms demo­niz­ing a black man who has the guts and the char­ac­ter to speak out against bla­tant and demon­strat­ed racism.

As they did against Dr. King and Malcolm and oth­er lead­ers of the civ­il rights strug­gle, the white pow­er struc­ture trot­ted out uncle tom negroes to make the case that every­thing was right in America, paint­ing those who sought to have their God-giv­en rights respect­ed, as trou­ble mak­ers , com­mu­nists, anti-American and every­thing includ­ing the kitchen sink.

Does any­one in their right mind believe the vit­ri­olic vapid and ven­omous attacks lev­elled at pres­i­dent Obama is because of pol­i­cy? In fact exam­ine Obama’s poli­cies against for­mer pres­i­dent Bush 43^rd and see if they dif­fer much.

Bush start­ed and main­tained two wars. Obama esca­lat­ed one and scaled back one.

Bush had the patri­ot Act signed into law . Obama extend­ed the patri­ot Act.

Bush main­tained prison in Guantanamo May. Obama keeps it open.

Bush gave tril­lions in tax cuts to the rich . Obama wants to roll them back, no success.

Bush’s poli­cies dev­as­tat­ed the econ­o­my. Obama strug­gles to bring the econ­o­my back.

Bush had no clue how to get Bin Laden. Obama found and exter­mi­nat­ed him.

Bush cre­at­ed ene­mies for America with his brava­do. Obama restores America to a coun­try of peace, that respect others.

Which of these two men is wor­thy of praise, if any? where are the seis­mic pol­i­cy dif­fer­ences that makes Obama so despised as against pres­i­dent Bush? The fact is there is none, the prob­lem tea par­ty activist and their zoot-suit­ed black court jesters have with the pres­i­dent is the col­or of his skin. White tea par­ty mem­bers hate the pres­i­dent because he is half black. Black tea par­ty activists hate the pres­i­dent because they hate themselves.

If democ­rats want to have a chance in the next elec­tion, they must start grow­ing some back­bone, no one wants wimps to rep­re­sent them at a time when racist dem­a­gogues are out in full force against what we have accom­plished , tear­ing at the seams of the gar­ments those whom have gone before have stitched for us . Threatening to rip them from us expos­ing the naked­ness of our dispossession.

Black peo­ple the world over who respect them­selves are tired of being told who our lead­ers should be, what we can and can­not say , and when we may or may not speak. The con­gres­sion­al black cau­cus have been silent through­out all of the assault on Barack Obama, which is an all out assault on all black peo­ple and what we have fought for and accom­plished . Make no mis­take there are those who will argue things are good and we should try to get along, well they aren’t, untill they respect us, and the lead­ers we chose to lead us, as Maxine Walters said “they can go straight to hell’.

This is not for blacks like Allen West, it is not for Clarence Thomas, it is not for the clowns that embar­rass them­selves at tea par­ty events pro­vid­ing com­ic relief. After all you may remove some from the plan­ta­tion, but may not remove the plan­ta­tion from some.

mike beck­les:

have your say:

The con­gres­sion­al black cau­cus took the ini­tia­tive to do some­thing about the job­less­ness in America , and par­tic­u­lar­ly in the black com­mu­ni­ty. We com­mend senior con­gres­sion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive John Lewis of Georgia for his lead­er­ship and unflinch­ing efforts toward the uplift­ing of all Americans and par­tic­u­lar African-Americans. 

The ini­tia­tive was in the form of a job fair in Atlanta Georgia on Thursday August 18^th which saw thou­sands of job seek­ers turn­ing up hop­ing to get a job.( ABC news saw it this way).Thousands of unem­ployed wait­ed overnight, camp­ing out in their busi­ness suits and office heels and brav­ing the tor­ment­ing heat in Atlanta to stand in line for a job fair Thursday. Authorities treat­ed 20 peo­ple for heat exhaus­tion as they strug­gled to keep the line mov­ing and get peo­ple moved inside.(abc news​.com)

The con­gres­sion­al black cau­cus says it intends to do it again spon­sor­ing one in Los Angeles California and in Miami Florida. The Job fair made the news in oth­er ways, as some mem­bers of the black cau­cus took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to voice their dis­con­tent at the lack of jobs in the econ­o­my. Front and cen­ter was California rep­re­sen­ta­tive Maxine Walters who seemed rather frus­trat­ed with the President , whilst at the same time insist­ing that she sup­ports him.

At the heart of Walter’s dis­con­tent is the fact that the pres­i­dent took a three-day bust trip to ally the fears of rur­al folks in Iowa , Minnesota , and Illinois , but did not vis­it any urban cen­ters that are tra­di­tion­al homes to black Americans.

This leads us to look at the pres­i­den­t’s style of leadership.

From the onset, can­di­date Obama was forced to sep­a­rate him­self from the shack­les of being char­ac­ter­ized as a black can­di­date for the pres­i­den­cy, Obama under­stood that if he was pigeon-holed as a black can­di­date his chances of win­ning the White House was slim­mer than that of a snow-ball in hell.

Whether Obama did this as a shrewd tac­ti­cal polit­i­cal move or because he had to relate to the oth­er half of him, that is his moth­er’s side, is irrel­e­vant. Anyone look­ing at his can­di­da­cy had to see it as the best strat­e­gy if he was to pull off some­thing most peo­ple thought they would nev­er see in their life­time, a black man in the White House.

Bill Clinton for­mer Democratic President char­ac­ter­ized Obama’s can­di­da­cy as a quote “fairy tale’. President Clinton spent a lot of ener­gy try­ing to walk back those com­ments. We in the black com­mu­ni­ty knew exact­ly what he meant, I how­ev­er under­stood why he said it, I would have done the same in his place, if my wife was run­ning, and it would not be racial.

It just was nev­er done before.

In order for Obama to pull off the impos­si­ble, he had to posi­tion him­self as a race neu­tral being, he could ill-afford to be char­ac­ter­ized as anoth­er angry black left-wing rad­i­cal. Labels that were hung around the necks of pre­vi­ous can­di­dates like Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton. In essence Obama had to dis­avow his black side in order to appease white Americans.

A white America that have always been wary and afraid of black men. A fear born out of guilt maybe, but fear nontheless. 

This how­ev­er drew the ire of black stal­warts like Jesse Jackson who had done the grunge work to make it pos­si­ble for a can­di­date Obama .

The good­ly Reverend alleged­ly had some choice exple­tives for Obama, for dar­ing to chas­tise black Americans on tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for their own actions, in a black church no less.

Something too many of my African American broth­ers and sis­ters do not nesces­sar­i­ly take kind­ly to. But which is made no less true because of their denial.

Bill Clinton was forced to take on the black com­mu­ni­ty in the face of a scathing attack from right wing repub­li­cans who saw rap music as the poten­tial death of America. 

Clinton went on to diss, rap­per sis­ter Soulja, about the con­tent of her lyrics, Clinton knew how­ev­er that blacks had nowhere else to go but the Democratic par­ty. where were blacks going to go ? To a par­ty that is as lil­ly white as the Colorado Mountains IN win­ter. Blacks have long been per­sona non gra­ta (not wel­come) in the Republican par­ty , so he could afford to take that gam­ble in order to counter bal­ance the vapid assault com­ing from the right , from attack­ers who were up in arms about rap lyrics.

Throughout the elec­tion cam­paign Obama was forced repeat­ed­ly to show his non black­ness, but was even­tu­al­ly cor­nered by a new wave of repub­li­can swift boaters in the Jeremiah Wright débâ­cle. Candidate Obama was forced to deliv­er a major Policy speech on race, the speech of his life, well writ­ten , well deliv­ered , and one that prob­a­bly cement­ed into the minds of white inde­pen­dent vot­ers that Obama was not a wide-eyed lib­er­al in black skin. despite this mon­u­men­tal speech the Jeremiah Wright affair dogged Obama through­out the pri­maries to their con­clu­sions and through­out the General elec­tions cam­paign. Democratic oppo­nent Hillary Clinton was all to hap­py to cap­i­tal­ize on the cir­cus-like mad­ness sur­round­ing this non issue. For the first time a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date was being held respon­si­ble for some­thing some­one else had said.

Obama’s lead­er­ship style and his stat­ed way of doing busi­ness after get­ting elect­ed, was one of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, reach­ing across the aisle to repub­li­cans in order to get things done. He was inspired by Lincoln and his strat­e­gy of putting his for­mer rivals into his cab­i­net. Biden as vice President,Hillary Clinton at the State Department pret­ty much saw Obama’s objec­tives met.

What Obama seem­ing­ly did not bar­gain for , and to this day do not com­pre­hend, at least as far as some folks I have spo­ken to are con­cerned, is the unadul­ter­at­ed ven­emous hatred repub­li­cans have for him. The President we assume is some­how shield­ed from the putrid bile that is spewed from the lips of every lit­tle repub­li­can ‚irre­spec­tive of stature.

The dis­re­spect is pal­pa­ble as it fol­lowed the pres­i­dent into the con­gress, whilst deliv­er­ing the state of the Union address one repub­li­can con­gress­man shout­ed out at the pres­i­dent “you lie”, most repub­li­cans sanc­tioned the infa­mous you lie com­ment, even though it was unprece­dent­ed , dis­grace­ful crass, and boor­ish. No oth­er sit­ting pres­i­dent as far as our research revealed, deliv­er­ing a state of the union address, have ever been treat­ed with such dis­re­spect and utter contempt.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D‑Md., said “I have nev­er in my 29 years heard an out­burst of that nature with ref­er­ence to a pres­i­dent of the United States speak­ing as a guest of the House and Senate.”

The hatred and the utter humil­i­ta­tion at see­ing a black man as President stand­ing there lec­tur­ing a room-full of most­ly old white men was too much for Joe Wilson of South Carolina.

So gut wrench­ing it was for them that Wilson arguably lost con­trol of his entire being, and was unable to stop him­self from shout­ing out at the President, ‘you lie”.

The troll lat­er apol­o­gised to Rham Emanuel, then Chief of staff to the pres­i­dent. To their cred­it some Republicans found his behav­ior dis­re­spect­ful and told him so ‚this includ­ed Senator John Mccain, of Arizona, and rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jerry lewis of California

This was not con­fined to the ill-man­nered con­gres­sion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive , a sit­ting mem­ber of the Supreme Court Samuel Alito , a recent Bush appointee vis­i­bly shook his head in dis­agree­ment whilst mouthing some­thing , as the pres­i­dent spoke to what he dis­agreed with, regard­ing a Supreme Court deci­sion. Political his­to­ri­ans are still hard pressed to find a sin­gle instance where any of the dis­re­spect shown to pres­i­dent Obama was ever shown to any oth­er American pres­i­dent. One can under­stand the intem­per­ate out­burst from an uncul­tured , uncouth Congressman, one would how­ev­er expect a supreme court jus­tice to under­stand protocol.

President Obama’s style of lead­er­ship has drawn howls of con­dem­na­tion from both the right and left. The chal­lenges he faces are unique, and as such hard to gauge, is the grid­lock in Washington just the way things gets done in the Nation’s cap­i­tal, or is it because we have a black president?

There have been a stat­ed desire from the peo­ple on the right to see the pres­i­dent fail ! I am strug­gling to see how the pres­i­dent could fail with no con­se­quence to the coun­try? I try to see the pos­si­bil­i­ty of this, based on the claims the pres­i­den­t’s ene­mies make, that they are patriots.

On his ascen­den­cy to the pres­i­den­cy , Mister Obama had a Democratic House, and a Democratic Senate. Democrats had an almost carte blanche to enact their agen­da, and could legit­i­mate­ly claim a man­date. They could have legit­i­mate­ly argued that elec­tions have con­se­quence. What they did was to quib­ble amongst them­selves, split­ting into dif­fer­ent groups , blue dogs, lib­er­als, and Regan democ­rats, the lat­ter being an oxy­moron if I ever did see one. Whilst democ­rats quib­ble an omi­nous cloud was form­ing on the polit­i­cal hori­zon in the form of the now pow­er­ful tea party.

The tea par­ty, large­ly a group of racist hyp­ocrites, had no trou­ble with the expen­di­tures of Reagan, Bush and Bush , repub­li­can pres­i­dents who ran up the nation­al debt and oper­at­ed with unbal­anced bud­gets . Suddenly saw the destruc­tion of America, and their quote way of life under threat from pres­i­dent Obama. They could not argue that the pres­i­dent was unqual­i­fied to be pres­i­dent because of his age, so they cast asper­sions on the true place of his birth. The United States Constitution requires only that a can­di­date be born in the United States, and be of or above the age of 35 years.

They cre­at­ed what almost amount­ed to a nation­al cri­sis argu­ing (1) Falsely that Obama was not born in the United States. (2) They argued false­ly that the pres­i­dent was a mus­lim, a  false­hood that even if true would not have pre­clud­ed an American from law­ful­ly seek­ing the pres­i­den­cy under the constitution.

Conversely Obama’s oppo­nent , war hero, Senator John McCain of Arizona was not born in the United States, report­ed­ly born some­where in the Panama canal zone. Tea par­ty activists had no prob­lem with sen­a­tor McCain’s lack of main­land birth. Tea par­ty sup­port­ers and their cronies had no com­punc­tion about show­ing their ran­cid hatred for the pres­i­dent , and cer­tain­ly have not been restrained in their use of deroga­to­ry and dis­gust­ing­ly demean­ing car­i­ca­tures in their depic­tion of Mister Obama.

Throughout all of these attacks on the pres­i­dent, the con­gres­sion­al black cau­cus has been mute. Where have the lead­er­ship of that group been ? The tea par­ty has gal­va­nized their sup­port­ers into a unyeild­ing , uncom­pro­mis­ing , group of right-wing zealots. that have pri­maried tra­di­tion­al repub­li­can sen­ate and house can­di­dates , forc­ing some out, and forc­ing oth­ers far to the right of their own con­vic­tions in order to stay alive politically.

The ide­o­log­i­cal right-wing puri­ty test have cre­at­ed what is now hap­pen­ing in Washington. This includes the non­sen­si­cal man­u­fac­tured debate about the debt ceil­ing , which before Obama was a mere for­mal­i­ty. The atten­dant down­grade of America’s AAA rat­ings from Standard and Poors, gave Republicans what they want­ed, the abil­i­ty to tag this pres­i­dent with the infamy of hav­ing been the first American President to see this hap­pen on his watch . Arguing it was a result of his fail­ures, when in fact it was of their doing.

The black cau­cus did not estab­lish them­selves as they most cer­tain­ly could, by strik­ing an alliance with the his­pan­ic cau­cus , giv­ing the his­pan­ic cau­cus their com­mitt­ment that they would sup­port them on immi­gra­tion , and ask­ing them to join them into push­ing back hard against the right-wing reac­tionar­ies in the tea par­ty. Instead they sat on their rear ends expect­ing things to hap­pen, well things hap­pened , the tea par­ty got all they want­ed , they have blocked the pres­i­den­t’s agen­da to the point the coun­try is arguably close to a sec­ond reces­sion, the pres­i­den­t’s approval num­bers on the econ­o­my is under 40% despite his suc­cess in elim­i­nat­ing Osama Bin Laden.

This ought to be a les­son to the black cau­cus , whether there is a black pres­i­dent or not the strug­gle con­tin­ues and despite the pow­er of the pres­i­den­cy, this  pres­i­dent will not be able to do what oth­er pres­i­dents did as a mat­ter of course. It’s not the office, it’s the man. This is still America.

mike beck­les:

have your say:

This blog has no pref­er­ence for either of the two polit­i­cal par­ties in Jamaica, in my esti­ma­tion they are both crim­i­nal gangs , unwor­thy of respect or support.

We how­ev­er seek mere­ly to high­light to the Jamaican pub­lic the facts and let them decide for them­selves unfil­tered.

The People’s National Party launched their new talk­ing points , the “pro­gres­sive agen­da” at the Courtleigh hotel in New Kingston last night. At that event par­ty President Portia Simpson Miller had this to say : The pol­i­cy mix­es con­tained in the doc­u­ment are aimed at ful­fill­ing the mis­sion Norman Manley spoke of in his last address to the par­ty’s con­fer­ence in 1968. “We have realised polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence now for almost 50 years. However, as Norman Manley said, the task ahead is to achieve eco­nom­ic inde­pen­dence. The ideas con­tained in this doc­u­ment will take us onward and for­ward to achiev­ing that target.

We have realised polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence now for almost 50 years. However, as Norman Manley said, the task ahead is to achieve eco­nom­ic inde­pen­dence. The ideas con­tained in this doc­u­ment will take us onward and for­ward to achiev­ing that tar­get,” Simpson Miller said in the packed audi­to­ri­um, with dozens locked out because there was no space in the room.

Manley, the first pres­i­dent of the PNP, said the mis­sion of his gen­er­a­tion was to win self-gov­ern­ment for Jamaica. He also said the mis­sion of the gen­er­a­tion which suc­ceed­ed him was “recon­struct­ing the social and eco­nom­ic soci­ety and life of Jamaica”.

In the Progressive Agenda, the PNP says it com­mits to “an approach to gov­er­nance that will be data-dri­ven, evi­dence-based with mea­sur­able outcomes”.

The par­ty says gov­er­nance would be con­struct­ed on five pil­lars — human resource devel­op­ment; a safe, secure and just soci­ety; par­tic­i­pa­to­ry, account­able and respon­si­ble soci­ety; pro­gres­sive inter­na­tion­al­ism; and eco­nom­ic growth for sus­tain­able nation­al development.

Commenting on the work of the Anthony Hylton-chaired com­mit­tee which devel­oped the Progressive Agenda, Simpson Miller said it deliv­ered what she asked for.

“Opposition par­ties are always faced with the temp­ta­tion of craft­ing pro­grammes for vote-get­ting. I thank the team for resist­ing the for­mu­la­tion of emp­ty promis­es, quick fix­es and pop­ulist slo­ga­neer­ing,” she said.

“I thank you who craft­ed the Progressive Agenda for not sim­ply rush­ing to sat­is­fy the under­stand­able anx­i­eties of a pop­u­la­tion that is des­per­ate­ly in need of hope,” she added.

Among the promis­es con­tained in the Progressive Agenda is a com­mit­ment to intro­duc­ing greater trans­paren­cy to the man­age­ment of the coun­try’s finance and eco­nom­ic affairs.

“Fiscal imbal­ances, per­sis­tent deficits and low rates of growth in the nation­al econ­o­my have been con­se­quences of this over many years,” the par­ty noted.

“In an effort to secure greater trans­paren­cy, greater fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty and greater lev­els of pub­lic account­abil­i­ty which is at the heart of good gov­er­nance, the PNP will estab­lish an esti­mates com­mit­tee in the Parliament to have con­sid­er­a­tion of expen­di­ture pri­or­i­ties in the con­text of a medi­um-term eco­nom­ic frame­work,” it said.

“We will also ensure the effec­tive func­tion­ing of a com­mit­tee on tax­a­tion in the Parliament able to con­sult with stake­hold­ers in con­sid­er­ing tax­a­tion pol­i­cy and rev­enue-rais­ing mea­sures,” it added.

Simpson Miller’s par­ty has also promised to posi­tion Jamaica’s cul­tur­al and cre­ative indus­tries, includ­ing sports, as pri­or­i­ty indus­tries, giv­en their enor­mous poten­tial for growth, export, employ­ment, gen­er­al eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment, and human-resource development.

“The par­ty, as gov­ern­ment, will seek to devel­op mod­ern cul­tur­al and cre­ative indus­tries poli­cies, informed by research and analy­sis,” the Progressive Agenda says.

Simpson Miller yes­ter­day stressed that the way for­ward for Jamaica’s devel­op­ment must be dri­ven by research. “We must be evi­dence-based. We must engage in fact-find­ing, data col­lec­tion, objec­tive analy­sis and lev­el-head­ed real­ism,” she said.

The Progressive Agenda rep­re­sents the fourth pol­i­cy review of the PNP since Norman Manley pub­lished the Man with the Plan in the 1950s. Michael Manley pub­lished Democratic Socialism in the 1970s and The Compass in the 1980s before P.J. Patterson’s 21^st Century Mission in the 1990s.daraine.​luton@​gleanerjm.​com

I have not seen the doc­u­ment and as such I am in no posi­tion to com­ment beyond what the Party President said in her address. Her state­ments rings haunt­ing­ly fami­lar , as if some­how we have been there before , I can­not quite put my fin­ger on why I have this feel­ing of unease and dis­qui­et. I think I will go over her state­ments again.…just give me a minute please readers.!!!!.….….…..

Got it,here it is, this is the source of my dis­qui­et, how could I have been so blind?

The Progressive Agenda rep­re­sents the fourth pol­i­cy review of the PNP since Norman Manley pub­lished the Man with the Plan in the 1950s. Michael Manley pub­lished Democratic Socialism in the 1970s and The Compass in the 1980s before P.J. Patterson’s 21^st Century Mission in the 1990s.

There you have it for as long as they have been a par­ty the PNP has been issu­ing plans(dogma) catchy elec­tion­eer­ing lit­er­a­ture that gets dis­card­ed once they have seized state pow­er. Make no mis­take the PNP is a mas­ter of win­ning elections.

Two-par­ty pol­i­tics after inde­pen­dence: 1962 – 80
The two lead­ing polit­i­cal fig­ures in the ear­ly days of inde­pen­dence were Alexander Bustamante, leader of the cen­tre-right Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), which he found­ed in 1943, and Norman Manley, leader of the left-of-cen­tre People’s National Party (PNP), which he found­ed in 1938. The JLP held pow­er 1962 – 72, win­ning gen­er­al elec­tions in 1962 and 1967 under the lead­er­ship first of Bustamente, who ruled until 1964 (when he was replaced by Donald Sangster) and then Hugh Shearer, from 1967. It was a time of strong eco­nom­ic growth, of around 6% per annum, with invest­ments in tourism and the alu­mi­na and oth­er indus­tries, but wealth was unequal­ly shared.

In the ear­ly 1970s, the econ­o­my slowed down and there was demand from the urban poor for a greater share of the coun­try’s wealth. This enabled the social­ist PNP, led by Norman Manley’s charis­mat­ic son Michael, to win the 1972 gen­er­al elec­tion, and the PNP dom­i­nat­ed between 1972 and 1980. Michael Manley embarked on a rad­i­cal pro­gramme of social reform, invest­ment in edu­ca­tion and health, and eco­nom­ic inde­pen­dence from the indus­tri­al­ized world. Despite high unem­ploy­ment, Manley was returned to pow­er in 1976 with an increased major­i­ty, but by 1980 there was high infla­tion and GDP had fall­en 25% since 1972. Manley reject­ed a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) because of the con­di­tions attached and instead pur­sued a pol­i­cy of eco­nom­ic self-reliance.

Political vio­lence and JLP rule: 1980 – 89
The 1980 gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign was extreme­ly vio­lent, despite calls by Manley and the leader of the JLP, Edward Seaga, for mod­er­a­tion. The out­come was a deci­sive vic­to­ry for the JLP, which won 51 of the 60 low­er-house seats. This gave Seaga a man­date for a return to a renew­al of links with the USA and an empha­sis on free enter­prise. He sev­ered diplo­mat­ic links with Cuba in 1981. In 1983 Seaga called an ear­ly, snap elec­tion. The oppo­si­tion claimed they had been giv­en insuf­fi­cient time to nom­i­nate their can­di­dates and the JLP won all 60 seats. There were vio­lent demon­stra­tions when the new par­lia­ment was inau­gu­rat­ed, and the PNP said it would con­tin­ue its oppo­si­tion out­side the par­lia­men­tary arena.

PNP dom­i­nance: 1989 – 2007
Manley and the PNP returned to pow­er with a land­slide vic­to­ry in the 1989 gen­er­al elec­tion, but Manley pur­sued more mod­er­ate eco­nom­ic poli­cies than in the 1970s, with some suc­cess, and worked for improved rela­tions with the USA. In 1992, with his health dete­ri­o­rat­ing, Manley resigned as pre­mier and was replaced by Percival Patterson, the for­mer finance min­is­ter. In a snap gen­er­al elec­tion, held in 1993, Patterson increased the PNP’s major­i­ty, win­ning 52 of the 60 low­er-house seats. From 1991, the PNP gov­ern­ment fol­lowed a pro­gramme of eco­nom­ic lib­er­al­iza­tion, includ­ing remov­ing exchange con­trols, float­ing the exchange rate, reduc­ing tar­iffs, remov­ing restric­tions on for­eign invest­ment, and pri­va­tiz­ing state enter­pris­es. This helped bring the infla­tion rate down from 80% in 1990 to 7% in 1998 and there was steady eco­nom­ic growth until the mid-1990s.

In 1995, the JLP was weak­ened when its chair­man, Bruce Golding, broke away with col­leagues to form a new cen­trist par­ty, the National Democratic Movement (NDM). This enabled Patterson to secure two fur­ther unprece­dent­ed con­sec­u­tive vic­to­ries, rout­ing the JLP in December 1997 and nar­row­ly win­ning the October 2002 gen­er­al election.

But in 2002 Golding rejoined the JLP, to become its chair again in 2003. Meanwhile, Patterson stepped down as prime min­is­ter in February 2006 and the local gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Portia Simpson-Miller was elect­ed head of the PNP and Jamaica’s first female prime minister.

In September 2007, the JLP, under the lead­er­ship of Bruce Golding, returned to pow­er, nar­row­ly defeat­ing the PNP by 32 seats to 28.(elicon Publishing is divi­sion of RM).

The prob­lem is not in win­ning elec­tions as can be seen from that report pub­lished by Elicon pub­lish­ing, one needs to look at the dis­con­nect between win­ning elec­tions through catchy jin­gles and hooks, and actu­al­ly doing the grunge work of Governing and pro­duc­ing results.

With the excep­tion of the peri­od from 1991 to the mid 1990’s under Percival James Patterson, there is not much to point to . Patterson adopt­ed con­ser­v­a­tive strate­gies of remov­ing exchange con­trols, float­ing the exchange rates, reduc­ing tar­iffs, remov­ing restric­tions on for­eign invest­ments and divest­ing some State hold­ings. this move saw infla­tion plum­met from 80% in 1990 to 7% in 1998 and there was steady eco­nom­ic growth until the mid-1990s.The achilees heel of Patterson how­ev­er is that he had no idea how to con­trol the mon­ster of cor­rup­tion and crime.The PNP even though hav­ing been the belle of the ball as it relates to Jamaican pol­i­tics real­ly has not deliv­ered much in the way of tan­gi­ble accom­plish­ments to the Jamaican peo­ple, who for some strange rea­son seem to favor them to the JLP.

It is inter­est­ing to see Miller unwit­ting­ly acknowl­edg­ing that in the past the par­ty has been all about win­ning elec­tions. quote: “Opposition par­ties are always faced with the temp­ta­tion of craft­ing pro­grammes for vote-get­ting. I thank the team for resist­ing the for­mu­la­tion of emp­ty promis­es, quick fix­es and pop­ulist sloganeering,” .

You don’t say ? Populist slo­ga­neer­ing ? Are these the same things as.

Better must come.

My father born ya.

pow­er com­rades:

lick them wid de rad of carrection:

Jamaica a pnp country.

Time for a change.

Democratic social­ism.

Are we to believe the PNP has gone through a meta­mor­pho­sis , ? Are we to believe that they have repent­ed as Michael Manley did after the débâ­cle of the 70’s ? As we have said in pre­vi­ous blogs, Populism can­not run a coun­try , despite all of the tears and hugs of the Party pres­i­dent her con­stituen­cy remains one of the most depressed in the coun­try despite her many years in rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al politics.

I am not an econ­o­mist, sub­se­quent­ly I will allow the them to cri­tique this newest slo­gan ” PROGRESSIVE AGENDA” .

I would imag­ine that fis­cal pru­dence, dereg­u­la­tion, competence,lack of cor­rup­tion, greater transparency,respect, humility,accountability,and an appre­ci­a­tion for the fact that cam­paign­ing and gov­ern­ing are dif­fer­ent. Most impor­tant­ly the rule of law must take prece­dent over every­thing Moving the coun­try from one of man to a coun­try of laws. That includes the bedrock prin­ci­ple of sup­port for those who toil to make the coun­try safe.

Nothing com­ing from the President of the PNP indi­cates that she even under­stands the need to empow­er the rule of law, which is a nec­es­sary char­ac­ter­is­tic, if crime and ter­ror is to be con­tained, a nec­es­sary com­po­nent if the coun­try is to be com­pet­i­tive in attract­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing and oth­er invest­ment opportunities.

Harvesting man­goes and pro­cess­ing them though admirable, and intu­itive, is not going to be enough if our peo­ple are to com­pete going forward.

mike beck­les:

have your say: