WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO SMALL NATIONS?

Last Night’s State of the Union Address by President Obama was the first of his second term, I sat watching the president and writing a blog simultaneously, then I did something (no idea what), and lost it all so I went to bed.

As the pres­i­dent spoke I thought about not just America’s future but also that of small depen­dent nations like my Island home Jamaica. Jamaicans were recent­ly told by their finan­cial bene­fac­tor The (IMF) that it will have to adopt even more strin­gent mea­sures than before to show it is wor­thy of more cred­it. Jamaica’s debt to earn­ing ratio is hor­ri­bly out of whack, Jamaica pays more of its earn­ings to ser­vic­ing its astro­nom­i­cal debt bur­den than almost all oth­er coun­tries on Earth includ­ing Greece. After ser­vic­ing its inter­est pay­ments there is very lit­tle mon­ey left do any­thing on the peo­ple’s behalf. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly galling because of Jamaica’s crip­pling cor­rup­tion epi­dem­ic. As impor­tant as Obama’s speech was for mid­dle and low­er-class Americans, so too was it impor­tant for coun­tries like Jamaica on issues like Immigration, and jobs programs.

Simply put, if there are less depor­tees to Jamaica if there is real immi­gra­tion reform, it would ease some of the crim­i­nal­i­ty so ram­pant on the Island. More mon­ey in the pock­ets of work­ing-class Americans means they are more like­ly to take vaca­tions to places like the car­ribean. Nothing that President Obama pro­posed last night will mat­ter if Republicans do not go along, if last night was an indi­ca­tion of whats to come then there will not be much accom­plished leg­isla­tive­ly in Obama’s sec­ond term. Republicans in the Congress sat on their hands when the President pro­posed rais­ing the min­i­mum wage to US$9, they sat on their hands on the Violence against Women Act, Rubio vot­ed no just yes­ter­day. They sat on their hands on the jobs Act Proposal. The fact is the only thing Republicans are excit­ed about is drilling for oil in America’s wet lands . To hell with the envi­ron­ment , as long as their super rich con­trib­u­tors are sat­is­fied. The irony of the night was Florida repub­li­can Senator Marco Rubio the 41-year-old wun­derkind who has being trum­pet­ed to be the sav­ior of the ridicu­lous­ly Neanderthal Republican Party. The prob­lem is, Marco Rubio is the prod­uct of Cuban Immigrants who came to the United States in 1956 . Rubio and his par­ents have ben­e­fit­ed much from Government largess.

Florida’s Republican US Senator Marco Antonio Rubio.

Marco Rubio who is a lawyer has now reached the top and he is pulling the lad­der away from any­one not at the top where he is perched. Marco Antonio is now a T‑Party dar­ling, he is regard­ed as the “crown prince of the Tea Party move­ment”.

Marco Rubio is not just a guy who is pulling away the lad­der for the poor , for women , for the old and indi­gent, this guy has proven to be a mon­u­men­tal fraud. In his now infa­mous Watergate response to the President Rubio pon­tif­i­cat­ed that he was for the poor, he went on to state that he lives in the same mid­dle-class neigh­bor­hood with retirees. However Rachel Maddow of MSNBC report­ed that Rubio’s house in the so-called mid­dle class neigh­bor­hood ‚has been on the mar­ket for a whop­ping 600+ Thousand dollars.

So the lit­tle Cuban-American crown prince of the T‑Party who loves the mid­dle class so much, real­ly wants to move to Washington DC where he may fur­ther ingra­ti­ate him­self with the 1%.

As President Obama con­tend with the rad­i­cal right-wing par­ty, hell-bent on cir­cum­vent­ing the will of the major­i­ty, coun­tries like Jamaica must do what it takes to get their own economies on the right track. There will be no hand­outs com­ing from coun­tries like the United States that will sig­nif­i­cant­ly change their circumstances.

They will have to make tough choic­es, in Jamaica’s case, it is ram­pant cor­rup­tion and run-away crim­i­nal­i­ty which is chok­ing the life-blood out of the coun­try, eco­nom­i­cal­ly and lit­er­al­ly. Jamaica how­ev­er , has a tough road to hoe as it is stuck with polit­i­cal lead­ers who either do not under­stand what crime and cor­rup­tion is doing to our coun­try, or are too heav­i­ly invest­ed in those vices to care,. either way it will be a dif­fi­cult way for­ward for Jamaica.