Bahama Pundit

On Political Stunts and Moving the Port of Nassau to Arawak Cay

by Larry Smith

On Political Stunts
If you recall,  "Joe the Plumber" was a star attraction during the US presidential debates last fall.

Joe is actually Joe Wurzelbacher, an 'everyman' who appeared out of a crowd at an Obama campaign rally and asked the candidate about his economic plan.

Joe then became the poster boy for the McCain-Palin campaign's attempt to portray Obama as a red-fanged radical plotting to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat and destroy hard-working Americans by "sharing the wealth".

Turned out that Joe was a Republican plant who wasn't registered to vote, wasn't a licensed plumber, owed back taxes, and would actually benefit from the tax cuts proposed by Obama. It also turned out that a majority of Americans were in favour of a more equitable distribution of income.

In short, Joe the Plumber was part of an elaborate political stunt that failed to achieve its goal.

We witnessed a similar exercise here last week, although the issue that the stunt focused on was rather more serious than the redistribution of income. It revolved around the apparent suicide of a 15-year-old juvenile who was jailed on suspicion of housebreaking.

Why I Vex...A Summertime Rant

by Larry Smith

Justice System Vicious Circle.
The lack of a decisive response to our deterioriating judicial system lies at the root of the country's problems. We risk everything with this. And moreover, since the country is run by lawyers they know exactly what the problems are, what the solutions are, and what is at stake.

According to chief lawyer Wayne Munroe, the controversy over granting bail to those accused of serious crimes is symptomatic of the breakdown of the entire system. The average citizen naturally wants these people kept behind bars until their guilt can be determined. But that raises serious constitutional as well as logistical issues.

The scale and scope of the problem is by now familiar. Former police chief prosecutor Keith Bell outlined it for us last year:

"There are 100,000 matters before the courts, including 11,000 criminal cases and 48,000 traffic cases," he said."That's about a third of the total population before the courts, and it is getting worse and worse...Our murder rate is higher than the US and three times higher than Canada...If this spreads to the out islands we will be unable to control it."

Prime Minister’s Question Time – Part 2

by Simon

•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at frontporchguardian@gmail.com.

Prime Minister Ingraham faces a thick patch of thorny questions amidst a severe economic crisis as the run-up to the 2012 general election approaches with what may initially be a gradual and sluggish recovery. 

His Government’s answers to a riddle of policy and political questions might be best communicated in a series of near-term events. One of these events, the 2009/10 budget is a set piece of political drama and policy choices. 

Prime Minister’s Question Time – Part 1

by Simon

•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at frontporchguardian@gmail.com.

The prime minister faces some of the pricklier questions of his political career beyond the routine queries posed by the Opposition in the House of Assembly during questions to ministers.

More compelling are a boil-up of questions cum crises, including what may turn out to be the worst economic downturn in an independent Bahamas, the latest “developed world” challenge to our financial services sector, and to tweak a saying, the valley of the shadow of increasing public debt.

The PM’s judgements on these questions will determine how the country responds to and emerges from this economic crisis, how the FNM fares in the next general election and, longer-term, what legacy he bequeaths to the country and his party.

Who’s At the World's Table?

by Simon

•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at frontporchguardian@gmail.com.

The G20, which actually has more than 20 standing participants, is a mix of individual countries, regional groupings, international organizations and the European Union.

Its rapid “evolution” is a harbinger of things to come and a swan-song for an old world order -- on life support.

Growing out of the G8, the new club is becoming economically, politically and culturally more diverse.  Yet, as it evolves, its principles, structures and decisions must be agreed by a broader international consensus and greater transparency.

G20 Pomp and Circumstance

by Simon

•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at frontporchguardian@gmail.com.

Amidst the pomp, protests and posturing at last week’s Masters of the Universe gathering in London some may have missed the shifting world order and illusion of reality the G20 gathering represented.  But before there were 20 there were eight.

Not since the Warsaw Pact fractured after the collapse of the Berlin Wall did an international group fizzle into irrelevance almost overnight.  Panicked by a global economic meltdown, the exclusive G8 club resembled a skeleton crew struggling to redirect a supertanker away from a Category 5 hurricane.

Perhaps the G-“Eight is Enough” can dissolve into an old gentleman’s club reminiscing about simpler times when a few, mostly men, set the rules for the majority of the world, whose leaders, including India and China, with one-third of the world’s people, were not invited to the members only fraternity.

TCI Commission of Inquiry Outlines Massive Corruption and Misrule

by Larry Smith

In 2005 our then prime minister, Perry Christie, was invited to open the new legislative building in the Turks & Caicos Islands. Mr Christie said the parliament would be a forum for "bold and innovative ideas", and he was certainly right about that.

In fact, the ideas were so bold they led straight to a British-appointed commission of inquiry into corruption and misrule that handed a "wide-ranging" preliminary report to the governor this past weekend. The recommendations will not be published immediately, and a final report is not due until the end of April.

The commission was appointed last year to inquire into corruption among members of the legislature. It is led by a British jurist (Sir Robin Auld), who took part in the 1967 inquiry into casino gambling in the Bahamas. Four weeks of public hearings at the Regent Palms Hotel on Provo ended on February 11, and the commission is now working on its report in London.

Keynes, the Economy and the Technological Singularity

by Larry Smith

"We are suffering just now from a bad attack of economic pessimism, wrote the famous British economist John Maynard Keynes in a 1930 essay. "It is common to hear people say that....a decline in prosperity is more likely than an improvement in the decade which lies ahead of us."

Keynes was one of the most renowned economist of his day, and his theories of deficit spending to stimulate demand were the global economic orthodoxy from the time of the Great Depression until the 1970s. They are now coming back into fashion as the world economy collapses around us.

But in this instance Keynes was no doomsayer. At the beginning of the Depression - which was to last 15 years until the outbreak of the second world war in 1945 - he wrote a 4,000-word essay entitled Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, in which he called the understandable pessimism of his day mistaken.

The Bahamas, Cuba and the US

by Simon

•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at frontporchguardian@gmail.com.

Bahamians enjoy front row seats to an unfolding story in which two longstanding rivals are about to turn an outdated cold war into at least a lukewarm relationship. 

Just about every step in the thawing of relations between the U.S. and Cuba will be met with the sky-is-falling panic by true believers across both the Florida Straits and the so called left-right divide.

As a point of reference these straits serve as a maritime border and as potentially common ground for three neighbours: The Bahamas, Cuba and the U.S.A. Of course, “straits” can also refer to an array of difficulties.

A constellation of events will shape the pace of the rapprochement between our geographically closest neighbours.  How these events are taken advantage of, missed or disregarded will determine the substance of the evolving relationship.

Santa Claus is Vex

by Simon

•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at frontporchguardian@gmail.com.

Facing a bleak Yuletide season of stockings filled with termination notices, debt payments and electricity bills, many of the newly unemployed are deserving of compassion and consideration.  But there are some who should receive a reality-check in their Christmas packages with this note from Santa Claus:

“You better watch out, / You better not cry, / Better not pout, / I'm telling you why: Santa Claus is coming to town. / He's making a list, / and checking it twice; / gonna find out, / who’s naughty and nice. / Santa Claus is coming to town.”

We cannot easily judge any individual’s circumstances.  But there are many on Santa Claus’ twice checked list who have in many ways been much more naughty than nice.