Miami, Florida – The below constitutes a re-distribution of the blog-commentary on the US President’s formal address to his Congress, the State of the Union for 2015. The occasion now is the State of the Union address for 2016. This time is monumental in that it is the final address for the current President, Barack Obama; due to term restrictions in the US Constitution, he can no longer serve as President after this year. The election for his successor is slated for November 2016.
You are invited to watch the State of the Union address that President Barack Obama delivered to the US Congress on Tuesday night (January 20, 2015). You are urged to listen carefully and count the number of times the Caribbean is referred to. The answer:
(The Guantanamo Bay Naval Base is a perpetual leased US territory; so it will not count as Caribbean-specific).
No reference to the US Territories (Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands); no reference to the Dutch Caribbean; nor to the French Caribbean; and especially not to the English-speaking Caribbean member-states.
The truth of the matter is that the Caribbean is out-of-scope for Obama. It was the State of the Union of the United States of America. Not the State of the Caribbean Union. Even the US territories have to be concerned. They have a voice in the US Congress, but no vote. (A lesson in American Civics teaches that territories have Congressional representation that can vote in committees, but not vote in full Congress).
So all the President’s focus on job creation, energy independence, growing the economy, controlling healthcare costs, securing the homeland, and optimizing government was directed to his American constituency and not to the Caribbean member-states.
VIDEO Title: The State of the Union (SOTU) 2015 – http://youtu.be/cse5cCGuHmE Watch President Obama’s 1-hour remarks during his 6th SOTU address and learn more below.
Published on Jan 20, 2015 President Barack Obama delivers his sixth State of the Union address, at the United States Capitol, January 20, 2015.
We, the Caribbean, are required to focus on the State of our own Union.
The people, the 320 million Americans, elect a President to pursue their best interest, not the world’s best interest. Though the US tries to be a Good Neighbor, there may be times when the priorities of the US conflict with the priorities of the Caribbean, or the rest of the world. In those scenarios, the President is under charge to pursue the American best option.
The 42 million people of the Caribbean homeland are not in his scope!
The foregoing VIDEO and this commentary is being brought into focus in a consideration of the book Go Lean … Caribbean. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:
Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.
The Go Lean book (Page 3) makes a simple assertion regarding the State of our Union: the Caribbean is in crisis. The book details that there is something wrong in the homeland, that while it is the greatest address in the world, instead of the world “beating a path” to these doors, the people of the Caribbean have “beat down their doors” to get out.
Why do people leave? The book identifies a numberof reasons, classified as “push-and-pull”. There are economic (jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities), security and governance issues.
One mission of the Go Lean roadmap is to minimize these “push-and-pull” factors that contribute to this alarmingly high abandonment rate of Caribbean citizens – one report reflects a 70% brain drain rate.
Considering “pull” factors, the roadmap posits that the United States of America should not be viewed as the panacea for Caribbean ailments; that when the choice of any challenge is “fight or flight” that Caribbean society must now consider anew, the “fight” options. (No violence is implied, but rather a strenuous effort, heavy-lifting, to compete and win economic battles). One strong reason for cautioning Caribbean emigrants is that America is not so welcoming a society for the “Black and Brown” populations from the Caribbean. This was not addressed by Obama; he has to address the needs of all Americans – not just “Black and Brown” – racial discrimination have not been as high a priority among his initiatives, to the chagrin of many in the African-American communities, including the Caribbean Diaspora.
On the other hand, the Go Lean book does not ignore the “push” factors that cause many Caribbean people to flee. The book stresses (early at Pages 12 – 13) the need to be on-guard for “push” factors in these pronouncements in the Declaration of Interdependence:
xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.
xix. Whereas our legacy in recent times is one of societal abandonment, it is imperative that incentives and encouragement be put in place to first dissuade the human flight, and then entice and welcome the return of our Diaspora back to our shores. This repatriation should be effected with the appropriate guards so as not to imperil the lives and securities of the repatriated citizens or the communities they inhabit. The right of repatriation is to be extended to any natural born citizens despite any previous naturalization to foreign sovereignties.
xx. Whereas the results of our decades of migration created a vibrant Diaspora in foreign lands, the Federation must organize interactions with this population into structured markets. Thus allowing foreign consumption of domestic products, services and media, which is a positive trade impact. These economic activities must not be exploited by others’ profiteering but rather harnessed by Federation resources for efficient repatriations.
xxi. Whereas the preparation of our labor force can foster opportunities and dictate economic progress for current and future generations, the Federation must ensure that educational and job training opportunities are fully optimized for all residents of all member-states, with no partiality towards any gender or ethnic group. The Federation must recognize and facilitate excellence in many different fields of endeavor, including sciences, languages, arts, music and sports. This responsibility should be executed without incurring the risks of further human flight, as has been the past history.
xxvi. Whereas the Caribbean region must have new jobs to empower the engines of the economy and create the income sources for prosperity, and encourage the next generation to forge their dreams right at home, the Federation must therefore foster the development of new industries, like that of ship-building, automobile manufacturing, prefabricated housing, frozen foods, pipelines, call centers, and the prison industrial complex. In addition, the Federation must invigorate the enterprises related to existing industries like tourism, fisheries and lotteries – impacting the region with more jobs.
This commentary previously related details of Caribbean emigration and their experiences (Diaspora), the “push-and-pull” factors in the US, and our region’s own job-creation efforts – State of Our Own Union. Here is a sample of earlier blogs:
Traditional 4-year College Degree are Terrible Investments for the Caribbean Region Due to Brain-Drain
The Go Lean book and accompanying blogs posit that for the Caribbean Diaspora, fleeing from their homelands to reside in the US is akin to “jumping from the frying pan into the fire” in terms of effort to succeed and thrive in a community. The message of the Go Lean movement is that it takes less effort to remediate the Caribbean than to fix a new adopted homeland. While the Go Lean planners may not be able to change American society, we can – no, we must – impact our own society. This is the charge of the Go Lean…Caribbean roadmap, to do the heavy-lifting, to implement the organization dynamics to impact Caribbean society here and now. The following are the community ethos, strategies, tactics and operational advocacies to effectuate this goal:
Community Ethos – People Respond to Incentives
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influences Choices & Incentives
Page 21
Community Ethos – The Consequences of Choice Lie in the Future
Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier
Page 22
Community Ethos – Minority Equalization
Page 24
Community Ethos – Lean Operations
Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius
Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Negotiations
Page 32
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good
Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Make the Caribbean the Best Address on Planet
Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Repatriate Diaspora
Page 46
Strategy – Mission – Dissuade Human Flight/“Brain Drain”
Page 46
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Union versus Member-States
Page 71
Implementation – Assemble CariCom, Dutch, French, Cuba and US Territories
Page 95
Implementation – Enact Territorial Compacts for PR & the Virgin Islands
Page 96
Implementation – Foreign Policy Initiatives at Start-up
Page 102
Implementation – Ways to Deliver
Page 109
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate
Page 118
Implementation – Ways to Benefit from Globalization
Page 119
Implementation – Ways to Promote Independence
Page 120
Planning – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean
Page 127
Planning – Lessons from the US Constitution
Page 145
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy
Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs
Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance
Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security
Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Diaspora
Page 217
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage
Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Re-boot Cuba
Page 236
Advocacy – Ways to Impact US Territories
Page 244
Appendix – Interstate Compacts
Page 278
This Go Lean book accepts that the current State of Our Own Union is not a permanent disposition. We can do better. This roadmap is a 5-year plan to effect change, to make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. From Day One/Step One, positive change emerges. The roadmap therefore serves as turn-by-turn directions for what-how-when-where-why to apply the needed remediation, mitigations and empowerments.
The scope of this roadmap is change for the Caribbean, not change for American society – though there is the need for some lobbying of American authorities for Interstate/Foreign Compacts (Page 278).
As for the Caribbean US territories – the great American Empire – having a voice, but no vote is disadvantageous. A Congressman from Nebraska would not negotiate with a Congressman from Puerto Rico because there is no vote to offer, compromise or “horse-trade”. American territories are therefore just traditional colonies, parasites and subjective to their imperial masters.
The Caribbean strives to be protégés, no parasites! We can be the world’s best address. How glorious the day when we can declare that as the State of the Caribbean Union!
Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people and governing institutions, to lean-in to this Go Lean … Caribbean roadmap. 🙂
While we all want to live in a society free of crime, we all recognize that this goal is easier said than done!
Since remediating and mitigating crime is both an “Art” and a “Science”, we have to rely on professionals and Subject Matter Experts (SME) – Police – to do this job. And when these SME’s succeed in their “art and science”, we hardly notice; but when they fail we cannot ignore the failures, as we are all impacted.
Right now, there is no way to ignore what is going on in the Caribbean member-state of the Bahamas; they have an alarming crime problem, one that has the attention of local, regional and international stakeholders. According to the below news article, these numbers highlight the problem:
In 2010, there were 94 murders recorded in the country, a record at the time. The next year there were 127 murders and in 2012 there were 111. There were 120 murders in 2013, 123 in 2014 and a record 149 last year [2015].
For a country of 320,000 people, these numbers are alarmingly high. (This blogger is Bahamas-bred).
The book Go Lean … Caribbean asserts that to elevate Caribbean society there must be a focus on elevating the region’s economic, security and governing engines. While the book primarily targets economic empowerments (jobs, investments, education, entrepreneurship, etc.), it posits that security concerns must be front-and-center along with these economic efforts.
The book directly relates (Page 23) that with the emergence of new economic drivers that “bad actors” will also emerge thereafter to exploit the opportunities, with good, bad and evil intent. This is a historical fact, and is bound to be repeated again and again. The following news article and related VIDEO convey this point:
January 04, 2016 – Former Deputy Commissioner of Police Quinn McCartney is renewing his call for a change in leadership in the crime fight following the setting of a new murder record in The Bahamas in 2015, and several serious crimes already recorded for 2016, including two murders and multiple shootings. While McCartney did not identify anyone in his post, his comments are widely viewed as a critique of Commissioner of Police Ellison Greenslade.
“I promised not to say too much this year, but looks like 2016 is starting off much like 2015 ended, and therefore I feel compelled to say something brief right now,” McCartney wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday night.
“Obviously what we are doing right now is not working. There is, in my humble opinion, a need for drastic changes to be made. Perhaps we should take our cues from sports teams. I am not a sports fanatic, but I do know that when a team continues to lose, sooner or later there is a leadership change [and] the manager/coach is fired.
“Most of the team members stay but new leadership is brought in to hopefully chart a new course for what should be a talented team. With six successive years of unprecedented records, are we at the point where we need to honestly look at a change of the leadership for the team?”
McCartney’s call for new leadership comes exactly six years after Greenslade assumed command of the Royal Bahamas Police Force and one year after he, McCartney, retired as deputy.
In 2010, there were 94 murders recorded in the country, a record at the time. The next year there were 127 murders and in 2012 there were 111. There were 120 murders in 2013, 123 in 2014 and a record 149 last year.
McCartney’s post attracted widespread attention and in response to a comment under his post, McCartney promised to expand on his thoughts later in the week.
“We can only be manipulated to the extent that we allow persons to manipulate us,” he wrote. “The political directorate can only get us to do what they want if we allow them to. We need to de-politicize our institutions or at least the perception that they are politicized. Unfortunately we have allowed them in when it has been expedient for our professional success or advancement. We are to blame.”
Fresh off a record-setting year, a man was shot and killed outside a bar at the intersection of Kemp Road and Wulff Road early Saturday morning, police said. Hours later, Michael Deangelo Bethel, a well-known businessman, was shot and killed after he was ambushed at the traffic light near Montagu Beach early Sunday morning. His wife and two others were injured in the shooting, police said.
This is not first time McCartney has been critical of the leadership in the crime fight. Last November, he said if those charged with addressing the problem are failing to do their jobs, they should be removed.
McCartney left the force after more than 30 years of service. His relationship with the commissioner was reportedly strained in the time leading to his exit. McCartney holds a first degree in chemistry and a master’s degree in forensics from the University of Scotland. He has had extensive professional training since then.
As deputy commissioner, he was responsible for complaints and discipline, fire services and the force’s inspection and review branch, which was reportedly dismantled in 2012.
Published on Dec 29, 2015 – NB12 DECEMBER 29TH, NEWSCAST.
Pardon the opening Advertisement/Commercial.
The foregoing news resources relate the dire status quo in the Bahamas. A similar review in other Caribbean member-states shows similar challenges. So crime is a regional problem. The Go Lean book therefore presents a regional solution. The book features details of mitigations designed from world-class best-practices to remediate crime in the Caribbean region. All of which the current regimes of the 30 separate member-states would be unable to pursue on their own. As the commentator relates in the foregoing article, there is a need for a new regime, as the current structures are failing. The Go Lean book therefore relates “the new Sheriff in Town” – a regional one – with these strategies:
Caribbean Police (CariPol)
Regional Security Intelligence Bureau
Enhanced Witness Protection Solutions
Regionally-regulated Private/Commercial First Responders
Youth Crime Awareness and Prevention
Prison Industrial Complex
This last entry – Prison Industrial Complex – is the focus of this commentary. There is much to learn from the “art and science” of penology and criminology in implementing change in the new Caribbean.
The Go Lean book posits that the Caribbean is in dire straits – society-wise and crime-wise – due fundamentally to one factor: societal abandonment. Evidence is provided when the best-of-the-best flees a community, the consequence is more-and-more turmoil among the remnant.
Consider this: What happens in prisons where/when felons and “bad actors” are all warehoused together?
The fields of penology and criminology are all consistent in their conclusions: Criminals, felons and “bad actors” all learn to become better criminals, felons and “bad actors” in prison. This is why recidivism – the propensity to return to the bad practice – is so high.
This commentary – in support of the book Go Lean…Caribbean – has previously established that the societal abandonment rate among the educated classes of the Caribbean average 70%, with some communities experiencing even higher rates; (Jamaica at 85% and Guyana at 89%). This consideration details the “push and pull” reasons why Caribbean citizens flee.
The Go Lean book and this entire movement hereby asserts that the problem of crime in the Bahamas – as related in the foregoing news article, though not exclusive there – is a vicious cycle of cause-and effect that is common and tragic throughout the entire Caribbean region. Imagine this cycle:
The Caribbean Remnant – lower skilled and more prone to violence – learn more effective lawlessness
Innocent people leave the Caribbean region for refuge abroad
The Caribbean Remnant – lower skilled and more prone to violence – learn more effective lawlessness
Innocent people leave the Caribbean region for refuge abroad
… pattern continues …
This presumed pattern is based on the premise that foreign governments disallow immigrants with criminal records. So these ones – bad actors – are comprised in the remnant population left behind in the Caribbean. This means that every iteration of the above pattern changes the statistics of felons/non-felons in society; more and more felons, percentage-wise.
So then, what hope is there for the future?
“Do what you’ve always done, get what you’ve always got” – Old Adage.
The declaration of the policing SME in the foregoing article is to “change the leadership in the crime fight”. (Though the quoted article appears to be more political in its indictment).
This is the quest of the Go Lean movement, to change the leadership, stewardship and oversight of the Caribbean eco-system. (This commentary makes no judgments on the actual Commissioner of Police of the Royal Bahamas Police Force; this public servant seems to be an honorable man with only good intentions for his homeland). The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to elevate the region’s economic, security and governing engines beyond their status quo. The roadmap has these 3 prime directives:
Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to provide public safety and protect the resultant economic engines from economic crimes and cross-border threats.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.
The goal of this roadmap is to confederate all of the Caribbean – all 30 member-states – under a unified entity to provide these societal solutions for the region. But ‘Security’ for the Caribbean has a different meaning than for many of the countries the Caribbean Diaspora flee to, like North America and Europe. The CU security goal is for public safety! The goal of the CU is set to optimize Caribbean society through economic empowerment, and also the security dynamics of the region, since these are inextricably linked to this same endeavor.
The end result of the successful execution of the Go Lean/CU roadmap is improvement of Caribbean society, minimizing the “push-pull” factors that led to more emigration, and incentivizing the return of many Diaspora that have left over the years and decades.
The cause-and-effect of failing economics lead to increasing criminality. The cause-and-effect of improved economics lead to lesser criminal activities. The motivation of this Go Lean/CU roadmap is the basic economic principle, described in the Go Lean book (Page 21), that “Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices and Incentives”. So the advanced field of economics hereby posits that Economic Systems, more so than political systems influence people’s choices and incentives. So the Go Lean/CU seeks to optimize the region’s economic systems to better deliver on the prime directives of the Go Lean roadmap.
This roadmap fully envisions the integration of shepherding – leadership – for the Caribbean region’s economic and security initiatives under the same governance: The Caribbean Union Trade Federation. This point is pronounced early in the Go Lean book with the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12) that claims:
x. Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign. The Federation must employ the latest advances and best practices … to assuage continuous threats against public safety.
xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.
xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.
xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes, including piracy and other forms of terrorism, can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.
The Caribbean appointing “new guards”, or a security apparatus to ensure justice and public safety will include many strategies, tactics and implementations deemed “best-practice” over the years, including an advanced Intelligence Gathering & Analysis effort to mitigate and remediate crime in the region, and also to optimize the “art and science” of crime, including prison reform; (see Page 211 of the Go Lean book). This represents “top-down” and “bottom up” optimization of the security process to better protect the homeland. This comprehensive Homeland Security focusis “Step One, Day One” in the Go Lean roadmap, covering the approach for adequate funding, accountability and control. The Go Lean book details the series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to provide increased public safety & security in the Caribbean region:
Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices
Page 21
Community Ethos – Consequences of Choices Lie in Future
Page 21
Community Ethos – Privacy –vs- Public Protection
Page 23
Community Ethos – Intelligence Gathering
Page 23
Community Ethos – “Crap” Happens
Page 23
Community Ethos – Cooperatives
Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good
Page 37
Tactical – Vision – Forge a Single Market economy
Page 45
Tactical – Confederating a non-sovereign union
Page 63
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy
Page 64
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Homeland Security
Page 75
Tactical – Separation of Powers – CariPol: Marshals & Investigations
Page 75
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change
Page 101
Implementation – Start-up Security Initiatives
Page 103
Implementation – Ways to Foster International Aid – Security Assistance
Page 115
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate
Page 118
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better
Page 131
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices – Mitigate Organized Crime
Page 134
Planning – Lessons from the American West – Law & Order Lessons
Page 142
Planning – Lessons from Egypt – Lackluster Law & Order affects Economy
Page 143
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy
Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance
Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract
Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Leadership
Page 171
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice
Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Reduce Crime
Page 178
Advocacy – Ways to Improve for Gun Control
Page 179
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security
Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Terrorism
Page 181
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Intelligence Gathering and Analysis
Page 182
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Prison Industrial Complex
Page 211
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights
Page 220
Other subjects related to crime and security empowerments for the region have been blogged in other Go Lean…Caribbean commentaries, as sampled here:
10 Things We Don’t Want from the US – #6: Criminal Organizations
The vision of the Go Lean roadmap is to make the Caribbean homeland, a better place to live, work and play. This means measurable reduction (mitigation and remediation) of crime in the region.
The premise is that “bad actors” will always emerge, from internal and external origins. We must be prepared and on-guard to defend our homeland against all threats, foreign and domestic, including crime. Plus, we must accomplish this goal with maximum transparency, accountability, and commitment to due-process and the rule-of-law.
An additional mission is to lower the “push” factors (from “push-and-pull” reference) so that our citizens are not led to flee their homeland for foreign (North American and European) shores. Among the many reasons people emigrate, is victimization or fear of crime. There is “good, bad and ugly” in every society. We must not allow all our “good” citizens to leave and the only remaining – the remnant – would be the “bad and the ugly”.
So all stakeholders in the Caribbean – people and institutions – are urged to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap for the elevation of the Caribbean’s societal engine: economy, security and governance. The roadmap calls for the heavy-lifting so as to impact the Greater Good. 🙂
Imagine one day you have $100 in your wallet. You put the wallet down at night, and then pick it up the next morning and now that money is only worth $70.
Depressing, isn’t it?!
This is not just “make believe”. This is real! This has happened a number of times in the Caribbean past, and just happened today in an Eastern European/Western Asian country, and former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan; with their manat currency; see Appendix. This is not “Economics 101”, but rather “Economics 901”.
This is a commentary on the frailties of the modern banking system, and the need for mastery in this field of endeavor. The banking community, in the Caribbean and elsewhere, have to master the agents-of-change in this troubling world. Factors such as: Globalization, Technology, and Climate Change. But, we will see that it’s not just banks, but consumers – the man on Main Street – as well that needs to better understand and manage these dynamics.
This introduction vividly demonstrates how banking fortunes, and misfortunes, easily affect people, all around the world. This point aligns with the book Go Lean…Caribbean; and the underlying movement by the publishers SFE Foundation; these were launched as a direct result of the banking crisis referred to as the Great Recession of 2008. One purpose of the book was to apply lessons learned from the 2008 experience in the quest to empower and optimize Caribbean life and society. In addition to the banking dysfunctions that year, global petroleum prices also wreaked havoc on the world’s economy. (The demand for crude oil is now a “wild card” with the new thrust to adapt Green Energy solutions to arrest Climate Change).
There is now a new set of challenges facing the international (central) banking community. This time with currency valuations, as in this case of Azerbaijan; see the news article here and the Appendix below for detailed definitions:
Title: Azerbaijan sets its currency on free float
BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) — Oil-rich Azerbaijan has let its currency float freely, leading to its sharp depreciation as global oil prices hit new lows.
Azerbaijan’s Central Bank said Monday’s move to let the manat fluctuate was made to “preserve hard currency reserves … and ensure the national economy’s competitiveness on the international arena.”
Following the move, the manat fell by 32 percent. One manat, which was worth around $0.95 Friday, was now trading at $0.65.
The ex-Soviet nation has spent more than half of its hard currency reserves so far this year in an attempt to shore up the embattled currency.
Financial analyst Oqtay Akhverdiyev said the decision to let the manta float was “a necessary measure … what we’re now seeing is the real value of the manta.”
Published on Dec 21, 2015 SUBSCRIBE TO “EYES OPEN MEDIA” https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnLq…
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While this foregoing article relates to international currencies and central banking, this is more than just a Wall Street issue; this is a Main Street issue. This relates fully to the laws of Supply-and-Demand. A central bank must constantly buy-and-sell foreign currencies to regulate the supply in the general market so as to stabilize the “home” currency. As economic drivers for foreign currency become challenged – such as the decline in crude oil prices for Azerbaijan – it’s takes more and more foreign “cash” reserves to regulate the international prices for “home” currencies.
This foregoing article is in consideration of the Go Lean book; it serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) and Caribbean Central Bank (CCB) to provide better stewardship, to ensure that the economic/currency failures of the past, in the Caribbean and other regions (like Azerbaijan), do not re-occur here … again in the homeland. This all relates to foreign currency exchange (fx), an advanced subject in the field of Economics.
Economics 901 also asserts that there is now interconnectivity of the financial systems; bank/currency troubles in foreign countries easily become trouble for the Caribbean region. The assumption embedded in the Go Lean roadmap is that while there could be elasticity from these foreign financial contagions, the Caribbean is big enough (42 million people in 30 member-states, as opposed to 9.6 million in Azerbaijan alone) so as to streamline its own viable currency/financial/securities market.
There are lessons to apply from the foregoing news story. In a previous blog-commentary, these fx technical points were detailed:
Capital Controls – This is a necessary responsibility of Central Banks. The Go Lean book dives deeply into the discussion for Capital Controls; consider this direct quotation from Page 315 of the book:
Capital controls are residency-based measures such as transaction taxes, other limits, or outright prohibitions that a nation’s government can use to regulate flows from capital markets into and out of the country’s capital account. Types of capital control include exchange controls that prevent or limit the buying and selling of a national currency at the market rate, caps on the allowed volume for the international sale or purchase of various financial assets, transaction taxes, minimum stay requirements, requirements for mandatory approval, or even limits on the amount of money a private citizen is allowed to remove from the country.
Currency Manipulations – The Central Bank of Azerbaijan has the heavy-lifting tasks of manipulating the supply-and-demand equations to try and keep their currency fixed, against an international standard, like the US dollar. Most Central Banks must undertake this strategy to prevent other parties, “bad actors”, from manipulating the currency themselves. Currency manipulators can inflict harm on a country’s resources for their own personal financial gain.
Human & Capital Flight – When a country’s currency is in distress, there is the threat that citizens may flee with their capital so as to secure the value of their savings and investments. This normally means a loss of future economic activity for the educated and productive segments of society; this results in negatives on the national economy in the short-term and in the long-term. The Caribbean has been plagued with this occurrence again and again. Even now, the region has an alarming 70% brain drain rate among the college education populations of Caribbean heritage.
These lessons must be applied in the technocratic administration of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation, and the Caribbean Central Bank’s (CCB) oversight of the Caribbean Dollar (C$). The Go Lean roadmap calls for the CCB to be a cooperative entity of the existing Central Banks in the region; this will foster interdependence from the political entities allowing the motivation of the regional Greater Good. This need for regional stewardship of Caribbean currencies was pronounced early in the book, in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 13) with these statements:
xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.
xxv. Whereas the legacy of international democracies had been imperiled due to a global financial crisis, the structure of the Federation must allow for financial stability and assurance of the Federation’s institutions. To mandate the economic vibrancy of the region, monetary and fiscal controls and policies must be incorporated as proactive and reactive measures. These measures must address threats against the financial integrity of the Federation and member-states.
So the planners of the new Caribbean sympathizes with the Central Bank of Azerbaijan. We have learned hard lessons on the issue of currency, as many CU member-states have had to endure painful currency fluctuations over the past decades – on more than one occasion. So we now understand that any attempt to reboot the Caribbean economic landscape must first start with a strenuous oversight of the proposed regional C$ currency.
The Go Lean book, and previous blog/commentaries, stressed the key community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies necessary to establish a strong Caribbean financial eco-systems and strong currency. These points are detailed in the book as follows:
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Voluntary Trade Creates Wealth
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Money Multiplier
Page 23
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations
Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Return on Investments
Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future – Count on the Greedy to be Greedy
Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good
Page 37
Strategy – Mission – Fortify the Stability of the Securities Markets
Page 45
Strategy – Provide Proper Oversight and Support for the Depository Institutions
Page 46
Strategy – e-Payments and Card-based Transactions
Page 49
Tactical – Growing the Economy – Minimizing Bubbles
Appendix – e-Government and e-Payments Example: EBT
Page 353
As related in previous blog commentaries, there is an ebb-and-flow associated with national/regional economic stewardship. This stewardship constitutes the prime directives of the CU/Go Lean roadmap:
Optimization of the economic engines – “Economics 901” – in order to grow the economy and create 2.2 million jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant regional economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance/administration/oversight to support these engines.
The best practice for effective stewardship of an economy’s ebb-and-flow is agile management, the ability to “plan, do and review”, adjust course, then “plan, do and review” again. The points of effective, technocratic banking/economic stewardship, were further elaborated upon in these previous blog/commentaries:
Analyzing the Data – What Banks learn about financial risks
The Go Lean quest is to elevate our society and economy from the parasite role we have assumed in the world trading cycles. We want to be a protégé not a parasite! This mastery of “Economics 901” is not easy; it is heavy-lifting. Yet still, success is conceivable, believable and achievable.
We have so many lessons to learn from this case study in Azerbaijan. Let’s pay more than the usual attention to this, and other case studies in “Economics 901”.
The Caribbean’s 30 member-states are urged to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap for the CU, CCB and C$. This roadmap applies the best-of-the-best in terms of best-practices. It serves as turn-by-turn directions to move the region to its new destination: a better homeland to live, work and play. 🙂
The manat (code: AZN) is the currency of Azerbaijan. It is subdivided into 100 qəpik. The word manat is borrowed from the Russian word “moneta” (coin) which is pronounced as “maneta”. Manat was also the designation of the Soviet ruble in both the Azerbaijani and Turkmen languages.
The Azerbaijani manat symbol, , was assigned to Unicode U+20BC in 2013. A lowercase m. or man. can be used as a substitute for the manat symbol.
The second manat was introduced on 15 August 1992[1], following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it had the ISO 4217 code AZM and replaced the Soviet ruble at a rate of 10 rubles to 1 manat.
From early 2002 to early 2005, the exchange rate was fairly stable (varying within a band of 4770–4990 manat per US dollar). Starting in the spring of 2005 there was a slight but steady increase in the value of the manat against the US dollar; the reason most likely being the increased flow of petrodollars (US dollars earned through exports of petroleum crude oil) into the country, together with the generally high price of oil on the world market. At the end of 2005, one dollar was worth 4591 manat. Banknotes below 100 manat had effectively disappeared by 2005, as had the qəpik coins.
On 1 January 2006, a new manat (ISO 4217 code AZN, also called the “manat (national currency)”) was introduced at a value of 5,000 old manat. [Thus the .95 US Dollar exchange rate as of late].
According to Pope Francis, the Head of the Catholic Church and its 2 Billion members: “Yes, we are.”
He is not the only one with that subjective assessment. Consider:
Editorial Commentary: Wake up! It’s already World War III
By: Linda Stasi, Columnist, New York Daily News
What if they started WWIII and nobody noticed?
News flash: We’re in it and we all better start caring. No? Despite the fact that we have a worldwide terror alert, armed conflicts, religious wars that harken back to the Dark Ages, escalating international terrorism – only one world leader, Pope Francis, has dared to call it what it is: World War Three.
Don’t believe it? Believe this then: Globalsecurity.org estimates that right now in the world there are 30 ongoing wars and 22 conflicts. That’s 52 countries at war or in conflict. The U.S. alone has ground troops in 134 countries.
On Tuesday [November 24], Turkey downed a Russian warplane upping the ante of an official start to WWIII to: Very Scary. Yet what did Britain’s Secretary of State Philip Hammond call it? “Potentially serious.” Seriously?
Warsintheworld.com puts the number of wars being waged right now even higher. Factoring in militias, guerrillas, and terrorist organizations, they estimate the number of countries currently at war at 65. Meantime, only 61 countries were involved in WWII. That’s why Pope Francis calls our current state, the “piecemeal third world war.” And he’s right – with the “piecemeal” being the worst part of the evaluation.
Difference is that during the first two world wars we knew who the enemies were and what countries they called home. Now we don’t. How is that two of the world’s top three superpowers – the U.S. and Russia – whose incredible intelligence fueled the Cold War, have been surprise-attacked by terrorist groups whose threats they underestimated, didn’t understand and didn’t appreciate until it was too late?
The U.S.’s oxymoronic intelligence left our ineffectual president seemingly clueless about who the hell we’re even battling – or should be – from day-to-day. ISIS? Al Qaeda? Boko Haram? The Salafi-Jihadists? What about the homegrown terrorist next door? Russia? China? Iraq? Iran? Syria? Who?
What has the $635.9 billion we spent on intelligence since 2001 bought us? Oh right, 70% of it was spent on independent outside contractors who got rich even as terrorist attacks like Benghazi were being planned. Now like cockroaches, terrorist groups backed by oil money and rich sheiks who shake our hands while stabbing us in the back, are multiplying out of control. And like cockroaches, each time we think we can bomb the latest terrorist organization out of existence, they evolve and multiply into something bigger, different and more elusive, popping up where we don’t expect them with more weaponry at their disposal.
As Lawrence Kolb, VP of the Council on Foreign Relations and assistant Defense Secretary under Reagan recently told Frontline, the enemy of the U.S. and of the world is instability. The president still doesn’t get that.
Interesting factoid to think about as we enter the holidays – in the midst of all this war, who negotiated the release of 98 Assyrian hostages held by ISIS? No, not the ambassadors, but the head of the AssyrianChurch of the East in Syria.
HE’S POPE FRANK-NESS
The pope has declared that this year, Christmas is “all a charade. The world has not understood the way of peace. The whole world is at war.”
He should be known as Pope Francis the Truthful since he’s the first pope to say what’s on his mind instead of what’s on the mind of the Vatican establishment since the Medicis.
Francis also said that folks who sell guns and weapons are hypocrites if they call themselves Christians. What? He doesn’t like those happy Christmas ads for assault weapons? What next? Will he disapprove of kicking off the White Christmas season with Black Friday sales and riots? Positively un-Christian!
From the Caribbean perspective, we have some scary propositions:
Undeniable threats … deniable response.
We are not the first region with this status, and will probably not be the last; samples, examples and role models abound. This commentary considers the role model of the African Standby Force (ASF); see their functions in the Appendix below. That region has a history of undeniable threats, and a shameful history of failing responses. Now, the continent attempts to reform and transform. There is a lot for the Caribbean to learn in considering this African role model:
News Title: Africa puts security hopes in foreign-funded, home-grown strike force By: Wendell Roelf
LOHATLA COMBAT TRAINING BASE, South Africa – Backed by tanks, armoured vehicles and plenty of EU cash, thousands of African soldiers took on an imaginary enemy in the arid heart of South Africa this week, the last joint exercises before a homegrown continental strike force goes live.
Standing on far-away hilltops, commanders peered through night vision goggles and issued orders through helmet-mounted radios to the 5,400 troops simulating a dawn assault on rebels in the fictitious city of Kalasi marked out in the bush.
The orderly manoeuvres and high-tech kit elicited purrs of approval from military chiefs who tout the rapid-reaction battalion – a key part of a long-awaited African Standby Force (ASF) – as the antidote to insurrections spiralling into civil war or even genocide.
“This is an important milestone in our endeavour to create a tool that will be at our disposal should we require to intervene to quell violence,” South African Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said at an opening parade.
But analysts say the ASF, which attains “full operational capability” in December, still faces two major challenges: funding, and forging the political agreement among 54 countries to send in troops – if need be without being invited.
“The big elephant in the room here is political will – the will to deploy without national consent, for instance,” said Thomas Mandrup, an expert in African security and governance at the RoyalDanishDefenceCollege.
Under original African Union (AU) plans, each of the continent’s five regions – north, south, east, west and central – are meant to provide a brigade of 5,000 troops to the force.
But in a sign of potential divisions, North Africa sent only staff officers to this month’s exercises, not troops, a reflection of the domestic political turmoil in the region.
Without the likes of Egypt and Algeria, the ASF will lack much of the air-lift capability crucial to any rapid deployment.
Instead, ASF operations are likely to become a “coalition of the willing”, Mandrup said, much as South Africa, Tanzania and Kenya have done in United Nations-backed peacekeeping and intervention missions across Africa.
Recent security crises in Africa include coups in Guinea-Bissau, Mali and Burkina Faso, offensives by Islamist militant groups in Mali, Nigeria and Somalia, and conflict between rebels in eastern Congo and Central African Republic.
FOREIGN FUNDING The polished nature of this week’s war games stood in contrast to decades of underinvestment that has left African armies poorly equipped and trained, blunting the AU’s ability to launch speedy responses to political or humanitarian crises.
Nowhere was this more evident than Mali in 2013 when former colonial power France, rather than the AU, rushed in troops and planes to block the advance of Islamist jihadists sweeping south from the Sahara.
Since 2004, the European Union has committed more than 1.3 billion euros to African peace operations, including 225 million euros in 2014 for missions to Somalia, the Central African Republic and Mali.
In all, more than 90 percent of AU peace and security efforts are funded by the likes of the EU and United States, although AU member states have pledged to provide a quarter of the funding for operations by 2020.
However, the concern remains that if Africa does control the purse-strings of the military force, it cannot control the outcomes.
Underlining the problem, the EU is even bankrolling this month’s exercises, casting a shadow over the “African solutions for African problems” mantra espoused by politicians in national capitals and the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa.
“The external support for defence spending in Africa is, in my view, a major foreign policy handicap,” said David Anderson, professor of African history at Britain’s University of Warwick.
“African states will truly own their defence and security when they pay for it themselves,” he added. “There is no greater marker of sovereignty and independence than security and defence.”
In addition to Africa, there is also the need to reform and transform the Caribbean homeland, the security, governing and economic engines. The assertion in the book Go Lean … Caribbean (Page 23) is that with the emergence of new economic engines, “bad actors” will also emerge thereafter to exploit the opportunities, with good, bad and evil intent. This point is pronounced early in the book with the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12) that claims:
x. Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign. The Federation must employ the latest advances and best practices … to assuage continuous threats against public safety.
xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.
xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes, including piracy and other forms of terrorism, can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.
The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU would be established by treaty among the 30 member-states to empower the region, including a Defense Pact for the region’s security interest and more. In all, the Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:
Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy and create new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines and the Caribbean homeland.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.
The Caribbean needs to appoint “new guards”, or a security pact to ensure public safety for the Caribbean region. This will include many strategies, tactics and implementations considered “best-practices” around the world. According to the foregoing news article, these “best-practices” are obvious in the plan for the African Standby Force. This allows a constant vigil against “bad actors”, present and future. The term “constant vigil” connotes pro-activity in monitoring, mitigating and managing risks. Thusly, the Go Lean roadmap describes an organization structure with Intelligence Gathering and Analysis, a robust Emergency Management functionality, plus the Unified Command and Control for Disaster Response, anti-crime and military preparedness.
The model of the African Standby Force is instructive for the Caribbean effort. The ASF is an extension of the African Union (AU), the multilateral government pact consisting of 54 countries in Africa. The only African state that is not a member is Morocco, although Burkina Faso and the Central African Republic have had their memberships suspended due to the recent coup d’état and ongoing civil war respectively. The AU was established on 26 May 2001 with the Secretariat – the African Union Commission – based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The ASF is enabled by a Constitutive Act in the AU treaty; this establishes the legal right to intervene in a member-state in grave circumstances, namely war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. As per Article 13 of the Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union, the ASF is based on standby arrangements with Africa’s five sub-regions. – (Source: http://www.peaceau.org/en/page/82-african-standby-force-asf-amani-africa-1#sthash.3ELbjdTQ.dpuf).
In parallel, the CU/Go Lean securityorganization structure is enabled with a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) embedded in the treaty to create the CU Trade Federation. This requirement for the SOFAis “Step One, Day One” in the Go Lean roadmap. The Go Lean book details the series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to provide the proactive and reactive public safety/security in the Caribbean region:
Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices
Page 21
Community Ethos – Consequences of Choices Lie in Future
Page 21
Community Ethos – Privacy –vs- Public Protection
Page 23
Community Ethos – Intelligence Gathering
Page 23
Community Ethos – Whistleblower Protection
Page 23
Community Ethos – “Crap” Happens
Page 23
Community Ethos – Cooperatives
Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Manage Reconciliations
Page 34
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing
Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness
Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good
Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederating a non-sovereign permanent union
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices – Escalation Role
Page 134
Planning – Lessons from the American West – Needed Law & Order
Page 142
Planning – Lessons from Egypt – Law & Order for Tourism
Page 143
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy – Quick Disaster Recovery
Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance
Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract
Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice – Policing the Police
Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Reduce Crime – Regional Security Intelligence
Page 178
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security
Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Terrorism
Page 181
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Intelligence Gathering & Analysis
Page 182
Advocacy – Ways to Improve for Emergency Management
Page 196
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights – Watchful World
Page 220
Other subjects related to security and governing empowerments for the region’s defense have been blogged in other Go Lean…Caribbean commentaries, as sampled here:
The continent of Africa is very exotic. The natural beauty and abundance of natural resources is legendary. So too is the lack of peace and security.
There is good, bad and ugly in Africa.
An effort to provide a better security solution should be welcomed there. But, Africa is out-of-scope for the promoters of Go Lean … Caribbean. Our focus is the Caribbean only, to make this homeland a better place to live, work and play.
The Caribbean is arguably the best address of the planet; there are few similar arguments towards Africa. There are also economic realities for the Caribbean: tourism is the primary source for the generation of foreign currency in the region. This is not true of the African region. So security here in our homeland must take on a different priority. Tourists do not visit “hot-spots” with civil war, genocides, active terrorism and rampant crime.
No one wants World War III, waged in their neighborhood; people want to keep the peace. A safe, secure homeland is important for how we live, how we work, and how we and others play here in the Caribbean. So addressing this issue – public safety and security threats – and modeling best practices for mitigation and remediation is a matter of serious concern; our “bread-and-butter” is at stake.
Everyone in the Caribbean – citizens, institutions and governments – are hereby urged to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap to make the region a better, safer homeland to live, work and play.
The range of functions assigned to the ASF includes:
1.
Observation and monitoring missions;
2.
Other types of peace support operations;
3.
Intervention in a member state in respect of grave circumstances or at the request of a member state to restore peace and security, in accordance with Article 4(h) and 4(J) of the AU Constitutive act;
4.
Preventive deployment to prevent a dispute or a conflict from escalating, an ongoing violent conflict from spreading to neighboring areas or states and the resurgence of violence after parties to conflict have reached an agreement;
5.
Peace building, including post conflict disarmament and demobilization;
6.
Humanitarian assistance to alleviate the suffering of civilian population in conflict areas and support efforts to address major natural disasters;
7.
Any further functions as may be mandated by the Peace and Security Council or the Assembly of Heads of State.
– See more at: http://www.peaceau.org/en/page/82-african-standby-force-asf-amani-africa-1#sthash.3ELbjdTQ.dpuf
Economics, security and governance is presented in the book Go Lean … Caribbean as the “three-fold cord” for societal harmony; for any society anywhere. The Caribbean wants that societal harmony; we must therefore work to optimize all these three engines. But this is easier said than done. This heavy-lifting is described in the book as both an art and a science.
The focus in this commentary is on the societal engine of governance; previously, there was a series on economics and one on security lessons. This commentary focuses on assuaging the “abuse of power”. The Go Lean book posits that verily, bad actors will always emerge to exploit successful engines (in economics and governance). Therefore the checks-and-balances must be proactively embedded in any organizational structure so as to minimize the actuality of abuses by authority figures.
The American experience is important for this consideration. There is a lesson in governance here in examining the US; more exactly, examining the output from the Center for Public Integrity (CPI); see Appendix A below. This Non-Governmental Organization specifically evaluates/measures government misbehavior, structures and systems of oversight. It is an American NGO with an American focus; but we now need to focus on the Caribbean, measuring “best-practices” with this same American yardstick.
Warning!!! This is a LONG commentary … with the Appendices. Considering the grave subject matter; this length is unavoidable.
The work of the CPI is relevant in our consideration of the Caribbean. For the 30 Caribbean member-states, two are American territories (Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands), and a few member-states use the US Dollar as their official currency (British Virgin Islands, the Turks & Caicos Islands and the Dutch Caribbean Territories of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba). This is one reason why this review is important; the other, and most important reason is that our Caribbean people deserve the best-of-the-best of governmental processes. Power corrupts … everyone … everywhere.
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to elevate the economic, security and governance engines of the region’s 30 member-states. The roadmap features these 3 prime directives:
Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus – with oversight over economic crimes and prosecutorial power for public officials – to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines, including ranking and ratings of the mechanics of oversight.
The roadmap covers a 5 year period in which the societal engines will be optimized. The region’s GDP should increase from $278 Billion to $800 Billion. With this success, there will be a lot of opportunities for government administrators to acquire and wield power. The roadmap fully expects these corrupting effects of power to emerge in the Caribbean, as they have emerged in the US, according to the featured news article below (Appendix D):
Secret Deal-making – (S)
Corruption – (C)
Conflicts of Interest – (I)
Thusly, the CU/Go Lean roadmap embeds the required checks-and-balances from the outset to assuage these threats. This commentary considers the in-depth examination of the member-state governments in the US – by the Center for Public Integrity – and then proceeds with a rating/ranking of those 50 states using these 13 categories:
Public Access to Information (S)
Political Financing (I)
Electoral Oversight (C)
Executive Accountability (I)
Legislative Accountability (I)
Judicial Accountability (I)
State Budget Processes (S)
State Civil Service Management (I)
Procurement (C)
Internal Auditing (S)
Lobbying Disclosure (I)
Ethics Enforcement Agencies (C)
State Pension Fund Management (C)
Consider here, the actual VIDEO and news article (in Appendix D below) as reported in the national daily newspaper USA Today, published on November 9, 2015:
An investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and Global Integrity ranked all 50 states based on how ‘corrupt’ they were. The investigation looked at data in 13 different categories. USA TODAY
Well done, CPI. This assessment of the integrity status of the 50 American state governments is a great check-and-balance on those governmental powers.
See the overall rank of the 50 US states in Appendix B below and the separate ranking for each of the 13 criteria at this web address http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/11/09/center-integrity-corruption-grades-interactive/75033060/. The grade of “C” is the highest grade – not good – but it is a benchmark; all the other states did even worse. The state that ranks the highest on the list is Alaska; in contrast, the state with the lowest score/rank is Michigan. (The principal city and economic engine in Michigan is Detroit. The publishers of the book Go Lean…Caribbean are here in Detroit to “observe and report” the turn-around and rebirth of the once-great-but-now-distressed City of Detroit and its metropolitan area).
The assertion of the Go Lean book is that the Caribbean region can benefit from this Good Governance objective in the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) mission. The Caribbean region can do the same as the CPI does for the US. The states are not accountable to the CPI; but they do have to answer to “the people”. Underlying to the CPI mission, is the tactic of “Freedom of Information” embedded in State and Federal laws. They are first and foremost a journalistic organization; they are an NGO, they do not possess any sovereignty or prosecutorial powers.
The model of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) is similar, in that the CU will not possess sovereignty over its member-states. (The CU treaty does vest prosecutorial and accountability powers to CU entities for corruption matters related to CU federal funds). In general, the CU is limited to the same “ratings and ranking” tools as the CPI. So we must proactively and reactively address public corruption. But doing so judiciously and with proper regard for personal sacrifice and volunteerism.
The Go Lean roadmap calls on citizens of the Caribbean member-states to lean-in to the empowerments of this elevation plan. This will require whole-souled commitments and sacrifice on the part of the people; a determination to pursue the needs of the public over the needs of just one person; many times at great sacrifice. This is good! To reach the goals of the community, or an entire nation, there must be a willingness to sacrifice – blood, sweat and tears. This is the community ethos – spirit that drives the people – that is necessary for the pursuit of the Greater Good as opposed to personal gains.
But … there is a need for balance here.
We want to invite public participation, but we do not want people to come to public service looking to profit themselves. On the one hand, we do not want to discourage volunteerism and National Sacrifice with excessive disclosures (see Bahamian satirical song in Appendix C lambasting the resistance when introducing a financial disclosure law), while on the other hand, we want to check and double-check the integrity in the governing process. We must ensure Good Governance.
That perfect balance is possible! The Center for Public Integrity provides its own roadmap for doing so in the US. For this, they are a role model for the Caribbean effort, the CU/Go Lean roadmap. This point was strongly urged in the Go Lean book, in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 10 & 12) with these pronouncements:
Preamble: … While our rights to exercise good governance and promote a more perfect society are the natural assumptions among the powers of the earth, no one other than ourselves can be held accountable for our failure to succeed if we do not try to promote the opportunities that a democratic society fosters.
As the history of our region and the oppression, suppression and repression of its indigenous people is duly documented, there is no one alive who can be held accountable for the prior actions, and so we must put aside the shackles of systems of repression to instead formulate efficient and effective systems to steer our own destiny.
xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption,
nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.
xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.
The Go Lean book details all the community ethos to ensure the right attitudes and practices among those that submit to serve and protect Caribbean communities. Plus the book identifies the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to ensure public integrity for the Caribbean region governing process:
Economic Principle – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices
Page 21
Community Ethos – Security Principle – Privacy –vs- Public Protection
Page 23
Community Ethos – Security Principle – Whistleblower Protection
Page 23
Community Ethos – Security Principle – Witness Security & Protection
Page 23
Community Ethos – Security Principle – Intelligence Gathering
Page 23
Community Ethos – Security Principle – Light Up the Dark Places – Openness
Page 23
Community Ethos – Governing Principle – Minority Equalization
Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principle – Cooperatives and NGO’s
Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Manage Reconciliations – Case Study of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Page 34
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing – Intelligence Gathering
Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good
Page 37
Tactical – Confederating a Non-Sovereign Union
Page 63
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy
Page 64
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Justice Department – District Attorneys with Jurisdiction for Public Integrity cases.
Page 77
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Justice Department – CariPol – Policing the Police
Page 77
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Federal Courts – Truth and Reconciliation Commissions
Page 90
Implementation – Assemble “Organs” – including Regional Courts and Justice Institutions
Page 96
Implementation – Start-up Security Initiatives
Page 103
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better
Page 131
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices – Accountability of Governing Officials
Page 134
Planning – Lessons from the US Constitution – Checks and Balances
Page 145
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy
Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance – Right to Good Governance
Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract
Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice – including White Collar & Government Integrity
Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Intelligence Gathering/Analysis
Page 182
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Communications – Long Form Journalism and Public Broadcasting
Page 186
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Wall Street – Ensure Corporate Governance
Page 200
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Prison Industrial Complex – Learn from Past & Ensure Corporate Governance
Page 211
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights – Justice Focus and Good Governance
Page 220
Appendix – Lessons Learned in Open Government – Floating the Trinidad & Tobago Dollar (1993)
Page 316
Other subjects related to public integrity in the region (or the perception of deficient integrity) have been blogged in other Go Lean…Caribbean commentaries, as sampled here:
The goal of the Go Lean roadmap is to make the Caribbean homeland, a better place to live, work and play. We must lower the “push” factors that cause our citizens to flee their homeland for foreign (North American and European) shores. Among the many reasons people emigrate is the ineffectiveness of their homeland’s local government. We must therefore improve the governing process.
We must do better!
We know that “bad actors” will emerge, even in government institutions, so we must be “on guard” against corruptive threats, from internal (i.e. audits) and external (i.e. lobbyists) origins. We must maintain transparency, accountability, and constant commitments to due-process and the rule-of-law.
The Go Lean roadmap calls for the engagement and participation of everyone, the people (citizens), institutions and government officials alike. We encouraged all with benevolent motives to lean-in to this roadmap, to get involved, get busy and get going. But we caution all with malevolent motives – we will be watching, listening, checking and double-checking.
Our Caribbean subjects deserve only the best … for a change. 🙂
TheCPI is an American nonprofit investigative journalism organization whose stated mission is “to reveal abuses of power, corruption and dereliction of duty by powerful public and private institutions in order to cause them to operate with honesty, integrity, accountability and to put the public interest first.”[1] With over 50 staff members, CPI is one of the largest nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative centers in America.[2] It won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.[3]
CPI describes itself as an organization that is “nonpartisan and does no advocacy work.”[4] CPI has been characterized as “progressive”[5] “nonpartisan,”[6] “independent,”[7] and a “liberal group.”[8][9]
CPI releases its reports via its web site to media outlets throughout the U.S. and around the globe. In 2004, CPI’s The Buying of the President book was on the New York Times bestseller list for three months.[10]
In state after state, legislators and agency officials engage in [secrecy, corruption and] conflicts of interest. Here is the list of overall scores in ranking Good-to-Bad-to-Worse-to-Detroit (Michigan):
State
Score
Rank
Alaska
C
1
California
C-
2
Connecticut
C-
3
Hawaii
D+
4
Rhode Island
D+
5
Ohio
D+
6
Alabama
D+
7
Kentucky
D+
8
Nebraska
D+
9
Indiana
D-
10
Iowa
D+
10
Massachusetts
D+
11
Washington
D+
12
Colorado
D+
13
Illinois
D+
14
Tennessee
D
15
Virginia
D
16
West Virginia
D
17
North Carolina
D
18
New Jersey
D
19
Wisconsin
D
20
Montana
D
21
Arizona
D
22
Maryland
D
23
Georgia
D-
24
Utah
D-
25
Idaho
D-
26
Missouri
D-
27
Minnesota
D-
28
Florida
D-
30
New York
D-
31
Arkansas
D-
32
Mississippi
D-
33
New Hampshire
D-
34
New Mexico
D-
35
South Carolina
D-
36
North Dakota
D-
37
Texas
D-
38
Vermont
D-
39
Oklahoma
F
40
Louisiana
F
41
Kansas
F
42
Maine
F
43
Oregon
F
44
Pennsylvania
F
45
Nevada
F
46
South Dakota
F
47
Delaware
F
48
Wyoming
F
49
Michigan
F
50
———-
Appendix C VIDEO-AUDIO – Eddie Minnis – Show and Tell – https://youtu.be/9ERov4w7l78
Uploaded on Jun 16, 2011 – Artist: Eddie Minnis Song: Show & Tell Album: Greatest Hits!
In November 2014, Arkansas voters approved a ballot measure that, among other changes, barred the state’s elected officials from accepting lobbyists’ gifts. That hasn’t stopped influence peddlers from continuing to provide meals to lawmakers at the luxurious Capital Hotel or in top Little Rock eateries such as the Brave New Restaurant; the prohibition does not apply to “food or drink available at a planned activity to which a specific governmental body is invited,” so lobbyists can buy meals as long as they invite an entire legislative committee.
Such loopholes are a common part of statehouse culture nationwide, according to the 2015 State Integrity Investigation, a data-driven assessment of state government by the Center for Public Integrity and Global Integrity. The comprehensive probe found that in state after state, open records laws are laced with exemptions, and part-time legislators and agency officials engage in glaring conflicts of interests and cozy relationships with lobbyists while feckless, understaffed watchdogs struggle to enforce laws as porous as honeycombs.
Take the Missouri lawmaker who introduced a bill this year — which passed despite a veto by the governor — to prohibit cities from banning plastic bags at grocery stores. The state representative cited concern for shoppers, but he also happens to be state director of the Missouri Grocers Association and is one of several lawmakers in the state who pushed bills that synced with their private interests.
Or the lobbyist who, despite a $50 cap on gifts to Idaho state lawmakers, spent $2,250 in 2013 to host a state senator and his wife at the annual Governors Cup charity golf tournament in Sun Valley; the prohibition does not apply to such lobbying largess as long as the money is not spent “in return for action” on a particular bill.
In Delaware, the Public Integrity Commission, which oversees lobbying and ethics laws for the executive branch there, has just two full-time employees. A 2013 report by a special state prosecutor found that the agency was unable “to undertake any serious inquiry or investigation into potential wrongdoing.”
And in New Mexico, lawmakers passed a resolution in 2013 declaring that their emails are exempt from public records laws — a rule change that did not require the governor’s signature.
These are among the practices illuminated by the State Integrity Investigation, which measured hundreds of variables to compile transparency and accountability grades for all 50 states. The best grade in the nation, which went to Alaska, is just a C. Only two others earned better than a D+; 11 states received failing grades. The results may be deflating to the two-thirds of Americans who, according to a recent poll, look to the states for policy solutions as gridlock and partisanship has overtaken Washington.
The top of the pack includes bastions of liberal government, including California (ranked 2nd with a C), and states notorious for corrupt pasts (Connecticut, 3rd with a C-, and Rhode Island, 5th with a D+). In those New England states, scandals led to significant changes and relatively robust ethics laws, even if dubious dealings linger in the halls of government. The bottom includes many Western states that champion limited government, such as Nevada, South Dakota and Wyoming, but also others, such as Maine, Delaware and dead-last Michigan, that have not adopted the types of ethics and open records laws common in many other states.
The results are “disappointing but not surprising,” said Paula A. Franzese, an expert in state and local government ethics at Seton Hall University School of Law and former chairwoman of the New Jersey State Ethics Commission. Franzese said that as many states struggle financially, ethics oversight is among the last issues to receive funding. “It’s not the sort of issue that commands voters,” she said.
Aside from a few exceptions, there has been little progress on these issues since the State Integrity Investigation was first carried out in 2012. In fact, most scores have dropped since then, though some of that is attributable to changes made to improve and update the project and its methodology.
Since State Integrity’s first go-round, at least 12 states have seen their legislative leaders or top Cabinet-level officials charged, convicted or resign as a result of ethics or corruption-related scandal. Five House or Assembly leaders have fallen. No state has outdone New York, where 14 lawmakers have left office since the beginning of 2012 because of ethical or criminal issues, according to a count by Citizens Union, an advocacy group. That does not include the former leaders of both the Assembly and the Senate, who were charged in unrelated corruption schemes this year but remain in office while they await trial.
New York is not remarkable, however, in at least one regard: Only one of those 14 lawmakers has been sanctioned by the state’s ethics commission.
GRADING THE STATES
When first conducted in 2011-2012, the State Integrity Investigation was an unprecedented look at the systems that state governments use to prevent corruption and expose it when it does occur. Unlike many other examinations of the issue, the project does not attempt to measure corruption itself. The 2015 grades are based on 245 questions that ask about key indicators of transparency and accountability, looking not only at what the laws say, but also how well they’re enforced or implemented. The “indicators” are divided into 13 categories: public access to information, political financing, electoral oversight, executive accountability, legislative accountability, judicial accountability, state budget processes, state civil service management, procurement, internal auditing, lobbying disclosure, state pension fund management and ethics enforcement agencies.
Experienced journalists in each state undertook exhaustive research and reporting to score each of the questions, which ask, for example, whether lawmakers are required to file financial interest disclosures and whether they are complete and detailed. The results are both intuitive — an F for New York’s “three men in a room” budget process — and surprising — Illinois earned the best grade in the nation for its procurement practices. Altogether, the project presents a comprehensive look at transparency, accountability and ethics in state government. It’s not a pretty picture.
DOWNWARD TREND, BLIPS OF DAYLIGHT
Overall, states scored notably worse in this second round. Some of that decline is because of changes to the project, such as the addition of questions asking about “open data” policies, which call on governments to publish information online in formats that are easy to download and analyze. The drop also reflects moves toward greater secrecy in some states.
“Across the board, accessing government has always been, but is increasingly, a barrier to people from every reform angle,” said Jenny Rose Flanagan, vice president for state operations at Common Cause, a national advocacy group with chapters in most states.
No state saw its score fall further than New Jersey, which earned a B+, the best score in the nation, in 2012 — shocking just about anyone familiar with the state’s politics — thanks to tough ethics and anti-corruption laws that had been passed over the previous decade in response to a series of scandals.
None of that has changed. But journalists, advocates and academics have accused the Christie administration of fighting and delaying potentially damaging public records requests and meddling in the affairs of the State Ethics Commission. That’s on top of Bridgegate, the sprawling scandal that began as a traffic jam on the George Washington Bridge but has led to the indictments of one of the governor’s aides and two of his appointees — one of whom pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges — and even to the resignations of top executives at United Airlines.
Admittedly, it’s not all doom and gloom. Iowa created an independent board with authority to mediate disputes when agencies reject public records requests. Gov. Terry Branstad cited the state’s previous grade from the center when he signed the bill, and the move helped catapult Iowa to first in the nation in the category for access to information, with a C- grade (Iowa’s overall score actually dropped modestly).
In Georgia, good government groups latched on to the state’s worst-in-the-nation rank in 2012 to amplify their ongoing push for changes. The result was a modest law the following year that created a $75 cap on the value of lobbyists’ gifts to public officials. The change helped boost the state’s score in the category of legislative accountability to a C-, sixth-best in the nation.
Perhaps the most dramatic changes came in Virginia, where scandal engulfed the administration of outgoing Gov. Robert McDonnell in 2013 after it emerged that he and his family had accepted more than $170,000 in loans and gifts, much of it undisclosed, from a Virginia businessman. McDonnell and his wife were later convicted on federal corruption charges, but the case underscored the state’s woefully lax ethics laws and oversight regime; Virginia received an overall F grade in 2012. At the time, there was no limit on the value of gifts that public officials could accept, and they were not required to disclose gifts to their immediate family, a clause that McDonnell grasped at to argue that he had complied with state laws. (Appeals of the McDonnells’ convictions are pending.)
Over the next two years, newly elected Gov. Terry McAuliffe and lawmakers passed a series of executive actions and laws that led in 2015 to a $100 cap on gifts to public officials from lobbyists and people seeking state business. They created an ethics council that will advise lawmakers but will not have the power to issue sanctions. Advocates for ethics reform have said the changes, though significant, fall far short of what’s needed, particularly the creation of an ethics commission with enforcement powers.
States continued to score relatively well in the categories for auditing practices — 29 earned B- or better — and for budget transparency — 16 got a B- or above. (The category measures whether the budget process is transparent, with sufficient checks and balances, not whether it’s well-managed).
In Idaho, for example, which earned an A and the second best score for its budget process, the public is free to watch the Legislature’s joint budget committee meetings. Those not able to make it to Boise can watch by streaming video. Citizens can provide input during hearings and can view the full budget bill online.
New York earned the top score for its auditing practices — a B+ — because of its robustly funded state comptroller’s office, which is headed by an elected official who is largely protected from interference by the governor or Legislature. The office issues an annual report, which is publicly available, and has shown little hesitation to go after state agencies, such as in a recent audit that identified $500 million in waste in the state’s Medicaid program.
Unfortunately, such bright spots are the exceptions.
ACCESS DENIED
In 2013, George LeVines submitted a request for records to the Massachusetts State Police, asking for controlled substance seizure reports at state prisons dating back seven years. LeVines, who at the time was assistant editor at Muckrock, a news website and records-request repository, soon received a response from the agency saying he could have copies of the reports, but they would cost him $130,000. Though LeVines is quick to admit that his request was extremely broad, the figure shocked him nonetheless.
“I wouldn’t have ever expected getting that just scot-free, that does cost money,” he said. But $130,000? “It’s insane.”
The cost was prohibitive, and LeVines withdrew his request. Massachusetts State Police have become a notorious steel trap of information — they’ve charged tens of thousands of dollars or even, in one case, $2.7 million to produce documents — and were awarded this year with the tongue-in-cheek Golden Padlock award by a national journalism organization, which each year “honors” an agency or public official for their “abiding commitment to secrecy and impressive skill in information suppression.”
Dave Procopio, a spokesman for the State Police, said in an email that the department is committed to transparency but that its records are laced with sensitive information that’s exempt from disclosure and that reviewing the material is time-consuming and expensive. “While we most certainly agree that the public has a right to information not legally exempt from disclosure,” he wrote, “we will not cut corners for the purpose of expediency or economy if doing so means that private personal, medi[c]al, or criminal history information is inappropriately released.”
It’s not just the police. Both the Legislature and the judicial branch are at least partly exempt from Massachusetts’ public records law. Governors have cited a state Supreme Court ruling to argue that they, too, are exempt, though chief executives often comply with requests anyway. A review by The Boston Globe found that the secretary of State’s office, the first line of appeal for rejected requests, had ruled in favor of those seeking records in only one in five cases. Massachusetts earned an F in the category for public access to information. So did 43 other states, making this the worst-performing category in the State Integrity Investigation.
Though every state in the nation has open records and meetings laws, they’re typically shot through with holes and exemptions and usually have essentially no enforcement mechanisms, beyond the court system, when agencies refuse to comply. In most states, at least one entire branch of government or agency claims exemptions from the laws. Many agencies routinely fail to explain why they they’ve denied requests. Public officials charge excessive fees to discourage requestors. In the vast majority of states, citizens are unable to quickly and affordably resolve appeals when their records are denied. Only one state — Missouri — received a perfect score on a question asking whether citizens actually receive responses to their requests swiftly and at reasonable cost.
“We’re seeing increased secrecy throughout the country at the state and federal level,” said David Cuillier, director of the University of Arizona’s School of Journalism and an expert on open records laws. He said substantial research shows that the nation’s open records laws have been poked and prodded to include a sprawling list of exemptions and impediments and that public officials increasingly use those statutes to deny access to records. “It’s getting worse every year,” he said.
After a series of shootings by police officers in New Mexico, the Santa Fe New Mexican published a report about controversial changes made to the state-run training academy. When a reporter requested copies of the new curriculum, the program’s director refused, saying, “I’ll burn them before you get them.”
In January, The Wichita Eagle reported that Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s budget director had used his private email address to send details of a proposed budget to the private email accounts of fellow staff members and to a pair of lobbyists. He later said he did so only because he and the rest of the staff were home for the holidays. In May, Brownback acknowledged that he, too, used a private email account to communicate with staff, meaning his correspondence was not subject to the state’s public records laws. A state council is studying how to close the loophole. Court cases in California are examining a similar question.
Cuillier said that in most states, courts or others have determined that discussions of public business are subject to disclosure, no matter whether the email or phone used was public or private. But the debate is indicative of a larger problem, and it reveals public records laws as the crazy old uncle of government statutes: toothless, antiquated appendages of a bygone era.
WEAK ETHICS OVERSIGHT
Governments write ethics laws for a reason, presumably. Public officials can’t always be trusted to do the right thing; we need laws to make sure they do. The trouble is, a law is only as good as its enforcement, and the entities responsible for overseeing ethics are often impotent and ineffective.
In many states, a complex mix of legislative committees, stand-alone commissions and law enforcement agencies police the ethics laws. More often than not, the State Integrity Investigation shows, those entities are underfunded, subject to political interference or are simply unable or unwilling to initiate investigations and issue sanctions when rules are broken. Or at least that’s as far as the public can tell: Many of these bodies operate largely in secret.
The Tennessee Ethics Commission, for example, rose in 2006 out of the ashes of an FBI bribery probe that had burned four state lawmakers. In its decade of operation, the commission has never issued a penalty as a result of an ethics complaint against a public official (it did issue one to a lobbyist). That may seem surprising, but the dearth of actions is impossible to assess because the complaints become public only if four of six commissioners decide they warrant investigation. Of 17 complaints received in 2013 and 2014, only two are public.
“There just haven’t been that many valid complaints alleging wrongdoing,” said Drew Rawlins, executive director of the Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance, which includes the commission.
In 2013, in a case that did become public, the commission decided against issuing a fine to a powerful lobbyist and former adviser to Gov. Bill Haslam who had failed to disclose that he’d lobbied on behalf of a mining company seeking a state contract. The lobbyist maintained that his failure was simply an oversight, and only one commissioner voted to issue a penalty.
In Kansas, staff shortages mean the state’s Governmental Ethics Commission is unable to fully audit lawmakers’ financial disclosures, according to Executive Director Carol Williams. “We would love to be able to do more comprehensive audits,” Williams told the investigation’s Kansas reporter. Instead, she said, all her staff can do is make sure officials are filling out the forms. “Whether they are correct or not, we don’t know.” Only two states initiate comprehensive, independent audits of lawmakers’ asset disclosures on an annual basis.
The State Integrity Investigation found that in two-thirds of all states, ethics agencies or committees routinely fail to initiate investigations or impose sanctions when necessary, often because they’re unable to do so without first receiving a complaint.
“Many of these laws are out of date. They need to be revised,” said Robert Stern, who spent decades as president of the Center for Governmental Studies, which worked with local and state governments to improve ethics, campaign-finance and lobbying laws until it shut in 2011. Stern, who is helping to write a ballot initiative that would update California’s ethics statutes, said that although he thinks the State Integrity Investigation grades are unrealistically harsh, they do reflect the fact that state lawmakers have neglected their responsibilities when it comes to ethics and transparency. “It’s very, very difficult for legislatures to focus on these things and improve them because they don’t want these laws, they don’t want to enforce them, and they don’t want to fund the people enforcing them.”
In three in five states, the project found, ethics entities are inadequately funded, causing staff to be overloaded with work and occasionally forcing them to delay investigations.
The Oklahoma Ethics Commission is charged with overseeing ethics laws for the executive and legislative branches, lobbying activity and campaign finance. This year, the commission operated on a budget of $1 million. In 2014, the non-profit news site Oklahoma Watch reported that the commission had collected only 40% of all the late-filing penalties it had assessed to candidates, committees and other groups since it was created in 1990. Part of that failure was the result of a challenge to the commission’s rules, but Executive Director Lee Slater said much of it was simply due to a lack of resources.
“Until about a month ago, we had five employees in this office,” Slater said. “We’ve now got six. Try to do it with six employees.” Slater said the commission this year began collecting all fees it is owed, thanks to the sixth employee — whose salary is financed with fees — and new rules that clarify its authority. He said the agency simply does not have enough money to do what it ought to. “I’m not going to sit here and tell you that we do everything we should,” he said. “But I will tell you that we do the best that we can, whatever that is.”
Slater said he’s been told to expect a cut of 5% to 20% to the commission’s appropriations next year ($775,000 of the commission’s budget comes from appropriations.)
Oklahoma is hardly an outlier. “They don’t have the resources,” Stern said, speaking of similar agencies across the country. “That’s the problem.”
NEW FRONTIER POINTS TO OLD PROBLEM
Not long ago, journalists and citizen watchdogs were thrilled to get access to any type of information online. Standards have changed quickly, and many have come to expect government to not just publish data online but to do so in “open data” formats that allow users to download and analyze the information.
“The great benefit you get from making data available digitally is that it can then be very easily reused,” said Emily Shaw, deputy policy director at the Sunlight Foundation, an advocacy group. (Global Integrity consulted with the Sunlight Foundation when writing the open data questions for this project.)
Shaw said local governments are moving more aggressively than states toward putting data online in malleable formats. Only nine states have adopted open data measures, according to the Sunlight Foundation, some of which do little more than create an advisory panel to study the issue.
The 2015 State Integrity Investigation included questions in each category asking whether governments are meeting open data principles. The answer was almost always no. More than anything, these scores were responsible for dragging down the grades since the first round of the project.
Though open data principles are relatively new, the poor performance on these questions is indicative of the project’s findings as a whole. “If we really wanted to do it right, we’d just scrap it all and start from scratch,” said Cuillier of the University of Arizona, speaking of the broken state of open records and accessibility laws. That clearly is not going to happen, he said, so “we’re going to continue to have laws that are archaic and tinkered with, and usually in the wrong direction.”
This article draws on reporting from State Integrity Investigation reporters in all 50 states.
The Caribbean member-states, despite their differences, (4 languages, 5 colonial legacies, terrain: mountains -vs- limestone islands), have a lot in common. Some similarities include:
Lack of equality for women compared to men.
The government is the largest employer.
So the reality of Caribbean life is that while the governmental administrations are not fully representative of the populations, they are responsible for all societal engines: economy, security and governance.
This is bad and this is good! Bad, because all the “eggs are in the same basket”. Good, because there is only one entity to reform, reboot and re-focus.
So how do we seriously consider reforming government in the Caribbean?
Start anew.
Start with politics and policy-makers.
Start with the people who submit for politics, to be policy-makers.
Start with people who participate in the process.
Considering the status-quo of the region – in crisis – there is this need to start again. But this time we need more women.
Consider Canada!
(The City of Detroit is across the river from Windsor, Ontario, Canada. The publishers of the book Go Lean…Caribbean are here to “observe and report” the turn-around and rebirth of the once-great-but-now-distressed City of Detroit and its metropolitan area. This proximity also allows us to observe-and-report on Detroit’s neighbor: Canada).
The Canadian political landscape can serve as a great role model for the Caribbean; (its a fitting role model for Detroit too). Consider these articles on Canada’s recent national elections:
A record 88 women were elected in the 2015 federal election, up from 76 in 2011. The increase represents a modest gain in terms of representation, with women now accounting for 26 per cent of the seats in the House. The following feature — which was initially published before the election — examines the gender imbalance in Canadian politics.
Canadian women held just one-quarter of the seats in the House of Commons when the writ dropped back in August. This figure places us 50th in a recent international ranking of women in parliaments.
The 41st Canadian Parliament featured 77 women MPs, with a record 12 female ministers in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s cabinet.
The NDP’s success in Quebec during the 2011 federal election largely triggered the uptick in the number of women in Parliament, with the proportion rising to 25 per cent from 22 per cent in the 2008 election.
In spite of this, a large gender gap persists after decades of relative stagnation in Canada’s House of Commons. Women comprise just 33 per cent of the candidates from the five leading parties in this election.
“There is no doubt that in the old democracies, including Canada, there is stagnation,” said Drude Dahlerup, a political scientist from the University of Stockholm who has consulted in countries such as Tunisia and Sierra Leone on gender equality in parliament.
“We have this perception that gender equality should come naturally. Our research shows that is not necessarily a fact.”
Old democracies don’t favour ‘gender shocks’ There is significant growth in women representatives in what Dahlerup calls “fast-track” countries — places that have experienced recent conflict or are a new democracy.
In fact, some of the countries outpacing Canada in terms of parliamentary gender equality include Rwanda, Bolivia, Iraq and Kazakhstan.
Newer democracies like Bolivia can experience a gender shock as it did in an October 2014 election, rising from 22 per cent to 53 per cent women in the lower house.
Older democracies take the incremental approach, which is slower and involves grappling with the conventions of older institutions.
…
Does the electorate share some of the blame? Despite what some term as a patronizing treatment in the public sphere it appears that gender is not a chief concern for voters.
Sylvia Bashevkin, a political scientist from the University of Toronto, looked at the negative effects of underrepresentation for women in her 2009 book Women, Power, Politics: The Hidden Story of Canada’s Unfinished Democracy and found a persistent marginalization of women’s contributions to politics in the media and public sphere.
“There’s a certain stream of gender stereotyping that still colours our discussions of public leadership that often tends to trivialize the contributions of women by paying particular attention to things like their appearance, speaking style or their personal lives rather than positions on policy.”
According to a recent poll, party loyalty factors far outweigh individual factors such as gender. In fact, respondents said women often tend to represent leadership qualities the voting public admires. The online Abacus survey was conducted in December 2014 and included a sample size of 1,438 Canadians.
“The argument is that [women] tend to be more community focused… and that they tend on average to be more honest and trustworthy than male politicians,” said Bashevkin.
The core of the issue comes back to the political parties and their nominations processes, says Melanee Thomas, a political scientist from the University of Calgary.
“We can find no evidence that voters discriminate against women candidates. We did find considerable evidence that party [nomination committees] were more likely to discriminate against women candidates,” said Thomas.
Thomas’s 2013 research with Marc André Bodet of LavalUniversity looked at district competitiveness. They found that women were more likely to be chosen as nominees in areas considered strongholds for other parties.
Where women are involved in the party nomination process, Thomas also said, more women are recruited to run for that nomination. Former MP and deputy prime minister Sheila Copps agrees.
“People try to replicate themselves and their social circle is usually very like-minded. I probably recruited more women in my time because it’s human nature,” said Copps.
Copps played a role in pitching the concept of a gender target of 25 per cent to former prime minister Jean Chrétien in 1993.
The target concept relies on the ability of the party leader to appoint women nominees required to meet the target.
Former prime minister Paul Martin opted to not have a target for women in the federal Liberal Party for 2004 while Stéphane Dion increased the target to 30 per cent in 2008.
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is running with an open nomination policy for the upcoming election, although this has caused some recent controversies. Ultimately, women comprised 31 per cent of the Liberal candidates.
The NDP has internal mechanisms to attempt to foster diversity. They say they have “parity policies,” that aim for gender diversity in the party structure, leadership and delegates.” It also insists that ridings must provide documentation of efforts to search for a woman or minority candidate before selecting a white male. When the final candidate list was released, the NDP touted a record proportion of 43 per cent women candidates.
Under the leadership of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the Conservative Party holds that the matter should be left up to the local riding associations to determine. After running only 38 women candidates in 2006 the party’s figure spiked quickly in 2008 to 63 candidates. In 2015, 66 women, representing 20 per cent of the Conservatives roster of candidates, are in the running.
Published on Oct 21, 2015 – Political Scientist Sylvia Bashevkin reviews Canada’s gender facts: 50% population, 25% representation Why the parliamentary gender gap?
————
News Article #2 Title: New PM unveils cabinet that looks ‘like Canada’ Sub-title: Justin Trudeau’s younger, more diverse team comprises old-guard Liberal politicians and newcomers, half of them women.
Justin Trudeau has been sworn in as Canada’s new prime minister, appointing a cabinet that he says looks “like Canada”.
The 43-year-old Liberal party leader, who swept to power in a general election two weeks ago to end nearly a decade of Conservative rule, took the oath on Wednesday and promised big changes as he introduced a younger, more diverse cabinet.
Most of the new ministers are between the ages of 35 and 50, while half of them are women – in line with Trudeau’s campaign pledge.
“Canadians from all across this country sent a message that it is time for real change, and I am deeply honoured by the faith they have placed in my team and me.”
The new cabinet includes a mix of old-guard Liberal politicians with many newcomers.
Among them is Indian-born Harjit Sajjan, a former Canadian soldier and Afghanistan war veteran who was named as Canada’s new defence minister.
He was Canada’s first Sikh commanding officer and received a number of recognitions for his service, having been deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Sajjan, a lieutenant-colonel in Canada’s armed forces, will oversee an anticipated change in Canada’s military involvement in the battle against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters in Syria and Iraq.
This is not just a case for feminism. The issues in the foregoing news articles relate to policy-making participation and optimization, more than they relate to feminism. This story is being brought into focus in a consideration of the book Go Lean … Caribbean. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the societal elevation in the region. This roadmap calls for a fuller participation from women as stakeholders.
How do the foregoing stories relate to the Caribbean? The book relates that Canada (Page 146) has always provided a great role model for the Caribbean to consider for empowerment and elevation of our society. That country is a “friend” of the Caribbean; but it is also a competitor; a “frienemy” of sorts. How are we competing? What is our rate of participation of women in politics? See CHART here:
The Go Lean book advocates for more women in position of authority and decision-making in the new Caribbean.
Why is this necessary?
Simple: With 50% of the population, there is the need for 50% of the representation; (this is the target). The foregoing CHART, however shows a different reality. These facts align with the Go Lean book’s quest to elevate Caribbean society.
“Push” refers to deficient conditions at home that makes people want to flee. “Pull” refers to better conditions abroad that appeals to Caribbean residents. They want that better life.
An underlying mission of the CU is to dissuade this human flight (and incentivize repatriation of the far-flung Diaspora). Canada is one of those refuge countries; a large number of Caribbean Diaspora live there. This country does a better job of facilitating participation from women in the political process. In competition of the Caribbean versus Canada, the Caribbean needs to do better.
For this lofty goal, of which we are failing, we can learn from Canada – our competitor – and follow their lead!
Change has come to the Caribbean. As the roadmap depicts, there is the need to foster more collaboration and optimization in the region’s governing eco-system. This involves including all ready, willing and abled stakeholders, men or women. In the Summer 2015 Blockbuster Movie Tomorrowland, the main character Frank Walker – played by George Clooney – advised the audience hoping to impact their communities for change:
“Find the ones who haven’t given up. They are the future”.
Women participating more readily in the political process can help a community.
This has been proven true. Consider the example of Rwanda. (The country first on the above list). This country has endured a lot (Genocide in the 1990’s between Hutu and Tutsi tribes). Now, despite being a poorer African country, they have healed a lot of social issues. They now have many women in policy-making roles; and they have transformed their society and now feature a great turn-around story. See details here:
Since 2000 Rwanda’s economy,[51] tourist numbers,[52] and Human Development Index have grown rapidly;[53] between 2006 and 2011 the poverty rate reduced from 57% to 45%,[54] while life expectancy rose from 46.6 years in 2000[55] to 59.7 years in 2015.[56]…
The Go Lean roadmap posits that every woman has a right to work towards making their homeland a better place to live, work and play. The book details the following community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocates to impact our homeland:
Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices
Page 21
Community Ethos – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future
Page 21
Community Ethos – Minority Equalizations
Page 24
Strategy – Fix the broken systems of governance
Page 46
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Member-states versus CU Federal Government
Page 71
Implementation – Reason to Repatriate
Page 118
Planning – Lessons Learned from the previous West Indies Federation – Canada’s Support
Page 135
Planning – Lessons from Canada’s History
Page 146
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract
Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Diaspora –
Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Foundations – NGO’s for Women Causes
Page 219
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights – Women’s Rights
Page 220
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Elder-Care – Needs of Widows
Page 225
Advocacy – Ways to Empower Women
Page 226
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Youth – Steering Young Girls to STEM Careers
Page 227
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Persons with Disabilities
Page 228
There are serious issues impacting the Caribbean; these must be addressed . Since many of these issues affect women, it is better to have women as stakeholders, as policy-makers and as politicians.
Many of these issues have been addressed in previous Go Lean blog/commentaries, as sampled here:
Case Study: Abused wives find help by going to ‘Dona Carmen’
Politics represent the power of the people. Women represent 50% of the population; to engage the population, we must engage women. But, we need the women to engage as well, to lean-in, to this roadmap to elevate their societal engines (economy, security and governance). The goal of the Go Lean roadmap is to make the Caribbean a better place to live work and play; for all, regardless of gender.
This is not politics. This is not feminism. This is simply a quest for “better”. 🙂
The Americans “got it bad!” They appear to be willing to ignore facts and deny science to continue their environmental unsound way of life, their eco-system. While Americans may have the right to their own opinions, they do not have the right to their own facts.
This is the summary from the below AUDIO PODCAST, that even the weather scientists, the meteorologists, are pressured to ignore the science or not sound the warning. This is their rationale for their non-stance:
The political climate is too heated.
Corporate ownership of TV stations don’t want to deal with Climate Change.
This is a bad model … for the rest of the world. According to the PODCAST, other countries – i.e. France – are not yielding to this American pressure; they recognize the need to sound a more accurate alarm. Listen to the PODCAST here/now (or read the transcript in the Appendix below):
Dave DeWitt reports on what North Carolina TV meteorologists think of climate change, and how one of them became a “convert.” North Carolina Public Radio – WUNC 91.5 – Posted Sunday October 29, 2015; retrieved November 5, 2015 http://wunc.org/post/meteorolgists-view-climate-change#stream/0
This silencing of the truth is troubling … for the Caribbean and the rest of the world. People turn to weather forecasters to forecast the weather. They need to be respected for announcing the truth: short-term, mid-term and long-term.
Theirs is a weighty responsibility!
This is remindful of the charge to the Watchman in the Holy Scriptures, in the Bible Book of Ezekiel (Chapter 33 verses 2 – 7); see here:
2 “Son of man, speak to the sons of your people, and say to them, “‘Suppose that I bring a sword upon a land, and all the people of that land take a man and make him their watchman, 3 and he sees the sword coming upon the land and blows the horn and warns the people. 4 If someone hears the sound of the horn but does not heed the warning and a sword comes and takes his life, his blood will be on his own head. 5 He heard the sound of the horn, but he did not heed the warning. His blood will be upon himself. If he had heeded the warning, his life would have been saved. 6 “‘But if the watchman sees the sword coming and he does not blow the horn and the people receive no warning and a sword comes and takes the life of one of them, that person will die for his own error, but I will ask his blood back from the watchman.’ 7 “As for you, son of man, I have appointed you as a watchman …
(New World Translation)
Yes, there are climate change deniers. It is a pity that these ones may hold positions of power and authority so as to subdue the proclamation of appropriate warnings.
This Climate Change is an important issue! It isconveyed in the book Go Lean … Caribbean as if a crisis. But the book goes on to declare that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste”, calling for the establishment of a regional administration to monitor, mitigate and manage the threats of Climate Change. The Go Lean book posits that the Caribbean region is at the frontline of the battleground of Climate Change, that we do not have the luxury of denying the facts. (As this commentary is written, there is a tropical storm – Kate – threatening danger for the Bahamas). We need to commission a “watchman” to give fair warning of the imminent danger. The same as conveyed in the foregoing scriptural reference: blood is at stake for this issue of Climate Change: there is the need to save life-and-limb due to increased occurrences of devastating hurricanes, flooding, forest fires, droughts, rising sea levels, and even alterations in fish stock.
What could be the motivation for the denial of the warnings of the actuality of climate change? Only one factor: Profit.
This issue has previously been detailed in the following blog/commentaries:
Book Review: ‘This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate’
This commentary therefore asserts that the Caribbean needs to not follow the American leadership in this regards; that we must forge our own future, seeing how pervasive the Crony-Capitalism elements are in the American eco-system. This Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The prime directives of this agency are described as:
Optimize the economic engines of the Caribbean to elevate the regional economy to grow to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establish a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.
The Go Lean roadmap calls for the CU to serve as the regional administration to optimize economy, homeland security and governance engines for the Caribbean, especially in flight of Climate Change battleground frontline status. This is the first pronouncement (Page 11) of the opening Declaration of Interdependence:
i. Whereas the earth’s climate has undeniably changed resulting in more severe tropical weather storms, it is necessary to prepare to insure the safety and security of life, property and systems of commerce in our geographical region. As nature recognizes no borders in the target of its destruction, we also must set aside border considerations in the preparation and response to these weather challenges.
The Go Lean roadmap fully details the reality of Climate Change in the region. There are many aspect of Caribbean life that will be affected; that have already been affected. These issues have also been repeatedly addressed and further elaborated upon in these previous blog/commentaries:
This Go Lean book declares that we must adopt the community ethos (the appropriate attitude/spirit), to forge change in our region; then details the executions of the following strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to better impact the region’s resources and eco-systems, in considering the preparations and responses for Climate Change. The following is a sample list:
Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices / Incentives
Page 21
Community Ethos – The Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future
Page 21
Community Ethos – “Crap” Happens
Page 23
Community Ethos – Lean Operations
Page 24
Community Ethos – Cooperatives
Page 24
Community Ethos – Non-Government Organizations
Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future
Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing
Page 35
Community Ethos – Impact the Greater Good
Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederating 30 Member-States into a Single Market
Page 45
Strategy – Vision – Foster Local Economic Engines for Basic Needs
Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Prepare for Natural Disasters
Page 45
Strategy – Agents of Change – Climate Change
Page 57
Tactical – Confederating a Permanent Union
Page 63
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy
Page 64
Separation of Powers – Emergency Management
Page 76
Separation of Powers – Interstate Commerce Administration
Page 79
Separation of Powers – Meteorological & Geological Service
Page 79
Implementation – Assemble Regional Organs into a Single Market Economy
Page 96
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change
Page 101
Implementation – Security Initiatives at Start-up – Unified Command & Control
Page 103
Implementation – Ways to Deliver
Page 109
Implementation – Ways to Foster International Aid
Page 115
Implementation – Ways to Benefit from Globalization
Page 119
Planning – Big Ideas for the Caribbean Region
Page 127
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better
Page 131
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy
Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs
Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance
Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract
Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Cooperatives
Page 176
Advocacy – Ways to Improve for Natural Disasters
Page 184
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Communications
Page 186
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Emergency Management
Page 196
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Fisheries
Page 210
Appendix – History of Puerto Rican Migration to US & Effects of Hurricanes
Page 303
Appendix – US Virgin Islands Economic Timeline with Hurricane Impacts
Page 305
The foregoing AUDIO PODCAST sounds the alarm of the threats of Climate Change on the planet and declares that the Caribbean may not want to depend on American Media reporting of the Climate Change threats. But, we have encountered this issue before in our interaction with the American eco-system – we have previously discussed how the European Weather Forecasting Models may be better suited for the Caribbean Greater Good, because of the lesser Crony-Capitalistic influences, and lesser corporate ownership of media companies.
The Caribbean is on the frontlines of this battle! This is not just a preference for us, this may be life-and-death. We have no option to exit from any of these discussions; whether we want to or not.
Change must come to our region as more devastating effects of Climate Change are imminent. The book Go Lean…Caribbean posits that this “Agent of Change” is too big for just any one member-state to tackle alone, that there must be a regional solution. This multi-state technocratic administration of the CU is presented as that solution.
The people and institutions of the region are hereby urged to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap, and heed the warnings from this Caribbean “Watchman”. Too much is at stake – the blood of the people. Despite the threats of Climate Change, we can still make the Caribbean a better homeland to live, work and play. 🙂
Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!
———–
APPENDIX – Transcript: A Meteorolgist’s View On Climate Change
By: Dave DeWitt Broadcast meteorologists on local television have one job. It’s simple to express but difficult to do well. Predict the future, a few days at a time.
To be an effective forecaster, a broadcast meteorologist has to be a scientist. And because it’s TV, she or he also has to be likable and trustworthy.
Greg Fishel of WRAL is all of those things. He also used to be a global warming denier. Now, he admits he was wrong.
“I don’t see being wrong as being a scarlet letter,” Fishel says. “I think all of us have experiences in our life where we are wrong and we realize it was a good thing and we learn something from it.”
Fishel changed his mind about climate change after putting aside his politics and examining the science. Now, he’s an equally passionate convert, and recently expressed it again on Facebook.
Fishel is in a unique position among his colleagues in the weather forecasting business. He was one of the first broadcast meteorologists to push for certification in his profession. He’s also wildly popular and has worked for arguably the most successful family-owned local TV station in the country since 1981.
And that matters in the so-called climate change “debate.”
“Any time you have someone of high stature, high standing in the market, with a lot of credibility, it does speak volumes and it shows how important that the topic is,” says Sean Sublette, a former TV meteorologist in Roanoke who currently works forClimate Central in Princeton, New Jersey.
Not all broadcast meteorologists are in the same position—or think the same way.
WUNC Radio surveyed TV meteorologists in North Carolina. About three-quarters of those who responded agree or strongly agree that the planet is warming due to human activity. But fewer than half agreed it was part of their job to inform viewers about climate change.
Several expressed that the political debate was too heated or that corporate ownership of stations didn’t want to deal with the controversy.
Sublette says those results are not surprising.
“I know some that are very interested in the science, and I know some that are just not,” says Sublette. “They are just not as interested in talking about it, for whatever reason they may have.”
Even with the help, it can be very difficult to get climate information into a forecast. Lee Ringer at Time Warner Cable News does “Weather On The Ones,” so, six weathercasts an hour.
“And even though it seems like a lot of time, it’s limited what we can talk about,” Ringer says. “So our traditional weathercasts are really just going to be limited to the forecast for today and up through the next week.”
“I’m the scientist here at the station, along with our other team of meteorologists,” he says. “So we’re the folks a lot of our news reporters come to when there’s some type of science story, whether it’s directly related to the weather, whether it’s related to the environment, or related to meteorology.”
At WRAL, Fishel has taken that role as station scientist to a higher level. Earlier this year, he traveled to Alaska and Colorado to produce special climate change reportsand has brought leading scientists to town for discussions.
The other night, he says he got a call from a longtime friend and die-hard conservative. That friend said he is re-thinking his position on climate change because of Fishel’s reporting and social media outreach.
“If I had done this six months after I moved here and I was 22 years old and wet behind the ears, then people would have said ‘get that liberal out of here’,” says Fishel, laughing. “So it gets back to the whole thing, if there was ever a time when I could engage in this discussion, I feel like this is it.”
Fishel says he’ll keep engaging in that discussion—on-air and online—in the hope he can lead the conversation for viewers and fellow weather professionals.
The Caribbean is arguably the best address on the planet, but a lot is missing. There are certain aspects of Caribbean life that is hard … and expensive.
Is it only the actuality of islands that make Caribbean life so expensive or are there other dynamics? These issues apply:
The need to import consumer products is a constant feature of island life.
An island is usually more limited with landmass, (sans Australia).
Opportunities for agricultural exploitations may be limited.
Transportation cost is the biggest hurdle, everything must be flown in or shipped in. The low-cost logistics of rail or trucks are irrelevant because of the reality of being surrounded by water.
This high cost of island living is not just a Caribbean issue; the American State of Hawaii has the same issues. Consider the news article in the Appendix below – from September 2013 – describing Hawaii’s plight.
Drawing from that experience, we are able to identify the following challenges consistent with island life … everywhere in the modern world:
Energy Costs – Unless the source of energy is homegrown (think Geo-Thermal Geysers in Iceland) the logistical costs of getting energy to an island is higher than mainland options.
Limited Land – There is competition for the available land on small tropical islands. The laws of supply-and-demand therefore implies that the price would rise with the demand. A higher demand for real estate puts upward pressure on home prices and rentals.
Consumer Prices – The consumer products to satisfy the day-to-day needs of island residence tend to be more expensive due to importation and an increase in transportation costs.
Heightened Corrosion – Islands are surrounded by salt water. There are also consistent trade winds. This is a bad combination for metal fixtures, appliances and equipment. Cars tend to suffer more wear-and-tear on islands compared to the mainlands due to this exposure to salt water on a daily basis.
Healthcare Realities – Healthcare costs are higher in island locales. The infrastructure needed to minimize costs (energy, product pricing) are less optimized on islands. Plus the lower populations affect the actuarial numbers for insurance pools.
This above summary applies equally to life in … the Caribbean. 27 of the 30 Caribbean member-states are islands (sans Belize, Guyana and Suriname) and the residents there have to contend with these hard realities.
One of the Caribbean member-states is the US Virgin Islands territory. Their government officials have been monitoring the foregoing societal factors for higher-than-mainland costs, and have become enraged over one factor: the price of oil/petroleum products. The assertion in this territory is that all that “glitters may not be gold”, something is afoul in the economic equations that result in oil/petroleum pricing. There may be some other factors at play.
See the article here:
Title: USVI to address high consumer prices
ST THOMAS, USVI — The Department of Licensing and Consumer Affairs has announced an initiative with the attorney general’s office to take action to bring relief to the consumers of the US Virgin Islands.
“The Department of Licensing and Consumer continues to be concerned with the high prices consumers are paying for essential commodities in the Virgin Islands, especially food and gas,” said Commissioner Devin Carrington.
The commissioner stated that this concern is exacerbated by the fact that, in the past, retailers have justified the prices charged consumers, in part, on the cost of fuel on the world market that affects shipping and transportation costs paid by importers of consumer goods.
“If this is the case, periodic surveys conducted by the department for food and gas prices reflect no appreciable change in the prices paid by consumers for these essential commodities. This is so even though the price of oil per barrel is currently at the lowest it has been in a ten-year period. If fuel costs are lower, prices at the pump and on the shelf should be lower as well,” Carrington said.
Having observed the continuing trend in prices in the US Virgin Islands, despite lower fuel costs, the department has decided to take a more aggressive posture in order to bring relief to the consumers.
“After examination of survey data that may suggest fraudulent manipulation of prices, the department made the decision to enlist the attorney general’s office to launch an investigation into the causes of high consumer prices,” Carrington noted. Source: Caribbean News Now – Online Magazine – Posted 10/29/2015 from: http://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/topstory-USVI-to-address-high-consumer-prices-28102.html
Welcome to the Caribbean, arguably the best address on the planet; in terms of physical beauty, absolutely yes; but in terms of a home to live, work and play – not so much.
Uploaded on Feb 25, 2009 – This report was posted during the impactful 2009 general strike on the French Caribbean island Guadeloupe. One of the protester demands was more help to cope with the high cost of living. This report specifically addresses the outlying island of Marie-Galante where prices are particularly high.
The book Go Lean…Caribbean addresses the issues that makes life in the Caribbean difficult and expensive. Identifying all the challenges of island life above, the book serves as a roadmap for the introduction of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) with the strategies, tactics and implementations to optimize Caribbean life. The book details how the CU is chartered with these prime directives to elevate life in the islands:
Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.
So specifically, why does the US Virgin Islands suffer from higher consumer prices with gasoline? Or generally, why is the Caribbean region expected to pay higher prices?
The answer is the same for us as for Hawaii (as depicted in the below Appendix) …
… plus the added burdens of rent-seeking!
In a previous blog/commentary, this bad community ethos of rent-seeking was identified as running contrary to the goal of optimizing the economy. Unfortunately, in the Caribbean the “free market” is not always “free” nor a “market”; sometimes, there are Crony-Capitalistic and monopolistic forces at play.
The purpose of the Go Lean roadmap is not just to report on Caribbean failures, but also to project solutions. The book details these 3 initiatives which will be used to impact the high costs of living:
Caribbean Postal Union
Regional Energy Grid
Union Atlantic Turnpike & Pipelines
CPU To lower the eco-systems for higher costs of living, the Go Lean roadmap introduces the Caribbean Postal Union (CPU). This vision is identified as a model for Caribbean logistics, our means for delivering the mail. But the focus of the book Go Lean…Caribbean and the CPU is not just postal mail, but rather logistics for packages and chattel goods. So the Go Lean/CU/CPU does not model other Postal operations (like the US Postal Service debunked in the book at Page 99), but rather successful enterprise in the logistics industry, like Amazon and Alibaba.
The Go Lean roadmap seeks to change the entire eco-system of Caribbean commerce and logistics, with the interaction with postal operations. Part-and-parcel to this CPU effort is the launch of the social media website www.myCaribbean.gov to bring much of the general public interactions and marketing online. Now island residents can easily order consumer goods online from any merchant (foreign and domestic) and have them delivered… via the CPU. This creates a “great equalizer” for Caribbean life; it brings downward pressure on consumer prices. This vision is defined early in the book (Pages 12 & 14) in the following pronouncements in the Declaration of Interdependence:
xv. Whereas the business of the Federation and the commercial interest in the region cannot prosper without an efficient facilitation of postal services, the Caribbean Union must allow for the integration of the existing mail operations of the governments of the member-states into a consolidated Caribbean Postal Union, allowing for the adoption of best practices and technical advances to deliver foreign/domestic mail in the region.
xxvii. Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.
Regional Energy Grid Fulfilling energy needs is a great target for lean, agile operations, perfect for the CU technocracy. A more technocratic solution would equate to lower energy costs.
This Go Lean/CU roadmap recognizes that modern life has now expanded to include food, clothing, shelter and energy as a basic need. And thusly the book proposes many solutions for the region to optimize energy …
generation – Green options (solar, wind turbines, tidal and natural gas)
distribution – Underwater cables to connect individual islands
consumption – efficient battery back-ups for home deployments.
No “stone is left unturned”. Go Lean posits that the average costs of energy can be decreased from an average of US$0.35/kWh to US$0.088/kWh in the course of the 5-year term of this roadmap; (Page 100). That’s a 75% savings!
Union Atlantic Turnpike & Pipelines The “Union Atlantic” Turnpike, (modeled after the Union Pacific efforts in the US back in 1862), is a big initiative of the CU to logistically connect all CU member-states for easier transport of goods and passengers. There are many transportation arteries envisioned for the Turnpike: Pipeline, Ferry, Highways, and Railroad. (Imagine a sophisticated network of ferry boats on schedule service to every island).
The book Go Lean … Caribbean asserts that pipelines can be strategic, tactical and operationally efficient for lowering the cost of delivery in the Caribbean region, for energy communities like oil, gas and water. They can also mitigate challenges from Mother Nature, create jobs and grow the economy at the same time. The book purports that a new technology-enhanced industrial revolution is emerging, in which there is more efficiency for installing-monitoring-maintaining pipelines. Caribbean society must participate in these developments, in order to optimize its costs of living. This point is pronounced early in the book with this Declaration of Interdependence (Page 14), with these statements:
xxvi. Whereas the Caribbean region must have new jobs to empower the engines of the economy and create the income sources for prosperity, and encourage the next generation to forge their dreams right at home, the Federation must therefore foster the development of new industries, like that of … pipelines …
There are many best practices around the world for the region to study and from which to glean insight and wisdom. The successful application of this roadmap will foster such best practices to optimize living in the Caribbean and lowering the costs of doing so. The wisdom the Go Lean book gleans are presented as a series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies; a detailed sample is listed as follows:
Community Assessment – French Caribbean: Organization and Discord
Page 17
Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices
Page 21
Community Ethos – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future
Page 22
Community Ethos – Intelligence Gathering – Pricing Analysis
Page 23
Community Ethos – Lean Operations
Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future
Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship
Page 28
Community Ethos – Ways to Close the Digital Divide
Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good
Page 37
Strategy – Mission – Embrace the advances of technology
Page 46
Strategy – Mission – Re-boot and Optimize Postal Operations
Page 46
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy
Page 64
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Postal Services
Page 78
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Interstate Commerce Administration
Page 79
Implementation – Year 1 / Assemble Phase – Establish CPU
Page 96
Anecdote – Implementation Plan – Mail Services – US Dilemma
Page 99
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change
Page 101
Implementation – Ways to Develop a Pipeline Industry
Page 107
Implementation – Improve Mail Services – Electronic Supplements
Page 108
Implementation – Ways to Deliver
Page 109
Implementation – Ways to Improve Energy Usage
Page 113
Planning – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean Region – Cyber Caribbean
Page 127
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Interstate Commerce
Page 129
Advocacy – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better
Page 131
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy
Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs
Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance
Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract
Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology
Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Foster e-Commerce
Page 198
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Main Street
Page 201
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Transportation – Ferries & Pipelines
Page 205
Appendix – Alaska Marine Highway
Page 280
Appendix – Eurotunnel Model – English Channel Tunnel
Page 281
This commentary therefore features the subjects of commerce, logistics and energy. Yet the Go Lean book asserts that the problems of the Caribbean are too big for any one member-state to assuage alone, that rather the requisite investment of the resources (time, talent, treasuries) will require an integrated region-wide, professionally-managed, deputized technocracy to effect greater production and greater accountability.
The Caribbean can do better, even better than the US State of Hawaii. (While Hawaii is 2500 miles from the US mainland, Trinidad is 7 miles from the South American mainland; the Bahama island of Bimini is 50 miles away from Miami, Florida). This new improved infrastructure – described above – awaits deployment. The biggest ingredient missing in the region is the “will” of the people. We hereby urge all in the region to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap.
This is the take-away of this consideration: Ferries, pipelines, tunnels and railways functioning as “blood vessels to connect all the organs” within the region, thus allowing easier transport of goods (ordered online) and people among the islands and the mainland states (Belize, Guyana or Suriname) – at cheaper costs.
Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people and governing institutions, to work to make their homeland a better and more affordable place to live, work and play. 🙂
So this is paradise. Palm trees sway in the trade winds that take the edge off the late-summer sun. Nearby, tanned bodies glisten on the sand.
Cabbie Lam Lu sits at the entrance of the parking garage at the AlaMoanaCenter shopping mall, overworked and stressed out as he awaits a fare. Lu is parked outside Foodland. Inside the supermarket, an advertisement shows two smiling girls eating hamburgers. Maybe they shouldn’t be so happy. The store’s pack of hamburger buns goes for $5.59, almost $3 more than it costs at a similar market in Washington, D.C. Do the kids want to wash it down with some milk? That’s another $3.69 per quart, which is nearly double the $1.88 it costs in the nation’s capital.
Yes, we know it is pricey here. Cars run on the most expensive gas in the nation, at $4.35 a gallon on a recent day. Our shopping centers and our homes use electricity that’s twice as expensive per kilowatt hour as the next costliest state, Alaska. We have to earn more per hour than Californians and New Yorkers to afford a two-bedroom home. Hawaii actually has the ninth highest median income in the nation, at $59,605. That sounds great to many people on the mainland, but when the cost of living is factored in, Hawaii slides down to the 21st highest median income. And we pay more for goods and services than residents of any other state.
And, as we all know, the list goes on. It is why we work so hard, skimp so much.
All of which is why Lu looks so glum. He doesn’t surf. He doesn’t hang out at the beach. To make ends meet, he drives his cab 12 hours per day, seven days a week. For every $100 he makes in fares, $15 of it goes for gas.
“No time for paradise,” he said.
Does It Have to be This Way?
In an ongoing series, Civil Beat will examine the reasons behind the high cost of living and how it affects Hawaii’s submerged middle class. How come life is so expensive here? Why is food — including our beloved Spam — so pricey? Should rentals and real estate around the islands really compare with world-class cities like San Francisco and New York City? And why do we pay so much just to sit at home with the lights on?
It all adds up to the price of paradise, the phrase coined by University of Hawaii law professor Randy Roth in two best-selling books by that name that he edited and co-authored in the early 1990s. And it affects every aspect of our lives, at every stage from childhood to parenthood and beyond, to our final days in some of the costliest nursing homes in the country.
We’ve heard the explanations. Many people accept it because we are on our archipelago in the middle of the Pacific Ocean 2,500 miles from the West Coast ports that so much of our stuff ships through. There is a set amount of real estate on the islands, and there is competition for how it is used, which puts intense pressure on farmers, home renters and buyers. Some locals blame tourist-generated inflation. Others wonder who is getting rich — and maybe profiteering — off of our vulnerabilities. Others point at unions, a lack of competition, our small consumer market, high taxes.
So, what can be done to bring down the cost of living here? What are the actual costs — of shipping, of transportation, of labor, of regulation. We look forward to breaking them down.
We’ll also look at what political and economic interests are standing in the way of making Hawaii more affordable and how the islands might remake themselves politically and economically to improve residents’ quality of life.
As part of this, we want to hear from you about your experiences. What sorts of things do you question the cost of? What everyday products have inexplicably high price tags? What do you want to know about, what have you sacrificed to live here and what do you
In the meantime, here are some facts of life in our islands:
— Hawaii has the highest cost of living in the nation, according to a U.S. Commerce Department Bureau of Economic Analysis report in June. The cost of living is 16 percent higher than the national average. (Second place goes to New York.)
— A single person can earn as much as $54,850 and qualify for housing assistance on Oahu. For a family of four, the cut-off is $78,300, according to the Hawaii Public Housing Authority. In most of the country, those would be comfortably middle-class incomes.
— We spend more on housing. Based on U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development data, the National Low Income Housing Coalition says the median cost of renting a two-bedroom apartment in Hawaii is $1,671 a month. That’s not just the highest nationally, it is about 71 percent more than the national average of $977.
Based on the HUD standard that families shouldn’t spend more than a third of their income on housing, the coalition calculated what hourly wage people around the country would have to earn to afford such an apartment. Hawaii again earned the dubious rank of No. 1. A resident here would have to earn the most: $32.14, compared with a national average of $25.25 per hour.
— A 2013 report by the Center for Housing Policy found that Honolulu was the fifth most expensive city for home buyers. The average income necessary to own one, according to the center, is $115,949.
— Similarly, the people of Hawaii pay the highest electricity rates at 37 cents per kilowatt hour, triple the national average of 12 cents per kilowatt hour, according to the the US. Energy Information Agency. That translates into bills that are two, three or even four times those in other states. While rates can fluctuate quickly around the country, Hawaii residents are currently spending $60 per month more than people in Alabama, the state with the next highest monthly bill (even though Alabamans pay much lower per-kilowatt rates than residents of some states).
— The cost of having a car (insurance, gas, maintenance, depreciation, etc.) is the eighth highest in the nation here in Hawaii. A study last year by Edmunds.com, a car pricing website, estimated that Hawaii drivers will have to spend $52,683 on their cars over the next five years, which is about $3,000 more than the national average. Hawaii cars also depreciate the fastest in the nation, by $16,809 over a five-year period. We also pay the most interest to finance a vehicle, $4,084, and the gas bill for those five years, $15,822, is also the highest in the nation.
— Food costs more. The U.S. Department of Agriculture calculates the differences in cost around the country to determine the size of food stamp benefits, and has found that food prices in Hawaii are 70 percent more than the national average. According to the USDA’s calculations, a family of four with young children nationally should be able to eat on a “thrifty” food budget of $373 per month. In Hawaii, it would cost the same family $632 for the same meals.
— We have to work more. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 6.2 percent of Hawaii workers have more than one job, compared to only 4.9 percent nationally.
An Age-Old Problem
There are those who say don’t worry. Be happy. Lucky you live Hawaii. But others note there are real impacts. Even for a middle-class that manages to scrape by, the cost of paradise often catches up to us late in life.
Bruce Bottorff, spokesman for the Hawaii chapter of the AARP, says that high prices have made it hard for most people to save for the day when they need help to live. “Most adult families have mortgages and rent, transportation, food and beverage costs, health care. And when you have all these costs, it makes it difficult to set aside an additional sum of money for an eventuality down the road. People take care of their immediate needs,” he said.
As a result, the AARP’s annual survey of Hawaii residents over 50 years old last year found that three in four said they did not want to rely on families and friends to take care of them in their old age, but more than half said they had no real plan for how they’d afford elderly care when they need it. (They acknowledged that they probably would have to rely on their families and friends.)
No wonder Tony Lenzer and his family have been feeling plenty of pressure. Lenzer, 83, said he had to put his wife, Joan, in a care home this year because she suffers from a variety of health problems, including dementia. Their children had taken turns helping Tony take care of his wife at home. But they couldn’t anymore. “We couldn’t keep her safe. She’s too frail,” he said.
They were among the (relatively) lucky ones because they bought long-term care health insurance that covers most of the nearly $9,500-a-month cost, Lenzer explained.
If they hadn’t, she would not have been able to afford the care home, Lenzer said. “I think it would be a very difficult situation. We would have to rely on family members, possibly friends, possibly neighbors to help out with the care. And even then we wouldn’t have been available for her 24/7.”
Old, with dementia, and needing your neighbor to bathe you.
Is it proper to refer to individuals as “disabled people”?
… or as “persons with disabilities”?
Get it!?!? The PC is to recognize the whole person and then acknowledge the physical challenge.
But even now this is outdated … it’s so 2014. Now, the proper labeling is “differently-abled”.
Being PC is hard-work! This is the America of 2015. But consider the alternative, the America of yesteryear, where it was the greatest country in the world … if you were: White, Anglo-Saxon, Rich, Male, Straight, and “Right-sized”.
Anything/anyone else and … it was “God help you”.
This commentary aligns with the book Go Lean…Caribbean, which campaigns for a reasonable accommodation so that persons in the Caribbean that are differently-abled can live a full and engaging life … and help to elevate their communities and make their homelands better places to live, work and play.
This difference also includes “fat”.
This is a sober issue because many persons that are overweight, fat or obese are faced with serious challenges (scorn, discrimination, glares, prejudice, body-shaming and outright animosity) in society. And many times their challenge starts “in the mirror”. There is a lot that can be done and a lot that needs to be done for overweight, fat or obese persons, but it must start with self-advocacy and then, the whole society can be urged to change.
This is the cause of one advocate Jes Baker; she is a mastermind, author, blogger, champion and Militant Baker. Those of us that are looking, listening, learning, lending-a-hand and leading can greatly benefit by considering her as a Role Model.
Consider this account (Book Review, article and VIDEO) of her story:
Book Review: Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls: A Handbook for Unapologetic Living … By Jes Baker
“Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls”is a manifesto and call to arms for people of all sizes and ages. With her trademark wit, veteran blogger and advocate Jes Baker calls people everywhere to embrace a body-positive worldview, changing perceptions about weight, and making mental health a priority.
Alongside notable guest essayists, Jes shares personal experiences paired with in-depth research in a way that is approachable, digestible, and empowering. “Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls” is an invitation to reject fat prejudice, fight body-shaming at the hands of the media, and join this life-changing movement with one step: change the world by loving your body.
Among the many “Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls” that you don’t want to miss:
1. It’s Possible to Love Your Body (Today. Now.)
2. You Can Train Your Brain to Play Nice
3. Your Weight Is Not a Reflection Of Your Worth
4. Changing Your Tumblr Feed Will Change Your Life
5. Salad Will Not Get You to Heaven
6. Cheesecake Will Not Send You to Hell
If you’re a person with a body, this book is for you.
A little more than two years, I was struggling after a horrible breakup and feeling quite low. I believed that I would never find a partner who loved me and loved my body.
I thought that someone would simply put up with how I looked. I also felt like only certain people could love a fat girl; there were just some people I could never date. I channeled those feelings into a blog post and began feeling more empowered.
Over the years as I continued blogging and speaking all over the country about body image, I realized the flaws behind my thinking—and I realized that societal norms inspired many of these thoughts. That idea that fat girls remain unlovable is just a lie.
Everyone deserves to be love and accepted.
And, fat girls can have authentic, sexy, enduring love.
The idea behind that blog eventually became part of an idea for my book, Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls. It’s full of things I wish I had learned a lot earlier in life and info I hope will help other women.
While it is a book about fat girls from a fat girl’s perspective I believe the message remains basic — and it’s one I hope that resonates with everyone.
We need to accept ourselves in our bodies.
There are so many bodies and so many people struggling with how they look in those bodies. I want fat girls to accept that fat is just an unbiased word to describe how a person looks. But I also want skinny girls to feel good about how they look, too, no matter how many times someone sneers at them to eat a hamburger.
As part of the social media campaign associated with the book, we developed a hashtag #FatGirlsCan and a trailer to accompany it. The hashtag encourages women to show visually what fat girls can do. There are fat girls whitewater rafting, rock climbing, practicing yoga, running marathons, wearing horizontal stripes, and so many other things. This was really incredible. I was never expecting to feel so inspired by seeing women doing things some of which I’m afraid to do. I know I can swim, dance, and ride a bike, but I don’t trust my body enough to rock climb or whitewater rafting.
Loads and loads of women have sent in pictures of themselves in love — all types of partners and all types of love. That feels like really powerful imagery.
Loving our bodies can really change the world.
When we liberate ourselves from our physical oppression then we are free to live our incredible lives. We become kinder to ourselves and to others. This book is for fat girls because that is who I am.
But it’s also for girls of all sizes told that they cannot do something because of how they look. Acceptance remains incredibly important and with that we can do so much more.
Published on October 28, 2015 – Jes Baker is blogger and mastermind behind the Militant Baker. She is a body image advocate, a fat model, and author of the new book, “Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls.” Jes shares her inspiration for why we all need to accept ourselves in our bodies.
That last sentence from the foregoing article is paramount: “We can change society”.
Yes, we can! All of us …
The Go Lean book posits that one person, despite their field of endeavor/advocacy, can make a difference in the Caribbean, and its impact on the world; that there are many opportunities where one champion can elevate society. In this light, the book features 144 different advocacies, one specifically for Persons with Disabilities (Page 228). We need advocates, vanguards and sentinels to ensure equal opportunities for all these relevant stakeholders. We even welcome those champions that may be overweight! #FatGirlsCan … and we welcome “Fat Men” too.
Make no mistake, obesity is unhealthy. But the individual must still be valued. They have human rights!
The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU is designed to elevate the region’s economic, security and governing societal engines. This includes healthcare. We recognize the societal threats of obesity; we are not condoning bad eating habits nor bad diets. Just the opposite, this Go Lean/CU movement and underlying book, addresses the ailments tied to obesity and seeks to assuage it, including the psychological dimensions. But the roadmap starts first with this “frank and earnest” assessment of reality:
It is what it is.
There are “fat” people in the Caribbean and we need them too, to be involved in the empowerment plan to elevate our society. We need them to work to lower their perceived health risk and improve their wellness. We cannot impact their lives without their motivation and participation. They are different, yes, but differently-abled!
The CU/Go Lean roadmap has a singular directive, a prime directive: to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play for all stakeholders, including persons with physical disabilities and those differently-abled. The declarative statements of this prime directive are as follows:
Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion GDP and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to prepare and protect stakeholders for natural, man-made and incidental emergencies.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.
The Go Lean book relates a common crisis; that the whole region must integrate to streamline delivery systems for improved healthcare and wellness. There is the need to encourage healthy eating, assuage obesity, optimize the food supply and promote better self-esteem. But many of these mitigations are too big for any one member-state alone. From the outset, the book reported this requirement as a pronouncement in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 11):
ix. Whereas the realities of healthcare and an aging population cannot be ignored and cannot be afforded without some advanced mitigation, the Federation must arrange for health plans to consolidate premiums of both healthy and sickly people across the wider base of the entire Caribbean population. The mitigation should extend further to disease management, wellness, mental health, obesity and smoking cessation programs. The Federation must proactively anticipate the demand and supply of organ transplantation as developing countries are often exploited by richer neighbors for illicit organ trade.
The pressing need to optimize facilitations for all population groups – abled and challenged – was also pronounced in the Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 13), with this statement:
xviii. Whereas all citizens in the Federation member-states may not have the same physical abilities, reasonable accommodations must be made so that individuals with physical and mental disabilities can still access public and governmental services so as to foster a satisfactory pursuit of life’s liberties and opportunities for happiness.
The Go Lean roadmap specifically encourages the region, to lean-in to elevate society for all stakeholders – abled and challenged – with these specific community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies:
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices
Page 21
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Minority Equalization
Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations
Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Return on Investments
Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness – Minority Rights
Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good
Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederate all 30 Member-states
Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Repatriate the Diaspora, young and old …even those disabled
Page 46
Anatomy of Advocacies – Examples of Individuals Who Made Impact
Page 122
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – Homeland Security Pact
Page 127
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices – Minority and Human Rights
Page 134
Planning – Lessons from US Constitution – Equal Protection for all Minorities
Page 139
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance – For All Citizens
Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract – Medical / Heath Endeavors
Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice – Ensure Rights for the Disabled Classes
Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Remediate and Mitigate Crime – Protect Minority Classes
Page 178
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Homeland Security – Emergency Management
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights – Caribbean [Persons] with Disabilities
Page 220
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Elder-Care – Caribbean [Persons] with Disabilities
Page 225
Advocacy – Ways to Empower Women
Page 226
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Youth
Page 227
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Persons with Disabilities – Americans with Disabilities Act Model
Page 228
The Caribbean region wants a more optimized society … for all citizens. We want to mitigate human rights and civil rights abuses, and empower all for a better life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This quest, for differently-abled persons, is not easy, it requires strenuous effort, heavy-lifting. These persons may not be able to contribute as much to Caribbean society as they draw from public resources. But they can engage more fully, and contribute more with the proper support systems. The mission to “help them help us” is only reasonable; it can generate a Return on Investment (ROI); as conveyed in the foregoing book review/article/VIDEO. Plus everyone needs the encouragement and confidence portrayed by that Role Model and Advocate Jes Baker.
Go Girl!
Many related subjects have been blogged in previous Go Lean…Caribbean commentaries; they are sampled here:
Regional Health-care Concerns: The need for a “larger pool” of partakers
The CU/Go Lean roadmap is designed to empower and enhance the economic engines for the full participation and benefit of all Caribbean people, including the differently-abled ones. The CU’s vision is that this population group represents a critical talent pool that is underserved and underutilized. There is therefore a call for a Caribbean [Persons] with Disabilities (CDA) provision to be embedded in the CU confederation treaties; modeled after the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
This roadmap is a fully comprehensive plan with consideration to all aspects of Caribbean life for all stakeholders: citizens, businesses, and institutions. All are hereby urged to lean-in to this roadmap. Yes, with all “hands on deck”, including the differently-abled, the Caribbean can truly become a better place to live, work and play. 🙂
This rule appears to be true not just for the individual, but for the community as well. According to this subsequent news article, communities suffer in their academic performance where a larger percentage of adolescents are obese or eat poorly. So this is not just a micro problem, but a macro one as well.
This is an important consideration, not just for health care or wellness, but for educational concerns and community competitiveness as well.
The publishers of the book Go Lean…Caribbean seeks to elevate Caribbean communities by optimizing the societal engines for economics, security and governance – these are identified as our prime directives. It has long been accepted that education reform – as a subset of economics – would be inclusive of this effort, but now it looks like optimizing the Caribbean diet must also be part-and-parcel of this quest.
It goes without saying that academic competitiveness would affect a community’s economic dispositions. But it may be judged as “a stretch” to liken food choices as an important economic concern, but if the above adage is to be considered factual, then yes, we are what we eat. According to the following story, the Western Diet – inclusive of the Caribbean – has a serious academic downside. See the full story here:
Title: The Academic Downside Of ‘Western’ Diets By: Sam P.K. Collins
Proponents of healthier school lunches have one more reason to frame the issue as a public health matter. A new study suggests that the “Western” diet — defined as selections of red meat, sugary desserts, high-calorie food, and refined grains — may be detrimental to a child’s cognitive development, ultimately hampering their academic performance.
Researchers polled more than 2,800 adolescents about their dietary choices and examined their standardized test scores. Once they controlled for variations in body mass index readings and physical activity levels, they found that students who ate mostly vegetables and whole grains scored an average of 7 percent higher in mathematics, writing, and reading compared to their counterparts who ate a “Western” diet.
“Adolescence is a sensitive period for brain development and a vulnerable time of life with respect to nutrition. Therefore, public health policies and health promotion programs should rigorously target the issue of food intake during this stage of individual development,” the study read. “To date, this is one of the few studies to report on the associations between dietary patterns and academic performance; therefore, more prospective studies are required to support our findings.”
The study, published in a recent issue of Nutrients journal, followed a separate experiment in which the same research group gave an older group of youth computerized cognitive exams. Teens who had a “Western” diet more than likely skipped breakfast frequently. Researchers said that doing so delayed development of reasoning and learning skills. Studies conducted in Canada, Sweden, and Iceland at the turn of the decade also linked fruits, vegetables, and milk to higher academic achievement among teens.
These findings come amid exploding rates of childhood obesity and increased scrutiny of the fast food industry. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that eating fast food sporadically doesn’t result in nutrition deficiency, the government agency warns the high-sugar, high-salt meals found at popular fast food franchises can cause memory loss and slow brain development in children. Those meals lack calcium, iron, Vitamin C, and zinc — nutrients that experts say help stimulate cognitive development.
The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, up for reauthorization this year, sets policy for the United States Department of Agriculture’s food programs. Since the law’s passage, more than $385 million in locally grown produce has entered the nation’s cafeterias. More than one million students across the country have benefited — eating not only healthy breakfasts and lunches, but also nutritious dinners, as part of an after-school snack component of the program.
Decades prior, the status quo disadvantaged children of color and those living in low-income areas with subpar education systems. Without nearby sources of healthy food, youngsters living in food deserts — urban enclaves where it’s difficult to purchase affordable or high-quality food — often depend on fast food and corner store offerings for sustenance. The fast food industry’s aggressive marketing tactics in those areas, as outlined in a recent Arizona State University study, don’t make it easier to encourage healthy food choices.
While opponents of Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act argue that students aren’t responding positively to menu changes, data compiled in the recent years paints a different picture. A 2014 Harvard survey, for example, found that students are eating 16 percent more vegetables and 23 percent more fruit with their lunch. The University of Connecticut’s Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity also found that students discarded their lunches less often under the new nutrition standards.
“We encourage Congress to reauthorize the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which, since its implementation, has changed how school districts prepare foods ensuring that district funding for federal school meal and child nutrition programs meet more nutritious meal guidelines and restricts the serving of fatty and non-nutritious foods and beverages, including vending machines,” The Monitor’s editorial staff wrote on Tuesday.
“This measure, we believe, has dramatically altered the conversation about foods in American schools for the better. And we want to see this discussion continue in the right direction and not allow children to revert back to bad eating habits,” the editorial continued.
The controversy around the “Western” diet isn’t limited only to students’ academic performance. Earlier this year, scientists attributed those food choices to the development of colon cancer in a study where a group of African Americans and South Africans switched diets for 10 days. The experiment, in part, opened conversations about the potentially dire health effects of a high-fat, high sugar diet. Source: Think Progress Digital Magazine – (Posted 09/29/2015; retrieved 10/27/2015) – http://thinkprogress.org/health/2015/09/29/3706900/western-diet-low-cognition/
There are some strong points being made in this article:
Adolescence is a sensitive period for brain development and a vulnerable time of life with respect to nutrition.
… and …
We want to see this discussion continue in the right direction and not allow children to revert back to bad eating habits.
These points helps us to appreciate the gravity of this issue. This constitutes the heavy-lifting that the Go Lean book posits that is necessary to elevate Caribbean society.
Why so hard?
The Go Lean roadmap seeks to have the Caribbean do even better than the American model reported here. We do not want to follow the American food standards (Standard American Diet = SAD); we want to exceed it.
We recognize that it is a heavy-lifting task. There are so many societal defects in the region and we need effective strategies, tactics and implementation just to effect a turn-around. But now, to try and do even better than the American eco-system, when it comes to food seems like such a “tall order”.
It is not!
As previously discussed, the American eco-system is plagued with societal defects; one in particular: Crony-Capitalism. The Greater Good for so many aspects of American life has been hijacked for the private gains of special interest groups. In this case, the indictment is on Big Agra or more specifically, the agribusiness concerns as they fight common sense food labeling efforts, induce so much steroids in meat production and exacerbate greenhouse gases. These ones prove to be “bad actors” despite any promotion of up-building community values. They even bully family farmers to crowd out the wholesale markets for larger and larger shares, see VIDEO in the Appendix below. Lastly, they engage in abusive labor practices with large portions of their labor force – migrant workers.
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), a confederation of all 30 member-states in the region. This effort is an initiative to bring change and empowerment to the Caribbean region, to make the region a better place to live, work, learn, heal and play even better than our American neighbors enjoy. The book recognized the significance of our culture. This is why a discussion on food choices and diet is such a significant topic. “We are what we eat” and food defines our culture. From the outset, the book reported this pronouncement in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 14):
xxxii. Whereas the cultural arts … of the region are germane to the quality of Caribbean life, and the international appreciation of Caribbean life, the Federation must implement the support systems to teach, encourage, incentivize, monetize and promote the related industries … These endeavors will make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play.
The book asserts that Crony-Capitalism is not the only option. We can enjoy the foods of our dynamic cultures and build up our economy at the same time. This is not a binary issue. We can have great food, healthy options and still support jobs and other economic activities. This fact was also pronounced in that opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 14):
xxvi. Whereas the Caribbean region must have new jobs to empower the engines of the economy and create the income sources for prosperity, and encourage the next generation to forge their dreams right at home, the Federation must therefore foster the development of new industries, like that of … frozen foods … impacting the region with more jobs.
xxx. Whereas the effects of globalization can be felt in every aspect of Caribbean life, from the acquisition of food and clothing, to the ubiquity of ICT, the region cannot only consume, it is imperative that our lands also produce and add to the international community, even if doing so requires some sacrifice and subsidy.
The Go Lean movement, in presenting an empowerment roadmap for the region hereby examines the reality and consequences of food and diet in the day-to-day affairs of Caribbean people. While we do not want to endanger personal freedoms, there must be a set of community values that are promoted. These are defined in the underlying Go Lean book as “community ethos” or the fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices; dominant assumptions of a people.
This is the quest of the Go Lean roadmap; to impact the Caribbean region in a comprehensive manner, starting with the values, or what’s in our heart, and then to elevate society with the execution of our prime directives, defined with these 3 statements:
Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion GDP and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance, including a separation-of-powers with the member-states, to support these engines.
The book describe the CU as a hallmark of a technocracy, a commitment to efficiency and effectiveness. Yet still there is the commitment to fun, happiness, beauty, art and self-actualization of our culture. The Go Lean roadmap was constructed with the community ethos in mind to forge change, plus the execution of related strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to make the change permanent. The following is a sample of these specific details from the book:
Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Choose
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Respond to Incentives in Predictable Ways
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – The Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future
Page 21
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations
Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future
Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Research & Development – Nouvelle Caribbean Cuisine
Page 30
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Turn-Around
Page 33
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness – Promotion of Domestic Cultural Institutions
Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good
Page 37
Strategy – Mission – Build and foster local economic engines to satiate food needs
Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Celebrate the Culture and Cuisine of the Caribbean
Page 46
Strategy – Customers – Outreach to Caribbean Diaspora
Page 47
Strategy – Agents of Change – Globalization
Page 57
Tactical – Confederating a Permanent Union
Page 63
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy
Page 64
Tactical – Creating $800 Billion Economy – New High Multiplier Industries – Frozen Foods
Page 70
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Department of State – Culture Administration
Page 81
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Department of Education – Regional Directives
Page 85
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Food / Nutritional Administrations
Implementation – Ways to Benefit from Globalization – Dynamics of Food Supply
Page 119
Implementation – Ways to Promote Independence – Food Interdependence
Page 119
Planning – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean Region – 4 Languages & Culture in Unison
Page 127
Planning – Ways to Improve Trade – Diaspora Marketing
Page 128
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better
Page 136
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy
Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs
Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Cancer – Promote Wellness – Better Diets
Page 157
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage Food Consumption
Page 162
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Communications – Public Broadcasting of “Sound-bites”
Page 186
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Events – Food Festivals
Page 191
Advocacy – Ways to Develop Frozen Foods
Page 208
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Fisheries
Page 210
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage – Promote Culture
Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Improve the Arts
Page 230
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Urban Living – Promotion of Farmers Markets
Page 234
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Rural Living – Agricultural Co-existence Mandate
Page 235
This roadmap wants to change the Caribbean diet plan, branded Nouvelle Caribbean Cuisine: more fiber, less fats; more green vegetables, less processed food; no more “SAD”. We must start this in the schools so as to effect the habits of our youth.
The hope is that when they grow-up they will not depart from those new values. This is a basic premise in Judeo-Christian religious doctrine; as stated here in the Bible:
Train up a child in the way he should go, And even when he is old he will not depart from it. – Proverbs 22:6 (ASV)
We have so many reasons to lean-in to the ethos, values and principles of this Go Lean roadmap. But according to the foregoing news article, we should also have academic motivations. Our children will not advance (academically) as well as they should, or as other regions do around the world.
Education is presented as a priority for every government in the Caribbean member-states; it is our only hope of competing on the world stage. (Globalization is presented in the Go Lean book as an agent-of-change, so we cannot opt-out of the competition). It is time to “put our money where our mouth is”; or better stated, “to put in our mouths where we hope to get our money”.
Education policy has been a prominent topic for the Go Lean movement. We have detailed education policies, strategies and tactics in many previous Go Lean blog/commentaries. See sample here:
Is a Traditional 4-year Degree a Terrible Investment?
As depicted by the S.A.D. references, the Go Lean expectation is not to allow the American eco-system to lead the Caribbean’s reform efforts. The plan is for more of the Caribbean food supply to originate locally and to institute some new standards: Nouvelle Caribbean Cuisine. The Caribbean succeeded before in forging great culinary traditions based on the best-practices of the time in the past, (think the abundance of seafood recipes), we can do this again with a focus on the future.
While this plan is conceivable, believable and achievable, it can also be delicious. 🙂
Everyone is urged to lean-in for the empowerments in the Go Lean roadmap.
Published on May 17, 2015 – John Oliver explains how chicken farming can be unfair, punishing, and inhumane. And not just for the chickens! Pardon the coarse language.
