June 2018 – Go Lean…Caribbean

Month: June 2018

‘Time to Go’ – States must have ‘population increases’

Posted on June 28, 2018 in Economics, Ethos, Government, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

“We need more people” – News Article conclusion below.

Economics is a complex social science. But it all boils now to advanced variations of this simple law:

Supply and demand

Whether it’s a product, service or population, there must be a good measure of supply and demand for eco-systems to work. When either side of the equation becomes dysfunctional, the supply or the demand, the stewards of the eco-system (company leaders or community leaders) must effect change in either the supply-side or demand-side, or both.

This is the actuality of the US State of Vermont today. They need more people! They need more supply and more demand. ‘Things’ are bad now, but will get even worse going forward if there are no mitigations to the current trends.

Vermont’s aging population … the median age nationally has increased by almost five years to 37.8 while Vermont’s has increased by 10 years
rapidly shrinking tax base
16,000 fewer workers [now] than [they had] in 2009
“Must think outside the box …”

So that State is willing to pay $10,000 to people to move into the State.

Wait, what?

See the full news article and related VIDEO here:

Title: Vermont will pay you $10,000 to move there and work from home
By: Abigail Hess

Considering leaving the big city behind in favor of somewhere scenic? Now could be the right time.

On Wednesday, Quartz reports, Vermont Governor Phil Scott signed a bill into law that will pay people $10,000 if they move to Vermont and work remotely for an employer out of state. The Remote Worker Grant Program will take effect on January 1, 2019, and will help cover moving, living and working expenses. Grants can be used for relocation, computer software and hardware, broadband internet and access to a co-working space.

Currently, Vermont has budgeted funds to support 100 grants for the first three years and 20 additional workers each year from then on. Grant recipients will receive $10,000 over two years that will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis.

This policy is intended to address Vermont’s aging population. While the state may be rich in beautiful landscapes and maple syrup, it has a rapidly shrinking tax base.

“Vermont continues to age, and age faster than the nation as a whole,” writes Art Woolf for the Burlington Free Press. “Over the past quarter of a century, the median age nationally has increased by almost five years to 37.8 while Vermont’s has increased by 10 years.”

This trend has made Vermont one of the oldest states in the nation.

In addition to the remote worker grant program, the bill also launches the state’s Stay-to-Stay initiative. The program, aimed at convincing the state’s 13 million annual tourists to permanently relocate to Vermont, will be organized by the Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing and will connect visitors with local employers, entrepreneurs, community leaders and potential neighbors.

“We have about 16,000 fewer workers than we did in 2009. That’s why expanding our workforce is one of the top priorities of my administration,” Scott said in a statement. “We must think outside the box to help more Vermonters enter the labor force and attract more working families and young professionals to Vermont. That’s exactly what the Department of Tourism and Marketing did with this program for out-of-state visitors who may be interested in living full-time in Vermont, and I’m excited to see it move forward.”

The initiative will take place over four weekends and will be piloted in three communities. One of those selected communities is Brattleboro, Vermont. “The one thing we need more of in Vermont is people,” says Adam Grinold, executive director of the Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation. “We need more visitors, we need more employees, we need more business owners. We need more people.”

Source: CNBC Consumer & Business News – posted May 31, 2018; retrieved June 27, 2018 from: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/31/vermont-will-pay-you-10000-to-move-there-and-work-from-home.html

————

VIDEO – Move to Vermont, make $10,000 – https://youtu.be/Q5Pum5HfNkQ

Published on Jun 1, 2018 – Fox Business News’ Tracee Carrasco on a new bill signed in Vermont allowing the state to offer $10,000 to those who move there and work remotely for out-of-state employers.

Category: News and Politics

License: Standard YouTube License

Vermont has a problem and they are willing to throw money at it for resolution. This just might work! Another observed-and-confirmed principle in Economics is that:

People Respond to Incentives in Predictable Ways

Think about the viability for Vermont. There are candidate individuals (and families) out there. These ones do work from home and can reside/live anywhere. Why not do it – reside – in Vermont and work from Vermont? Especially if “someone” will pay for it. These candidates have to live somewhere:

… an entity will pay you $10,000 to do something – Reside – that you would otherwise have to do for free, or pay for!

This challenge for Vermont parallels with challenges for the Caribbean homeland. This commentary continues the series on Time to Go back to the Caribbean homeland as residents. In this instance, we are considering the reality for life in communities that constantly lose their population. Things will go from bad to worse. Considering the assessment of our Caribbean member-states:

Oops, too late! We are already Failing!
(See Appendix F below for references to Failed-State Indices for Caribbean member-states)

We have lost, and will continue to lose, so many of our professional population – one report measured the abandonment rate at 70 percent. Something must be done! Solutions must be sought!

This is commentary Number 11 in this series from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean which started in September 2016 with the first 6 issues. Now, this commentary, examines the actuality of an American State trying to recruit “good” people away from their current abodes. This is something we must be conscious of. Our advocacy is simple:

Our Caribbean Diaspora need to plan to repatriate to the region – we need them back!
While our young people, in the homeland, many times set their sights on foreign (American) shores – we need to dissuade this.

So, is this a competition? Are we trying to recruit people to come to the Caribbean instead of going to Vermont?

Ready or not, we have a battle on our hands.

The Go Lean book – available to download for free – serves as a roadmap for the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The book specifically states (Page 49):

Who are our competitors and how do we stack up against them?

Considering the customers of the CU (citizens, governments, business community, Diaspora, visitors, bank depositors, investors, monitors, NGOs), who else will be competing for their attention? From the Trade Federation perspective, this “attention” includes their time, talents, and their treasuries. Even as basic as the citizens of the region, though we’d like to think that we have a captive audience, the truth of the matter is that other role-players are campaigning to the same marketplace and audience. Consider the aspect of media: Caribbean citizens can listen to radio, watch television and read newspapers/magazines from anywhere around the world. Also, consider the City of Miami – Florida; they brand themselves as the “gateway to the Americas”. So they would rather provide most of the services – for profit – that the CU intends to provide for its citizens.

The world is flat … and as such, all societies are now competitors for the resources of Caribbean society. …

(The US State of Kansas is also incentivizing people to move there. See here: https://youtu.be/d7Gj1wDfKFM)

Vermont is cold … in the winter months! The same as Canada, the UK and Europe; they are all cold-weather locations during the winter season, yet the Caribbean has lost large numbers to those countries – our Diaspora. Weather is therefore nullified as a competitive disadvantage; it’s all about economics … and security … and governance. See more here:

The Go Lean roadmap posits that the Caribbean region is in crisis now, and so many are quick to flee for refuge in foreign countries. But the “grass is not necessarily greener on the other side”. Those destinations need our “new blood” the same as we need our people to remain. But in those countries, racial disparities continue to present challenges for new immigrants, especially those of Black-and-Brown characteristics. It is therefore easier and better for all stakeholders, that our people remain in the homeland; plus for those that have departed, that they would repatriate to the homeland.

But words alone will not suffice, we must also compete.

No, we do not need to give $10,000 to each individual. But we do need to invest … in our people and our infrastructure! We must give the effort to reform and transform our societies. We do have defects; we do have inadequacies; we are flirting with a Failed-State status. So we have heavy-lifting to do! The Go Lean/CU roadmap is designed for that heavy-lifting … to optimize Caribbean society through economic, security and governing empowerments. The Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives for optimizing our societal engines:

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 ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

This is the conclusion (for now) on this series of commentaries on this theme Time to Go! There are 11 in total, starting in September 2016; those 6 submissions were as follows:

Now, we consider these 5 new entries along that same theme:

Time to Go: Windrush – 70th Anniversary
Time to Go: Mandatory Guns – Say it Ain’t So
Time to Go: Racist History of Loitering
Time to Go: Blacks Get Longer Sentences From ‘Republican’ Judges
Time to Go: States must have Population Increases

All of these commentaries relate to Caribbean people and their disposition in foreign lands and why they need to Go Back Home. Communities need their populations to grow! Our Caribbean member-states need our populations to grow. So many macro-economic programs – pensions, unemployment insurance, etc. – need gradual increases to remain solvent!

This subject is a familiar theme for this Go Lean commentary. This movement has consistently related the economic realities from societal abandonment. Less is not more! Consider these prior submissions:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14954	Overseas Workers Programs are not the Panacea; they create crises
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14746	Calls for Repatriation Strategy to reverse Abandonment
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13391	After Hurricane Maria : Destruction and Defection for Puerto Rico
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12996	After Irma, Failed-State Indicators: Destruction and Defection
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9203	Where the Jobs Are – Employers in the United States – They want our cheap labor
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8155	Referendum Outcome: Impact on the ‘Brain Drain’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5759	Bad Role Model: Pressed by Debt Crisis, Doctors Leave Greece in Droves
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4278	Businesses Try to Stave-off Brain Drain as “Baby Boomers” Retire
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4185	Caribbean Ghost Towns: It Could Happen…Again
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2547	Miami’s Success versus Caribbean Failure
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=841	Having Less Babies is Bad for the Economy

To Caribbean people: do not move to Vermont. While they are good people there – they are a great role model to emulate in terms of Green Energy initiative – it is not home. The Black-and-Brown of the Caribbean may forever be a minority there as their demographics feature 90.5% Non-Hispanic White with only 1.2% Black, 2.3% Hispanic and 2.7% Asian. This is still America; a society not built for the Caribbean’s Black-and-Brown. It is a dangerous proposition to be Black in America.

But to better compete, we must still “take care of our business” at home. The Go Lean book identifies the reasons why people abandon their homeland as “push and pull”. While the “push” refers to the societal defects that people take refuge from, the “pull” is mostly due to messaging. Our people perceive that the US is better for them, and that landing in the US will assuage all societal short-comings.

This is far from the truth. And it’s cold … in the winter!

You see! Good messaging will help mitigate our societal abandonment rate.

The Go Lean book asserts that it is easier for the Black-and-Brown populations in the Caribbean to prosper where planted in the Caribbean, rather than in Vermont or any American State, or Canada or Europe.

We need our Caribbean people to remain in the homeland, and they need to Stay Home! This is the quest of the Go Lean/CU roadmap. The book presents 370 pages of instructions for how to reform and transform our Caribbean member-states. It stresses the key community ethos that needs to be adopted, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies necessary to optimize the societal engines in a community.

No doubt, it is Time to Go! We urge all Caribbean stakeholder, in the homeland and in the Diaspora to lean-in to this Go Lean/CU roadmap. This is our quest to reform and transform our society and make it better to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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APPENDIX F – CU Indicators & Definitions

The Bottom Line on the Failed States Index – Go Lean … Caribbean (Page 134)
The Failed States Index (Appendix F) is an annual ranking of 177 nations based on their levels of stability and capacity. The Index is compiled by the Fund for Peace Institute, an independent, nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) non-profit research and educational organization, based in Washington DC, that works to prevent violent conflict and promote sustainable security. As a leader in the conflict assessment and early warning field, the Fund for Peace focuses on the problems of weak and failing states. The strength of the Failed States Index is its ability to distill millions of pieces of information into a form that is relevant as well as easily digestible and informative, as an indicator code.

Each Indicator is rated on a 1 to 10 scale with 1 (low) being the most stable and 10 (high) being the most at-risk of collapse and violence. Think of it as trying to bring down a fever, with high being dangerous, low being acceptable. An obvious example, consider Somalia, the state’s complete inability to provide public services for its citizens would warrant a score of 10 for the Public Service indicator. Conversely, Sweden’s extensive provision of health, education & other public services would produce a 1 or 2 for that indicator. – Fund For Peace®

Source: Appendix F of Go Lean … Caribbean (Pages 271 – 272)

For the Caribbean Failed-State rankings, some states are too small for consideration (i.e. Antigua, St. Kitts, etc.) and the Overseas Territories (Aruba, St. Martin, etc.) are not considered due to the fact that their legacy countries are ranked. The rankings for 2012 are as following:

Failing Indicator:

REF – Massive Movement of Refugees or IDPs
Forced uprooting of large communities as a result of random or targeted violence and/or repression, causing food shortages, disease, lack of clean water, land competition, and turmoil that can spiral into larger humanitarian and security problems, both within and between countries. This indicator refers to refugees leaving or entering a country.
This indicator include pressures and measures related to: Displacement, Refugee Camps, IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) Camps, Disease Related to Displacement, Refugees per capita, and IDPs per capita.

HF – Chronic and Sustained Human Flight and Brain Drain
When there is little opportunity, people migrate, leaving a vacuum of human capital. Those with resources often leave before, or just as, conflict erupts. This “brain drain” of professionals, intellectuals and political dissidents fearing persecution or repression is an indicating of the failing status of a state. Other features are voluntary emigration of “the middle class”, particularly economically productive segments of the population, such as entrepreneurs, businesspeople, artisans and traders, due to economic deterioration. The end result is the growth of exile communities and Diasporas.
This indicator include pressures and measures related to: Migration per capita, Human Capital, and Emigration of Educated Population

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Diaspora, Model, Transform

‘Time to Go’ – Blacks get longer sentences from ‘Republican’ Judges

Posted on June 27, 2018 in Ethos, Government, Social

Go Lean Commentary

“Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are” – Old Adage

This Old Adage was drummed in me as a youth; I may have wanted to question its validity, but time has proven its accuracy. As humans, we are affected by the people we associate with; their values, principles, character, aspirations – or lack thereof – will have an effect on us. This statement even harmonizes with the Bible scripture at 1 Corinthians 15:33, which states:

“Bad companions ruin good character.” – Today’s English Version

This commentary highlights a disturbing trend in American jurisprudence; it turns out that among judges that associates with the conservative political parties or the liberal political parties, one group consistently sentences Black defendants to longer prison sentences. This is indicative of more than just the tolerance of criminality; this shows some hidden bias, that severely endangers the Black populations in America. These judges, despite claims of non-partisanship, are affected by their party.

Say it ain’t so!

The party with the harsher sentences is the Republican Party or GOP (for Grand Old Party).

Sometimes, we need to step back and look at the whole picture before we can notice trends and leanings. This is the common sense in the old expression: “One cannot see the forest for the trees”. This was the purpose of a study on judicial bias; it looked at a range of 500,000 cases to summarize its findings. Intelligence and wisdom can be gleaned from this data.

The numbers – and conclusions – must not be ignored. See the full story here:

Title: Black Defendants Get Longer Sentences From Republican-Appointed Judges, Study Finds
By: Adam Liptak

WASHINGTON — Judges appointed by Republican presidents gave longer sentences to black defendants and shorter ones to women than judges appointed by Democrats, according to a new study that analyzed data on more than half a million defendants.

“Republican-appointed judges sentence black defendants to three more months than similar nonblacks and female defendants to two fewer months than similar males compared with Democratic-appointed judges,” the study found, adding, “These differences cannot be explained by other judge characteristics and grow substantially larger when judges are granted more discretion.”

The study was conducted by two professors at Harvard Law School, Alma Cohen and Crystal S. Yang. They examined the sentencing practices of about 1,400 federal trial judges over more than 15 years, relying on information from the Federal Judicial Center, the United States Sentencing Commission and the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

Douglas A. Berman, an authority on sentencing law at Ohio State University, said the study contained “amazing new empirical research.”

“It’s an extraordinarily important contribution to our statistical understanding of sentencing decision making in federal courts over the last two decades,” he said.

It has long been known that there is an overall racial sentencing gap, with judges of all political affiliations meting out longer sentences to black offenders. The new study confirmed this, finding that black defendants are sentenced to 4.8 months more than similar offenders of other races.

It was also well known, and perhaps not terribly surprising, that Republican appointees are tougher on crime over all, imposing sentences an average of 2.4 months longer than Democratic appointees.

But the study’s findings on how judges’ partisan affiliations affected the racial and gender gaps were new and startling.

“The racial gap by political affiliation is three months, approximately 65 percent of the baseline racial sentence gap,” the authors wrote. “We also find that Republican-appointed judges give female defendants two months less in prison than similar male defendants compared to Democratic-appointed judges, 17 percent of the baseline gender sentence gap.”

The two kinds of gaps appear to have slightly different explanations. “We find evidence that gender disparities by political affiliation are largely driven by violent offenses and drug offenses,” the study said. “We also find that racial disparities by political affiliation are largely driven by drug offenses.”

The authors of the study sounded a note of caution. “The precise reasons why these disparities by political affiliation exist remain unknown and we caution that our results cannot speak to whether the sentences imposed by Republican- or Democratic-appointed judges are warranted or ‘right,’” the authors wrote. “Our results, however, do suggest that Republican- and Democratic-appointed judges treat defendants differently on the basis of their race and gender given that we observe robust disparities despite the random assignment of cases to judges within the same court.”

The study is studded with fascinating tidbits. Black judges treat male and female offenders more equally than white judges do. Black judges appointed by Republicans treat black offenders more leniently than do other Republican appointees.

More experienced judges are less apt to treat black and female defendants differently. Judges in states with higher levels of racism, as measured by popular support for laws against interracial marriage, are more likely to treat black defendants more harshly than white ones.

The Trump administration has been quite successful in stocking the federal bench with its appointees, and by some estimates the share of Republican appointees on the federal district courts could rise to 50 percent in 2020, from 34 percent in early 2017.

The study said these trends were likely to widen the sentencing gaps.

“Our estimates suggest that a 10 percentage point increase in the share of Republican-appointed judges in each court would increase the racial sentencing gap by approximately 5 percent and the gender sentencing gap by roughly 2 percent,” the authors wrote. “During an average four-year term, a Republican president has the potential to alter the partisan composition of the district courts by over 15 percentage points, potentially increasing the racial and gender sentencing gap by 7.5 and 3 percent, respectively.”

There are a couple of reasons to question that prediction. The Trump administration has been more energetic in appointing appeals court judges than trial judges. And in recent years many conservatives have started to shift positions on sentencing policy. The very scope of the study, which considered sentences imposed from 1999 to 2015, could mask trends in the later years.

Supreme Court justices like to say that partisan affiliation plays no role in judicial decision making.

“There’s no such thing as a Republican judge or a Democratic judge,” Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, President Trump’s Supreme Court appointee, said at his confirmation hearing last year. “We just have judges in this country.”

Political scientists have disagreed, finding that Republican appointees are markedly more likely to vote in a conservative direction than Democratic ones. Senate Republicans, by refusing to hold hearings for Judge Merrick B. Garland, President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, seemed to agree.

So has Mr. Trump. “We need more Republicans in 2018 and must ALWAYS hold the Supreme Court!” he tweeted in March.

But judicial ideology is one thing. The race and gender gaps identified by the new study present a different and difficult set of questions.

Professor Berman said the study should prompt both research and reflection. “It only begins a conversation,” he said, “about what sets of factors really influence judges at sentencing in modern times.”

Follow Adam Liptak on Twitter: @adamliptak.

Source: New York Times – published May 28, 2018; retrieved June 26, 2018 from: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/28/us/politics/black-defendants-women-prison-terms-study.html

This article alludes to a stereotype; one where women are sentenced lighter, but Blacks harsher. This stereotype transcends the entire history of the United States … right up to this day. The more things change, the more they remain the same!

This commentary continues the series on Time to Go, considering the reality for life of the Caribbean’s Black-and-Brown population in the US. This entry is Number 10 in this series from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean which started in September 2016 with the first 6 issues. Now, this revisit, this commentary, examines a disturbing trend with the sentences of federal court judges; these ones are appointed by the President of the United States. Needless to say, Presidents appoint judges that reflect and respect their values – it’s a natural expectation that they would have the same (virtual) association. So “we” can tell a lot about federal judges, just by knowing which President appointed them.

These were the 2016 submissions in this series:

Now, we consider these 5 new entries along that same theme:

All of these commentaries relate to Caribbean people and their disposition in foreign lands – in this case in the US – and why they need to Go Back Home. Surely, it is obvious and evident that institutional racism is “Alive & Well” in the US. We can and must do better at home. The Go Lean book – available to download for free – serves as a roadmap for the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to assuage the societal defects in this region. It is “out of scope” for our movement to fix America; our efforts to reform and transform is limited to the Caribbean.

‘Republican’ Judges???

This is as opposed to Democratic Judges! Yes, this is a reference to specific political parties in the US. Yet, we are not making these assessments with any political leaning. Rather, this movement behind the Go Lean book and blogs, the SFE Foundation, is an apolitical organization with no favoritism for one political party over the other. In fact, the first 6 commentaries in this Time to Go series were published during the presidential administration of Barack Obama, a Democrat.

The subject of Optimized Criminal Justice is a failing for all previous presidential administrations – though Blacks lean more to the Democrats – see/listen to the AUDIO-Podcast in the Appendix below. This is a familiar theme for this Go Lean commentary. This movement have consistently related the lack of respect for those in America fitting the Black-and-Brown description; consider these prior submissions:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14627	Cop-on-Black Shootings – In America’s DNA
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14413	Repairing the Breach: Hurt People Hurt People
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8202	Lessons Learned from American Dysfunctional Minority Relations
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8200	Climate of Hate for American Minorities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7221	Street naming for Martin Luther King unveils the real America
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5527	American Defects: Racism – Is It Over?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4863	Video of Police Shooting: Worth a Million Words
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4447	Probe of Ferguson, Missouri shows cops & court bias
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=546	Book Review – ‘The Divide’ – Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=341	Hypocritical US slams Caribbean human rights practices

It is a dangerous proposition to be Black in America. This is why this movement consistently urges the Black-and-Brown of the Caribbean to Stay Home! In fact, The Bahamas urged its majority Black population (and the young men) to exercise extreme caution when traveling to the US and dealing with police authorities. There is no doubt that the America of Old – would have been no place for Caribbean people to seek refuge. But now we are asserting that the disposition is still the same:

Our Black-and-Brown Diaspora should plan to repatriate back to the Caribbean
While our young people, in the homeland, should plan to prosper where planted rather than setting their sights on American shores.

Despite the fact that this society – modern America – is still no place for Black-and-Brown Caribbean people to seek refuge, all 30 member-states of the region continue to suffer from an abominable brain drain rate – one report proclaims 70 percent – in which so many Caribbean citizens have emigrated to the US (and other places). We must resist this bad trend! How?!

Good messaging
Heavy-lifting to reform and transform the societal engines

The Go Lean book identifies the reasons why people abandon their homeland as “push and pull”. While the “push” refers to the societal defects that people take refuge from, the “pull” is mostly due to messaging. Our people perceive that the US is better for them, and that landing in the US is the panacea – cure-all – for all societal short-comings. Good messaging will mitigate that trend. Yet, still, we must do the hard work for fixing our society.

The Go Lean book asserts that it is easier for the Black-and-Brown populations in the Caribbean to prosper where planted in the Caribbean, rather than in the United States. Plus, we need these people’s help to reform and transform our society. We need some to lead, and some just to follow. We need some to produce, and some just to consume. We need growth! So abandonment is counter-productive.

This is the quest of the Go Lean/CU roadmap. The book presents 370 pages of instructions for how to reform and transform our Caribbean member-states. It stresses the key community ethos that needs to be adopted, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies necessary to optimize the societal engines in a community. The CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives for optimizing our societal engines:

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 ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

As related in this blog series, it is Time to Go! We have a better chance of optimizing our society in the Caribbean for our Black-and-Brown majority populations than the US will do for our people; we can actually be better than America. Just look, their distinguished judges are still adjudicating like its 1868, and not 2018. America has gone “2 steps forward and 1 step backwards”.

Now is the Time to Go and now is the time to lean-in to this Go Lean/CU roadmap. This quest is conceivable, believable and achievable. Yes, we can … reform and transform our society. We can make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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AUDIO Podcast – Why Did Black Voters Flee The Republican Party In The 1960s? – https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/07/14/331298996/why-did-black-voters-flee-the-republican-party-in-the-1960s

Posted July 14, 2014 – If you’d walked into a gathering of older black folks 100 years ago, you’d have found that most of them would have been Republican.

Wait… what?

Yep. Republican. Party of Lincoln. Party of the Emancipation. Party that pushed not only black votes but black politicians during that post-bellum period known as Reconstruction.

Today, it’s almost the exact opposite. That migration of black voters away from the GOP reached its last phase 50 years ago this week.

…

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‘Time to Go’ – Racist History of Loitering

Posted on June 25, 2018 in Ethos, Planning, Social

Go Lean Commentary

The cruel, inhumane institution of slavery finally ended in the United States … on which date?

January 1, 1863 – with the Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln
April 9, 1865 – with the surrender of the Army of the Confederate States of America by General Robert E. Lee
June 19, 1865 – with the Abolition Declaration in Galveston, Texas (Juneteenth)
December 6, 1865 – Ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution
December 12, 1942 – Prohibition against the Peonage System by Franklin D. Roosevelt – See Appendix
August 6, 1965 – Signing of the Voters Rights Act by Lyndon Johnson, that finally guaranteed citizenship rights.
January 20, 2009 – Inauguration of Barack Obama, First Black Man as US President
Not Quite yet, considering the Cop-on-Black Shootings on American streets, plus the enforcement of loitering laws against Blacks.

This was not meant to be a multiple choice! But rather, these answers demonstrate the continuous flow of racist oppression that had befallen the African-American experience, despite these identifiable dates ending the practices and legacy of America’s Original Sin.

Why so lingering here, when the practice was so much more easily disbanded elsewhere; think British Empire in 1834.

This commentary asserts than the Southern United States – the former Confederate States/Slave States – never embraced the end of slavery because of this philosophical premise here:

“An empire toppled by its enemies can rise again, but one which crumbles from within, is dead forever. ” – Popular Quotation from the Character Baron Zemo in the Marvel film Captain America: Civil Wars

Say it ain’t so! The Confederate South was toppled by its enemies (the non-Slave Northern States), their same spirit of racial superiority rose again. If the South had evolved on their own to assuage their societal defects, things may have been different for the Black minority there among the White majority.

While racial disparity in the US is a national reality, attitudes in the Southern States continued to reflect blatant White Supremacy. Since this was tolerated in the South, there was spin-off in the rest of the country. Truthfully, oppression, suppression and repression of the African race became the community ethos in the whole country: blatant in the South; subtle in the North and in the West. Community ethos is defined as:

The fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society; dominant assumptions of a people or period.

Considering the foregoing historic timeline, loitering laws against African-Americans, is the focus of this commentary. There have been a number of high profile cases of Blacks being discriminated against in general society. See related VIDEO‘s here:

VIDEO 1 – Racist History of Loitering – https://youtu.be/jQuT0gO2X0o

Splinter
Published on May 16, 2018 – What is the line between “loitering” and just “hanging out”? Turns out, the enforcement of loitering laws often has less to do with committing the act and more to do with the skin color of the person who does:

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Category: News & Politics

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VIDEO 2 – Somebody Called The Cops On Me In My Own Building – https://youtu.be/LzQsYc_k4Tk

HuffPost
Published on May 18, 2018 – Someone called the police on him for suspected armed robbery. The reality? He was moving into his New York City apartment.

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Category: News & Politics

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Racial disparity in the US is still a reality. As related in the above VIDEO‘s, “you’re already criminalized when you have Black skin”.

This commentary asserts that it is easier for the Black-and-Brown populations in the Caribbean to prosper where planted in the Caribbean, rather than emigrating to foreign countries, like the United States. So the urging is as follows:

All Black-and-Brown Caribbean people exiling in the US, we entreat you: It’s Time to Go!

All Black-and-Brown people in the Caribbean wanting to emigrate to the US, we entreat you to Stay Home!

This point aligns with the book Go Lean…Caribbean, which states that while the blatant racist attitudes and actions may now be considered politically incorrect, the foundations of institutional racism in the US are entrenched. The book supports the notion that the Caribbean can be an even better place to live for the Caribbean’s Black-and-Brown, once we make the homeland a better place to live, work and play. Our quest is to optimize the economic, security and economic engines in the Caribbean region so as to dissuade our people from leaving and encourage the Diaspora to repatriate.

This commentary – Number 9 – continues a series from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean, in consideration of the rationale to return back to the Caribbean homeland. The other commentaries – published in September 2016 and beyond – detailed in this series are as follows:

Now, we consider 5 new entries along that same theme; they are identified as follows:

Time to Go: Windrush – 70th Anniversary
Time to Go: Mandatory Guns – Say it Ain’t So
Time to Go: Racist History of Loitering
Time to Go: Blacks Get Longer Sentences From ‘Republican’ Judges
Time to Go: States must have Population Increases

All of these commentaries in this series relate to the disposition of the Caribbean Diaspora in foreign countries; in the case of this one, the United States of America. The Go Lean book and movement serves as a roadmap for the introduction of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU is set to optimize Caribbean society through economic, security and governing optimizations. Therefore the Go Lean roadmap has 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 ensure public safety and protect the economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The Go Lean roadmap posits that the Caribbean region is in crisis now, and so many are quick to flee for refuge in foreign countries. But the “grass is not necessarily greener on the other side”. Here in the Caribbean, Black-and-Brown people are not arrested for being Black-and-Brown – they are the majority population. But they are a minority in the US; and that society is definitely not optimized for Caribbean people.

The Go Lean book asserts that every community has bad actors. The Caribbean has bad actors; and the US has bad actors. But because of the obvious need for reform and to transform the region, it may be easier to effect change at home, than in the foreign country of the US. Besides, many (non-Black) people in the US, don’t even think they need to change anything. They think there is no problem – they are perfectly allowed to call the police because a Black person is in their presence … loitering, or drinking coffee, or studying, or moving.

African Americans may have no where else to go, but the Black-and-Brown of the Caribbean can go back to the Caribbean. This is the urging now: It’s Time to Go!

This was a motivation of the Go Lean roadmap, we have to prepare for the Diaspora’s return; we have to fix our defects and mitigate for our “bad actors”; bad actors always emerge. 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 of criminology and penology to assuage continuous threats against public safety. The Federation must allow for facilitations of detention for [domestic and foreign] convicted felons of federal crimes, and should over-build prisons to house trustees from other jurisdictions.

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 pact to ensure public safety and justice assurance is part of the comprehensive effort of reforming the societal engines in our region. Security lapses are among the reasons why people left – they were pushed to seek refuge. So better delivering on the Social Contract – citizens surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the State in exchange for protection of remaining natural and legal rights – sends the message that we are readying the homeland for our far-flung Diaspora to finally come home.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society. Accepting that we have been inadequate in delivering security needs to our citizens in the past, we must now do better, not just in security promises, but in security deliveries. In addition, the Go Lean movement have presented many previous blog-commentaries on regional security and the assurance of public safety; consider this sample here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14482	International Women’s Day – Protecting Rural Women
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14424	Repairing the Breach: Crime – Need, Greed, Justice & Honor
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13664	Managing High Profile Sexual Harassment Accusations
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13476	Future Focused – Policing the Police
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13126	The Requirement for Better Security – ‘Must Love Dogs’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12400	Accede the Caribbean Regional Arrest Treaty
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10959	See Something, Say Something … Do Something
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10566	Funding the Caribbean Security Pact
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10222	Waging a Successful War on ‘Terrorism’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9072	Securing the Homeland – A Series featuring “On the Ground, Air and Sea”
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5002	Managing a ‘Clear and Present Danger’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4360	Dreading the American: ‘Caribbean Basin Security Initiative’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4308	911 – Improving Emergency Response

The Go Lean roadmap was composed with the community ethos of the Greater Good – the greatest good for the greatest number of people – Black, Brown, White, Yellow or Red. We advocate for a pluralistic democracy …

… and justice for all.

While this is an American concept … in words only, we have the opportunity to manifest this in the Caribbean. America does many things right, but they feature a lot of societal defects still, so we have the opportunity to do a pluralistic democracy Better than America.

This is the quest of the Go Lean/CU roadmap. We urge all Caribbean stakeholders to lean-in to this roadmap to elevate the Caribbean; to make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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APPENDIX – The Bottom Line on Peonage – Book: Go Lean … Caribbean (Page 211)

Peonage, involuntary servitude, existed historically during the colonial period, especially in Latin America and areas of Spanish rule, as well as in the Southern United States … after slavery was abolished. These States passed “Black Codes” to control the freed “Black” population. Peonage was essentially debt slavery, where a person was held against their will to work off an alleged debt to someone who had purchased them. This was the language, buying and selling, that was used for inmates purchased from county jails and state prison systems. They often declared as vagrant those who were [simply] unemployed.

Under such laws, local officials arbitrarily arrested tens of thousands, and charged them with fines and court costs. (By the beginning of the 20th century, 40% of blacks in the South were imprisoned in peonage). Merchants, farmers or business owners could pay their debts, and the prisoners had to work off the debt. Prisoners were “sold” or leased as forced laborers to operators of coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries and farm plantations, with the fees for their labor going to the States. Overseers often used severe deprivation, beatings and other abuses as “discipline”.

By 1942, the jail/prison peonage system came to an end with public exposure of the abuses and atrocities, advances of the American Communist movement, congressional hearings and public outcry.

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‘Time to Go’ – Mandatory Guns: “Say it Ain’t So”

Posted on June 23, 2018 in Implementation, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

There is that Biblical directive:

Live by the Sword; Die by the Sword – Matthew 26:52

While the reference is here to the weapon of a sword, the truism of this statement applies to any weapon.

So for our American counterparts, this version is apropos: “Live by the Gun; Die by the Gun”.

Consider the recent school shootings and mass shootings, is there any doubt to the fulfillment of these words: America and guns go hand in hand.

Here’s proof! See this news article here; here this town in Georgia tried to mandate that every home own a gun. This is real! See the article & VIDEO here:

Title: Georgia City Loses Battle Over Mandatory Gun Ownership Law, Affirms Right Not To Bear Arms
By: Nick Wing

The small city of Nelson, [Georgia], agreed Thursday to revise an ordinance passed earlier this year that required every household to own a gun.

The measure, passed in April, drew nationwide attention for attempting to make gun and ammunition ownership mandatory. The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a national gun control group, sued Nelson over the law, claiming it was unconstitutional to make those demands of its citizens.

Nelson settled the suit this week when the city council unanimously approved a motion to amend the ordinance, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Here are the additions to the text:

WHEREAS, many members of the City Council believe that possessing a firearm in the home is an effective means to defend residents and the community; and

WHEREAS, the City Council also recognizes that there are other means available to defend families and homes, and the Constitution protects the rights of Americans to choose not to possess a firearm or bring one into the home….

The Brady Center applauded the city council’s decision in a statement:

“The Constitution protects not just the right to bear arms, but the right not to bear arms,” said Jonathan Lowy, Director of the Legal Action Project at the Brady Center. “The Brady Center brought this lawsuit to establish that the Constitution protects the rights of gun owners and non-gun owners alike, and all of us must be respectful of each other’s rights. We are pleased that as a result of our lawsuit the City of Nelson has recognized that the Second Amendment protects the rights of the hundreds of millions of Americans who believe that the best way to keep themselves and their families safe is by keeping guns out of their homes.”

While the idea of mandatory gun ownership is clearly a divisive one, many people on both sides of the issue pointed out that Nelson’s push was never likely to have been enforced. As the Associated Press reported in April, the ordinance had exemptions for convicted felons, those who suffer from certain physical or mental disabilities, and anyone who generally objects to gun ownership.

Lamar Kellett, a Brady Center member and one of Nelson’s 1,317 residents, was concerned that the law could lead to his being punished for opting not to own a firearm, so he sued. On Thursday, he called Nelson’s changes an “acceptable solution.”

Other mandatory gun ownership laws, meanwhile, remain in place largely without controversy. Kennesaw, Ga. has had such a measure on the books since 1982, though the law is rarely enforced, and some residents reportedly opt to ignore it.

Source: Huffington Post; Posted August 23, 2013; retrieved June 22, 2018: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/23/nelson-georgia-guns_n_3805292.html

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VIDEO – Guns for everybody: Georgia town makes firearm ownership mandatory – https://youtu.be/e6DELdrYZuI

RT America
Published on Apr 2, 2013 – The city council in the town of Nelson, Georgia voted unanimously in favor of every resident possessing a gun at their homes. Now it’s compulsory for all of them, and Nelson isn’t the only US town to vote for a measure like this. RT’s Liz Wahl explains.

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Or watch us online: http://rt.com/on-air/rt-america-air/

Category: News & Politics

License: Standard YouTube License

Say it Ain’t So! Is this the life that Caribbean people want? It should not be!

Yet, we are losing so many of our people to this eventuality. Our people leave due to “Push and Pull” reasons. “Push” refers to the societal defects in the Caribbean that moves people to want to get way; and “pull” factors refer to the impressions and perceptions that America is better. Surely a mandatory gun culture is not better!

The purpose of this commentary is to relate two strong points of contention:

We need to dissuade the high emigration rates of Caribbean citizens to the American homeland.
We need to encourage the Caribbean Diaspora to repatriate back to their ancestral homeland.

According to the foregoing article, American life is to “live by the sword/gun and die by the sword/gun”. Despite all the efforts to change this disposition, America’s consistency with guns continue, even now to the point that some communities want to mandate that every household have a gun. This is not the case in the Caribbean.

Yippee! If only, we can “prosper where planted” there. Yes, we can!

This commentary and the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean asserts that “yes, we can” reform and transform our Caribbean homeland so as to be better places to live, work and play. Where as, Caribbean communities can be elevated and improved, we already comply with common sense gun control, there is no hope for this in America – guns are in their DNA. (Good luck to American Youth demanding change).

For all Caribbean people in America who want a more sound life – gun wise – we entreat you: It is Time to Go.

This commentary is a continuation of a series from the Go Lean movement, in consideration of reasons why the Diaspora should repatriate back to the Caribbean homeland. There was an original 6-part series in 2016, with these submissions:

Now, we consider 5 new entries along that same theme; they are identified as follows:

Time to Go: Windrush – 70th Anniversary
Time to Go: Mandatory Guns – Say it Ain’t So
Time to Go: Racist History of Loitering
Time to Go: Blacks Get Longer Sentences From ‘Republican’ Judges
Time to Go: States must have Population Increases

All of these commentaries relate to the disposition of the Caribbean Diaspora in foreign countries. The Go Lean book and movement serves as a roadmap for the introduction of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU is set to optimize Caribbean society through economic, security and governing optimizations. Therefore the Go Lean roadmap has 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 ensure public safety – including regional gun violence abatements – and protect the economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The “push and pull” factors do imperil Caribbean life. We push our citizens out. Then the resultant effect is a brain drain and even more endangerment to our society: less skilled workers, less entrepreneurs, less law-abiding citizens, less capable public servants – we lose our best and leave the communities with the rest. This create a crisis. The Go Lean roadmap posits that the entire Caribbean is now in crisis; so many of our citizens have fled for refuge in the US and other foreign countries, but the refuge is a mirage. The “grass is not necessarily greener on the other side”. Life in the US, is definitely not optimized – can you imagine living in a community where everyone is mandated to have a gun.

Yes, there is a challenge to reform and transform communities in the US; and there is a challenge to reform and transform communities in the Caribbean. It is easier though, to fix the Caribbean than to fix the American eco-system. So it is Time to Go, so our Caribbean people can do the work to prosper where planted in their Caribbean communities.

Why not simply try to fix America?

The history and DNA of America may be beyond our reach.

Just consider:

Who benefits from a mandatory gun ownership policy?

The Retail Stores and gun manufacturers!

This is Crony-Capitalism at work – exploiting the public good for private profit.

Also underlying the Second Amendment (of the US Constitution) is the white supremacy defect. This ignominious Second Amendment; is a product of the previous Slave Culture, as one original motivation in 1791 was to suppress insurrection, allegedly including slave revolts ^[60][61][62]. A previous blog-commentary entitled 10 Things We Want from the US and 10 Things We Don’t Want from the US detailed this rationale:

The “right to bear arms” has a personal application beyond the country’s entitlement to maintain a militia. This “right” has been interpreted in a manner in which any normal “man” can get possession of guns and other armament. This proliferation of guns in society results in the highest rate of gun violence in the world, even an unconscionable rate of school shootings.

The Go Lean roadmap purports that this status has also caused discord – a gross abuse and availability of illegal guns – in bordering communities of Mexico, and Caribbean states of the Bahamas, and the DR. This propels our gun-related crime.

The US still has some societal defects – racism and Crony-Capitalism for example – that are so imbrued that they are tied to the country’s DNA. This is why the Go Lean movement posits that it is easier to effect change at home in the Caribbean, than in the foreign country of the US.

In a previous blog-commentary, a thesis was presented that for Caribbean citizens, it is NOT better to live “fast & furious” in the US, but rather it is better to prosper where planted in the Caribbean homeland. Life in the US may experience a shorter mortality due to the riskier reality, like this dangerous gun culture – this is not just theory, a Caribbean Diaspora’s daughter was killed in the Parkland School Shooting in February 2018. And yet, our Caribbean communities are losing people more and more to the US with our atrocious societal abandonment rates.

While we are declaring that it is “Time to Go“, we are also preparing for the return – fixing our economic, security and governing defects. Our goal is to be an American protégé and not a parasite; maybe to even be Better Than America.

If this is going to be, it starts with me – being residential in the Caribbean homeland. Time to Go!

The vision of the CU is a confederation of the 30 member-states of the Caribbean to do the heavy-lifting of championing better economic and security policies. There is the structure of a separation-of-powers between CU agencies and the individual member-states. So the CU will be able to do more independently than the regional status quo, while also helping to elevate the status quo security deliveries in the 30 member-states.

The Go Lean roadmap provides turn-by-turn directions on how to reform the Caribbean security apparatus to better secure Caribbean society as a whole. This roadmap concedes that the Caribbean is in crisis, but that this “crisis would be a terrible thing to waste”. As a planning tool, the roadmap commences with a Declaration of Interdependence, pronouncing the approach of regional integration (Page 12 – 13) as a viable solution to elevate the region’s societal engines:

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.

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.

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 …

Change has now come. The driver of this change is globalization. Caribbean people have been emigrating in their search for a better life. Nelson, Georgia – from the foregoing article – should not be that destination. Nor should any community that refuses to implement common sense gun control. The bottom-line should not include sacrificing our children. The bottom-line motive should be the Greater Good – “the greatest good for the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong – not profit, prejudice nor emigration.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to transform the societal engines of Caribbean society, regarding guns and gun control. In addition, the Go Lean movement have presented many previous blog-commentaries on regional security and common-sense provisions to remediate and mitigate crime and violence. See this sample here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14596	Forging Change – Corporate Vigilantism To Help with Guns
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14556	Observing the Change … with Guns
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13746	Failure to Launch – Security: Caribbean Basin Security Dreams
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13476	Future Focused – Policing the Police
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13213	Caribbean People ‘Pulled’ – Despite American Guns
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13126	“Must Love Dogs” – Providing K9 Solutions for Better Security
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12400	Accede the Caribbean Arrest Treaty
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11332	Boston Bombing Anniversary – Learning Lessons
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11244	Live Fast; Die Young – The Fast & Furious Life in the US
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11048	Managing the ‘Strong versus the Weak’ Series – Mitigating Bullies
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9072	Model: Shots-Fired Monitoring – Securing the Homeland on the Ground
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7485	Mitigating Interpersonal Violence Series – Street Crimes

In the Caribbean, we need to dissuade our people from leaving … and incentivize many of the Diaspora to return. We need our people to help us reform and transform our societies. Fleeing to America is not the answer! The grass is not greener on the other side. There are far too many guns in America for that society to be inviting. No, America is not the panacea for all of the Caribbean ills. To the contrary, we must reform and transform our own society.

The Go Lean/CU roadmap asserts that now is the time for all of the Caribbean – residents and Diaspora – to lean-in for the empowerments described here in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. This is conceivable, believable and achievable that we can elevate our homeland and to make our communities better places to live, work and play.

Now is the Time to Go … home! 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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‘Time to Go’ – Windrush: 70th Anniversary Today – ENCORE

Posted on June 22, 2018 in Ethos, Government, Social

On 22 June 1948, the ship HMT Empire Windrush brought a group of 802 migrants to the port of Tilbury, near London, England. – Wikipedia

Thus started the drain!

The Brain Drain that is. What started as a “drip has now turned into a drizzle”. After 70 years exactly, the jury is now in. The verdict is emphatic:

Time to Go!

“Frankly, the Caribbean Diaspora … can now do better at home … in the Caribbean.” – This was the assertion from this previous blog-commentary from July 10, 2014. Today, on the 70th anniversary of the Windrush landing with its African Caribbean arrivals; it is time now to Encore that submission – see below.

African Caribbean people may not be so welcomed in the British Isles right now, anyway. See the latest on the Windrush Controversy in the Appendix VIDEO below.

This Encore continues a series from 2016, with these entries:

Now, we consider 5 new entries along that same theme; they are identified as follows:

Time to Go: Windrush – 70th Anniversary
Time to Go: Mandatory Guns – Say it Ain’t So
Time to Go: Racist History of Loitering
Time to Go: Blacks Get Longer Sentences From ‘Republican’ Judges
Time to Go: States must have Population Increases

All of these commentaries relate to the Caribbean Diaspora’s disposition in foreign lands, asserting that it is Time to Go … home! See that Encore now:

———————

Go Lean Commentary – British public sector workers strike over ‘poverty pay’

The grass is not greener on the other side.

Go from being a big fish in small pond, to small fish in big pond.

These expressions are relevant in considering the fate of so many Caribbean Diaspora that had fled their Caribbean homelands over the past decades to take residence in Great Britain. Many of them sought refuge as career civil servants; (one reason ^[a] was the acute racism and intolerance encountered in private enterprises). These ones are faced with the harsh reality that pay scales in the public sector have not kept pace with inflation; they are now at poverty level. See the news article here:

By: Tess Little (Editing by Stephen Addison)

LONDON (Reuters) – Hundreds of thousands of public sector workers including teachers, council workers and firefighters staged a 24-hour pay strike on Thursday in a stoppage that has prompted Prime Minister David Cameron to pledge a crackdown on union powers.

Protesters marched through the streets of many of Britain’s main cities in one of the biggest co-ordinated labour stoppages for three years.

Denouncing what they called “poverty pay,” they demanded an end to restrictions on wage rises that have been imposed by the government over the past four years in an effort to help reduce Britain’s huge budget deficit.

In London, demonstrators marched towards Trafalgar Square at midday, chanting “Low pay, no way, no slave labour” to the beat of a drum. A giant pair of inflatable scissors, carried by members of the National Union of Teachers (NUT), read “Education cuts never heal.”

Firefighter Simon Amos, 47, marched wearing his uniform behind a flashing fire engine parading members of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU). “The government [is] making us pay more for our pension for it to be worth the same, and making us work longer,” he said.

The biggest public sector union involved, Unison, said early reports showed the strike had led to 3,225 school closures with more than 1,000 others partially closed.

Refuse collectors, school support staff, cleaners, street sweepers, care workers, nursery assistants and social workers were joining the strike, it added.

Hot spots, it said, included the North East, Wales and East Midlands where most council offices had closed, while more than 60 picket lines have closed most services in Newcastle.

“It is a massive decision by local government and school support workers to sacrifice a day’s pay by going on strike, but today they are saying enough is enough,” said Unison General Secretary, Dave Prentis in a statement.

Britain’s coalition government has enforced a policy of pay restraint for public sector workers since coming to power in 2010, imposing a pay freeze until 2012 and then a one percent pay rise cap, resulting in a fall in income in real terms [compared to inflation].

The Cabinet Office played down the impact of the strike, saying that most schools in England and Wales were open and that fire services were operating throughout the country.

On Wednesday, Cameron told parliament he planned to limit unions’ powers to call strikes.

“How can it possibly be right for our children’s education to be disrupted by trade unions acting in this way” he said.

Tough new laws would be proposed in the Conservative manifesto for next year’s general election, he added.

These would include the introduction of a minimum threshold in the number of union members who need to take part in a strike ballot for it to be legal.

The manifesto could also back the introduction of a time limit on how long a vote in favour of industrial action would remain valid.

The NUT mandate for Thursday’s strike, for example, came from a 2012 strike ballot based on a turnout of just 27 percent, Cameron said.

The issue of minimum voting thresholds last arose three months ago when a strike by London Underground train drivers caused huge disruption in the capital, prompting Mayor Boris Johnson to demand that at least half of a union’s members should vote in favour for a strike to go ahead.
Source: Reuters News Service; retrieved 07/10/2014 from: http://news.yahoo.com/public-sector-workers-strike-over-poverty-pay-105040672.html

Frankly, the Caribbean Diaspora employed in the British public sector can now do better at home … in the Caribbean.

This is the assertion of the book Go Lean…Caribbean. That once the proposed empowerments are put in place, the Caribbean Diaspora should consider repatriating to their ancestral homelands.

Unfortunately for the Caribbean, this societal abandonment has continued, since the early days of the “Windrush Generation”^[a] right up to now. In a recent blog post, this commentary related analysis by the Inter-American Development Bank that the Caribbean endures a brain drain of 70% among the college educated population; (https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1433).

Change has now come to the Caribbean.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This roadmap will spearhead the elevation of Caribbean society. The prime directives of the CU are presented as the following 3 statements:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy & create 2.2 million new jobs at home.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The book posits that the improved conditions projected over the 5 years of the roadmap will neutralize the impetus for Caribbean citizens to flee, identified as “push and pull” factors. This point is stressed early in the book (Page 13) in the following pronouncements in the opening Declaration of Interdependence:

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.

This foregoing article highlights other issues that have been prominently addressed in the Go Lean book, namely that of the Civil Service and Labor Relations. There is the need for a professional staff in the Federal Civil Service. They require marketable benefits and compensation. There is also a role for Labor Unions to play in the elevation of Caribbean society. The Go Lean roadmap envisions an inclusionary attitude towards unions. The Go Lean community ethos is that of being partners with unions, not competitors. The book features specific tools and techniques that can enhance management-labor relationships.

These issues constitute heavy-lifting for the regional administration of the Caribbean:

fostering best practices for federal civil service and labor unions,
minimizing the brain drain, and
facilitating repatriation to the homeland.

These issues cannot be glossed over or handled lightly; this is why the Go Lean book contains 370 pages of finite details for managing change in the region. The book contains the following sample of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to impact the Caribbean homeland:

Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Choices & Incentives	Page 21
Community Ethos – The Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future	Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier	Page 22
Community Ethos – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Return on Investments	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Negotiations	Page 32
Strategy – Competition – Remain home –vs- Emigrate	Page 49
Strategy – Agents of Change – Aging Diaspora	Page 57
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Versus Member-States Governments	Page 71
Implementation – Year 1 / Assemble Phase – Establish Civil Service	Page 96
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Implementation – Trade Mission Objectives	Page 116
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate	Page 118
Anecdote – Experiences of a Repatriated Resident	Page 126
Planning – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean Region	Page 127
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Labor Unions	Page 164
Advocacy – Ways to Manage Federal Civil Service	Page 173
Anecdote – Experiences of Diaspora Member Living Abroad	Page 216
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Diaspora	Page 217

The Go Lean roadmap has simple motives: fix the problems in the homeland to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work, learn and play. There should be no need to go abroad and try to foster an existence in a foreign land. So for those of Caribbean heritage working in the British Civil Service, we hear your pleas. Our response: Come home; come in from the cold.

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people residing in the homeland and those of the Diaspora, to lean-in for the empowerments described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. This Big Idea for the region is a dramatic change; one that is overdue. The policies & practices of the past have failed Caribbean society. Too many people left, yet have little to show for it.

Caribbean music icon Bob Marley advocated this same charter for the Caribbean Diaspora. He sang to “come in from the cold” in the opening song of his last album Uprisings in 1980. How “spot-on’ were his words in the following music/video:

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

———————

Appendix – Cited Reference
a: “There was plenty of work in post-war Britain and industries such as British Rail, the National Health Service and public transport recruited almost exclusively from Jamaica and Barbados”. Retrieved July 10, 2014 from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_African-Caribbean_people#The_.22Windrush_generation.22

——————–

Appendix VIDEO – How will the UK solve the Windrush controversy? | Inside Story – https://youtu.be/GYUag4XYhFo

Al Jazeera English

Published on Apr 17, 2018 – They are called the “Windrush generation”. That is a refefence to the ship, the Empire Windrush, that carried the first wave of immigrants from the West Indies to Britain in 1948. Many arrvied as children on their parents’ passports – and have lived in the UK for over 70 years, paying taxes and insurance, but never formally becoming British Citizens. Now, as the government tightens its immigration rules, those without the proper documents are being denied services and could even face deportation. Some are calling it ‘cruel and inhumane’ treatment. The government has apologised and it’s promsing an investigation. But will that be enough?
Presenter: Peter Dobbie Guests Sally Daghlian – CEO of Praxis, an organisation that provides assistance to people affected by the Windrush controversy. Clive Foster – member of the Nottingham Citizens Group.

Category: Shows

License: Standard YouTube License

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Civil Rights, Diaspora, UK

[Top]

e-Government 3.0

Posted on June 20, 2018 in Government, Implementation

Go Lean Commentary

What if we had the chance to “start all over again”, with the knowledge, wisdom and experience that we have now? Could we do “it” faster, stronger, better? Can we do more with less?

Absolutely! Yes, we can!

Work it harder
Make it better
Do it faster
Make us stronger – 2001 Song Lyrics by group Daft Punk

The “it” in this case, is the governance for the Caribbean, the stewardship and shepherding of the 30 member-states that constitute the political Caribbean. (This includes the 2 South American countries – Guyana and Suriname – along with the Central American country of Belize).

There is the need now to reboot, reform or transform all 3 societal engines of the Caribbean region: economics, security and governance. While the first 2 engines can be reformed, there is the opportunity to launch a whole layer of governance. This is the purpose of the book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free – to introduce and implement the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for this new federal government. We will therefore be in a position to “start all over again” and create an administrative regime that can make the Caribbean homeland faster, stronger, better as places to live, work and play. This regime can be dubbed:

e-Government 3.0.

e-Government 1.0 refers to just the facilitation of government services via some electronic mode, the first attempt to embrace an online presence and processing; 2.0 refers to the quest for greater citizen participation in the governing/policy-making process, “putting government in the hands of citizens”.^[54] This 3.0 brand however, refers to the penultimate e-Delivery, processing and optimization of ICT (Internet & Communications Technologies) among all the different roles and responsibilities. Imagine digital interactions …

between a citizen and their government (C2G)
between governments and other government agencies (G2G)
between government and citizens (G2C)
between government and employees (G2E), and …
between government and businesses/commercial entities (G2B).

If this sounds fantastical, just know that there are successful role model countries doing this e-Government 3.0 right now. For example, the Baltic Republic country of Estonia is widely recognized as e-Estonia, as a reference to its tech-savvy government and society.^[98] (Until recently – 1991 – Estonia was a Failing-State as a member of the USSR or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). Today, e-Estonia is recognized as the leader in implementing block-chain technology into its e-government infrastructure.^[99] See more on their 3.0 offering in the Appendices below, including a White Paper in Appendix B. Also see the VIDEO on Estonia in Appendix C.

e-Government schemes are win-win …

The ultimate goal of e-Government is to be able to offer an increased portfolio of public services to citizens in an efficient and cost effective manner. e-Government allows for government transparency. Government transparency is important because it allows the public to be informed about what the government is working on as well as the policies they are trying to implement. Simple tasks may be easier to perform through electronic government access. Many changes, such as marital status or address changes can be a long process and take a lot of paper work for citizens. e-Government allows these tasks to be performed efficiently with more convenience to individuals. e-Government is an easy way for the public to be more involved in political campaigns. It could increase voter awareness, which could lead to an increase in citizen participation in elections. It is convenient and cost-effective for businesses, and the public benefits by getting easy access to the most current information available without having to spend time, energy and money to get it.

e-Government helps simplify processes and makes government information more easily accessible for public sector agencies and citizens. For example, the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles simplified the process of certifying driver records to be admitted in county court proceedings.^[34] Indiana became the first state to allow government records to be digitally signed, legally certified and delivered electronically by using Electronic Postmark technology. In addition to its simplicity, e-democracy services can reduce costs. Alabama Department of Conservation & Natural Resources, Wal-Mart and NIC^[35] developed an online hunting and fishing license service utilizing an existing computer to automate the licensing process. More than 140,000 licenses were purchased at Wal-Mart stores during the first hunting season and the agency estimates it will save $200,000 annually from service.^[36]

The anticipated benefits of e-government include efficiency, improved services, better accessibility of public services, sustainable community development and more transparency and accountability.^[22]

Source: Retrieved June 19, 2018 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-government#Advantages

There is no doubt that the operations of government are necessary for a functioning society. There is an implied Social Contract that states “that citizens surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the State in exchange for protection of remaining natural and legal rights”. The more efficiency a State displays in delivering its obligations to its citizens, the better for the State, and the citizens. Where there is failure in this delivery, people … leave or flee!

Human flight and societal abandonment is already a characteristic of the Caribbean today. So we must explore the viability and feasibility of e-Government schemes in the new Caribbean, as rebooting the governing engines is part-and-parcel of the Go Lean roadmap. In fact, 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 to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

In a previous Go Lean commentary, it was revealed that the government is the largest employer in each Caribbean member-state. So to foster change, it is necessary to engage the governing processes. How can we improve Caribbean governance so as to bring change to our society? Answer: Deploy these functional areas of new electronic systems:

e-License
e-Payments
e-Cadastre (Property Taxes eco-system)
e-Draft (Proposed legislation)
e-Register
e-Announcement
e-Tax
e-IP (Patents)
e-Visa (Consulate Applications)
e-Signature
e-Voting
e-Residency (Virtual ID Card; see Appendix B)

e-Government services are among the strategies, tactics and implementations in the Go Lean roadmap for elevating Caribbean society. While the new federal government will embrace these above e-Systems, the existing governmental structures – municipal, state and NGO’s – can also benefit from the economies-of-scale. See how this functionality is portrayed in the book (Page 51):

The CU’s delivery of ICT [(Internet & Communications Technologies)] systems, e-Government, contact center and in-source services (i.e. property tax systems [and www.myCaribbean.gov]) can put the burden on systems continuity at the federal level and not the member-states. (This is the model of Canada with the federal delivery of provincial systems and services – some Provincial / Territorial presence / governance is completely “virtual”).

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn directions on how to deliver on the ICT promise. The book describes “how” Caribbean communities can adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform our homeland. Consider one advocacy in particular on Page 168; see here some excerpts, summaries and headlines from the Chapter entitled:

10 Ways to Improve Governance in the Caribbean Region

1	Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market The CU will adopt a “Right to Good Governance” in its charter; thereby bringing accountability beyond state borders. The CU’s initiatives allow for more effective governance by separating many duties that are now managed on a national level to a federal level within the CU. So national governments will perform less services, and with the dividends from the CU, more revenues to control. But with these benefits come greater fiscal accountability.
2	Currency Union & Monetary Control
3	e-Government & e-Delivery e-Government services for a lot of government functionality will allow economies of scale with regional governments sharing the same systems. This is envisioned for property records-tax assessment-collections, income taxes, auto registrations, vital records, human resources-payroll, and regulatory-compliance-audit functionality. In addition, a lot of government services will be delivered electronically: email, cash disbursements on a card-based benefits card (see Appendix ZV on Page 353), ACH and electronic funds transfer measure for expenditures and revenue collections.
4	Better (and New) Revenue Management
5	Economic Sanctions and Penalties
6	Consolidation of Outstanding Debt
7	CU Capital Markets
8	Economic Crimes and Bankruptcy Jurisdiction
9	Postal Modernization The CU will assume the responsibility for mail service in the region with modernized systems and processes to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness: zone improvement (ZIP) codes, postal barcodes, sorting-collating equipment, “last-leg-electronic-postal”. The Caribbean Postal Union will deploy thousands of “neighborhood centralized mail box” locations for delivery and collection. All postal employees of the member-states will become Federal Civil Servants.
10	Prison Industrial Labor

The CU will launch the www.myCaribbean.gov on Day One/Step One of this important roadmap. This portal, resembling a social media site, will also be accessible from a smart-phone. So citizens can interact for their government from the palm of their hands. Consider how e-Government and e-Delivery have been portrayed in this sample of previous blog-commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13524	Future Focused – e-Government Portal 101
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10513	Transforming ‘Money’ Countrywide
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8823	China’s WeChat: Model for Caribbean Social Media
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7991	Transformations: Caribbean Postal Union – Delivering the Future
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7034	The Future of Money
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=888	How to Re-invent Government in a Digital Image – Book Review

We must reform and transform our Caribbean governing engines. We can easily accomplish this with the new CU Trade Federation – a new federal government.

This is not an option. We have a chance to start over again, and do things right! We can be faster, stronger and better. This is exactly what our region needs right now – e-Government 3.0. We urge all stakeholders to lean-in to this CU/Go Lean roadmap to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

————

Appendix A – Estonia takes the plunge
Sub-title: A national identity scheme goes global

The founders of the internet were academics who took users’ identities on trust. When only research co-operation was at stake, this was reasonable. But the lack of secure identification is now hampering the development of e-commerce and the provision of public services online. In day-to-day life, from banking to dating, if you don’t know who you are dealing with, you are vulnerable to fraud or deceit, or will have to submit to cumbersome procedures such as scanning and uploading documents to prove who you are.

Much work has gone into making systems that can recognise and verify digital IDs. A standard called OpenID Connect, organised by an international non-profit foundation, was launched this year. Mobile-phone operators have started a complementary service, Mobile Connect, which allows identities of all kinds to be authenticated from smartphones.

But providing a digital ID that will be widely used and trusted is far harder. Businesses can check their employees rigorously, and issue credentials for gaining access to buildings, computers and the like. But what about outside the workplace? Facebook, Google and Twitter are all trying to make their accounts a form of ID. But these are issued without verification, so pseudonyms are rife and impersonation easy.

Private providers are offering their own schemes; miiCard, for example, uses bank accounts as a way of issuing a verified online identity. But these fall short of the reliability of a state-backed identity, issued by a government official, checked against other databases, using biometric data (such as fingerprints and retinal scans) and backed by law—in effect an electronic passport.

There is one place where this cyberdream is already reality. Secure, authenticated identity is the birthright of every Estonian: before a newborn even arrives home, the hospital will have issued a digital birth certificate and his health insurance will have been started automatically. All residents of the small Baltic state aged 15 or over have electronic ID cards, which are used in health care, electronic banking and shopping, to sign contracts and encrypt e-mail, as tram tickets, and much more besides—even to vote.

Estonia’s approach makes life efficient: taxes take less than an hour to file, and refunds are paid within 48 hours. By law, the state may not ask for any piece of information more than once, people have the right to know what data are held on them and all government databases must be compatible, a system known as the X-road. In all, the Estonian state offers 600 e-services to its citizens and 2,400 to businesses.

Estonia’s system uses suitably hefty encryption. Only a minimum of private data are kept on the ID card itself. Lost cards can simply be cancelled. And in over a decade, no security breaches have been reported. Also issued are two PIN codes, one for authentication (proving who the holder is) and one for authorisation (signing documents or making payments). Asked to authenticate a user, the service concerned queries a central database to check that the card and relevant code match. It also asks for only the minimum information needed: to check a customer’s age, for example, it does not ask, “How old is this person?” but merely, “Is this person over 18?”

Other governments have tried to issue electronic identity cards. But costs have been high and public resistance strong. Some have proved careless custodians of their citizens’ data. There are fears of snooping. Britain had spent £257m ($370m) of a planned £4.5 billion on a much-criticised ID card scheme by the time the current coalition government scrapped it after coming to office in 2010.

That has left a gap in the global market—one that Estonia hopes to fill. Starting later this year, it will issue ID cards to non-resident “satellite Estonians”, thereby creating a global, government-standard digital identity. Applicants will pay a small fee, probably around €30-50 ($41-68), and provide the same biometric data and documents as Estonian residents. If all is in order, a card will be issued, or its virtual equivalent on a smartphone (held on a special secure module in the SIM card).

Some good ideas never take off because too few people embrace them. And with just 1.3m residents, Estonia is a tiddler—even with the 10m satellite Estonians the government hopes to add over the next decade. What may provide the necessary scale is a European Union rule soon to come into force that will require member states to accept each others’ digital IDs. That means non-resident holders of Estonian IDs, wherever they are, will be able not only to send each other encrypted e-mail and to prove their identity to web-service providers who accept government-issued identities, but also to do business with governments anywhere in the EU.

Estonia is being “very clever”, says Stéphanie de Labriolle of the Secure Identity Alliance, an international working group. Marie Austenaa of the GSMA, a global association of mobile-phone firms, praises it too. Allan Foster of ForgeRock, a firm that is working on government ID schemes in Belgium, New Zealand and elsewhere, thinks that the new satellite Estonians will help change attitudes to secure digital identities in their own countries, too.

The scheme’s advantages for Estonia are multiple. It will help it shed the detested “ex-Soviet” tag and promote itself as a paragon of good government and innovation. It will attract investment: once you have an Estonian ID, setting up a company there takes only a few minutes. And it will create an electronic diaspora all over the world with a stake in the country’s survival—no small matter at a time when the threat from Russia is keenly felt. (Estonia is also planning to back up all its national data to secure “digital embassies” in friendly foreign countries.)

Struck by the X-road’s scalability and security, and the fact that it has already worked well for over a decade, Finland and other countries are adopting the Estonian system in whole or in part. But for foreign individuals, perhaps its greatest appeal is that it is optional. Those who like the system’s convenience, security and flexibility can apply (though Estonia’s chief information officer, Taavi Kotka, who is taking time away from his real-life job running an IT company, stresses that the ID is a privilege, not a right). Those who feel queasy about a foreign state having access to their personal data can steer clear.

Mr Kotka says that Estonia aims to do for identity what American Express cards did for international travel in the 1960s: to simplify life. But the bigger point is that government-verified identity has been divorced from location. If Estonia’s scheme takes off some other countries may well decide to follow its lead. Some may aim at volume; others, to target the top end, as with the market in non-resident investors’ passports. Soon, multiple satellite citizenship may even become the norm.

Source: The Economist Magazine – Posted June 28, 2018; retrieved June 20, 2018 from: https://web.archive.org/web/20140701170642/http://www.economist.com/news/international/21605923-national-identity-scheme-goes-global-estonia-takes-plunge

————

Appendix B – Estonia: A model for e-Government
Abstract
Over the next decade, the population of Estonia is expected to soar more than 600% as the country becomes the first in the world to open its borders to an influx of e-residents.

Estonia: A model for e-Government. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277943805_Estonia_A_model_for_e-government [accessed Jun 19 2018].

————

Appendix C VIDEO – Estonia Built the Society of the Future from Scratch – https://youtu.be/cHkIfiTGmzo

Beme News
Published on Jan 10, 2018 – A tech revolution is going down in Estonia…of all places. The tiny Baltic nation has built a futuristic, digital-first society. Lou explains how it works, why it works, and if it will work elsewhere.

Sources & Further Reading:
E-Estonia’ official website – https://e-estonia.com/
Estonia the Digital Republic – https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20…
Is This Tiny European Nation a Preview of Our Tech Future? – http://fortune.com/2017/04/27/estonia…
How long it takes to file taxes in Estonia – http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-met…
How long it takes to file taxes in the U.S. – https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/…
Why Americans didn’t vote in 2016 – http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/…

Category: News & Politics
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e-Commerce, ICT, Model, Transform

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Regional Tourism Coordination – No Longer Optional

Posted on June 16, 2018 in Economics, Ethos, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

No one can hide anymore!

There are 30 different member-states, with 5 different colonial legacies and 4 different languages, and yet people around the world only considers our region as One Caribbean:

Event	Consequence to Perception
Devastating hurricane	Oops, the Caribbean is unable to function commercially
Devastating earthquake	Oops, the Caribbean is unable to function commercially
Emergence of a pandemic	Oops, the Caribbean is unable to function commercially

All of the Caribbean member-states are in this “same boat”, so this is a matter of image and geographic misconceptions, more so than it is about disasters.

So, good or bad, the fate of one Caribbean member-state is tied to the other member-states, when it comes to tourism. See this point conveyed in this news article here:

Title: Geographic misconceptions hurting Caribbean economies
By Sarah Peter

Nassau, Bahamas – The mistaken perception among many travelers of the complete devastation of the Caribbean in the wake of the 2017 hurricane season caused further economic destruction to the region’s economy.

That’s according to the Chair of the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO), Joy Jibrilu. She raised the concern amid staggering losses among countries which were not impacted by the 2017 Hurricane season.

Jibrilu says following the devastation caused by hurricanes Irma and Maria to some islands in the region, many travelers called and canceled for countries who were not impacted by the storm.

This resulted in a significant drop in hotel room demand across the entire Caribbean. In light of that another disaster, an economic storm, was created which resulted in great losses in tourism revenue and a challenge for tourism officials.

“All our travel partners, all of them without exception called and said that we have heard the Caribbean  is closed.”

She further added that  Caribbean islands irrespective of if they were not actually impacted by the storm were economically  affected.

“We all lost when people were not sure if or when to book if they canceled. You saw a dip in bookings because people thought that the islands which were not impacted were. We must quantify the figures of lost business so we can share the story with the world to tell them how serious it is. “

The chair of the CTO says that over one billion US dollars in tourism revenue was lost in the wake of last year’s hurricane season, the costliest hurricane season on record.

Jibrilu, who is also the Director of Tourism for the island of Barbados says the region’s reconstruction and recovery effort has been estimated at close to  6 billion dollars.

“Tourism is the region’s greatest driver of foreign exchange tax revenue and reliable vehicle of poverty reduction and human capital development for the region’s small island developing states. The tragedy is that the dampening of demand occurred even among islands that were not in the path of the storm.  This contributes to  an economic disaster as tourism visitation dropped of resulting in significant losses in revenue.”

Jilbrilu blamed the international media for the problem. She says their reports describes the region as if it was one country as opposed to several different islands. The chairman of the CTO says this inaccurate reporting is costing a region millions and negatively impacting lives in the region.

“First of all if we look at international news reporters when they talk about a hurricane they say the “Caribbean” has been impacted. They generalize and say the entire Caribbean. As a result, people look at the Caribbean as a whole unit as oppose to all these different countries, thousands of miles away from each other. To put it in context the Bahamas alone from north to south covers one hundred thousand square miles that is further than the distance of  Toronto to New York.  So if a storm happens in New York no one would say I am not going to Toronto. They just would not, it just does not make sense but when people lump the Caribbean  together as just one region ( as if it was just one country ) it  is negative.”

Jilbrilu says the region’s economy and people lives depend on accurate reporting and think making the international media more aware of this matter is a matter of economic prosperity or suffering for the region’s people.

“What we have done is to educate people of the geography of the Caribbean, that the same time it takes to travel from the Bahamas to Barbados is the same as traveling from London in the UK to Rome, Italy. So what happens to the Bahamas does not impact Barbados and vice versa.  We really  want to get that message out.”

Jilbrilu made the disclosure at the 2018 annual Caribbean Aviation Meetup in the Bahamas. Dubbed as the Caribbean region’s largest aviation conference the annual event brings together major players from the aviation and tourism industries aimed at tackling problems faced by the  World and the Caribbean’s Tourism and Aviation industries.
Source: Posted and retrieved June 15, 2018 from: https://stluciatimes.com/2018/06/15/geographic-misconceptions-hurting-caribbean-economies/

As related in the foregoing, the whole world knew of the 2017 devastation from Hurricanes Irma and Maria. But the affected (wiped-out) islands were only Barbuda, Grenada and Puerto Rico. And yet:

… following the devastation caused by hurricanes Irma and Maria to some islands in the region, many travelers called and canceled for countries who were not impacted.

Again, this is a matter of image and geographic misconceptions, more so than it is about disasters or even tourism. The world is telling the Caribbean: Better band together to assuage your challenges. We are united in affliction, we might as well be united in solutions. Yes, it is no longer optional for our region to confederate as a Single Market. This, we must do!

Confederation is not a bad thing! In a previous blog-commentary, it was asserted that our Caribbean member-states all suffer from the same inadequate image, and thusly we can all benefit from a regional elevation. Yes, the effect of regional integration could be an Increased Caribbean Tourism Market Share. That commentary quoted:

It’s time to take inventory of Caribbean tourism:

It has been weighed in the balance; it has been measured …
It has been found wanting!
…
Tourism is the current dominant industry; the goal is to “stand on the shoulders” of previous accomplishments, add infrastructure not possible by just one member-state alone and then reap the benefits. Imagine this manifestation in just this one new strategy: inter-island ferries that connect all islands for people, cars and goods.

The movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean seeks to reboot the economic engines of the Caribbean member-states. So while tourism is the region’s primary economic driver, it is inadequate for providing the needs of the people in the region, and inadequate for dealing with the crisis of natural disasters. We must do better!

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU is designed to be a technocratic intergovernmental entity that shepherds economic growth for the Caribbean region and mitigate against all security-disaster challenges. The goal is to reboot and optimize the region’s economic, security and governing engines with a regional focus.

The Go Lean/CU roadmap will employ strategies, tactics and implementations to impact its prime directives; identified with the following 3 statements:

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 ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines. This includes a professional disaster planning and response organization.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies, as in Self-Governing Entities.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to elevate Caribbean image in good times and bad. One advocacy seeks to optimize the Caribbean tourism brand throughout the world; consider some specific plans, excerpts and headlines from the book on Page 133 entitled:

10 Ways to Better Manage Image

1	Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market This will allow for the unification of the region into one market of 42 million people across 30 member-states, with a GDP of $800 Billion (according to 2010 figures). In addition, the treaty calls for collective bargaining with foreign countries and industry representatives for causes of significance to the Caribbean community. There are many times when the media portray a “negative” depiction of Caribbean life, culture and people. The CU will have the scale to effectuate negotiations to better manage the region’s image, and the means by which to enforce the tenets.
2	Media Industrial Complex The Caribbean Central Bank will settle electronic payments transactions; this will allow electronic commerce to flourish in the region. With the payment mechanisms in place, music, movies, TV shows and other media (domestic and foreign) can be paid for and downloaded legally. For a population base of 42 million, this brings a huge economic clout.
3	Respect for Intellectual Property
4	Sentinel in Hollywood
5	Anti-Defamation League This Pro-Jewish organization provides a great model for marshalling against negative stereotypes that can belittle a race. The CU will study, copy, and model a lot of the successes of the Anti-Defamation League. This organization can also be consulted with to coach the CU’s efforts. (Consider the example of Uptown Yardies Rasta Gang in the game Grand Theft Auto [206]).
6	Power of the Boycott The CU is an economic negotiating bloc. The power to ban, boycott and censure trade in intellectual property is a powerful deterrent for producers to be balanced in their media portrayals. A CU federal agency will assume the role to rate pending moves, as performed by MPAA in the US. While the content may not be banned outright, placing a Rated R, NC-17 or X label to a film will affect the economic results from the box office. This is the “power of the purse”.
7	Freedom of the Press
8	Libel and Slander Litigation and Enforcement
9	Public Relations and Press Releases To facilitate effective communications, the CU’s agencies will embrace the role of “Press Secretaries” to disseminateaccurate records, news and portrayals of Caribbean life. This role is Offensive rather than the above Defensive tactics.
10	Image Award Medals and Recognition Following the model of the NAACP Image Awards, the CU will recognize and give accolades for individual and institutions that portray a positive “image” of Caribbean life and CU initiatives. This would be similar to the Presidential Medal of … / Congressional Medal of …

The likelihood of more hurricanes in the Caribbean is undeniable. This is further exacerbated with the reality of Climate Change. Our Caribbean region must be prepared to Rinse & Repeat. It is no longer an option to maybe manage our image on a regional level. The world must know that we are bigger than just whatever island has been recently impacted by a natural disaster. This challenge is heavy-lifting because, as a region, we rarely muster an adequate response to our natural disasters.

The Go Lean book explains further that the Caribbean region must install a security apparatus with the directive to prepare and respond to natural disasters. The efficiency and effectiveness of a Caribbean Emergency Management Agency must be streamlined to ensure the world of the business continuity of our systems of commerce. This quotation is derived from the book at Page 184:

Modeled after FEMA in the US, this agency will be charged with the preparation, response and reconstruction for the regions for the eventual manifestations of hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding and other declared disasters, natural and man-made like medical epidemic, drought, pollution, oil spills, terrorism, etc.

This is what it means to be a technocracy, to promote the best delivery arts and sciences, in this case for Professional Emergency Management; as explained further at Page 64:

The CU treaty calls for a collective security agreement for the Caribbean member-states to prepare-respond to natural disasters, emergency incidents and assuage against systemic threats against the homeland. The CU employs the professional arts and sciences of Emergency Management to spread the costs and risks across the entire region. Outside of hurricanes or earthquakes, the emergency scope includes medical trauma, pandemic incidents and industrial accidents (i.e. oil or chemical spills) – any scenario that can impact the continuity of the economic engines and/or community.

This above scenario describes the dynamics of regional tourism promotion and protection. Yes, managing regional tourism means optimizing the planning and response for natural disasters. This is no longer optional for this homeland. We are compelled to invest in this integration and collaboration. We must have the leverage to spread the costs, risks and premium base across the entire region. Only then will the rest of the world know that any hurricane in the Caribbean does not mean a shutdown of the entire Caribbean region. Our image will then be:

Be our guests … in rain and shine.

Consider this Hawaiian example; yes this problem of promoting tourism while contending with natural disasters is not just an issue for the Caribbean. Rather, the US State of Hawaii is contending with the same thing right now, with the active Kīlauea volcano. See related news VIDEO in the Appendix below.

There is the need for better stewardship of the economic engines on touristic islands, be it Hawaii or the Caribbean. It is what it is! And our situations will worsen; things will get worse before they get worst. This is due to the reality and eventuality of Climate Change. This need to assuage against the threats and realities of Climate Change was an original intent of the Go Lean roadmap. The opening Declaration of Interdependence stresses this (Page 11) in the first of many pronouncements:

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 movement has previously detailed many related issues and advocacies for disaster awareness and abatement. Consider this sample of previous blog-commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15012	In Life or Death: No Love for Puerto Rico
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14925	‘Climate Change’ Reality!? Numbers Don’t Lie
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14832	Example of Manifesting Environmental Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13391	After Maria, Failed-State Indicators: Destruction and Defection for Puerto Rico
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12996	After Irma, Failed State Indicators: Destruction and Defection
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12977	After Irma, Barbuda Becomes a ‘Ghost Town’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12900	The Logistics of Disaster Relief
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12879	Disaster Preparation: ‘Rinse and Repeat’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11858	Looking and Learning from the Cautionary Tale of Kiribati
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9455	Fix ‘Climate Change’ – Yes, We Can
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7103	COP21 – ‘Climate Change’ Acknowledged
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6893	A Meteorologist’s View On Climate Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4673	‘Climate Change‘ Merchants of Doubt … to Preserve Profits!!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2465	Book: ‘This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2276	Climate Change May Affect Food Supply Within a Decade
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1883	Climate Change May Bring More Kidney Stones
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1817	Caribbean grapples with intense cycles of flooding & drought

In summary, the issues in this commentary relate more to image and geographic misconceptions than they do tourism and natural disasters. Do we have the global reputation to “take a punch and stand back up”.

Unfortunately, no!

So we must reform and transform the Caribbean’s societal engines so as to assuage the dangers of Climate Change and natural disasters; pandemics too. This is the quest of the Go Lean roadmap, and this is not just a pipe dream; it is conceivable, believable and achievable for our regional stakeholders to do better and be better.

All Caribbean stakeholders – residents and tourists alike – are urged to lean-in to this roadmap for change … and empowerment. Yes, we can make the region a better place to live work and play. 🙂

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

—————-

Appendix VIDEO – Hawaii tourism hit hard by Kilauea volcano eruption – https://youtu.be/89ppKLS5ufI

CBS Evening News
Published on Jun 2, 2018 – As molten lava destroys more homes in Hawaii, police have been ordered to arrest people who refuse to evacuate. Thousands have already been forced to flee to safety. Now, dramatic images broadcast around the world are having another impact — on tourism. CBS News correspondent Carter Evans reports.

Category: News & Politics
License: Standard YouTube License

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“Venezuela” – ‘On the Menu’ in California – ENCORE

Posted on June 7, 2018 in Economics, Ethos, Government, Strategy

“Gavin Newsom wants to turn this State into Venezuela” …
Republicans are always underdogs in [California] statewide contests, Nehring said, but he sees Newsom as vulnerable to the perception that he’s elitist and out of touch.

Still, Cox showed no signs of moderating the aggressive tone that generated excitement among conservatives, saying “Gavin Newsom wants to turn this state into Venezuela.”

… the aggressive tone of this accusation has generated a lot of excitement among conservatives. Here’s the background: Gavin Newsom is the Democratic Party’s nominee for Governor of California – the General Election will be November 6, 2018 – he is currently the Lieutenant Governor and also the former Mayor of San Francisco. He is a liberal icon in a liberal State.

Yet the one criticism that is sticking to candidate Newsom by Republican Party candidate John Cox is the fearful pattern of Venezuela.

Yes, Venezuela is “On the Menu” in California. But wait, that should be our ‘vantage point’ in the Caribbean!

… this was the theme of a previous blog-commentary from the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean. Venezuela is in our neighborhood – with a long coastline on the Caribbean Sea – dysfunctions there spillover to our Caribbean member-states. It’s time to Encore that blog from May 31, 2016 . See the Encore as follows:

——————–

Go Lean Commentary – Venezuela: Watching a ‘Train Wreck in Slow Motion’>

Watching Venezuela now is like watching a “train wreck … in slow motion”.

Didn’t we just see this recently … in a land far-far away – Greece? If the Venezuela parallel with Greece continues, we will be able to accurately predict that “things will get worse before it gets worse!”

This is not just an academic consideration for Caribbean stakeholders, as Venezuela boasts a vast coastline on the Caribbean Sea; they also share a border with one Caribbean member-state, Guyana, and supplies the region with a lot of its oil. And just recently with its PetroCaribe initiative, Venezuela was one hope to help eradicate poverty in the Caribbean. But now Venezuela is having a tough time protecting its own self from the pangs of poverty.

Many people are now waking up – inside and outside Venezuela – to the harsh realities that a Failed-State is emerging in our neighborhood, right in front of our eyes. Unfortunately, we – the Caribbean – are all too familiar. Consider here how Venezuela’s political institutions are crumbling:

The opposition parties refused to collaborate with the governing officials
Riots in the streets
Assassinations of government officials
Economy in shambles
Currency in disarray
Cupboards and store shelves are bare – see Photo above
Basic government services – social contract – are not being executed
External parties – UNASUR – are coming in to intercede

See the news article here conveying this harsh reality in Venezuela:

Title: Venezuelan officials, opposition meet mediators over standoff
By: Ernesto Tovar

Caracas (AFP) – Venezuelan officials and opposition foes have held separate secret meetings in the Dominican Republic with a group of ex-world leaders seeking a way out of political crisis, officials said, as an ex-military reserve leader was shot dead.

Representatives of both sides of Venezuela’s political standoff met former Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, former Dominican president Leonel Fernandez and Panama’s ex-president Martin Torrijos “in recent days” under the auspices of the Union of South American Nations, UNASUR, to seek a “framework for a national dialogue,” the organization said in a statement.

The mediating former leaders found “a desire for dialogue on both sides,” for which new meetings were proposed to “agree on an agenda that meets the requirements of each party and a method for engaging in national dialogue,” the statement said.

The meetings were the initiative of President Nicolas Maduro, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez tweeted, saying the effort “promotes peace, respect for the rule of law and the defense of sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

The main center-right opposition group Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) said in a statement that its conditions for the talks were the holding of a referendum over Maduro’s recall, freeing political prisoners, allowing exiles to return and “an end to prosecutions for political persecution.”

The opposition is also calling on the government to allow international relief supplies of food and medicine into the country and seek to end a crippling economic crisis “generated by official corruption and an economic model that is spreading misery.”

The three former leaders also held talks with Maduro and the opposition under UNASUR auspices in Caracas two weeks ago.

Publicly, the two sides could not be further apart.

MUD which blames Maduro for the economic crisis, accuses the electoral authorities of dragging their feet in processing their petition for a referendum on removing the socialist leader from office.

Although a survey last month showed 68 percent of Venezuelans want Maduro to leave office and to hold new elections, he has said the referendum drive has “very little support.”

Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves, but its economy is reeling from the collapse in global crude prices.

Venezuelans are experiencing severe food and medicine shortages compounded by the world’s highest inflation — almost 190 percent in 2015, which the International Monetary Fund predicts will balloon to 700 percent in 2016.
Source: Yahoo/AFP Online News – Retrieved May 29, 2016 from: https://www.yahoo.com/news/venezuelan-officials-opposition-meet-mediators-over-standoff-020940920.html?nhp=1

Yet still, there are a lot of lessons for the Caribbean to consider from this crisis – a “crisis is a terrible thing to waste” declares the book Go Lean … Caribbean (Page 8). As a region with past and present Failed-States, we must not fail to discern these lessons.

For starters, there is a super-national organization that Venezuelan stakeholders are able to escalate to for mediation, the Union of South American Nations – UNASUR according to the Spanish-language acronym. A super-national organization – for mediation and conflict resolution – is also the goal of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). In both cases, the goal is to model the European Union. See details and VIDEO of the UNASUR organization in the Appendices below:

The UNASUR organization, as described below, is part of the Latin American integration movement, combining the efforts of the Andean Community and the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). This should be the primary strategy for mitigating Failed-State status in South America. While Venezuela is a sovereign state, they can still be held accountable to their neighbors in UNASUR; this would be a product of peer pressure and the threat of sanctions. Too bad this integration movement is not complete in its construct, as this would have been most effective in stopping this “slow motion train wreck”.

In fact, in the 2004 South American Summit, representatives of these twelve South American nations participated:

Members of the Andean Community of Nations (CAN): ^{1 L}
- Bolivia ^M
- Colombia
- Ecuador
- Peru
Members of Mercosur: ^{2 L}
- Argentina
- Brazil
- Paraguay
- Uruguay
- Venezuela
Other members:
- Chile ^{1 2 L}
- Guyana ^C
- Suriname ^C

¹ These countries are also considered to be associate members of Mercosur.
² These countries are also considered to be associate members of the Andean Community.
^C Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member state
^L Latin American Integration Association (ALADI) member state
^M Accessing member to Mercosur
Source: Retrieved May 31, 2016 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_South_American_Nations

The leaders of these countries announced the intention of modeling the new community in the mold of the European Union, including a unified passport, a parliament and, eventually, a single currency. The then Secretary General of the Andean Community – Allan Wagner – speculated at that time that the advanced union like the EU should be possible within the next fifteen years. Based on these experiences in Venezuela, this integration movement is a “day late and a dollar short”.

The actuality of Venezuela is more than just a cautionary tale for the Caribbean, it is also a Caribbean problem. In addition to the presence of Caribbean Community member-states of Guyana and Suriname, many aspects of Venezuelan life parallel those of the Caribbean in general and in specifics – see these previous blog-commentaries:

Mono-Industrial Economy

Majority of consumer goods imported and pricey

Close proximity with other countries, not suffering this failing status

Long legacy of bad community ethos regarding fiscal responsibilities

Validation of regional criticism

High societal abandonment rate

Large Diaspora abroad

Challenge of security / public safety

Incompetent governance

Being at the brink of disaster, at the precipice, is perhaps the only time communities are willing to reform and transform. This reality is what inspired the book Go Lean…Caribbean to serve as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The events of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis was the trigger for the composition of this book. Will Venezuela now use this crisis to forge change for its society?

Will the Caribbean forge change by just “observing and reporting” on Venezuela? There are many lessons to learn and the Caribbean community is urged not to ignore. The lessons learned, and codified in the pages of the Go Lean book can now be enhanced with the examination of the realities of Venezuela. This examination must consider the reality of the economic, security and governing aspects of Venezuelan society and the resultant consequences on their neighbors.

Like the UNASUR initiative, the Go Lean roadmap calls for a confederation of the 30 member-states of the Caribbean into a Single Market of 42 million people so as to leverage the governing burden across a separation-of-powers: a federal government and member-state government. This allows a new response to national crisis (economic, security and governance). This vision is at the root of the Go Lean roadmap, embedded in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12 – 13):

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.

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.

The following details from the book Go Lean … Caribbean are the community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies necessary to effect the turn-around of the Caribbean societal engines – to learn from failing communities (like Greece and Venezuela):

Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Money Multiplier	Page 21
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Turn-Arounds	Page 33
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederate all 30 Member-States into a Single Market	Page 47
Strategy – Mission – Build and foster local economic engines	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Fortify the stability of our mediums of exchange	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Dissuade further Brain Drain	Page 46
Tactical – Confederating a Permanent Union	Page 63
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Federal Government versus Member-States	Page 71
Implementation – Assemble all Member-States	Page 96
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change	Page 101
Implementation – Foreign Policy Initiatives at Start-up – Relationship with Venezuela	Page 102
Implementation – Ways to Foster International Aid	Page 115
Planning – Ways to Model the European Union	Page 130
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices	Page 134
Planning – Lessons Learned from 2008 – The Global Financial Crisis	Page 136
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Better Manage the Social Contract	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage	Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights	Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Re-boot Cuba – Marshall Plan Tactic for Failed-States	Page 236
Advocacy – Ways to Re-boot Haiti – Marshall Plan Tactic for Failed-States	Page 238
Appendix – Caribbean Failed-State Indicators and Definitions	Page 271

Unless mitigated, Venezuela will become a Failed-State. We hope that the country, and their South American neighbors can secure their society to assure peace and the protection of human rights.

We also have near Failed-States in the Caribbean: Think: Haiti, Puerto Rico and Cuba; plus a host of countries just slightly behind them. We have to foster our own turn-around strategies for our region.

Venezuela is out of scope for the Go Lean roadmap; our quest is to reform and transform the Caribbean. The roadmap declares that the responsibility for fixing the Caribbean though must fall first-and-foremost on the Caribbean, its people and institutions. The effort is not easy; the Go Lean book describes it as heavy-lifting. But the returns will be worth the investment. This is true for Venezuela … and the Caribbean.

This is the goal of the Go Lean roadmap: to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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Appendix – Union of South American Nations – UNASUR

The Union of South American Nations (USAN; Spanish: Unión de Naciones Suramericanas, UNASUR; Portuguese: União de Nações Sul-Americanas,UNASUL; Dutch: Unie van Zuid-Amerikaanse Naties, UZAN) is an intergovernmental regional organization comprising 12 South American countries.

The UNASUR Constitutive Treaty was signed on 23 May 2008 – [legally completing the integration between the Andean Community and the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) nations] – at the Third Summit of Heads of State, held in Brasília, Brazil.^[7] According to the Constitutive Treaty, the Union’s headquarters will be located in Quito, Ecuador.^[2] On 1 December 2010, Uruguay became the ninth state to ratify the UNASUR treaty, thus giving the union full legality.^[8][9] As the Constitutive Treaty entered into force on 11 March 2011, UNASUR became a legal entity during a meeting of Foreign Ministers in Mitad del Mundo, Ecuador, where they had laid the foundation stone for the Secretariat Headquarters.^[10] The South American Parliament will be located in Cochabamba, Bolivia, while the headquarters of its bank, the Bank of the South are located in Caracas,Venezuela.^[2]

On 4 May 2010, at a heads of state summit held in Campana, 47 miles north of Buenos Aires, former Argentine President Néstor Kirchner was unanimously elected the first Secretary General of UNASUR for a two-year term.

Structure

At the moment, the provisional structure of the UNASUR is as follows:

A permanent Secretariat is to be established in Quito, Ecuador. The Secretary General, with a two-year mandate, is to be elected on a consensual basis among the Heads of State of the member states. Former Argentine President Néstor Kirchner was designated the first Secretary General on 4 May 2010.^[20]
The presidents of the member nations will have an annual meeting, which will have the superior political mandate. The first meeting was in Brasília (Brazil) on 29–30 September 2005. The second meeting was in Cochabamba (Bolivia) on 8–9 December 2006. The third meeting was held in Brasília on 23 May 2008.

The Presidency Pro Tempore, is exercised for a one-year period on a pro tempore basis by one of the heads of state of each UNASUR Member State, the succession following alphabetical order. The first leader to occupy this position was Chilean President Michelle Bachelet. According to Decisions Reached in the Political Dialogue^[21] which was signed during the First South American Energy Summit.
The ministers of foreign affairs of each country will meet once every six months. They will formulate concrete proposals of action and of executive decision. The President of the Mercosur’s permanent representatives committee and the director of the Mercosur’s department, the Andean Community’s general secretary, the general secretary of the Latin American Integration Association (ALADI) and the permanent secretaries of any institution for regional cooperation and integration, Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization among others, will also be present at these meetings.
Sectorial Ministers’ meeting will be called upon by the presidents. The meetings will be developed according to Mercosur’s and CAN’s mechanisms.
On 9 December 2005, a special commission was established in charge of advancing the process of South American Integration. It consists of 12 members, whose function is to elaborate proposals that will help the process of integration between the South American nations.

An Executive Commission, which was created by the II CSN meeting, was transformed in the Political Commission or Delegates Council, according to Decisions Reached in the Political Dialogue.^[21]

=============================

APPENDIX – VIDEO – UNASUR – https://youtu.be/rNjkr7y8-Kc

Published on Apr 16, 2016 – The Union of South American Nations, or UNASUR, marks its ninth anniversary this Sunday, April 17 with a 12-kilometer race in Ecuador with the aim of “bringing the regional body closer to the people.” The UNASUR Secretary-General Ernesto Samper resumed in a few words what the bloc is all about: “To promote peace, democracy and respect of human rights, as well as a Latin American integration. http://multimedia.telesurtv.net/v/una…

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“Profiting” from Hurricanes – ENCORE

Posted on June 6, 2018 in Economics, Government, Industries

If only there was a way to make money on the hurricane season …

… there is.

Its called reinsurance sidecars – where investors buy-in to the risks and returns of insurance premiums.

Yes, we can …

This was detailed in a previous blog-commentary from the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean. As we embark on the Hurricane Season 2018, it is important to remember that there is a better way – a Way Forward – to optimize Caribbean life. Let’s Encore that blog from October 13, 2017 here-now:

——————

Go Lean Commentary – Funding Caribbean Risk

A penny saved is … a penny.

This is not exactly how the expression goes. It is supposed to refer to the good habit of “saving money”, which is a positive community ethos – underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices. “Saving money” is a practice that the stewards of any society should advocate for its people. It’s a simple formula: Earn money; spend some; save some!

This is easier said than done. A practice of saving money – for a rainy day or any catastrophe – takes discipline, the discipline not to spend. One tactic is to pay yourself first! Before paying other overhead expenses, the priority would be to set aside monies in a savings program or some insurance program. Yes, an insurance strategy could be even smarter for rainy days or catastrophes; it allows the hedging of risks by leveraging across a wider pool; more people – savers – put-in and only a few … or just one withdraws. This is also the approach of the thoughtful Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Fund (CCRIF).

It is very sad when communities are not able to save or insure a “Rainy Day” fund for when it rains, especially in the tropical region where it doesn’t just rain, but pours and storms.

What is sadder is when the heavy-lifting of “savings” or insurance is done, but the dollar amount is not enough; because a “penny saved is only just a penny”.

This is the Caribbean dilemma, today. We have just experienced 2 devastating hurricanes – Irma and Maria – that have wreaked havoc on our region. We now need to tap the “Rainy Day” fund and frankly, it is simply not enough!

See the actuality of this dilemma in the news article here and the related VIDEO on CCRIF:

Title: CCRIF to make payouts to countries affected by Hurricane Irma

The Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF SPC) will be making payouts totaling over US$15 million to three Caribbean countries affected by Hurricane Irma earlier this week.

“The CCRIF board and team offer condolences for the loss of life and hope these funds will provide some assistance. We stand ready to support the Government and people of these CCRIF countries as they recover from the effects of this devastating hurricane,” said CCRIF chief executive officer, Isaac Anthony.

Payments totaling US$15.2 million
The CCRIF plans to pay US$6.7 million to Antigua and Barbuda, US$6.5 million to Anguilla and US$2.2 million to St. Kitts-Nevis.

The storm has been blamed for at least 10 deaths and millions of dollars in property damages as it made its way through the Lesser Antilles this week.

In the case of Barbuda, Prime Minister Gaston Browne has ordered an immediate evacuation of some 1,800 people on the island. The government has also announced a state of emergency.

“Nothing is functional in Barbuda,” Browne said, adding that he has given instructions that ‘every single soul must be taken out of Barbuda”.

Verifying payouts
The CCRIF is verifying the payout calculations and is in discussion with the three governments about arrangements for the transfer of these funds. The transfer will be completed within 14 days after the storm, as mandated by CCRIF’s operational guidelines.

“Anguilla and St. Kitts & Nevis also have Excess Rainfall (XSR) policies and CCRIF is assessing if these policies were triggered by the rains from Hurricane Irma, which may possibly result in a second payout under those policies. The assessment under the XSR policies will be determined in the next few days,” the CCRIF added.

Segregated portfolio company
The CCRIF SPC is a segregated portfolio company, owned, operated and registered in the Caribbean. It limits the financial impact of catastrophic hurricanes, earthquakes and excess rainfall in the Caribbean and, since 2015, Central American governments by quickly providing short-term liquidity when a parametric insurance policy is triggered.

Since its inception in 2007, the facility has made 22 payouts for hurricanes, earthquakes and excess rainfall to 10-member governments totaling approximately US$69 million.

It said the new payments will bring the total payouts to approximately US$85 million. Last year CCRIF made payouts totaling US$29 million to four countries after Hurricane Matthew.

Source: Posted September 9, 2017; retrieved October 13, 2017 from: https://www.caribbeannationalweekly.com/caribbean-breaking-news-featured/ccrif-make-payouts-countries-affected-hurricane-irma/

———–

VIDEO – WorldBank CCRIF Caribbean Gold – https://youtu.be/IlZ56ON9KnI

CCRIF SPC

Published on Feb 28, 2017 – Working towards sovereign risk protection in the Caribbean and Central America.

We now know what CCRIF is; how it works; and who can engage this program in terms of investors and beneficiaries; see more encyclopedic details in the Appendix A below. But …

… it is the assessment of this commentary that CCRIF is flawed and inadequate for the Caribbean’s needs.

The CCRIF is designed for 1-in-15 year hurricane (Source: http://www.ccrif.org/content/rtfs-faqs). Truth be told, thanks to Climate Change we are seeing storms yearly.
There is a catastrophic trigger – complicated formula – which generates a “measly” payout for a hurricane or earthquake.
This is a sovereign fund only and the trigger level is dependent on the coverage purchased by individual countries.
The pool is too small. Member governments may purchase coverage which triggers for a ‘one-in-15-year’ hurricane and a ‘one-in-20-year’ earthquake, with maximum coverage of US$100M available for each peril. The cost of coverage is a direct function of the amount of risk being transferred, ensuring no cross-subsidisation of premiums and a level playing field for all participants.

This fund is “too little, too late” for what the region needs. But like all other Caribbean integration (CariCom) efforts, it is a good start! Still after 50 years of autonomous rule, the expectation is not just for a start, it is for solutions.

While the habit of “saving” or paying for insurance is a best-practice, the financial amount is important for the subjective assessment of success. The foregoing news article relates that $15.2 million will be paid-out to the affected countries. But this amount is so small, too small! Consider just for Hurricane Irma alone, the estimated damage amount has been tabulated at $62.87 billion. While $50 Billion of that amount relates to the US Mainland, the rest is the Caribbean. So the Caribbean’s share is $12.9 Billion; – see Chart here:

On the other hand. Hurricane Maria, has estimates for damages at $51.2 billion. None of that amount relates to the US Mainland, the amount is all Caribbean, considering Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands; see Chart here:

An immediate result of these storms on the Caribbean will probably be the defection of masses of people from the region. As of this date – October 12, 2017 – Puerto Rico is still not relieved nor recovered from Hurricane Maria. In fact 84% of the island still does not have power. Since Puerto Ricans are American citizens, they have freedom of movement from the island to the US Mainland. In addition, many of the other Caribbean islands will also suffer abandonment as the Diaspora is large in North America and Europe; so bonafide family connections will allow for their emigration. Expect more societal abandonment in the region!

The quest of the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free – is to lower the abandonment rates of our Caribbean citizens fleeing the homeland. Our quest is conceivable, believable and achievable. But the status quo of the Caribbean Catastrophe Insurance Funds is inadequate; it must improve. It must reform and transform.

The Go Lean book describes a Way Forward. 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 – for all member-states. 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 Homeland Security and Emergency Management apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The book stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13):

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.

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 … 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.

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.

Way Forward
The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society, despite the reality and risks of natural disasters. Accepting that the CCRIF is a government-member-state solution, the Go Lean book proposes a supplement of private solutions, instruments facilitated by the region’s Capital Markets – think the Caribbean version of Wall Street. The Go Lean book proposal is for region-wide (all 30 member-states; 4 language groups) private insurance companies and Re-insurance Side-cars traded on the Capital Markets.

Re-insurance Side-cars is a derivative product – see Appendix B below.

Consider these sample references to Re-insurance Side-cars in the book:

Tactical – Separation of Powers – Emergency Management Agency There is also an economic/financial scope for this department. As the effort for a comprehensive property-casualty fund to cover the entire Caribbean region will also be coordinated by this agency. The classic solution is a large pool of premium payers and claims filed by the affected area. Beyond this model, there are also advanced products like re-issuance side-cars for market assimilation. The public can then invest and profit from the threat/realization of regional risks. This derivative product is a bet, a gamble, but in the end, the result is an insurance fund of last resort, much like the Joint Underwriters Agency (JUA) in Florida.	Page 76
Implementation – 10 Ways to Pay for Change #8 Homeland Security – *Hurricane Insurance Fund* The risk pool for a 42-million population is so much lower than each member-state’s sole mitigation efforts. The CU will establish (contract with a service provider) reinsurance funds (& sidecars) from Day One, and glean the excess premiums-over-claims as profit.	Page 101
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Housing #7 Hurricane Risk Reinsurance Fund This fund fits the Emergency Management objectives of rebuilding and restoring after disasters. This is similar to Florida’s Joint Underwriters Association but instead regulated at the CU so as to maximize the premium pool.	Page 161
Advocacy – 10 Revenue Sources #9 Natural Disaster Insurance Fund The CU’s Emergency Management Agency will maintain a regional reinsurance fund to offset the casualty coverage for insurance carriers in the region. The difference between premiums and claims constitute revenues for the CU.	Page 172
Advocacy – 10 Ways to Impact Public Works #10 Capital Markets A Single Market and currency union will allow for the emergence of viable capital markets for stocks and bonds (public and private), thereby creating the economic engine to fuel growth and development. This forges financial products for “pre” disaster project funding (drainage, levies, dykes, sea walls) and post disaster recovery (reinsurance sidecars).	Page 175
Advocacy – 10 Ways to Improve for Natural Disasters #7 JUA-style Insurance Fund The fiduciary management of premiums and claims to allow the immediate response for reconstruction after disasters. These financial services, sidecars traded in markets can be direct or indirect as in reinsurance or insurer-of-last-resort.	Page 184
Advocacy – 10 Ways to Improve for Emergency Management #8 Casualty Insurance Plans – Reinsurance “Sidecars” There is also a financial battlefield for Emergency Management. Reinsurance “sidecars” allow investment bonds to be issued in the financial marketplaces to raise casualty insurance capital. The differences between premiums and claims (plus reserves) equal the profit to be shared with investors. The end result should be an insurance fund of last resort.	Page 196
Advocacy – 10 Ways to Develop a Pre-Fab Housing Industry #10 Homeowners Casualty Insurance Pre-Fab-ulous houses will be built with the structural integrity to withstand typical tropical storms/hurricanes. The CU will facilitate the Property Casualty insurance industry by offering Reinsurance sidecar options on the capital markets.	Page 207
Advocacy – 10 Ways to Improve Fisheries #7 Marine Financing There is also a financial element to facilitating the Fisheries industry. Most fishing vessels require financing and insurance products. These areas have gotten more challenging with “climate change” and the higher propensity of hurricanes. The CU will adopt advanced financial products for the region’s capital-securities markets (i.e. Reinsurance sidecars), to offer the prospects of risk-and-reward to investors, thus inviting more capital to the fisheries marketplace.	Page 210
Advocacy – 10 Ways to Help the Middle Class Prepare for Healthcare Realities While a Middle Class family may obtain a degree of financial security, just one catastrophic illness or injury can wipe out a family’s fortunes overnight. This is the proper place for insurance programs, and reinsurance to hedge the risk for carriers. The CU will proactively institute the measures (industry) to protect Middle Class prospects from this real threat.	Page 223
Advocacy – 10 Ways to Impact The Guianas #4 Disaster Planning, Preparation & Response Hurricanes are not as dire a threat for The Guianas as the Caribbean islands, yet still there are many natural disasters for this region to contend with, namely floods and earthquakes. The CU will better plan-prepare-respond, with Public Works initiatives (dams, reservoirs) and a professional Emergency Management Agency to recover with elite financial products (i.e. reinsurance sidecars) powered by regional capital markets to restore economic engines in these Guiana states.	Page 241
Advocacy – 10 Ways to Impact Belize #7 Disaster Planning, Preparation & Response Mother Nature, and the reality of hurricanes, has been a source of contention in Belize’s history. The CU will better plan-prepare-respond with a professional Emergency Management Agency and recover with elite financial products (i.e. reinsurance sidecars) powered by capital markets so as to restore economic engines in Belize.	Page 243
Advocacy – 10 Ways to Impact US Territories Advocacy – 10 Ways to Impact British Territories Advocacy – 10 Ways to Impact Dutch Territories Advocacy – 10 Ways to Impact French Territories #4 Disaster Preparation & Response Mother Nature, and the reality of hurricanes, plays no favorites for one island versus another due to political alliance. The CU will better plan-prepare-respond, with a professional Emergency Management Agency and recover with elite financial products (i.e. reinsurance sidecars) powered by regional capital markets to quickly restore economic engines in the islands.	Page 244 Page 245 Page 246 Page 247

As an individual or community, to devote a lot of time, talent and treasury to the practice of saving for a rainy-day fund is a positive ethos. To only get a measly payoff – after all that effort – is a negative. The manifestation of this measly scenario calls into question the whole viability of the Caribbean “pooled” risk strategy.

We must do better! Solutions abound!

Engaging a bigger-better regional risk pool, makes our quest realistic: a better homeland to live, work and play. We urge all Caribbean stakeholders – governments and citizens alike – to lean-in for the empowerments described here in the book Go Lean…Caribbean. 🙂

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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Appendix A – Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility Segregated Portfolio Company (CCRIF SPC)

[This CCRIF SPC] is an insurance company headquartered in the Cayman Islands.^[1] The sixteen original member-countries of CCRIF included participants in CARICOM, and the membership of the Board of Directors is selected by CARICOM and by the Caribbean Development Bank.^[2]

Founded in 2007,^[3] CCRIF is the first multi-country risk pool in the world, and was the first insurance instrument to successfully develop parametric policies backed by both traditional and capital markets.^[4] These parametric polices release funds based upon factors of a calamity such as rainfall or wind speed, which can speed up the payout of policies rather than after damages are assessed. Unused funds are kept as reserves for the CCRIF. The fund can also draw upon $140 million in funds underwritten by reinsurance.^[5]

Other regions have since setup similar government disaster instance including in the African Union and the Pacific Islands Forum.^[5]

Source: Retrieved October 13, 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribbean_Catastrophe_Risk_Insurance_Facility_Segregated_Portfolio_Company

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Appendix B – Reinsurance sidecars

Reinsurance sidecars, conventionally referred to as “sidecars”, are financial structures that are created to allow investors to take on the risk and return of a group of insurance policies (a “book of business”) written by an insurer or reinsurer (henceforth re/insurer) and earn the risk and return that arises from that business. A re/insurer will only pay (“cede”) the premiums associated with a book of business to such an entity if the investors place sufficient funds in the vehicle to ensure that it can meet claims if they arise. Typically, the liability of investors is limited to these funds. These structures have become quite prominent in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as a vehicle for re/insurers to add risk-bearing capacity, and for investors to participate in the potential profits resulting from sharp price increases in re/insurance over the four quarters following Katrina. An earlier and smaller generation of sidecars were created after 9/11 for the same purpose. …

Market growth following 9-11 and Hurricane Katrina
In the years following 9-11, the idea of raising funds from capital markets investors in addition to re/insurers to support quota-shares arose and a handful of such ventures were consummated (Olympus, DaVinci, Rockridge). These were the first true sidecars, and were a natural outgrowth of the development of re/insurance as an asset class in the form of catastrophe bonds.

Following Hurricane Katrina, the sidecar idea became very prominent among investors because it was seen as a way to participate in the risk/return of the higher-priced (“hard”) reinsurance market without investing in either existing reinsurers (who might have liabilities from the past that would undermine returns) or new reinsurers (“newcos” that would have a lengthy and expensive “ramp up” period).

Source: Retrieved October 13, 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinsurance_sidecar

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