Tag: Transform

Funding Caribbean Entrepreneurs – The ‘Crowdfunding’ Way

Posted on November 15, 2014 in Economics, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

The Washington, DC-based World Bank believes that Caribbean entrepreneurs can be funded by networking with the Caribbean Diaspora. This objective aligns with the book Go Lean… Caribbean which serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) with the charter to facilitate entrepreneurship and job-creation in the region.

Early in the Go Lean book, the responsibility to attract investors and create jobs was identified as an important function for the CU with these pronouncements in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 13, 14):

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.

xxvi.  Whereas the Caribbean region must have new jobs to empower the engines of the economy and create the income sources for prosperity, and encourage the next generation to forge their dreams right at home, the Federation must therefore foster the development of new industries… In addition, the Federation must invigorate the enterprises related to existing industries … – impacting the region with more jobs.

Before stating an opinion on the plausibility of the World Bank’s proposal, first consider the article, as follows:

Title: Caribbean entrepreneurs need to look to Diaspora for funding – World Bank Group Exec

CU Blog - Funding Caribbean EntrepreneursBRIDGETOWN, Barbados — Caribbean entrepreneurs who are looking for funding to develop new or existing businesses are being encouraged to look to their own nationals living abroad.

“Diaspora financing should be explored as a source of funding for entrepreneurs”, said Aun Rahman, head of the infoDev Access to Finance Programme, at the World Bank Group.

Rahman was speaking on the topic “Access to Finance: Examining Non-Traditional Platforms for Funding”, during the final day of the Caribbean Exporters’ Colloquium 2014 in BridgetownBarbados today.

About 85 per cent of Caribbean people in the Diaspora have said they would “be interested in investing in business back home,” Rahman said adding that they are not only interested in their own countries – but those across the region.

But despite the high interest, Rahman said only a “very few” — about 13 per cent — have actually invested in the Caribbean. The Diaspora investors need a “trusted local partner,” he said.

Project co-ordinator for the Jamaica Venture Capital Programme at the Development Bank of Jamaica, Audrey Richards, also spoke on non-traditional investment sources.

“If we want to attract non-traditional finance, we need to start thinking in a non-traditional way,” she said.

Other participants in the session included Nelson Gray, special project director at LINC Scotland, Shadel Nyack Compton, managing director of Belmont Estate Group of Companies and Judith Mark, managing director and enterprise development consultant at CME Consulting Ltd.
Jamaica Observer Daily Newspaper – Online Site – Retrieved 11-14-2014
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/business/Caribbean-entrepreneurs-need-to-look-to-Diaspora-for-funding—-World-Bank-Group-exec

“Say it ain’t so”. This assertion seems so out-of-touch. This plays into the fallacy that life is so much better outside the Caribbean, so that when a Caribbean resident emigrates and now lives in the US, Canada, or Europe that they thrive financially to the point that they have disposable income (beyond funding their own basic food-clothing-housing needs, plus support for their families left-behind) so as to be able to invest in entrepreneurs back in their ancestral homelands.

This is a distorted “view” from afar … as in Washington. This is not the true experience “on the ground”. (While a picture is worth a thousand words, it is no substitute to actually being “there”. A picture only describes the visual sense; there is so much more, there are the sounds, smells, touch and taste. All of that experience cannot be easily captured in words or pictures).

The book Go Lean…Caribbean, authored by Diaspora members, posits that while the Caribbean region is the greatest address in the world, (the tropical flora-fauna, islands landscapes-waterscapes, and Caribbean culture cannot be topped any where else on the planet), life “at home” is much harder than picturesque postcards depict. This is why residents leave in the first place,  “push and pull factors”, and join the Diaspora.

The Caribbean does need help from the Diaspora to fulfill the Go Lean vision; we need their Time, Talent and Treasuries. But in truth, the Caribbean Diaspora does not thrive financially in their foreign abodes; not with the first generation. Economic studies indicate that only at the 2nd generation, do the immigrant’s legacies (next generation) start to prosper financially[a]. At that point, these are no longer Diaspora (Nationals of the Caribbean member-states); and may not feel any attachment to their ancestral homelands. This is not just a Caribbean issue; it has been proven with other Diaspora groups: Irish, Italian, Chinese, etc. Added to the reality is the fact that Diaspora/legacy members can easily participate in Wall Street; with such an investment/economic engine, local Caribbean options cannot compete. The foregoing article concedes as much:

“only a ‘very few’ – about 13 per cent — have actually invested in the Caribbean”

The Go Lean roadmap is therefore realistic! We are not expecting the Diaspora to be some panacea of Caribbean societal ills. Rather, as a region, we must do the heavy-lifting ourselves. This roadmap proffers a unified, consolidated Caribbean effort, engaging all stakeholders: residents, Diaspora, Direct Foreign Investors, passive investors, NGOs and even governmental agencies, domestic and foreign. “All hands on deck”!

The foregoing article also states that “if we want to attract non-traditional finance, we need to start thinking in a non-traditional way”. This is the siren call of the Go Lean book, to effectuate change in the region, allowing for the following 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion GDP and create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance/administration/oversight to support these engines.

The Go Lean book/roadmap reflects the recommended “non-traditional thinking” to attract non-traditional funding for Caribbean empowerment and entrepreneurial endeavors:

  • The book advocates for incubators… helping/coaching entrepreneurs to put together proper business plans and structures…
  • The book advocates for cooperatives…
  • The book advocates for the full exploration and exploitation of social media, identifying www.myCarribbean.gov  …

All these strategies allow for non-traditional funding methods such as crowdfunding[b] (already essentially practiced in the region as no-tech offerings: Asue, Partner, Asociacion); this is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising monetary contributions from a large number of people, typically via the internet.[1] One early-stage equity expert described crowdfunding as “the practice of raising funds from two or more people over the internet towards a common Service, Project, Product, Investment, Cause, and Experience or SPPICE.”[2]

(See crowdfunding definition/explanation in the below VIDEO in the Appendix).

The crowdfunding model is fueled by three types of actors:

  • the project initiator who proposes the idea and/or project to be funded;
  • individuals or groups who support the idea (inclusive of the Diaspora);
  • and a moderating organization (the “platform”, envisioned for the CU‘s www.myCarribbean.gov) that brings the parties together to launch the idea.[3]

This strategy has proven successful for many other endeavors. In 2013, the crowdfunding industry grew to over $5.1 billion worldwide;[4] (see Kickstarter Appendix below):

There are three primary types of crowdfunding:

  • Reward-based crowdfunding – entrepreneurs pre-sell a product or service to launch a business concept without incurring debt or sacrificing equity/shares. Reward-based crowdfunding has been used for a wide range of purposes, including motion picture promotion,[16] free software development, inventions development, scientific research,[17] and civic projects.[18] For a joint study between Toronto, Canada’s York University and Universite Lille Nord de France, in Lille, France, published on June 2, 2014, two types of reward-based crowdfunding were identified: “‘Keep-it-All’ (KIA) where the entrepreneurial firm sets a fundraising goal and keeps the entire amount raised regardless of whether or not they meet their goal, and ‘All-or-Nothing’ (AON) where the entrepreneurial firm sets a fundraising goal and keeps nothing unless the goal is achieved.”[19] The study’s researchers analyzed 22,875 crowdfunding campaigns, with targets of between US$5,000 and US$200,000, and concluded: “Overall, [all-or-nothing] fundraising campaigns involved substantially larger capital goals, and were much more likely to be successful at achieving their goals.” In its review of the study outcomes, the Inc.com publication explained that potential investors are more inclined to support “all-or-nothing strategy” initiatives, whereby a substandard product will not be released if the funding goal is not achieved. The Inc.com review concluded that “AON” campaign typically provide more detailed information on the campaign.[20]
  • Equity-based crowdfunding – the backer receives unlisted shares of a company, usually in its early stages, in exchange for the money pledged. The company’s success is determined by how successfully it can demonstrate its viability.[15] Equity-based crowdfunding is the collective effort of individuals to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations through the provision of finance in the form of equity.[21][22] In the United States, legislation that is mentioned in the 2012 JOBS Act will allow for a wider pool of small investors with fewer restrictions following the implementation of the act.[22]
  • Credit-based crowdfunding – In the U.S., credit-based crowdfunding from non-banks became more prominent as a form of crowdfunding in 2012, with the launch of the Lending Club, which had advanced more than US$500 million in loans via its website by April 2012. Prospective borrowers of  the Lending Club first submit their requirements, and are then matched with pools of investors who are willing to accept the credit terms. Platforms such as the Lending Club gained popularity, as banks increased interest rates or reduced their level of lending activity. Another credit-based platform, Prosper.com, was established in 2006 and had funded nearly US$325 million in personal loans by April 2012.[23]

There are many dynamics of this nascent industry that must be considered and mastered if the Caribbean is to benefit from crowdfunding. Consider the following:

  • Crowdfunding applications – Crowdfunding is being experimented with as a funding mechanism for creative work such as blogging and journalism,[51] music, independent film,[52][53] (See KickStarter Appendix below) and for funding startup companies.[54][55][56][57] Community music labels are usually for-profit organizations where “fans assume the traditional financier role of a record label for artists they believe in by funding the recording process”.[58] A Financialist article published in mid-September 2013 stated that “the niche for crowdfunding exists in financing films with budgets in the [US]$1 to $10 million range” and crowdfunding campaigns are “much more likely to be successful if they tap into a significant pre-existing fan base and fulfill an existing gap in the market.”[60]
  • Philanthropy and civic projects – A variety of crowdfunding platforms have emerged to allow ordinary web users to support specific philanthropic projects without the need for large amounts of money.[18]
  • Real estate crowdfunding (and REITs) – Real estate crowdfunding is the online pooling of capital from investors to fund mortgages secured by real estate, such as “fix and flip” redevelopment of distressed or abandoned properties, and equity for commercial and residential projects, acquisition of pools of distressed mortgages, home buyer down payments and similar real estate related outlets. Investment, via specialized online platforms, is generally completed under Title II of the JOBS Act and is limited to accredited investors. The platforms offer low minimum investments, often $100 – $10,000.[63][64]
  • Intellectual property exposure – One of the challenges of posting new ideas on crowdfunding sites is there may be little or no intellectual property (IP) protection provided by the sites themselves. Once an idea is posted, it can be copied. As Slava Rubin, founder of IndieGoGo said: “We get asked that all the time, ‘How do you protect me from someone stealing my idea?’ We’re not liable for any of that stuff.”[65] Inventor advocates, such as Simon Brown, founder of the UK-based United Innovation Association, counsel that ideas can be protected on crowdfunding sites through early filing of patent applications, use of copyright and trademark protection as well as a new form of idea protection supported by the World Intellectual Property Organization called Creative Barcode.[66]
  • Innovative new platforms, such as RocketHub, have emerged that combine traditional funding for creative work with branded crowdsourcing – helping artists and entrepreneurs unite with brands “without the need for a middle man.”[61]
  • Global Giving allows individuals to browse through a selection of small projects proposed by nonprofit organizations worldwide, donating funds to projects of their choice.
  • Microcredit crowdfunding platforms such as Kiva (organization) and Wokai facilitate crowdfunding of loans managed by microcredit organizations in developing countries.
  • The US-based nonprofit Zidisha offers a new twist on these themes, applying a direct person-to-person lending model to microcredit lending for low-income small business owners in developing countries. Zidisha borrowers who pass a background check may post microloan applications directly on the Zidisha website, specifying proposed credit terms and interest rates. Individual web users in the US and Europe can lend as little as one US dollar, and Zidisha’s crowdfunding platform allows lenders and borrowers to engage in direct dialogue. Repaid principal and interest is returned to the lenders, who may withdraw the cash or use it to fund new loans.[62]
  • DonorsChoose.org, founded in 2000, allows public school teachers in the United States to request materials for their classrooms. Individuals can lend money to teacher-proposed projects, and the organization fulfills and delivers supplies to schools.
  • There are also a number of own-branded university crowdfunding websites, which enable students and staff to create projects and receive funding from alumni of the university or the general public. Several dedicated civic crowdfunding platforms have emerged in the US and the UK, some of which have led to the first direct involvement of governments in crowdfunding.

The Go Lean…Caribbean roadmap asserts that the adoption of new community ethos, plus the executions of the following strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies will foster the “crowdfunding”/investment industry in the region:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification Page 21
Economic Principles – People Choose because Resources are Limited Page 21
Economic Principles – People Respond to Incentives Page 21
Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Choices & Incentives Page 21
Economic Principles – 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   (ROI) Page 24
Community Ethos – Cooperatives Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship Page 28
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Intellectual Property Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Research & Development (R&D) Page 30
Community Ethos – Ways to Bridge the Digital Divide Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Strategy – Mission – Foster Local Economic Engines. Page 45
Strategy – Customers of the CU – Diaspora – Incentivize Investments Page 47
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy Page 64
Tactical – Tactics to Forge an $800 Billion Economy – High Multiplier Industries Page 70
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Self-Governing Entities Page 80
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change – SGE Licenses Page 101
Implementation – Steps to Implement Self-Governing Entities Page 105
Implementation – Ways to Deliver Page 109
Implementation – Ways to Impact Social Media Page 111
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – Self-Governing Entities / Cyber Caribbean Page 127
Planning – Ways to Improve Trade Page 128
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better Page 131
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Cooperatives Page 176
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Wall Street – Adopt Advanced Products like REITs Page 200
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Main Street Page 201
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Diaspora Page 217
Appendix – Job Multipliers Page 259

Under the Go Lean roadmap, there will be plenty of opportunities for entrepreneurial funding. The CU will solicit investors and foster entrepreneurism by featuring the structures of Self-Governing Entities (SGE); these are bordered grounds like high-tech R&D campuses, medical parks, and technology bases; but they will also include low-tech blue-collar activities like salvage yards and ship-breaking. The subjects of SGE’s, self-employment opportunities and entrepreneurial hustle has been directly addressed and further elaborated upon in these previous blog/commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2857 Where the Jobs Are – Entrepreneurism in Junk
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2338 Using SGE’s to Welcome the Dreaded ‘Plutocracy’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2126 Where the Jobs Are – Computers Reshaping Global Job Market
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2025 Where the Jobs Are – Attitudes & Images of the Caribbean Diaspora in US
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2003 Where the Jobs Are – Ship-breaking under SGE Structure
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1698 Where the Jobs Are – STEM Jobs Are Filling Slowly
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1683 Where the Jobs Were – British public sector now strike over ‘poverty pay’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1596 Book Review: ‘Prosper Where You Are Planted’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1325 Puerto Rico Governor Signs Bill on Small-Medium-Enterprises
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1214 Where the Jobs Are – Fairgrounds under SGE Structure as Landlords for Sports Leagues
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=599 Ailing Puerto Rico open to radical economic fixes – with focus on Informal Economy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=398 Self-employment on the rise in the Caribbean – World Bank
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=273 10 Things We Don’t Want from the US – Job Discrimination of Immigrations
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=214 LCD versus an Entrepreneurial Ethos

The Caribbean is arguably the best address on the planet, but there are a lot of missing ingredients so as to be the best address for everyone. Due to this deficiency, the region has lost a large share of its human capital, one estimate of 70%, to the brain-drain. Some of the missing ingredients, “push” factors, have been jobs and opportunities for entrepreneurship.

No More! Change has come to the Caribbean. Starting first with the CU leadership – “thinking in a non-traditional way”.

The roadmap anticipates 150 million unique subscribers on www.myCarribbean.gov. This technocratic approach is more viable, more engaging than simply throwing our hopes over some wall to the far-flung Diaspora.

We must stop the floodgates of the debilitating brain-drain now and encourage our youth to seek a future in their homeland. While, we are at it, we must also encourage the far-flung Diaspora to repatriate back to the Caribbean.

This plan identified in the Go Lean book and blog/commentaries is a good start to create the missing opportunities for the region. The end result of this roadmap is a clearly defined destination: a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

———-

Appendix A – Video – Crowdfunding:  http://youtu.be/8b5-iEnW70k

What is Crowdfunding? Crowdfunding planning? What, How, Why and When? One platform’s view:

Appendix B – Kickstarter Campaigns

On April 17, 2014, the UK-based Guardian media outlet published a list of “20 of the most significant projects” launched on the Kickstarter platform prior to the date of publication:

  • Musician Amanda Palmer raised US$1.2 million from 24,883 backers in June 2012 to make a new album and art book.[40]
  • American Hans Fex raised US$1,226,811 from 5,030 backers in March 2014 for his “MiniMuseum” project that he describes on his Kickstarter page: “For the past 35 years I have collected amazing specimens … I then carefully break those specimens down into smaller pieces, embed them in acrylic … Each mini museum is a handcrafted, individually numbered limited edition … The majority of these specimens were acquired directly from contacting specialists recommended to me by museum curators, research scientists and university historians”.[41]
  • Writer Rob Thomas raised $5.7 million from 91,585 backers in April 2013 to create a feature film version of the defunct television series Veronica Mars. The nine award levels were initially available to backers in 21 countries, including Brazil, Canada, Finland and Germany. Lead actress Kristen Bell explained on the launch date of the project: “I promise if we hit our goal, we will make the sleuthiest, snarkiest, it’s-all-fun-and-games-‘til-one-of-you-gets-my-foot-up-your-ass movie we possibly can.”[42]
  • Actor, writer and director Zach Braff raised US$3.1 million from 46,520 backers in May 2013 to create the feature film Wish I Was Here, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Braff’s campaign was financially complemented by Worldview Entertainment.
  • Filmmaker Spike Lee raised US$1.4 million from 6,421 backers in August 2013 to make a feature film that, as of April 2014, is not titled. The film will feature actors Stephen Tyrone Williams, Zaraah Abrahams and Michael K. Williams.
  • YouTube celebrity Freddie Wong, who owns the company RocketJump, raised US$808,000 to produce the second series of the Web-based series Video Game High School. In February 2013, 10,613 backers committed funds to the project following the      series’ first season, which was also funded on Kickstarter.
  • Performance artist Marina Abramovic raised US$661,000 from 4,765 backers in August 2013 after paying US$950,000 to buy a building that would house the “Marina Abramovic Institute”. The building, as well as a corresponding organization, was foremost to the campaign, as Abramovic seeks to feature and maintain “long durational work, including that of performance art, dance, theatre, film, music, opera, and other forms that may develop in the future”.
  • The Kano technology company raised US$1.5 million from 13,387 backers in December 2013 to create a “computer and coding kit for all ages.” In June 2014, Kano will ship a case, a keyboard, a  speaker, a wireless server, and software that encourages children to learn the “Kano Blocks” coding language, a set of computer programming skills.
  • The Flint and Tinder company raised US$1.1 million from 9,226 backers in April 2013 for its “10-Year Hoodie” hooded sweatshirt that consists of 100%cotton and is made in the U.S. The company explains on its website: “Companies have systematically lowered your expectations to the point where it’s hard to know what to expect anymore. But while they’re busy off-shoring, out-sourcing and generally making things as cheaply and quickly as possible. It ends here.” According to Flint and Tinder, one million units of the product have been sold.[43][44]

———–

Appendix C – Source References:

a. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jamerican / http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/sunday-review/hispanics-the-new-italians.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
b. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdfunding

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Local Miami Haitian leaders protest Bahamian immigration policy

Posted on November 13, 2014 in Locations, Planning

Go Lean Commentary

“Why’s everybody always pickin’ on me?” – The Coasters – Charlie Brown Song; (see Appendix A).

It would seem that Haitians all around the world can sing the chorus to this above song. The history of Haiti is frequented with hardships in their own country and they have understandingly pursued a better life abroad. However, the Haitian Diaspora have also experienced oppression, discrimination and exclusionary treatment abroad and have had to endure a “hard welcome” in most foreign countries.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for elevating Caribbean society, for all 30 member-states, including Haiti. As such there are direct references in the book regarding Haiti’s historicity; (Pages 238 & 306).

In addition to history, Haiti also has a different geography compared to most Caribbean nations. They share the same island with the Dominican Republic. The oppression, discrimination and exclusionary treatment of Haitians started on that island. Over the years, the governmental administrations of the Dominican Republic have favored “white” immigrant refugees over other races; Dominican troops often forcibly expelled illegal Haitians. Most notably, the 1937 Parsley Massacre of Haitian immigrants, a government-sponsored genocide in October 1937, at the direct order of then President Rafael Trujillo. He ordered the execution of the Haitian population living in the borderlands. The violence resulted in the killing of 20,000 ethnic Haitian civilians during approximately five days. (See Appendix B for additional historic references and inferences).

The US and other countries in the Caribbean neighborhood have also been harsh in their treatment of Haitian refugees. Consider this story of a conflict with the Bahamas, and the protests from the Haitian Diaspora in Miami:

1. News Article Title: Local Miami Haitian leaders protest Bahamian immigration policy
http://www.wsvn.com/story/27344225/local-haitian-leaders-protest-bahamian-immigration-policy – Posted: November 10, 2014

Miami Haitian Protesters 1

MIAMI (WSVN) — Local leaders are stepping up to stop a deportation dilemma regarding an immigration policy.

The policy forces families of Haitian descent out of the Bahamas.

Florida State Representative Daphne Campbell spoke out on the issue at a press conference in Little Haiti Monday morning. “I’m asking all, all cruises and all tourists, to make sure every industry boycotts the Bahamas to end discrimination against Haitian children,” Campbell stated. “Boycott Bahamas! Boycott Bahamas! Boycott Bahamas!”

Activists are now asking for the public’s support in helping to protect the future of Haitian families.
————

Video: WSVN Newscast – http://www.wsvn.com/story/27344225/local-haitian-leaders-protest-bahamian-immigration-policy?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=10832494

Though the leader of the accusing team has her detractors/problems, (South Florida state Rep. Daphne Campbell faces IRS investigation and she is already facing a Florida Medicaid fraud probe), the subject of her accusation may still have merit. What are the facts of the case regarding Haitian children in the Bahamas?

The Bahamas does not automatically grant citizenship to people born of foreign parentage in its homeland. There are special provisos even if one parent is a Bahamian citizen; many details of which are gender-biased. (There were attempts to correct these provisos in Parliament this past year, but this legislative reform was stalled).

This citizenship criteria is not standard … compared to the US, Canada, and most western European countries. Ironic as these countries are also the source of most tourists visiting the Bahamas, the #1 economic driver for the country. So any traction in this Boycott Bahamas campaign can potentially have a negative impact – remember “Boycott Apartheid in South Africa”.

What’s worse, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or UDHR (as related in Go Lean book Page 220) have specific prohibitions against national governments enforcing laws that effectuate discrimination against minority groups.

(The UDHR was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, partly in response to the atrocities of World War II, composed by a committee led by former American First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Although the UDHR was a non-binding resolution, it is now considered by some to have acquired the force of international customary law which may be invoked in appropriate circumstances by national and other judiciaries. The UDHR urges member nations to promote a number of human, civil, economic and social rights, asserting these rights as part of the “foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”).

This means you Bahamas! Are you ready to receive the onslaught of darts from the international community? Economic sanctions, formal or informal, are debilitating!

This is not just a Haitian -versus- Bahamian issue. The same immigration-border-encroaching issues are trending with the US, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. This following news article relates this controversy:

2. Title: Haitian Illegal Immigration Through Puerto Rico Is Skyrocketing Too  – http://news.yahoo.com/haitian-illegal-immigration-puerto-rico-skyrocketing-too-021611125.html;_ylt=AwrBJR6DB9dTyzoAHyzQtDMD – Posted: July 26, 2014

Haitians to PRWhile U.S. immigration agencies grapple with a recent surge of tens of thousands of illegal immigrants at the Mexican border, the number of Haitians trying to enter the U.S. illegally through Puerto Rico has skyrocketed as well.

In 2011, only 12 Haitians made the trek through the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory in the Caribbean Sea. That number had ballooned to 1,760 as of last year, according to U.S. Coast Guard statistics, CBS News reports.

“That’s new, and that’s something we’re trying to target,” Capt. Mark Fedor, the Coast Guard’s chief of response for the Southeast and Caribbean, told CBS.

“Organized smugglers in the Dominican Republic are advertising their services to Haitians and saying, ‘We’ll smuggle you through the Dominican Republic, put you on a boat to Puerto Rico or to one of the islands in the Mona Pass – a much shorter journey and we can get you to the United States that way.’ And I think people are responding to that,” he said.

The Dominican smugglers often drop their Haitian charges off at Mona Island, an uninhabited Puerto Rican island 40 miles off of the Dominican coast in the Mona Pass.

“As soon as you’re in Puerto Rico, it’s like you’re in the United States,” Lolo Sterne, coordinator for Haiti’s Office of Migration, told the Associated Press last year.

Once in Puerto Rico, the illegal Haitian immigrants are able to fly to destinations in the U.S. without having to show a passport. All they need is a driver’s license, according to the Associated Press.

The new route through the Mona Pass is seen as more desirable as the U.S. Coast Guard has increased patrols of normal routes taken by immigrants from Haiti and the Dominican Republic. As the AP points out, it has become more difficult to travel directly to the U.S. mainland or through Miami, which has historically served as the choice destination for illegal immigrants from the Caribbean.

Haiti and its 9+ million residents need change. In fact, all of the Caribbean’s 42 million people need change/empowerment.

The purpose of the Go Lean roadmap is to turn-around the downward trends in the Caribbean today, to reverse course and elevate society in the Caribbean as a whole and Haiti in particular. The CU, applying best-practices for community empowerment has these 3 prime directives, pronounced as follows:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance, with consideration for minority equalization, to support these engines.

How exactly can the CU impact Haiti to reboot that failing state? The answer can be found in the history of post-war Europe, where the Marshall Plan was instrumental in rebooting that continent. The book Go Lean…Caribbean details a Marshall Plan-like roadmap for Haiti, and all other failing Caribbean institutions.

The related subjects of economic, security and governing dysfunction among European and Caribbean member-states have been a frequent topic for blogging by the Go Lean promoters, as sampled here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2809 A Lesson in History: Economics of East Berlin
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2480 A Lesson in History: Community Ethos of WW II
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2330 ‘Raul Castro reforms not enough’, Cuba’s bishops say
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1531 A Lesson in History: 100 Years Ago Today – World War I
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1433 Caribbean loses over 70% of tertiary educated citizens to the brain drain
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1014 All is not well in the sunny Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=623 Only at the precipice, do they change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=599 Ailing Puerto Rico open to radical economic fixes
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=451 CariCom Chairman to deliver address on slavery/colonization reparations

The goal of the Go Lean roadmap is simple: to make Haiti (and by extension the rest of the Caribbean) a better place to live, work and play so that citizens would not feel compelled to risk life-and-limb to flee for foreign shores. The goal extends further in the mission to reverse course and encourage the repatriation of the Haitian/Caribbean Diaspora. To accomplish these goals, the book details a series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to empower all the factions of Haitian life in the Caribbean region and in the Diaspora:

Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Choices & Incentives Page 21
Community Ethos – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future Page 21
Community Ethos – Anti-Bullying and Mitigation Page 23
Community Ethos – Minority Equalization Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Manage Reconciliations Page 34
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Strategy – Vision –  Integrate region into a Single Market Economy Page 45
Strategy – Agents of Change – Globalization Page 57
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Department of Homeland Security Page 75
Implementation – Ways to Foster International Aid Page 115
Planning – 10 Big Ideas … for the Caribbean Region – Haiti & Cuba Page 127
Planning – Ways to Ways to Model the EU Page 130
Planning – Reasons Why the CU Will Succeed – Germany Reconciliation Model Page 132
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices – Haiti – first on the region list Page 134
Planning – Lessons from East Germany – European post-war rebuilding Page 139
Planning – Lessons from Canada’s History Page 146
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Empowering Immigration Page 174
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice Page 178
Advocacy – Ways to Enhance Tourism Page 187
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Diaspora – Haitians in Miami Page 217
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights Page 220
Advocacy – Ways to Help Women Page 226
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Youth Page 227
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Dominican Republic Page 237
Advocacy – Ways to Re-boot Haiti Page 238
Advocacy – Ways to Impact US Territories Page 244
Appendix – Dominican Republic – Rafael Trujillo Regime Page 306

The conclusion of the Go Lean book relates the experiences and motivations of the US Supreme Court for the 1954 landmark decision Brown versus Board of Education. The unanimous wisdom of the 9 Justices on the Court should not be ignored, it was strewn from the experiences of modern society waging two world wars; they saw the rampage, devastation of 60 million deaths around the world and appreciated the wisdom that a downtrodden people would not stay down, that they would rise and revolt, that they would risk their lives and that of their children to pursue freedom.

How impactful is the Haitian Diaspora in the Bahamas? With a total national population of 320,000 and one estimate (July 2013) of 50,000 Haitian and/or Haitian-Bahamians, there is an imminent wave of dissent for the Bahamas to contend with. Don’t wait Bahamas, deal with your domestic issues now! Learn from the experiences of your neighbors, as depicted in the Go Lean book:

US: Lessons from the US Constitution (Page 145)
Canada: Reconciliation with First Nations (Page 146)
Guyana: Indo-Guyanese versus Afro-Guyanese (Page 174)
Trinidad: Indo-Trinidadians versus Afro-Trinidadians (Page 240)

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean to learn the lessons from [economic] history of other successful (US & Canada) and unsuccessful societies. The Go Lean book posits that the Caribbean is in a serious crisis, but asserts that this crisis would be a terrible thing to waste. The people and governing institutions of the Bahamas, Haiti and the region as a whole are hereby urged to lean-in for the empowerments described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. This is a big deal for the region, we can all strive to make our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work, and play.

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

———–

Appendix A – The song: Charlie Brown by The Coasters – http://youtu.be/_UnPzp2lmNk

———–

Appendix B – Homework for additional credit: better understand the history of Haiti and its consequential impact on the world.

Video Title: Black In Latin America (Episode 1): Haiti and The Dominican Republic- The Roots of Division

This scholarly work was produced and narrated by noted Professor Henry Louis Gates. This was part of a series developed for the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) , a network of public TV stations in the US. The other features in the series, include:

Black In Latin America (Episode 2): Cuba: The Next Revolution
Black In Latin America (Episode 3): Brazil: A Racial Paradise?
Black In Latin America (Episode 4): Mexico & Peru: The Black Grandma in the Closet

 

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Jamaica’s Public Pension Under-funded

Posted on November 10, 2014 in Economics, Locations

Go Lean Commentary

“Stealing from Peter to pay Paul” – Old Adage.

This above statement does not need to be explained; every reader fully understands and appreciates the meaning of this expression. It reflects a practice in financial management when revenue resources are out-paced by financial obligations. This is when reorganization becomes necessary. In fact, the publishers of the book Go Lean … Caribbean, SFE Foundation, is well suited to comment on these practices, as their charter is portfolio reorganizations for individuals, families and institutions.

On Page 8 of the book, the detailed profile of the foundation features influences from a noted American Economist Paul Romer by listing two of his famous quotations:

1. “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste”
2. “Economic growth occurs whenever people take resources and re-arrange them in ways that are more valuable”

The foregoing article relates a need in Jamaica to reorganize the pension program for retired civil servants. The system is broken! This subject of retirement is therefore important for retired people (old) and active workers (young), as every civil servant is either retired or want to be … someday:

Title: Public pension reform programme won’t work – Unfunded obligations at J$680B and growing
Sub-Title: Public-sector employees now enjoy very generous pension benefits that Government pays from current revenue.
By: A.C. Countz, Guest Columnist

s Public Pension Under-funded - Photo 2The Jamaican Government does not put aside the necessary funds to finance pension obligations as they are incurred, as would be done in a private-sector scheme. It has a planned ‘reform’ that will further increase the pension fund deficit. This is irresponsible.

If past pension benefits were funded, as in most private-sector firms, that is, in a special segregated fund with an adequate balance to pay for the pension obligations relating to past service, then the Government (taxpayers) would have to find, right now, about J$680 billion to put into this fund.

Additionally, Government would have to put in 5.0 percent of pensionable annual salary for the public service in years going forward.

Currently, there are many members of the public sector, those of pensionable age, who receive pensions totaling J$23 billion per annum, while employee contributions amount to J$4.4 billion per annum.

In other words, Government is paying out annually almost J$19 billion more in pensions than incoming employee contributions.

Government now plans to reform the pension plan by April Fool’s Day 2016.

CURRENT PROPOSALS
The reform hopes to achieve:

1. Unification of all the different legislations that deal with these pensions and, as far as possible, standardise pensions terms across the whole public sector;

2. A defined benefit scheme would continue, though moderated;

3. An increase in retirement age to 65, gradually for existing employees – apparently lower retirement age for soldiers, policemen and maybe national and local politicians;

4. Calculate pensions based on average last five year’s service (calculation now based on final salary);

5. Calculate pensions based on 1.8 percent of average last five year’s service for every year served. There would be transitional arrangements whereby persons over 54 years old at the start of reform would get a higher percentage of between 2.0 per cent and 2.2 percent.

6. Pensions would not be indexed although the Government might increase pensions if a ‘surplus’ in the scheme is produced – as there is no segregated fund, one cannot imagine how this surplus is to be calculated; and

7. A lump sum of 25 percent of pension benefits payable on retirement and ongoing pension reduced – presumably the reduction will be actuarially calculated.

The Government proposals in the White Paper are faulty and, if implemented, will not make the public-sector pension plan affordable in the future. It is a Band-Aid when strong reform is needed.

The finances of the country are in a disastrous, although possibly better managed, condition.

RIGHT WAY FOR REFORM
Here are some suggestions for pension reform that are more appropriate than those in the White Paper:

1. Terminate the existing defined benefit scheme. Honour past service with existing benefits;

2. Commence a defined contribution scheme at once for ALL public servants, including statutory bodies and executive agencies. All future service for existing employees and all new employees to go into the defined contribution scheme. All employees to start paying a basic contribution of 5.0 per cent of pensionable salaries – these should be defined to exclude non-salary benefits. Employees should be encouraged to make further voluntary contributions to become entitled to a larger pension on retirement. Government to seek a waiver from IMF to allow them to fund the employer’s contribution of 5.0 per cent per annum from now;

3. Defined Contribution (DC) scheme to be operated in a properly managed and transparent segregated fund;

4. Government should face the issue squarely and acknowledge that they have debts, not accounted for in the national debt, of say J$700 billion representing the present day value of unfunded obligations. This amount should be properly accounted for in the national debt and arrangements made to fund it;

5. It is irresponsible for Government to reform the public sector pension scheme in a way that is certain to continue to increase the size of its unfunded obligations. Proper reform will be difficult to deal with, especially coinciding with the end of the pay freeze, but to do otherwise is once again not to face reality.

The basis of any reform must be to halt the growth of the unfunded obligation of the scheme in respect of past service and to fund on a current basis future service obligations.

Jamaica is badly served if EPOC, civil society and private sector organisations – to say nothing about the IMF – allow this pusillanimous approach to be followed.

Government reform must at a minimum stop the growth in the unfunded obligations of the scheme and include a plan to fund what is due for past service over a committed period of time.

A defined contribution scheme should be introduced for all future service.

This will be impossible for government to do unless there is public pressure on them to counterbalance the civil service lobby.

This column reviews the audited and in-house accounts and reports of companies and entities owned or influenced by Government.
Jamaica Gleaner Newspaper Online Site (Posted 08/20/2014; retrieved 03/06/2014) –
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20140820/business/business6.html

s Public Pension Under-funded - Photo 1

The book Go Lean … Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The technocratic CU is proffered to provide economic, security and economic security solutions for the 30 Caribbean member-states, including Jamaica. This mandate is important for retirement planning for current and future generations. This is detailed early on in the book’s Declaration of Interdependence, as follows on Page 13:

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 roadmap posits that retirement is a community issue, and that the mandate for the CU to manage economic security issues must encompass retirement planning as well. Applying lessons from the US and other western democracies, the key to technocratic retirement planning is the time-value-of-money; the ability to invest small amounts when young so that compounded returns can grow exponentially to benefit the saver when they are old; this is depicted in the VIDEO below. This is based on one assumption, that there is a capital/security market to facilitate the investment. This is where the Caribbean status quo is most lacking.

Without question, the role model for Caribbean capital/security markets would be New York City’s Wall Street. This ‘metonym’ refers to more than just the ‘street’, but rather the entire eco-system for financial investing in the US. While, the Caribbean region cannot rival Wall Street (for liquidity), we can reorganize and optimize the existing financial markets  – the current 9 Stock Exchanges – with the introduction of the Caribbean Dollar, managed by a technocratic Caribbean Central Bank.

Liquidity refers to the availability of money, therefore the Go Lean roadmap portrays the need for public messaging to encourage more savings/investments. This messaging pronounces the need for Caribbean stakeholders to “steal from Peter to pay Paul”, where “Paul” is their future selves; see VIDEO below. The book describes this “deferred gratification” as a community ethos that is required to forge permanent change; this is advantageous for the entire Caribbean, and individual member-states like Jamaica.

There are some realities for Jamaica that must not be ignored. This country has experienced numerous currency devaluations and hyper-inflation episodes that has undermined the good habit of savings. These realities were detailed in the Go Lean book (Pages 239 & 297), depicting the “misery index” that Jamaicans had to endure. No wonder the societal abandonment rate in Jamaica is among the highest in the region. A previous Go Lean blog/commentary listed an abandonment rate of 85% among the college educated population.

The Go Lean roadmap addresses pension reorganization by first rebooting the region’s currency, economic and governing engines.

Related subjects on currency, economic, and governing dysfunction in the region that may affect the management of pensions have been previously blogged by the Go Lean promoters, as sampled here:

Inflation Matters – A factor in ‘Pensions’
Canadian Retirees – Florida’s Snowbirds Chilly Welcome
US Federal Reserve releases transcripts from 2008 meetings regarding mitigations of the financial crisis
Dominica demonstrates Caribbean liquidity by raising EC$20 million on regional securities market
Time Value of Money – basis for retirement planning
Book Review: ‘Wrong – Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn…’
What’s Holding Back Jamaica’s Reforms

The purpose of the Go Lean roadmap is to turn-around the downward trends in the Caribbean today, to reverse course and elevate Caribbean society. The Go Lean roadmap, applying lessons from the currency, economic and governing dysfunction of past years, has envisioned the CU with the following 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 protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines with Executive branch facilitations & legislative oversight.

The Go Lean book details a series of assessments, community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to optimize financial/retirement planning and performance:

Assessment – Caribbean Single Market & Economy – need for integration Page 15
Assessment – The Greece of the Caribbean – dysfunctional debt policies Page 18
Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification Page 21
Community Ethos – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future Page 21
Community Ethos – Money Multiplier – Control of Local/Regional Currency Page 22
Community Ethos – Return on Investments Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Implementation – Ways to Better Manage Debt Page 114
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate Page 118
Planning – Lessons from 2008 Page 136
Advocacy – Ways to Control Inflation Page 153
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage Foreign Exchange Page 154
Advocacy – Ways to Manage Federal Civil Service – Pension -vs- 401K Page 173
Advocacy – Reforms for Banking Regulations Page 199
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Wall Street Page 200
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Elder-Care Page 225
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Retirement Page 231
Advocacy – Ways to Re-boot Jamaica Page 239
Appendix – Jamaica’s International Perception Page 297
Appendix – Lessons Learned – Floating a Currency Page 316
Appendix – Controlling Inflation – Technical Details Page 318

In most Caribbean countries, the largest employer is the government. Therefore public-sector employees are the largest group of workers. The foregoing news article was written as an audit-analysis to an audience of two, the Responsible Government Ministers for the Jamaican public-sector employees’ pension. The article specifically identified them as:

Dr. Peter Phillips – Ministry of Finance and Planning
Derrick Kellier – Ministry of Labour and Social Security

The Go Lean roadmap, on the other hand, was written for a different audience, all Caribbean stakeholders: citizens, Diaspora, government officials, civil servants, retirees and the youth. This is an empowerment plan for most aspects of Caribbean life, in fact there are 144 different advocacies in the Go Lean book. This is heavy-lifting; an investment in the people of the Caribbean for the elevation of the Caribbean.

The requisite investment of the resources (time, talent, treasuries) for this goal to elevate society may be too big for any one Caribbean member-state alone. Rather, shifting the responsibility to a region-wide, professionally-managed, deputized technocracy will result in “greater” production and greater accountability. Retirement planning and pensions are not optional, they need “greater” production and “greater” accountability; they need a “greater” return on investment – see VIDEO below on the slow-but-steady basics of “compound” investing.

Retirement planning for the Caribbean needs to “Go Lean“.

All Caribbean stakeholders are hereby urged to lean-in to this roadmap to make our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work, and play.

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

———

Video: Retirement Basics: The Power of Compounding – http://youtu.be/immQX0RKFY0

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A Lesson in History – Economics of East Berlin

Posted on November 9, 2014 in Government, Planning

Go Lean Commentary

The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for elevating Caribbean society; the book posits that the history of East Germany is a tutorial to the Caribbean effort. As such there are direct references in the book of the failed Communist State (Pages 132 & 139).

On this date 25 years ago, the “walls came tumbling down”, quickening the reunification of the nations of West Germany and East Germany. That is the headline, but beneath the surface, the German Democratic Republic (GDR or East Germany) was also rife with some other ugly truths.

In summary, the City of “East” Berlin was a maximum security prison in the heart of Europe. (This refers to City of East Berlin, not the whole country of East Germany).

Title: 25 Years Ago – The Berlin Wall Crumbled

CU Blog - A Lesson in History - Economics of East Berlin - Photo 1On the night of November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall came down. East German authorities opened the border between East and West Berlin and the door to the fall of tyranny.

The wall went up in the early morning darkness of August 13, 1961, to keep millions of people from fleeing communist East Germany after World War II. It fell as suddenly as it had been built. For 28 years, Germany was a country divided not only by ideology but by stone, barbed wire and deadly force. The Berlin Wall — die Mauer — stood as a testament to the eternal struggle between open and closed societies. For all its might, the wall could not stop the free flow of news into East Berlin.

The West side of the wall became a stage for politicians and a canvas for artists. The East side grew grimmer, as social and economic problems worsened. In the end, people rose in protest. When the wall finally crumbled, there was dancing and celebration. But the wall’s toll could not be forgotten: Nearly 200 people died trying to escape; more than 30,000 political prisoners were jailed.

Today, the fallen wall is a memorial to their sacrifice, one of the world’s great symbols of the victory of freedom over oppression. The eight, 12-foot-high segments of the Berlin Wall in the Newseum’s Berlin Wall Gallery weigh 2.5 tons each and came from throughout Berlin. The Newseum acquired the pieces in 1993, along with the three-story East German guard tower that stood near Checkpoint Charlie.

Newseum Institute – Archives and Exhibit of News Artifacts
http://www.newseum.org/2014/11/06/25-years-ago-the-berlin-wall-crumbled/

CU Blog - A Lesson in History - Economics of East Berlin - Photo 2This is more than just dry history. No, this is a lesson plan for the Caribbean empowerment effort. That effort is part-and-parcel of the Go Lean…Caribbean movement, this refers to the book and accompanying blog/commentaries. The book posits that the experiences of East Germany and the reunification with the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG or West Germany) provide a fitting example for the Caribbean people and institutions. What most people in the Caribbean may not realize, due to the far distance of a continent away, is that the national border for West and East Germany did not traverse through the City of Berlin, but rather 100 miles to the west of Berlin; (see map here). So the City of Berlin stood as an “island” within the country of East Germany, with that island itself split into West and East territories. (This is so similar to many Caribbean locales). The Western portion of Berlin belonged to West Germany; the residents had travel access via “air bridge” to other ports in the Federal Republic of Germany, while East Berliners were restricted – imprisoned in their own country, despite committing no offenses. This is classic human rights violation.

East Berlin, and by extension East Germany was a definitive Failed-State.

This audio-podcast here relates a practice of East Germany selling prisoners to the West for hard currency, so as to remediate the government’s economic deficiencies:

Video: Public Radio International East Germany Prisoner Ransom … http://youtu.be/FjozYlAlMew

The narratives described in this audio-podcast constitutes state-sponsored human trafficking.

This is abominable!

The German Reunification was not a merger, rather it was a repossession. East Germany was at the precipice of a Failed-State. The Caribbean today is at a similar precipice of dysfunction. This status is not due to the failure of communism (though one Caribbean member-state – Cuba – does feature a failed communist society), but rather the global financial crisis. Cuba also parallels East Germany with a human trafficking crisis; many citizens are desperate to leave the island and families pay huge “ransoms” to extract them.

The review of the historic events of this day regarding the Berlin Wall 25 years ago is more than just an academic discussion, the book Go Lean…Caribbean aspires to economic principles that dictate that “consequences of choices lie in the future”. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The people of the Caribbean may not know the intimate details of East Germany, but we do understand societal decline and dysfunction all too well.

What have we learned from the East/West Germany experiences? How will those lessons help us today?

  • Brain Drain is unrecoverable – East Germany learned quickly that they had to keep their talented citizens by any means necessary, and thus the wall. The CU/Go Lean roadmap places priority on the atmosphere for the Caribbean talent to want to stay in the homeland and for the Diaspora to repatriate..
  • Most valuable resource – East German sold their human resources to the West; (over 300,000 people according to the above audio-podcast/VIDEO). This was their best marketable resource. The Go Lean roadmap posits that one person can make a difference and impact the economic engines in the fields of endeavor. Rather than one, the CU/Go Lean effort strives to foster the masses for their collective and individual contributions.
  • Promote opportunities for the Pursuit of Happiness – People in the West were NOT trying to sneak into the East. Basic needs were not fully satisfied there, so higher level needs were rarely pursued. The Go Lean roadmap posits that when the basic needs are in place, only then can the pursuit of happiness be tackled.
  • Consider the Greater Good – Complying with this Greater Good principle would have prevented a lot of the conflict during the 28-year East-West segregation. This philosophy is directly quoted in the book as: “it is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong”. The CU/Go Lean roadmap calls for a number of measures that strike directly at the Greater Good mandate: accountable justice institutions, economic empowerment for rich and poor, strategic education initiatives, proactive health/wellness, etc.
  • Quit on “failed” policies  – With the Soviet Union and Eastern European trading partners collapsing, the East German currency, the Mark, had become worthless outside of the GDR, creating the acute need to merge the two German economies. The GDR did not try to prop up the failing currency beyond 1989, instead they transferred its financial & monetary policy to the stewards of the stronger West Germany currency. The Go Lean roadmap will employ a technocratic Caribbean Central Bank and Caribbean Dollar so as to shore up the currency and economic engines in the region.
  • Negotiating as partners not competitors – Considering the German reunification models, consolidating millions of people with divergent politics and cultures into one Federation requires toleration and adjustments by all stakeholders. Success is possible only when all sides are willing to negotiate as partners not competitors. The CU requires negotiations and treaty considerations for economics, security and governing solutions. So the Go Lean roadmap adopts negotiations as a community ethos.
  • Reconciliation of issues is not optional, more conflict will emerge otherwise – There was loss of life and many human rights abuses in the history of the East-West schism, and there must be accountability. The CU plans for Truth & Reconciliation Commissions for dealing with a lot of latent issues in the last Caribbean century (i.e. Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, etc).

The related subjects of economic, security and governing dysfunction have been a frequent topic for blogging by the Go Lean promoters, as sampled here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2585 A Lesson in History: Concorde SST
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2480 A Lesson in History: Community Ethos of WW II
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2359 CariCom calls for innovative ideas to finance SIDS development
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2330 ‘Raul Castro reforms not enough’, Cuba’s bishops say
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2297 A Lesson in History: Booker T versus Du Bois
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1531 A Lesson in History: 100 Years Ago Today – World War I
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1433 Caribbean loses over 70% of tertiary educated citizens to the brain drain
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1309 5 Steps of a Bubble – Learning from the past and mitigating negatives
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1014 All is not well in the sunny Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=816 The Future of Caribbean Integration and CariCom
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=782 Open the Time Capsule: The Great Recession of 2008
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=623 Only at the precipice, do they change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=599 Ailing Puerto Rico open to radical economic fixes
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=451 CariCom Chairman to deliver address on slavery/colonization reparations
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=353 Book Review: ‘Wrong – Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn…’

The purpose of the Go Lean roadmap is to turn-around the downward trends in the Caribbean today, to reverse course and elevate Caribbean society. This CU/Go Lean roadmap, applying lessons from the last 25 years of German history, has developed these prime directives, pronounced as follows:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The Go Lean book details a series of assessments, community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to empower all the factions in the Caribbean region:

Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Choices & Incentives Page 21
Community Ethos – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future Page 21
Community Ethos – Money Multiplier – Control of Local/Regional Currency Page 22
Community Ethos – Anti-Bullying and Mitigation Page 23
Community Ethos – Intelligence Gathering Page 23
Community Ethos – “Crap” Happens Page 23
Community Ethos – Minority Equalization Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Negotiations Page 32
Community Ethos – Ways to Manage Reconciliations Page 34
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Strategy – Vision –  Integrate Region into a Single Market Economy Page 45
Strategy – Agents of Change – Globalization Page 57
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Department of Homeland Security Page 75
Implementation – Assemble Existing Super-national Institutions Page 96
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change Page 101
Implementation – Foreign Policy Initiatives at Start-up Page 102
Implementation – Security Initiatives at Start-up Page 103
Implementation – Ways to Deliver Page 109
Planning – Ways to Ways to Model the EU Page 130
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better Page 131
Planning – Reasons Why the CU Will Succeed – Germany Reunification Model Page 132
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices Page 134
Planning – Lessons from East Germany Page 139
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Cooperatives Page 176
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Intelligence Gathering and Analysis Page 182
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights Page 220

1989 was pivotal in the history of modern Germany. Today the unified country is the Number One Economy in Europe and a role model for the Caribbean.

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean to learn the lessons from East Germany’s failed economy. The book Go Lean … Caribbean posits that the Caribbean is in a serious crisis, but asserts that this crisis would be a terrible thing to waste. The people and governing institutions of the region are hereby urged to lean-in for the empowerments described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. This is a big deal for the region, the same way 1989 was a big year for Germany. While “impacting Germany” is out-of-scope for this CU roadmap, applying effective turn-around strategies (as in emerging from communism in Cuba) and elevating the Caribbean neighborhood is realistic and plausible. We can make our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work, and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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DR President Medina on the economy: ‘God will provide’

Posted on November 8, 2014 in Economics, Locations

Go Lean Commentary

The Caribbean is in crisis!

For many, “success is measured by the successful exodus from their Caribbean homeland”. So declares the foreword of the book Go Lean … Caribbean (Page 3).

The Dominican Republic is in crisis! According to the foregoing news article, the island nation have lots of issues, stemming primarily from economic dysfunctions, and the solution, according to the President of the Republic is only “Faith, Hope and Prayer”:

President Medina PhotoSanto Domingo – President Danilo Medina says that the Dominican state has a very high level of debt, because it is dragging a vital execution deficit with the income it receives and has to spend, which has prevented the economy from recovery over the past few years.

“When a country does not receive enough resources to fund its spending, the only way of financing it is to use state money. In all these years the country’s average fiscal deficit since 2000 to date has been 4.5% of the annual Gross Domestic Product,” said Medina

He said that the state will have to pay US$11 billion in debt between 2013 and 2015, and for the deficit to be reduced an effort must be made to reduce its essence, in order to take it to 2.8% of GDP.

The President warned that this reduction is behind the importance of building coal-fired plants to supply the country with energy, and that he does not understand why “there is a conspiracy against these plants that should be defended by the whole country, if we want sustainability in public finances.” He said that these plants, which will come into operation in 2017, would mean the state would save 1.7% of the GDP, by paying the Dominican Corporation of State Electricity Companies (CDEEE) debt, thus putting the national economy on a good path within a few years.

When he was asked where he would obtain the resources for governing over the next years, Medina answered, “God will provide.” He said that the budgetary spending restructuring meant the government was investing where people needed it and that this was being reflected in economic development.
Dominican Today – Online Community – Posted 08-20-2014; Retrieved 11-08-2014:
http://www.dominicantoday.com/dr/economy/2014/8/20/52502/President-Medina-on-the-economy-God-will-provide

The publishers of the Go Lean book recognize and respect religious faith and devotion. In fact, the book examines the Bible’s record on economic empowerment, listing 10 Lessons from the Bible (Page 144). For the consideration of this commentary and the President’s “easy” secession in the foregoing article, a fitting lesson is derived from the Bible Book of James Chapter 2:14 – 26; (see Appendix*):

James 2:26 – “Faith without works is dead”.

The required “works” is described in the Go Lean book as heavy-lifting.

The publishers of the Go Lean book humbly submit a plan for heavy-lifting, one so comprehensive that it is considered a roadmap, turn-by-turn directions to move the Dominican Republic from Point A (status quo), to Point B (destination of societal elevation). This roadmap is set to re-boot the island’s economy, security and governing engines, highlighting 144 different advocacies designed to impact society. The book asserts that the problems of the Dominican Republic (and by extension, the entire Caribbean) are too big for any one member-state to solve alone. Rather, the focus of the roadmap is the region-wide professionally-managed, deputized technocracy of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU).

The Dominican Republic needs the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies of the CU.

The CU needs the Dominican Republic!

The CU requires the full participation of all 30 member-states in the region, including all 4 language groups (Dutch, English, French and Spanish). With this approach, the CU benefits from the economies-of-scale of 42 million people.

The CU expects NO MONEY from the Dominican Republic. This is good as the country’s treasuries are strained, maintaining the national debt of US$11 billion, plus a budget deficit reflecting 4.5% of GDP. To cure a deficit a government needs combinations of two things: more revenues and/or fewer expenses.

The Go Lean roadmap features both. The roadmap is a complete re-boot: new revenue streams and a separation-of-powers, thereby delegating some governance to CU agencies.

The Go Lean … Caribbean book introduces the CU to take oversight of’ much of the Caribbean economic, security and governing functionality. In summary, this plan’s execution makes the Dominican Republic, and the Caribbean, a better place to live, work and play.

This Go Lean roadmap assesses the Dominican Republic human flight/brain drain crisis, where large percentages of the island’s populations have fled to American shores, with estimates of up to 1.3 million in the Diaspora as of 2006 (Page 237 & 306). This plight makes the task of building a functioning society difficult, as often the brightest and best talents are the ones that flee; plus entitlement programs simply need populace retention.

The CU will fix the Dominican Republic! Look here at the solutions; (sorted by Economic/Security/Governance). The book Go Lean … Caribbean details these specific curative measures (advocacies, strategies, tactics, and implementations):

Economic:

Community Ethos – Money Multiplier Page 22
Help Entrepreneurship Page 28
Impact Turn-Around Strategies/Tactics Page 33
Tactics to Forge an $800 Billion Economy Page 67
New Ways to Pay for Change Page 101
Improve Energy Usage Page 113
Better Manage Debt Page 114
Foster International Aid Page 115
Improve Trade Page 128
Improve Interstate Commerce Page 129
New Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Create Jobs Page 152
Control Inflation Page 153
Improve Credit Ratings Page 155
Improve Education Page 159
Mitigate Black Markets Page 165
Enhance Tourism Page 190
Impact Wall Street Page 200

Security:

Separation of Powers – Homeland Security Page 75
Security Initiatives [stemming from the Start-up] Page 103
Impact Justice Page 177
Mitigate & Reduce Crime Page 178
Improve Intelligence [Gathering & Analysis] Page 182
Impact the Prison-Industrial Complex Page 211

Governance:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification Page 21
Improve Negotiations Page 32
Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Tactics to Foster a Technocracy Page 64
Implement Self-Governing Entities Page 105
Strong Reasons to Repatriate Page 118
Promote Independence Page 120
Improve Healthcare Page 156
Impact Entitlements Page 158
New [Governmental] Revenue Sources Page 172
Impact Public Works Page 175
Better Manage Natural Resources Page 183
Improve for Natural Disasters Page 184
Improve Emergency Management Page 196

The people of the Dominican Republic are calling for change, for help, for some mitigations. They need prayer, yes, but they need workable solutions too. See the VIDEO below, produced by young students in line with a “poverty” theme; this assessment is “from the mouth of babes” – Bible Quote (Matthew 21:16).

With the Go Lean roadmap, change has come to the Caribbean. The people and institutions of the Dominican Republic are all urged to “lean-in” to this roadmap.

In fact, now is the time for the whole Caribbean region to lean-in for this change, described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. The benefits of this roadmap are too alluring to ignore: emergence of an $800 Billion regional economy, 2.2 million new jobs and an end to the economic dysfunction. This will result in Dominicans repatriating from the US, not fleeing to the US. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

————-

Appendix – Bible Reading – James Chapter 2:14 – 26 (New International Version)

*Faith and Deeds

14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”
Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. 19 You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.
20 You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless ? 21 Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. 23 And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness, and he was called God’s friend. 24 You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.
25 In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? 26 As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

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Appendix – Video: Why the Dominican Republic is poor?  http://youtu.be/pCVR-kdc0ss

Published on May 15, 2013 By YouTube Contributor: “camilalovescupcakes” (Sharen Sosa)
The prologue included this verbiage: “In my school, as final exam in English classes, told us to do a video of ‘Why the Dominican Republic is poor?’ We had to make groups and make a video, talking about it, and also focus on the cause, which was the “Corruption”, we made a documentary and here is the whole video, hope you love it”.

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The Geography of Joblessness

Posted on November 7, 2014 in Economics, Social

Go Lean Commentary

“A better place to live, work and play” – this is the tagline for the book Go Lean…Caribbean, thereby placing emphasis on the verb “work”. To work, there must be jobs, so the entire eco-system of jobs is a constant focus of the book’s publishers.

The foregoing news article relates to this mission. The underlying issue in this consideration relates to jobs and joblessness. There is the need for more jobs – in urban communities in OECD – Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development – countries (like US, Canada, Europe) and also in the Caribbean – see VIDEO in the Appendix below. But there are many issues that underlie the availability of jobs, such as geography, transportation and racial discrimination. To effect change in the job creation quest, there must be some consideration of these issues:

Subtitle: The difficulty people have in getting to jobs makes unemployment unnecessarily high

CU Blog - The Geography of Joblessness - PhotoIN THE OECD, a club mostly of rich countries, nearly 45 million people are unemployed. Of these, 16 million have been seeking work for over a year. Many put this apparently intractable scourge down to workers’ inadequate skills or overgenerous welfare states. But might geography also play a role?

In a paper* published in 1965, John Kain, an economist at Harvard University, proposed what came to be known as the “spatial-mismatch hypothesis”. Kain had noticed that while the unemployment rate in America as a whole was below 5%, it was 40% in many black, inner-city communities. He suggested that high and persistent urban joblessness was due to a movement of jobs away from the inner city, coupled with the inability of those living there to move closer to the places where jobs had gone, due to racial discrimination in housing. Employers might also discriminate against those that came from “bad” neighbourhoods. As a result, finding work was tough for many inner-city types, especially if public transport was poor and they did not own a car.

For the past 50 years, urban economists have argued over Kain’s theory. Some, like William Julius Wilson, then of University of Chicago, pointed to the decline of inner-city manufacturing to explain the sharp spike in poverty in black inner-city neighbourhoods between 1970 and 1980—in keeping with Kain’s logic. Others, like Edward Glaeser, another Harvard economist, suggest that spatial mismatch is overblown. There may indeed be a correlation between where people live and their chances of finding a job. But the connection may not be causal: people may live in bad areas because they have been shunned by employers, either for lack of skills or because of racial discrimination.

Until recently economists did not have adequate data to back up their opinions. Studies used cross-sectional data—a snapshot of an economy at a single point in time—which made it hard to disentangle cause and effect. Did someone live in a bad area because they could not find a job, or was it more difficult to find a job because they lived in a bad area? It was also hard to know quite how inaccessible a particular job was. Researchers could calculate the distance between homes and job opportunities but struggled to estimate how much time it would take to get from one to the other by car or public transport. And the research was marred by small samples, often all from a single city.

A new paper, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, avoids these pitfalls. It looks at the job searches of nearly 250,000 poor Americans living in nine cities in the Midwest. These places contain pockets of penury: unemployment in inner Chicago, for instance, is twice the average for the remainder of the city. Even more impressive than the size of the sample is the richness of the data. They are longitudinal, not cross-sectional: the authors have repeated observations over a number of years (in this case, six). That helps them to separate cause and effect. Most importantly, the paper looks only at workers who lost their jobs during “mass lay-offs”, in which at least 30% of a company’s workforce was let go. That means the sample is less likely to include people who may live in a certain area, and be looking for work, for reasons other than plain bad luck.

For each worker the authors build an index of accessibility, which measures how far a jobseeker is from the available jobs, adjusted for how many other people are likely to be competing for them. The authors use rush-hour travel times to estimate how long a jobseeker would need to get to a particular job.

If a spatial mismatch exists, then accessibility should influence how long it takes to find a job. That is indeed what the authors find: jobs are often located where poorer people cannot afford to live. Those at the 25th percentile of the authors’ index take 7% longer to find a job that replaces at least 90% of their previous earnings than those at the 75th percentile. Those who commuted a long way to their old job find a new one faster, possibly because they are used to a long trek.

The annihilation of space with time

Other papers suggest that workers may be in the wrong place. A study from the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, finds that poverty in America has become more concentrated over the past decade. During the 2000s the number of neighbourhoods with poverty rates of 40% or more climbed by three-quarters. Unlike Kain’s day, though, poverty is growing fastest in the suburbs, not the inner cities. Pockets of concentrated poverty also tend to suffer from bad schools and crime, making them even more difficult to escape.

Spatial mismatch is not just an American problem. A paper by Laurent Gobillon of the French National Institute for Demographic Studies and Harris Selod of the Paris School of Economics finds that neighbourhood segregation prevents unemployed Parisians from finding work. Another study, conducted in England, concludes that those who live far from jobs spend less time looking for work than those who live nearby, presumably because they think they have little hope of finding one.

All this has big policy implications. Some suggest that governments should encourage companies to set up shop in areas with high unemployment. That is a tall order: firms that hire unskilled workers often need to be near customers or suppliers. A better approach would be to help workers either to move to areas with lots of jobs, or at least to commute to them. That would involve scrapping zoning laws that discourage cheaper housing, and improving public transport. The typical American city dweller can reach just 30% of jobs in their city within 90 minutes on public transport. That is a recipe for unemployment.
The Economist Magazine (Posted October 25, 2014; Retrieved November 7, 2014) –
http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21627628-difficulty-people-have-getting-jobs-makes-unemployment-unnecessarily

References – *Studies cited in this article

“Job displacement and the duration of joblessness: The role of spatial mismatch”, by F. Andersson et al, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2014

“The effect of segregation and spatial mismatch on unemployment: evidence from France”, by L. Gobillon & H. Selod, Centre for Economic Policy Research, 2007

“The spatial mismatch hypothesis: three decades later”, by J.F. Kain, Housing Policy Debate, 3(2), 371-460, 1992

“Spatial mismatch, transport mode and search decisions in England”, by E. Patacchini, & Y. Zenou, Journal of Urban Economics, 58(1), 62-90, 2005.

“The Growth and Spread of Concentrated Poverty, 2000 to 2008-2012“, by E. Kneebone, Brookings Institution

The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU is set to optimize Caribbean society, starting with economic empowerment. In fact, 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 protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The Go Lean roadmap calls for many changes and empowerments. One such example is the infrastructure of Self-Governing Entities (SGE), to allow for industrial developments in a controlled (bordered) environment. There is so much that can be accomplished with the right climate, entrepreneurial spirit, access to capital and willing work force. But location is significant with this model, workers must physically get to the bordered campuses/compounds, to get to the jobs. So transportation solutions are paramount to this roadmap.

The CU will foster the installation of SGE’s, and the infrastructure to transport workers to the jobs. The roadmap identifies electrified streetcars, light-rail, natural gas buses and other transit options.

Another compelling mission of the Go Lean book is to lower the “push and pull” factors that lead many to abandon their Caribbean homeland for foreign shores. The book posits that the region must create jobs, the roadmap calls for 2.2 million new jobs over a 5-year period, so that its citizens do not have to leave to become aliens in a foreign land, to be discriminated against as victims of joblessness due to the compelling factors depicted in the foregoing article. The CU does not aim to change North American or European societies, beyond impacting the Diaspora – our scope is the Caribbean. So the public messaging of the societal defects in those countries, as depicted in the foregoing article, should have the effect of dissuading Caribbean emigration. This affects the “pull” factors for Caribbean citizens wanting to leave.

That’s the “pull”; we must still deal with the “push” factors …

There are so many other defects of Caribbean life that need to be addressed to lower the “push” factors. This point is pronounced early in the book with the Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 14) with many statements that demonstrate the need to remediate Caribbean communities:

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 preparation of our labor force can foster opportunities and dictate economic progress for current and future generations, the Federation must ensure that educational and job training opportunities are fully optimized for all residents of all member-states, with no partiality towards any gender or ethnic group. The Federation must recognize and facilitate excellence in many different fields of endeavor, including sciences, languages, arts, music and sports. This responsibility should be executed without incurring the risks of further human flight, as has been the past history.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

xxv.  Whereas the legacy of international democracies had been imperiled due to a global financial crisis, the structure of the Federation must allow for financial stability and assurance of the Federation’s institutions. To mandate the economic vibrancy of the region, monetary and fiscal controls and policies must be incorporated as proactive and reactive measures. These measures must address threats against the financial integrity of the Federation and of the member-states.

xxvi. Whereas the Caribbean region must have new jobs to empower the engines of the economy and create the income sources for prosperity, and encourage the next generation to forge their dreams right at home, the Federation must therefore foster the development of new industries, like that of ship-building, automobile manufacturing, pre-fabricated housing, frozen foods, pipelines, call centers, and the prison industrial complex. In addition, the Federation must invigorate the enterprises related to existing industries like tourism, fisheries and lotteries – impacting the region with more jobs.

The purpose of the Go Lean…Caribbean roadmap is to compose, communicate and compel economic, security and governing solutions for the Caribbean homeland. We want a better society than the past, and perhaps even better than our OECD counterparts. (A CU mission is to repatriate the Diaspora back to the homeland).

How, what, when?

The Go Lean book details a series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to impact jobs in the region, member-states, cities and communities. Below is a sample:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principle – Economic Systems Influence Choices & Incentives Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principle – Voluntary Trade Creates Wealth Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier Page 22
Community Ethos – Minority Equalization Page 24
Community Ethos – Lean Operations Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship Page 28
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Strategy – Mission – Facilitate Job-Creating Industries Page 46
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy Page 64
Tactical – Tactics to Forge an $800 Billion Economy – High Multiplier Industries Page 70
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Self-Governing Entities Page 80
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change Page 101
Implementation – Steps to Implement Self-Governing Entities Page 105
Implementation – Ways to Deliver Page 109
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate to the Caribbean Page 118
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – Self Governing Entities as Job Creating Engines Page 128
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better Page 131
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices – OECD-style Big Data Analysis Page 133
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Transportation Page 205
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Diaspora Page 217
Advocacy – Battles in the War on Poverty Page 222
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Trinidad & Tobago – Bottom Line: OECD Case Study Page 240
Appendix – Job Multipliers Page 259

Other subjects related to job empowerments (and joblessness) for the region have been blogged in other Go Lean…Caribbean commentaries, as sampled here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2769 DC Streetcars to Facilitate Easier Urban Transportation Options
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2750 Disney World’s example of Self Governing Entities and Economic Impacts
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2602 Jobless Rural Guyana Wrestles With High Rate of Suicides
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2126 Where the Jobs Are – Computers Reshaping Global Job Market
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2025 Where the Jobs Are – Attitudes & Images of the Caribbean Diaspora in US
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2003 Where the Jobs Are – Ship-breaking under the SGE Structure
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1698 Where the Jobs Are – STEM Jobs Are Filling Slowly
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1683 Where the Jobs Were – British public sector now strike over ‘poverty pay’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1596 Book Review: ‘Prosper Where You Are Planted’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1433 Caribbean loses more than 70 percent of tertiary educated to brain drain
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1214 Where the Jobs Are – Fairgrounds as SGE & Landlords for Sports Leagues
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=273 10 Things We Don’t Want from the US – Job Discrimination of Immigrations

The purpose of this roadmap is to elevate Caribbean society. To succeed we must apply lessons from the advanced economy countries (OECD) like the US, Canada and Western Europe; lessons from their good, bad and ugly experiences of the past.

The Go Lean book embraces economic principles. One basic tenet is “supply and demand”. The assumption would be that if there are job openings and unemployed people, that “suppliers and demanders” would align. Unfortunately that is not the reality; the foregoing article relates the other issues in OECD countries of racism and geography.

Life in the OECD countries is not fair. It is a struggle; perhaps even more so than necessary.

The Go Lean movement (book and blog commentaries) posits that there is less effort to remediate the Caribbean homeland, than to thrive in an alien land. So it thusly advocates to “prosper where planted”. With some effort, as defined in the Go Lean book, the Caribbean can truly become a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

————

Appendix – Video: OECD – For A Better World Economy – http://youtu.be/B5XGiihBfaU

 

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Suit Over Red Light Traffic Cameras Could Impact Millions

Posted on November 5, 2014 in Government, Implementation

Go Lean Commentary

Change is coming to the Caribbean … and economic prosperity will undoubtedly follow:

“Happy Days Are Here Again” – familiar feel-good song during American political conventions.

CU Blog - Suit Over Red Light Traffic Cameras Could Impact Millions - Photo 1The book Go Lean…Caribbean posits that “bad actors” will always emerge in times of economic prosperity to exploit opportunities, with bad or evil intent. The book therefore serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) as a regional entity projected to forge security and public safety solutions for the entire Caribbean region.

The heavy-lifting activities to ensure security by this CU technocracy include deploying a wide network of closed-circuit and traffic cameras. This could be beneficial and advantageous, but it appears that there are some perils too. Considering the lessons learned from the US in this following VIDEO, there is the need to protect citizens and their “Due Process” rights:

VIDEO – NBC News TODAY Show – November 5, 2014 – A new lawsuit is challenging the popular cameras at intersections, and could lead to millions of busted drivers across the U.S. getting their money back. NBC’s Kerry Sanders reports.

http://www.today.com/video/today/56366199

The book Go Lean … Caribbean underpins the movement for traffic cameras throughout the Caribbean region, copying the model of the 3rd party company in the foregoing VIDEO, Arizona-based American Traffic Solutions, Inc. (see Appendix below). But rather than a profit motive, the CU‘s motive is the optimization of Caribbean society. Just imagine, receiving a traffic ticket “in the mail” for running a traffic light in some Caribbean member-state.

“In the mail” – This phrase in itself reflects the reform needed for the Caribbean governmental eco-system.

The CU would be set to optimize all aspects of Caribbean society through economic empowerment, and the aligning security dynamics. In fact, the Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines, including road traffic stakeholders like motorists and pedestrians.
  • Improve Caribbean governance, with a separation-of-powers between member-state administrations and the CU federal government (Executive facilitations, Legislative oversight and Judicial prudence) to support these economic/security engines.

Closed-circuit and traffic cameras are designed to impact society in the same above 3 areas: they can generate revenues/jobs, provide public safety / homeland security protections and streamline governmental processes. At the outset of the book (Page 12), these public safeguards are identified as prime directives in the Declaration of Interdependence:

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.

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.

CU Blog - Suit Over Red Light Traffic Cameras Could Impact Millions - Photo 2Unified command-and-control is identified as a major function of the CU security / law enforcement apparatus. This includes all intelligence gathering and analysis activities for overt and covert purposes. The effectiveness of these tactics (advanced monitoring, satellite surveillance, electronic eavesdropping, closed-circuit, and traffic cameras) has been proven for crime remediation and investigations. In addition to crime, the Go Lean roadmap targets delivery of government services, identifying best practices in agile methodologies to guarantee fewer defects and more efficiency; (Pages 109 & 147). In fact, the name Go Lean refers to the commitment to lean project management methodologies in the structure of the CU (Page 4).

All of this technocratic efficiency should at least allow for direct home mail delivery. Also at the outset of the book (Page 12), the need to reboot postal operations is detailed in the Declaration of Interdependence:

xv.  Whereas the business of the Federation and the commercial interest in the region cannot prosper without an efficient facilitation of postal services, the Caribbean Union must allow for the integration of the existing mail operations of the governments of the member-states into a consolidated Caribbean Postal Union, allowing for the adoption of best practices and technical advances to deliver foreign/domestic mail in the region.

The installation of the unified command-and-control security structure would be “Step One, Day One” in the Go Lean roadmap. Secondarily, the roadmap must enhance the postal operations in the region to ensure that government mail can be efficiently delivered to citizens, car drivers and registered car owners – the roadmap proposes a Caribbean Postal Union (CPU). The Go Lean book therefore details a series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to provide increased public safety, mail operations and government services in the Caribbean region:

Economic Principle – Consequences of Choices Lie in Future Page 21
Community Ethos – Privacy –vs- Public Protection Page 23
Community Ethos – Intelligence Gathering Page 23
Community Ethos – “Crap” Happens Page 23
Community Ethos – Cooperatives Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Tactical – Confederating a Non-sovereign Union Page 63
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy Page 64
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Homeland Security Page 75
Tactical – Separation of Powers – CariPol: Marshals and Investigations Page 77
Implementation – Assemble Regional Mail Operations into a CPU Page 96
Anecdote – Implementation Plan – US Failing Mail Services Page 99
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change Page 101
Implementation – Start-up Security Initiatives Page 103
Implementation – Ways to Improve Mail Service Page 108
Implementation – Ways to Deliver Page 109
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better Page 131
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices Page 134
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Leadership Page 171
Advocacy – Ways to Impact   Justice Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Reduce Crime Page 178
Advocacy – Ways to Improve for Gun Control Page 179
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Terrorism Page 181
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Intelligence Gathering/Analysis Page 182
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Events – Mitigating Security Threats Page 191
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Prison Industrial Complex – Tracking Felons Page 211
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights Page 220
Appendix – Prison Industrial Complex – Nauru DetentionCenter Page 327

Other subjects related to public safety empowerments for the region have been blogged in other Go Lean…Caribbean commentaries, as sampled here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1554 Security Pact from the Status of Forces Agreement
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1487 Here come the Surveillance Drones … and the Concerns
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=960 NSA records all phone calls in Bahamas, according to Snowden
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=392 Jamaica to receive World Bank funds to help in crime fight

Bad actors will always emerge…

Accepting this premise means preparing the necessary counter-measures. The model of the company American Traffic Solutions gives the Caribbean a template of “how, what, when and why” for traffic cameras. Individual “Due Process” rights do not have to be trampled on in the course of this roadmap. The policing authorities in the region can simply deputize CU resources for law-and-order enforcements in member-states. This deputization strategy/process of member-states authority being vested to CU agencies is front-and-center in the Go Lean roadmap.

Public safety is necessary to make the Caribbean homeland, a better place to live, work and play. Caribbean people need these assurances.

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

————–

Appendix – American Traffic Solutions, Inc. (ATS) – http://www.atsol.com/

ATS is the leading provider of traffic safety, mobility and compliance solutions for state & local governments, commercial fleets and rental car companies. With nearly 300 customers and more than 3,500 Road Safety Camera Systems installed and operating throughout the United States  and Canada (yellow in the below map), ATS is the market leader for Red-Light, Speed and School Bus Stop-Arm Safety Cameras.

CU Blog - Suit Over Red Light Traffic Cameras Could Impact Millions - Photo 3

ATS is also the industry leader in toll and violation management for fleets and rental companies.  PlatePass® coverage blankets all major toll regions in North America, complying with in-vehicle transponder and license-plate (video) toll recognition systems throughout the United States and Canada.

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DC Streetcars – Model For Caribbean Re-development

Posted on November 1, 2014 in Implementation, Industries

Go Lean Commentary

CU Blog - DC Streetcars - Model For Caribbean Re-development - Photo 1

The US capital city of Washington D.C. is now embarking on the deployment of a streetcar system … again. Between 1862 and 1962, streetcars in Washington, D.C., were a common mode of transportation, but the system was dismantled in the early 1960s as part of a switch to bus service.

One step forward, two steps backwards!

The District now embarks on a re-deployment, pivotal to a re-development of blighted urban areas. See story here:

August 4, 2014 – The Washington D.C. Department of Transportation will begin training streetcar operators in traffic for the first time this week along H Street and Benning Road in Northeast Washington. [The full system implementation is planned for late 2014].

The DC Streetcar is a surface light rail and streetcar network under construction in Washington, D.C. The streetcars will be the first to run in the District of   Columbia since the dismantling of the previous streetcar system in 1962. The District   of Columbia began laying track in 2009 for two lines whose locations in Anacostia and Benning were chosen to revitalize blighted commercial corridors. Initially, the system will be funded and owned by the District’s Department of Transportation (DDOT).

The D.C. government owns three Czech-built Inekon streetcars (destined for the Anacostia Line) that will serve the system; as of December 2009, they were in storage at Metro’s Greenbelt Rail Yard; [but now fully engaged in test runs]. Each car is eight ft (2.438 meters) wide and 66 feet (20.12 m) long, and each train consists of three car connected sections.

The City’s hope is that now with all the new bars and restaurants opening on H Street, this streetcar line will encourage people (residents, business commuters and tourists) to visit here. Mayor Vincent Gray states “what we’re trying to do is encourage people as a part of our sustainability plan to find other ways of moving around. Eventually, this will be a 37-mile system that will get people to every ward in the District of Columbia.”
WJLA Local ABC 7 TV News
http://www.wjla.com/articles/2014/08/d-c-streetcar-operator-training-begins-this-week-105726.html
Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia  (Retrieved November 3, 2014) –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_Streetcar

WJLA TV News Video: http://youtu.be/EY0d8E3304M

Why is there a need to re-start the streetcar system? Why did the streetcars end? Conspiracy theories abound. The following VIDEO portrays the story, and admittedly, there is a ring of truth:

In this excerpt from Stephen Talbot’s “Heartbeat of America” (1993), Christopher Snell explains how GM conspired with oil & tire companies to kill streetcars in cities all across America in order to create an inferior bus system that would guarantee the sale of tires, gas, and bus parts for an eternity.
VIDEO – Who Killed The Electric Street Car? – http://youtu.be/wFhsrbtQObI

The fact that Washington DC, and other cities (see VIDEO below of Portland’s effort), are re-deploying streetcars is proof-positive of the economic and logistical benefits of streetcars. Instead of gasoline or diesel vehicles, streetcars use energy-efficient electrified lines to power the vehicle up-and-down city streets. This is a win-win for all stakeholders!

Are streetcars being considered for Caribbean deployment, especially as these member-states report very high fuel costs and feature old-narrow streets?

Absolutely, yes! The book Go Lean … Caribbean asserts transportation solutions that include streetcars, light-rail, natural-gas powered vehicles and toll roads to empower the region through mass transit (Page 205).

Why not autonomous (driver-less) streetcars? This vision is one of intensive remote monitoring, plus unified command-and-control to mitigate security/safety concerns. (Think Disney World’s Mono-Rail). This is the future that is being planned, developed and tested now. The experience of the last 100 years is that those doing the planning, developing and testing for futuristic technologies are the ones that profit most from the economic gains.

The book, Go Lean … Caribbean, therefore extols the principle that R&D (research and development) activities are necessary to profit from advantages in technology. We want to do R&D here in the Caribbean. This is a mandate for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the CU. This technocracy will assume oversight to optimize the region in the areas of:

(1) economics
(2) security
(3) lean government

This vision of an autonomous streetcar aligns with the scope of Self-Governing Entities (SGEs) throughout the Caribbean region. On these bordered grounds (technology bases, industrial parks, research campuses, theater districts, medical centers, etc), only CU federal regulation and jurisdiction apply. This allows for the nimble environment to develop, test and deploy autonomous vehicles. This is the benefit of lean governmental coordination, so that a launch of these initiatives becomes possible and probable.

Though not written with this particular initiative in mind, the Go Lean roadmap anticipates such opportunities, as pronounced in the Declaration of Interdependence, (Pages 12 & 14):

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.

xxvii. Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

xxx.   Whereas the effects of globalization can be felt in every aspect of Caribbean life, from the acquisition of food and clothing, to the ubiquity of ICT, the region cannot only consume, it is imperative that our lands also produce and add to the international community, even if doing so requires some sacrifice and subsidy.

The CU mission is to implement the complete eco-system to deliver on market opportunities of streetcars, autonomous or driver- operated as sampled in the foregoing article. There are many strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies that will facilitate this readiness; a sample is detailed here:

Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices Page 21
Economic Principles – People Choose because Resources are Limited Page 21
Economic Principles – All Choices Involve Costs Page 21
Economic Principles – People Respond to Incentives Page 21
Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices Page 21
Community Ethos – Money Multiplier Page 22
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 Help Entrepreneurship Page 28
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Intellectual Property Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Research and Development Page 30
Community Ethos – Ways to Ways to Improve Negotiations Page 32
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Emergency Management Page 76
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Department of State – SGE’s Page 80
Implementation – Security Initiatives at Start-up – Command-and-Control Page 103
Implementation – Start-up Benefits from the EEZ Page 104
Implementation – Steps to Implement Self-Governing Entities Page 105
Implementation – Ways to Improve Energy Usage – Electrified Buses/Trains Page 113
Implementation – Ways to Benefit from Globalization Page 119
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Trade Page 128
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Cooperatives Page 176
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Intelligence Gathering & Analysis Page 182
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage Natural Resources Page 183
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Transportation Page 205
Advocacy – Ways to Develop the Auto Industry Page 206
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Urban Living – Transit Options Page 234

The world is preparing for the change for more efficient mass transit options and also to deploy more autonomous systems to do the heavy-lifting of industrial engagements. A new ethos to prepare for this change has now come to the Caribbean.

This blog/commentary touches on many related issues and subjects that affect planning for Caribbean empowerment in this transportation industry-space. Many of these issues were also elaborated upon in these previous blog/commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2750 Walt Disney World’s example of an SGE – Their Florida Resort features autonomous “monorails”
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2338 Mitigating the Dreaded ‘Plutocracy’, as GM practiced in the US in the past to quash the thriving Streetcar enterprises throughout the country
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2259 The Criminalization/Abuses of American Business – Applying the many Lessons Learned
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2126 Where the Jobs Are – Computers Reshaping the Global Job Market
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1487 Here come the Autonomous Aircrafts/Drones … and the Concerns
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1277 Google Self-Driving cars to mitigate highway safety concerns
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1214 Fairgrounds as SGEs and the CU as Landlord for Sports Leagues – Great need to move masses (thousands) to stadia/arenas in short time
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=915 Go Green Caribbean – Streetcars are electric, less carbon footprint
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=829 Trains and Trucks play well together
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=673 Ghost ships – Autonomous cargo vessels without a crew

Re-deploy, re-develop, and re-boot…

All of these verbs are germane for this Go Lean roadmap. The Caribbean needs help…with transportation solutions, jobs, growing the economy, and motivating our youth to impact their future here at home… in the Caribbean.

Therefore the people of the region are urged to “lean-in” for the changes/empowerments as described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. The benefits of this roadmap are too alluring to miss out: emergence of an $800 Billion single market economy, 2.2 million new jobs and relevance on the world scene for R&D. 🙂

Let’s all Go Lean!

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

———–

VIDEO – Portland’s Streetcar revival – Federal aid has helped spur the construction of modern U.S. streetcars for the first time in 58 years. http://youtu.be/BIcVlCB0er0

 

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Caribbean Study: 58% Of Boys Agree to Female ‘Discipline’

Posted on October 21, 2014 in Ethos, Social

Go Lean Commentary

The issue in the subsequent news article relates to the guidance we give our young people. The words we say and the things we do have an impact on their standards of right and wrong. The research in this article relates to the attitudes that lead to domestic violence, and why the rest of the community may standby and tolerate it.

This point is being brought into focus in a consideration of the book Go Lean … Caribbean. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the economic optimization in the region.

The focus of the book is “Economics“, not domestic violence! And yet this commentary relates that there is an alignment of objectives. The Go Lean roadmap posits that the economy of the Caribbean is inextricably linked to the security (public safety) of the Caribbean.

Among the objectives to accomplish the economic elevation is the mission to retain Caribbean citizens in their homelands and repatriate the far-flung Diaspora back to the region.

Many times people flee the region to mitigate abusive situations; even more troubling, as victims they may have encountered an attitude of complacency and indifference among public safety authorities. The following article posits that this attitude is deeply entrenched in society, even among the next (younger) generation.

Title: COB Study: 58% Of Boys Believe Men Should Discipline Their Female Partners
By: Rashad Rolle, Staff Reporter
The Tribune – Bahamas Daily Newspaper – October 21, 2014

Caribbean Study 1

FIFTY-eight per cent of high school boys and 37 per cent of high school girls participating in a recent academic survey believe men should discipline their female partners, according to a new College of the Bahamas study.

The study also found that 49 per cent of boys believe women should ask permission from their male partners if they wanted to go out while 17 per cent of girls supported this view.

Of the students surveyed, 46 per cent of boys believed wives must have sex when her husband wants to, compared to 16 per cent of girls. This, according to researchers, has possible implications on debates on marital rape.

According to the study, most of the teens from both sexes believed men should be the head of their households and that both husbands and wives should submit to one another and remain committed, reflecting the country’s religious values.

The research was conducted by members of the Bahamas Crisis Centre (BCC) and COB’s academic community. Its findings appear in the latest edition of the International Journal of Bahamian Studies. The study investigated teen perspectives on relationships between the sexes and the prevalence of violence within teen relationships.

It concluded that efforts must be made to ensure adolescents adjust their behaviour before becoming adults in order to push back against a culture of violence.

It also concluded that girls are more likely than boys to use aggressive behaviour in teen relationships, such as restricting access to friends of the opposite sex.

Based on the gathered data, the study concludes that “there is a clear need for children to be taught how to respect one another from an early age.”

One thousand students from grade 10 to 12 from eight schools, including one private school, participated in the study.

According to the study, “over 80 per cent of respondents had been on a date and so had a relationship of some sort with the opposite sex,” a figure noted as higher than the 61 per cent reported in a similar study of teens in the United   States.

The study is titled Attitudes of High School Students Regarding Intimate Relationships and Gender Norms in New Providence, The Bahamas.

“The responses show that on a number of issues regarding relationships, boys and girls have different attitudes and behaviours,” the researchers wrote. “It can also be seen that large numbers of teens can be expected to be victims of controlling behaviours. The use of threats and physical force may be learnt behaviours due to the presence of violence in homes in The Bahamas.”

“Overall, it is apparent that the breakdown in adult relationships, which is considered to play an important role in the violence observed in Bahamian society, may be the consequence of adolescents not adjusting their teen behaviours when they become adults. Therefore, modifying the attitudes of children with regard to interpersonal relationships may be important in reducing long-term violence in the country. Boys and girls had different attitudes on many aspects of relationships with current or future partners, but their endorsement of stereotypes of sex-related roles and their participation in certain behaviours could be a cause for concern. Underpinning these attitudes may be issues associated with what it means to be a woman or a man in The Bahamas, and related gender norms.” http://www.tribune242.com/news/2014/oct/21/cob-study-58-boys-believe-men-should-discipline-th/
———–
The actual Research Report: ‘Attitudes of High School Students Regarding Intimate Relationships and Gender Norms in New Providence, The Bahamas’ can be found here:
http://journals.sfu.ca/cob/index.php/files/article/view/225

This CU/Go Lean roadmap has 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy and create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines and their relevant stakeholders.
  • Improve Caribbean governance, with a separation-of-powers between member-state administrations and the CU federal government (Executive facilitations, Legislative oversight and Judicial prudence) to support these economic/security engines.

While the subject of the Caribbean adolescent culture of violence falls on the member-state side of the separation-of-power / governance divide, the CU will entail a jurisdiction of monitoring and metering (ratings, rankings, service levels, etc) local governance and their delivery of the Social Contract.

Change has now come to the Caribbean. As the foregoing article depicts the problem of domestic violence is tied to a community ethos. This ‘negative’ ethos must be uprooted and replaced with a new, progressive spirit, starting at the adolescent level, when attitudes are pliable and sensitive to strategic messaging; see VIDEO below.

Many related issues/points were elaborated in previous blogs, sampled here:

Students developing nail polish to detect date rape drugs
Book Review: ‘Chasing Youth Culture and Getting It Right’
Muslim officials condemn abductions of Nigerian girls
Caribbean/Latin countries still view women as ‘lesser‘
Jamaica to receive World Bank funds to help in crime fight

The above commentaries examined global developments and related their synchronicity with the principles in the Go Lean book. There are a number of touch points that relate to domestic violence and the community attitude to dissuade such behavior. Most importantly, the Go Lean book depicts solutions. These are presented as community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocates; a sample is detailed as follows:

Community Ethos – Privacy –vs- Public Protection Page 23
Community Ethos – Whistleblower Protection Page 23
Community Ethos – Witness Security Page 23
Community Ethos – Anti Bullying & Mitigations Page 23
Community Ethos – Light Up the Dark Places Page 23
Community Ethos – Ways to Manage Reconciliations Page 34
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Strategy – Rule of Law –vs- Vigilantism Page 49
Tactical – Separation of Powers – CariPol Page 77
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate Page 118
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices – Law Enforcement Oversight Page 134
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice – Police Internal Affairs Auditing Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Remediate and Mitigate Crime – Youth Crime Awareness Page 178
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Gun Control – Suspend Gun Rights during Domestic Discord Page 179
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Intelligence Gathering – Electronic Surveillance of Suspects Page 182
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Communications – Public Messaging Page 186
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Prison Industrial Complex – Reduce Recidivism Page 211
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Foundations – Crisis Centers and Support Groups Page 219
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights – Women & Youth Focus Page 220
Advocacy – Ways to Empower Women Page 226
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Youth Page 227
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Persons with Disabilities Page 228
Appendix – Failed-State Definitions – Index for Human Rights Uneven Protection Page 273

The book Go Lean…Caribbean was written by resources from an organized movement, by people (residents and Diaspora) with passion to change/elevate their Caribbean homeland. This is personal! One of those people devoted to this Go Lean goal, Camille Russell-Smith, is a co-author of the underlying research in the foregoing news article. This research is a product of her collaboration with the Bahamas Crisis Centre (Donna Nicolls) and her role at the College of the Bahamas as a Counselor, Instructor and Workshop Facilitator for incoming freshmen students entitled “Violence in Interpersonal Relationships”.

Good job Donna Nicolls, Camille Russell-Smith and your research team; thank you for your service. Congratulations on this timely research effort.

The goal is to make the Caribbean a better place to live work and play; with justice for all, regardless of gender. This is the right thing to do! But this is not easy. This takes heavy-lifting on the part of everyone: the educators, public safety officials, community leaders and parents. The message must be strong and clear:

No More!

‘No More‘ is the theme of a campaign in the US to minimize the public attitudes that tolerate domestic violence. This is a great role model for the Caribbean to emulate. See the VIDEO here of the Public Service Announcement (PSA)/TV Commercial:

Video Title -‘ No More‘ PSA Campaign – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j70ha1PUlqk:

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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Role Model for Justice – The Pinkertons

Posted on October 20, 2014 in Government, Implementation

Go Lean Commentary

How do we learn from other people? By their precepts and by their examples.

Sometimes the lessons are from good, sometimes from bad and yes, sometimes from ugly examples. This commentary on the legendary Private Security firm “The Pinkertons” demonstrates the need to ensure economic engines have a security apparatus. This commentary also provides a cautionary tale of how excessive force can lead to abuse.

No Justice – No Peace!

This discussion harmonizes with the book Go Lean…Caribbean which posits that “bad actors” will always emerge to exploit opportunities in times of economic prosperity, with bad or evil intent. The book relates a number of related episodes from world history, such as the Pirates of the Caribbean (Page 181) and the Old American West (Page 142).

If only life could be so simple and we all “just get along”. However there is the reality! When the primary economic driver is tourism, the strategy is to market an image of “pleasure and paradise”. Pirates and Old West Outlaws do not fit into that image. Mitigation efforts must be exerted to ensure that chaos does not reign supreme.

This is where we learn so much from The Pinkertons, of old (though the company continues today). The historic details are as follows:

 CU Blog - Role Model for Justice - The Pinkertons - Photo 1

“We Never Sleep” – Company Motto

Pinkerton, founded as the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, is a private security guard and detective agency established in the United States by Allan Pinkerton in 1850 and currently a subsidiary of Securitas AB.[1]

Pinkerton became famous when he claimed to have foiled a plot to assassinate president-elect Abraham Lincoln, who later hired Pinkerton agents for his personal security during the Civil War.[2] Pinkerton’s agents performed services ranging from security guarding to private military contracting work. Pinkerton was the largest private law enforcement organization in the world at the height of its power.[3] By the early 1890s, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency employed more agents than there were members of the standing army of the United States of America.

During the labor strikes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, businessmen hired the Pinkerton Agency to infiltrate unions, supply guards, keep strikers and suspected unionists out of factories, as well as recruiting “goon squads” to intimidate workers. One such confrontation was the Homestead Strike of 1892, in which Pinkerton agents were called in to reinforce the strikebreaking measures of industrialist Henry Clay Frick, acting on behalf of Andrew Carnegie. The ensuing battle between Pinkerton agents and striking workers led to the deaths of seven Pinkerton agents and nine steelworkers.[4]

The Pinkertons were also used as guards in coal, iron, and lumber disputes in Illinois, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia as well as the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921. The organization was pejoratively called the “Pinks” by its opponents.

CU Blog - Role Model for Justice - The Pinkertons - Photo 3

The company now operates as “Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations, Inc. d.b.a. Pinkerton Corporate Risk Management”, a division of the Swedish security company SecuritasAB. The former Government Services division, PGS, now operates as Securitas Critical Infrastructure Services, Inc.[5]

At one point, the good, bad and ugly track record of The Pinkertons heightened to the point that the US Federal Government passed a landmark legislation called the Anti-Pinkerton Act in 1893. The following details apply:

The Anti-Pinkerton Act was a law passed by the U.S. Congress in 1893 to limit the government’s ability to hire strikebreakers. It is contained within 5 U.S.C. 3108 and specifically restricts the government (and Federal Territories) from hiring employees of The Pinkerton Agency or similar organizations.

So much of American history and media productions reference The Pinkertons:

  • The Pinkertons have been mentioned in season 1 and featured in seasons 2 and 3 of the HBO series “Deadwood“, and also the 1980 movie “The Long Riders,” where Pinkerton agents are depicted investigating criminal activity of the James brothers.
  • In the fourth season episode “Havre de Grace” of “Boardwalk Empire“, the character Roy Phillips is revealed to be a detective working for the agency.
  • The protagonist of the video game BioShock Infinite, Booker DeWitt, is an ex-Pinkerton, known for his violent methods in controlling strikes.
  • The character Captain Homer Jackson in the BBC series Ripper Street is also revealed as an ex-Pinkerton agent in series one.
  • Two Pinkerton Agents were featured in the movie “Legend Of Zorro”.
  • The Pinkertons are featured in the “3:10 to Yuma” remake featuring Russel Crowe and Christian Bale.
  • In Ian Fleming’s James Bond 007 Novels Felix Leiter worked for Pinkertons.
  • Three Pinkerton Agents were featured in the first season episode “Husbands & Fathers”, of the BBC America show Copper (TV series).
  • In 1966 Irwin Allen series The Time Tunnel on episode 12 “The Death Trap”, Mr. Pinkerton, with the help of the two main characters, saved President Lincoln.
  • In the Sherlock Holmes novel The Valley of Fear, Birdy Edwards is a Pinkerton agent.
  • In Cable TV network Showtime’s Penny Dreadful Season 1-Episode 8 “Grand Guignol” Ethan Chandler is confronted by 2 Pinkerton agents in a bar as his past catches up with him.
  • The song “Book, Saddle, And Go” on the 2013 album Earth Rocker from musical group “Clutch” references ‘Pinkerton Man’ – “Pinkerton man, murdering bastard, I’m gonna get even, get even with you, Get even with you”.
  • The Pinkertons, a scripted one-hour syndicated show starring Angus MacFadyen as Allan Pinkerton, debuted in 2014.[22][23]
    Actor Angus MacFadyen is set for one of the lead roles in The Pinkertons, Canadian companies Rosetta Media and Buffalo Gal Pictures’ upcoming 22-episode action-adventure detective series that is set to premiere in first-run syndication in the U.S. this fall. It has been cleared in more than 85% of the country by Rohrs Media Group on station groups including Tribune, Weigel, Hearst, LIN, Meredith, Cox and the CW PLUS. Drawing on the real cases of The Pinkerton Detective Agency, The Pinkertons follows founder Allan Pinkerton (MacFadyen), his son, William, and America’s first female detective, Kate Warne, as they solve crimes throughout the “Wild West” of the 1860s (Pinkerton is known for revolutionizing detective work by developing use of surveillance, undercover work and the mug shot). In part because of his commitment to AMC drama Turn, on which he is a regular, MacFadyen is will be a recurring guest star on The Pinkertons, not appearing in all episodes.[23]

CU Blog - Role Model for Justice - The Pinkertons - Photo 2
Promotional Video for the TV Series: The Pinkertons –  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Nhl9A5smo0

The security goal of Go Lean…Caribbean is for public safety! This is not the first (newly integrated) society needing public safety mitigations. The role model and history of The Pinkertons provides great insight. In 1871, Congress appropriated $50,000 to the new Department of Justice (DOJ) to form a sub-organization devoted to “the detection and prosecution of those guilty of violating federal law”. The amount was insufficient for the DOJ to fashion an integral investigating unit, so the DOJ contracted out the services to The Pinkerton National Detective Agency.[10] This is the biggest lesson for the Caribbean role model. The Pinkerton Agency had a nation-wide footprint and expedience in protecting economic engines – the US Federal government needed that expertise.

The Go Lean book calls for the establishment of “Justice Institutions” within the Caribbean at the outset of the roadmap. These institutions, similar to The Pinkertons, will have the broad scope for jurisdiction and prosecution of economic crimes throughout the entire region. In addition to economic crimes, there is the need for a military establishment in the region. Execution of the roadmap integrates and consolidates a regional naval force, escalated expeditionary forces, unified command-and-control and an intelligence gathering & analysis apparatus. But unlike The Pinkerton agency, the Caribbean’s public safety entities (law enforcement and security forces) will not be accountable to private or corporate interest, but rather accountable to a technocratic Caribbean governance.

This goal is detailed in the Go Lean book as it serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU would be set to optimize Caribbean society through economic empowerment, and the aligning security dynamics. In fact, 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 protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance, (with Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches) to support these engines.

The security apparatus within this Go Lean roadmap asserts that the region (and member-states) must prepare for its own security needs. So the vision is that all Caribbean member-states authorize regional “Justice Institutions” and delegate jurisdiction to marshal and prosecute economic crimes. This delegation, or separation-of-powers, will cover law enforcement and regional defense, all encompassed in the book’s Homeland Security roadmap.

There is the need to ensure law-and-order in all 30 Caribbean member-states and the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the Caribbean Sea. This point is pronounced early in the book with the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12) that claims:

x.   Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign. The Federation must employ the latest advances and best practices … to assuage continuous threats against public safety.

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 has been previously detailed in these blogs/ commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2259 Economic Crime Enforcement – The Criminalization of American Business
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1965 America’s Navy – 100 Percent – Model for Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1531 A Lesson in History: 100 Years Ago – World War I
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1487 Here come the Drones … and the Concerns
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1076 Caribbean “Terrorists” travel   to Venezuela for jihadist training
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=392 Jamaica to receive World Bank funds to help in crime fight
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=341 US slams Caribbean human rights practices
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=273 10 Things We Want from the US and 10 Things We Don’t Want …

The treaty to establish the “new guards”, the Homeland Security Force and Federal Justice Department within the Caribbean Union Trade Federation gets legal authorization from a Status of Forces Agreement with the initiation of the confederation. This process would be “Step One, Day One” in the Go Lean roadmap. The Go Lean book also details a series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to provide increased public safety & security in the Caribbean region:

Community Ethos – Economic Principle – Consequences of Choices Lie in Future Page 21
Community Ethos – Security Principle – Privacy –vs- Public Protection Page 23
Community Ethos – Security Principle – Intelligence Gathering Page 23
Community Ethos – Security Principle – Crap” Happens Page 23
Community Ethos – Governing Principle – Lean Operations Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principle – Cooperatives Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Trade Federation with Proxy Powers of a Confederacy Page 45
Strategy – Vision – Defense Pact to Defend Against Systemic Threats Page 45
Tactical – Confederating a Non-Sovereign Union Page 63
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy Page 64
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Homeland Security Page 75
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Justice Department – CariPol: Marshals and Investigations Page 77
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Justice Department – Witness Protection Page 77
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change Page 101
Implementation – Start-up Security Initiatives Page 103
Implementation – Start-up Benefits from the EEZ – Security – Interdictions & Piracy Page 104
Implementation – Steps to Implement Self-Governing Entities – Security and Justice Page 105
Implementation – Ways to Foster International Aid – Military Aid Page 115
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better Page 131
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices – Law Enforcement Oversight Page 134
Planning – Lessons Learned from the West Indies (WI) Federation – WI Regiment Page 135
Planning – Lessons from the American West – Law & Order Page 139
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Leadership – Art of War Applications Page 171
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Reduce Crime Page 178
Advocacy – Ways to Improve for Gun Control Page 179
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Terrorism Page 181
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Intelligence Gathering & Analysis Page 182
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights Page 220
Appendix – Art of War Chapters – Chapter 7 – Engaging The Security Force Page 327

The history of The Pinkertons depicts honorable men (and women) engaging an honorable cause (law and order), but not always in an honorable manner. Their motto was “we never sleep” but their ethos appeared to be “by any means necessary”. Yes, bad actors will always emerge, but people of goodwill do not need to use bad behavior to stop bad things from happening – two wrongs don’t make a right.

The Go Lean roadmap calls for justice institutions of the CU to execute their role in a just manner, to impact the Greater Good. This does not happen accidently, this must be the output of a technocratic system bent on efficiency and effectiveness. The Go Lean roadmap ensures accountability, transparency, checks-and-balances in the execution of the rule-of-law. This is the change for the Caribbean. Public Safety, Law Enforcement and Homeland Security is necessary to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. Everyone in the Caribbean, the people and institutions, are hereby urged to lean-in to this elevation of society.

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

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Source References:
1. “Pinkerton Government Services, Inc.: Private Company Information – Businessweek”. investing.businessweek.com. Retrieved 24 September 2012.
2. Green, James (2006). Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement, and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America. Pantheon Books.  Page 43
3. TM Becker (1974). “The place of private police in society: An area of research for the Social Sciences”. Social Problems (Social Problems) 21 (3): 438–453. doi:10.1525/sp.1974.21.3.03a00110. JSTOR 799910.
4. Krause, Paul (1992). The Battle for Homestead, 1890-1892: Politics, Culture, and Steel. University of Pittsburgh Press.  Page 20-21
5. http://www.linkedin.com/company/pinkerton-government-services
10. Churchill, Ward (Spring 2004). “From the Pinkertons to the PATRIOT Act: The Trajectory of Political Policing in the United States, 1870 to the Present”. The New Centennial Review 4 (1): 1–72. doi:10.1353/ncr.2004.0016. Archived from the original on 2009-07-29.
22. “The Pinkertons TV Series”. Rosetta Media and Buffalo Gal Pictures. Retrieved 2014-10-11.
23. Andreeva, Nellie (July 23, 2014). “Angus MacFadyen Set To Play Allan Pinkerton In Syndicated Drama Series ‘The Pinkertons’”. Deadline Hollywood (Penske Business Media, LLC). Retrieved 2014-10-11.

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