St Lucia – Go Lean…Caribbean

Tag: St Lucia

Regulating Plastics in the Bahamas – So Little; So Late – Encore

Posted on August 12, 2019 in Economics, Government, Strategy

Plastics have been identified as “unbecoming” for the Caribbean environment. One country after another is now starting to regulate them and maybe even ban them.

Considering the 500 year history of Caribbean society, plastics are new …

… the proliferation emerged in the last 100 years. But the acknowledgement is now universal that they are destructive for the planet’s landscape and seascape.

While plastics are dutiful, plentiful and cheap, they are strictly optional; there are many viable alternatives; think glass, paper, wood and ceramics.

Here again:

plastic bags ==> paper bags
plastic bottles ==> glass bottles
plastic straws ==> paper straws
plastic cups ==> ceramic cups
plastic stirrers ==> wood stirrers

Plastics may be cheaper than all of these alternatives! But economically, plastics costs more … in the end! This is due to the disposal costs; or worse still: the destruction to the environment.

Caribbean communities that depend on the trade of touristic services must not jeopardize the sand and sea of the region. Tropical beauty is a strong selling point. Same too for the Fisheries.

One country after another is starting to implement regulations to eliminate plastic shopping bags, food utensils, straws and Styrofoam. Last year, August 21, 2018, the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean related the efforts of the Caribbean country of Saint Lucia for their mitigation of plastics and Styrofoam. Now, we see that an additional country, the Bahamas, is also deploying their ban on plastics, starting in January 2020.

In fact, 40 other countries have already implemented such bans.

This is late for the Bahamas to only now be implementing this ban – they have always been vulnerable. In addition to their near-400,000 residents, they also hosts more than 3 million tourists annually (stay-overs and cruise passengers). But the location of the archipelago chain exposes it to unwanted marine debris (plastics) as a result of ocean currents and wave patterns – see the Gulfstream photo above.

The Bahamas is late! They should have been front-and-center with any mitigation efforts.

See this article here that describes the Bahamas plan for January 2020. Notice the emphasis on “plastic bags” and the little focus on other examples of single-use plastics. See the article here:

Title: Ferreira: Bahamas to join more than 40 countries that has banned plastic bags
By: Ginelle Longley

NASSAU, BAHAMAS – Minister of Environment and Housing, Romauld Ferreira, during his contribution to the 2019/2020 Budget debate on Tuesday night, said the Bahamas is expected to join more than 40 countries that have introduced a ban on plastic bags.

The government’s proposed ban on plastic bags is set to take effect in January 2020.

Ferreira said the Government will ensure that the move offers minimal disruption to businesses and their operation. He said his ministry will also inform and educate the public through a number of town hall meetings heading into 2020.

“The ministry’s education is also advancing the message of a healthier Bahamas through this initiative as the improper use of plastics is associated with various forms of environmental pollution and environmental degradation, which ultimately affects an individual’s health and well-being,” Ferreira said.

The proposed ban comes on the heels of several warnings issued by local environmental and climate experts who have stressed that non-biodegradable products such as plastic bags and Styrofoam have contributed to environmental issues.

Director of Energy and Environment with the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce, Debbie Deal, told Eyewitness News Online Wednesday that back in April 2018, the Ministry of Environment signed a Memorandum of Understanding with The Bahamas Chamber of Commerce, to ensure that businesses would be prepared for enforcement of the 2020 ban.

Deal said the implementation of the ban should not be an issue.

“VAT was [pushed] from 7.5 to 12 per cent and on July 1, 2019 it came into effect. We as a people were able to make that transition in a month’s time, so I personally think that a year and 9 months is sufficient to make that transition,” Deal said.

Meanwhile, Trevor Davis, the co-owner of Quality Home Center on Blue Hill Road said as his business prepares to replace plastic bags with reusable shopping bags, the move, while costly, will bring down the cost of bags for business owners as the new bags are reusable.

Source: Posted June 12, 2019; retrieved from: https://ewnews.com/ferreira-bahamas-to-join-more-than-40-countries-that-has-banned-plastic-bags

While we applaud the Bahamas for this tardy effort; it must be acknowledged that it is: so little; so late!

It is very apropos to Encore that previous blog-commentary from August 21, 2018. See that blog-commentary here-now:

——————–

Go Lean Commentary – Plastics and Styrofoam – A Mitigation Plan

So where do all the used plastics – and Styrofoam – go?

In a landfill …

… and may not degrade for a thousand years!

But for the ones that end up in the water (oceans and seas), they too do not degrade. They linger, pollute and disrupt eco-systems.

No one can just “stick their head in the sand”; this issue must be addressed, the crisis must be assuaged, the threat must be mitigated. See this crisis as depicted in this VIDEO here:

VIDEO – How Much Plastic is in the Ocean? – https://youtu.be/YFZS3Vh4lfI

It’s Okay To Be Smart

Published on Mar 28, 2017 – What can you do to make the oceans plastic-free?

Ocean plastic pollution is a massive environmental problem. Millions of tons of plastic waste enter the ocean every year, even plastic that goes in the trash can often ends up in the sea! This week we learn about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and look at the dangers ocean plastic poses to ocean animals. Plus, a few tips for you to reduce your own plastic use!

Sample Resources

Plastic Oceans Foundation: http://www.plasticoceans.org/

United Nations “Clean Seas” program: http://www.cleanseas.org/

Ocean plastic pollution resources from Monterey Bay Aquarium: https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/c…

Category: Education

Welcome to the Caribbean! We are 30 member-states in an all-coastal region – with many archipelagos (i.e. the Bahamas alone features over 700 islands). We have a lot of waterways and seascapes to contend with … and manage! So this global problem of plastics and Styrofoam is a local problem too.

Think global; act local!

What are we doing in our Caribbean region to mitigate the problem of plastics and Styrofoam? One member-state, St. Lucia, has proposed something; see the full news story here:

Title: Saint Lucia to ban Styrofoam and plastics

August 13th, 2018 – Saint Lucia plans to phase-out Styrofoam food service containers and plastics, both plates and cups, beginning December 1, 2018, with a total ban on their importation before the end of next year.

The announcement came in a statement from Minister of Education, Innovation, Gender Relations and Sustainable Development, Doctor Gale Rigobert.

Rigobert said the Government of Saint Lucia is cognizant of the negative impact on the environment and human health from food service containers made from Polystyrene and Expanded Polystyrene, also known as Styrofoam, along with Plastics.

However, she observed that the administration recognises that the healthier alternative to these products, such as biodegradable and compostable food service containers, are more costly.

” We are doing our very best to alleviate this issue,” the minister explained.

She disclosed that over the last few months, the Department of Sustainable Development, in partnership with other key agencies such as the Saint Lucia Solid Waste Management Authority, the Department of Finance, the Ministry of Commerce and the Customs and Excise Department, has been working towards the development of a strategy to eliminate single use plastics, polystyrene and expanded polystyrene from the Saint Lucia market.

“To date, we have completed fiscal analyses, conducted a survey of the key suppliers of these products and we have also identified suppliers of the biodegradable and compostable food service containers, all this to ensure that Saint Lucia creates the enabling environment to facilitate this process,” Rigobert stated.

She explained that in light of this, the Department of Sustainable Development will be taking a phased approach to facilitate a smooth transition for all stakeholders.

“The phase-out, along with a ban on the importation of Styrofoam food service containers, and plastics, both plates and cups, will commence December 1, 2018 with a total ban culminating by November 30, 2019:”

Rigovert revealed that in order to ensure adequate sensitisation, the Department of Sustainable Development will continue its campaign to educate the general public on the options they have available to them during this phase.

“With respect to plastic bottles, discussions are ongoing with major stakeholders to finalize legislation that would curb and control their use,” the minister noted.

“I encourage you to join the fight to reduce your dependency on single use plastics and Styrofoam by utilizing re-useable bottles, food containers, cutlery and shopping bags. Let us act responsibly in our everyday consumption and production,”Rigobert stated.
Source: St. Lucia Times – Daily Newspaper – Posted 08-13-2018; retrieved 08-21-2018: https://stluciatimes.com/2018/08/13/saint-lucia-to-ban-styrofoam-and-plastics/

This problem is bigger than just the Caribbean member-state of St Lucia. They did not start this fight; nor can they finish it. This is BIG Deal that is too big for any one member-state or the full Caribbean region alone. This will require a global effort, including some Caribbean mitigation!

But here in the Caribbean, we cannot expect others to do all the heavy-lifting and clean-up; we must do our share; clean-up our own environment. This has been a frequent theme by the movement behind the book Go Lean … Commentary – available for download now. In the book, and in previous Go Lean blog-commentaries, it was asserted that we – the Caribbean region – must do our share to “Go Green” so as to assuage our own contributions to global pollution and greenhouse gases; yes, we must keep our own neighborhoods clean and optimize our own industrial footprint, so that we may be less hypocritical – have moral authority – in calling for reform from the big polluting nations. This sample – as follows – depicts some previous blog-commentaries that relates this theme:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14832	Counter-culture: Manifesting Change – Environmentalism
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14174	Canada: “Follow Me” for Model on Environmental Action
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12724	Lessons from Colorado: Water Management Arts & Sciences
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12144	Book Review: ‘Sea Power’ – The Need for Good Oversight
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9455	Fix ‘Climate Change’ and other Environmental Issues? Yes, We Can
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2465	Book Review: ‘This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2276	Climate Change May Affect Food Supply Within a Decade
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1656	Blue is the New Green
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=915	Go ‘Green’ … Caribbean

From the foregoing news articles and these previous blog-commentaries, we see the compelling need for a concerted anti-pollution-Go Green effort in our region. We must “Reduce, Re-use, Recycle”. Who will stand-up and lead this charge?

“Here I am, send me” – The Bible; Isaiah 6:8

This is the charter of the Go Lean book. It serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The roadmap depicts how this federal government is designed to stand-up and lead the charge to assuage and mitigate the threats on Caribbean life. The book identifies a list of crises as Agents of Change that are crippling our way of life. We can add pollution to that list. As a Single Market, we need a regional sentinel to be on guard and to tackle these “plastics pollution” problems.

Why regional?

Because the national effort has been unsuccessful; in many cases, even unknown, unavailable and unfunded.

No, individual member-states will not be able to succeed in this effort; we need a regional effort; it is too big to tackle alone; so we must acknowledge our regional dependency or interdependence to have any chance of success. This vision is embedded in the opening Declaration of Interdependence, pronouncing as follows, (Pages 11, 12):

vi. Whereas the finite nature of the landmass of our lands limits the populations and markets of commerce, by extending the bonds of brotherhood to our geographic neighbors allows for extended opportunities and better execution of the kinetics of our economies through trade. This regional focus must foster and promote diverse economic stimuli.

viii. Whereas the population size is too small to foster good negotiations for products and commodities from international vendors, the Federation must allow the unification of the region as one purchasing agent, thereby garnering better terms and discounts.

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. …

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

The Go Lean book and previous blog-commentaries posit that the “whole is worth more than the sum of its parts”, that from this roadmap disparate Caribbean nations can speak with “one voice” … collectively as a Single Market and be heard. The international community – the big polluters – would therefore have more respect and accountability to our regional Caribbean entity, rather than the many (30) Small Island Development States. But while contributing to the problem ourselves, though on a smaller scale, we cannot just say to these big polluters:

“You break it, you fix it”.

No, we must unite and take our stand in this fight … to mitigate plastics and Styrofoam … and advocate for change!

As related in the Go Lean roadmap, the CU Trade Federation is designed to elevate Caribbean society, but not just against pollution, rather these other engines in the regional construct as well. The roadmap therefore has these 3 prime directives:

Optimize the economic engines of the Caribbean to elevate the regional economy to grow to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establish a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines over the seas & land.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

So the CU will serve as the regional administrator to optimize the economy, homeland security and governing engines for the Caribbean. These efforts are already important in the fight for Climate Change abatement; so the same can apply for the mitigation of polluting plastics and Styrofoam.

We can all do more!

Some hotel resorts in the Caribbean have already embraced the strategy of being early-adopters of plastics-Styrofoam bans. See a related article here from St Lucia:

Bay Gardens Resorts discontinues use of Expanded Polystyrene EPS (Styrofoam) products https://stluciatimes.com/2017/02/17/bay-gardens-resorts-discontinues-use-expanded-polystyrene-eps-styrofoam-products/

Change has come to the Caribbean region. This heavy-lifting is the quest of the CU/Go Lean roadmap; to make the Caribbean region more self-reliant collectively; to act more proactively and reactively for our own emergencies and natural disaster events; and to be more efficient in our governance.

If “plastics pollution” is not arrested, then even more devastating changes will come. So there is the need for our region to establish a regional Sentinel, a permanent union to provide efficient stewardship for our economic, security and governing engines.

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people and governing institutions, to lean-in to the efforts and empowerments to mitigate and abate “plastics pollution”. It is also time to lean-in to this roadmap described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. Plastic pollution is a Big Deal. We have other Big Deals too, so as to reform and transform our society. We must make our waterways and homelands better places to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

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Bahamas, Disaster, Green Energy, Security, St Lucia, Transform

Industrial Reboot – Reinsurance 101

Posted on October 2, 2018 in Economics, Industries, Tactical

Go Lean Commentary

Continuity of Business (CoB) …

It’s a simple concept; it asserts that if there are any extraordinary events – i.e. emergencies and natural disasters – that the tools and techniques are in place to pick-up and continue for business-as-usual. For some companies, this field is so formalized that they have stakeholders (team) with the responsibilities to ensure that “no stone is left un-turned”. These companies have a C-level executive with this responsibility, i.e. …

VP of Risk [Management]
Director of Disaster Recovery

One popular risk mitigation strategy is to buy “insurance“. Yet the Caribbean is in crisis! Due to Climate Change realities, there are fewer and fewer “Property & Casualty” insurance products available to Caribbean stakeholders.

This is Sad!

Yes, it is that simple: insurance is a protection to ensure the continuation of business operations, and is expected for all modern business operations. This theme was addressed in a previous blog-commentary by the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean, in relation to the need to ensure the continuation of a community in the wake of Caribbean natural disasters. That submission presents this quotation:

… an insurance strategy could be even smarter for rainy days or catastrophes; it allows the hedging of risks by leveraging across a wider pool; more people – savers – put-in and only a few … or just one withdraws. This is also the approach of the thoughtful Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Fund (CCRIF).

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

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

The Caribbean’s industrial landscape is in crisis. It must reboot; we do not have adequate “Property & Casualty” offerings. The identified CCRIF Catastrophe Fund, though it’s too-little-too-late, is for member-states governments, by the member-states governments. Individuals and companies need not apply; yet still, there is the need. Individuals, institutions and enterprises need the protection of a viable CoB solution. This glaring need is so obvious, right now on the heels of Tropical Storm Kirk. Though not a major storm, it brought major destruction to one particular business. See the full story here:

Title: Poultry farmer loses 2000 chickens during storm

Poultry farmer Linus Bernadine suffered a major setback Thursday night, when high winds associated with Tropical Storm Kirk destroyed his chicken houses at Babonneau.

Bernadine told St Lucia Times it resulted in the loss of 2000 broiler chicks.

He explained that the loss has impacted significantly on his livelihood.

“This is what I am expecting to put bread on my table,” Bernadine stated.

He estimated that his losses are in the region of some $90,000.

Bernadine said he does not know how he will recover from the calamity.

“Right now I am just on the farm demolishing things,” he said.

“What happened is that these birds, I just got them on Wednesday last week and the storm was Thursday night,” Bernadine disclosed.

The poultry farmer recalled having left his home for Vieux Fort to pick up the chicks.

“I got back home about ten past nine in the night, I put the birds down and that was it,” he stated.

“Friday morning I had no choice but to bury them,” he told St Lucia Times, adding that both of the chicken pens on his property had been destroyed by the storm and the chicks that were in them died.

“I am flat down – everything is just gone,” Bernadine lamented.

“I have a capacity of about 7000 birds and all of that is flat down,” he said.

Source: St Lucia Times Daily Newspaper – Posted September 30th, 2018; retrieved October 2, 2018 from: https://stluciatimes.com/2018/09/30/poultry-farmer-loses-2000-chickens-during-storm/

Needless to say, the underlying problem in the foregoing story is “money”, the lack of money in Caribbean communities for restoring business operations in the wake of disasters.

The lack of money is the root of all evil” – Pejorative Pun credited to “Rev. Ike”

There is not enough money in the St. Lucia pool. The Go Lean book simply declares that there needs to be a Bigger pool, one that individuals, institutions and enterprises can participate in. The Go Lean book proposed the solution of Reinsurance Sidecars, related in the book on Page 101 as follows:

Hurricane Insurance Fund
The risk pool for a 42-million population is so much lower than each member-state’s sole mitigation efforts. The CU will establish (contract with a service provider) reinsurance funds (& sidecars) from Day One, and glean the excess premiums-over-claims as profit.

So this is the solution that is proposed in the Go Lean book, to allow for Reinsurance Sidecars in the regional Capital Markets. This way more liquidity will be brought to the marketplace and investors can share in the risk … and profit. See a fuller definition of Sidecars here:

Reinsurance Sidecars, conventionally referred to as “sidecars”, are financial structures that are created to allow investors to take on the risk and return of a group of insurance policies (a “book of business”) written by an insurer or reinsurer (henceforth re/insurer) and earn the risk and return that arises from that business. A re/insurer will only pay (“cede”) the premiums associated with a book of business to such an entity if the investors place sufficient funds in the vehicle to ensure that it can meet claims if they arise. Typically, the liability of investors is limited to these funds. These structures have become quite prominent in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as a vehicle for re/insurers to add risk-bearing capacity, and for investors to participate in the potential profits resulting from sharp price increases in re/insurance over the four quarters following Katrina. An earlier and smaller generation of sidecars were created after 9/11 for the same purpose. …
Source: Retrieved October 13, 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinsurance_sidecar

The introduction of Reinsurance Sidecars will reboot the entire industrial landscape in the Caribbean. With this product, businesses will have the Property & Casualty insurance products to provide some assurances; also banks will be able to compel their loan clients to maintain these coverages. This is the whole definition of “Escrows”, that of banks requiring Property & Casualty insurance for their loan customers:

In layman’s terms, this means an escrow service is basically a middleman between a buyer and a seller, or in the case of a mortgage, a middleman between a homeowner and the county (for property taxes), insurance companies, and anyone else who the homeowner designates to pay with funds from the escrow account.

1. Imagine the effect of sidecars on bank escrow processing departments.

2. Imagine the effect of sidecars on the insurance retail and wholesale markets.

3. Imagine the effect of business insurance on businesses.

4. Imagine the effect of business continuity on community continuity.

5. Imagine the effect of an industrial reboot on Caribbean life and our day-to-day reality.

So the goal here is to better explore the industrialization of Reinsurance Sidecar products and escrow processing. We must pursue this reboot of our industrial landscape; we need to foster the many new opportunities (jobs, entrepreneurism and industrial development). This is the declaration of the book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free; it serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU); this is a confederation of all 30 member-states – the larger pool – to execute a reboot of the Caribbean economic eco-system. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a Homeland Security and Emergency Management apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean economic engines must be a regional pursuit – always remember the reality of a larger pool. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 13):

i. Whereas the earth’s climate has undeniably changed resulting in more severe tropical weather storms, it is necessary to prepare to insure the safety and security of life, property and systems of commerce in our geographical region. As nature recognizes no borders in the target of its destruction, we also must set aside border considerations in the preparation and response to these weather challenges.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

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

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.

This is the vision of an industrial reboot! This transformation is where and how the economic eco-system is reinforced, re-engaged and re-engineered. With this reboot in the Caribbean, new jobs can be created, companies started and industries optimized.

Despite the references to “industrial”, there are benefits to individuals as well.

Mortgages and houses will have protections, this means the Caribbean home will be more secure. This fits the quest of the Go Lean movement, to make the Caribbean a better homeland to live, work and play.

The foregoing news article related the agri-business of a Chicken Farm. Have you eaten chicken lately?

Probably! For some people it’s everyday!

So the out-workings of this industrial reboot will also have an effect on consumer goods. That’s food and shelter, part of the pantheon of basic needs: food, clothing and shelter.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society. One advocacy in rebooting the industrial landscape is to work to improve the delivery systems for our food supply. All Caribbean islands and coastal states should have chicken farms. It is unconscionable that ALL CHICKENS may be imported from abroad. Surely, we can provide the industrial landscape so that every community have their own chicken farms.

Surely …

This will mean that we will have to manage and mitigate the risks of storms and natural disasters; remember Climate Change.

Consider these specific excerpts and headlines from the book on Page 162 entitled:

10 Ways to Better Manage Food Consumption

1	Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market The CU will allow for the unification of the region into one market, thereby creating a single economy of 30 member-states, 42 million people and a GDP of over $800 Billion – the CU will take the lead in facilitating the food supply and distribution systems to ensure the region can feed itself, more from local production and less from trade. Though the cost savings of imports should never be ignored, some CU countries (Greater Antilles, Belize, Guyana & Suriname) have a low opportunity cost for increasing food production for the regional market. Thus a mission of the CU is to streamline the systems, processes, logistics, funding, training, and market promotions so that the Caribbean can fulfill this basic need.
2	Public Health Dynamics – Produce Deserts & Farmers *Market*
3	“Nouvelle” Caribbean Cuisine
4	Agri-Business Many of the member-states get 90% (or more) of their food supplies from imports; even fish is imported from Alaska, despite the 1,063,000 square miles of harvestable waters of the Caribbean Sea. The CU will implement agri-business (and aqua-culture) investments to generate more regional options for food production: cooperatives (co-ops), farm credit, common grazing lands, fisheries oversight, canaries, aqua-culture endeavors, etc.
5	Logistics for the Food Supply
6	Fresh Frozen
7	Food Labeling
8	Export – Help Regional Businesses Find Foreign Markets
9	Media Industrial Complex
10	Food Tourism

Rebooting the industrial landscape of the Caribbean is not a new subject for this Go Lean roadmap. In fact, this commentary has previously identified a number of different industries that can be rebooted under this roadmap. See the list of previous submissions on Industrial Reboots here:

Industrial Reboots – Ferries 101 – Published June 27, 2017
Industrial Reboots – Prisons 101 – Published October 4, 2017
Industrial Reboots – Pipeline 101 – Published October 5, 2017
Industrial Reboots – Frozen Foods 101 – Published October 6, 2017
Industrial Reboots – Call Centers 101 – Published July 2, 2018
Industrial Reboots – Prefab Housing 101 – Published July 14, 2018
Industrial Reboots – Trauma 101 – Published July 18, 2018
Industrial Reboots – Auto-making 101 – Published – July 19, 2018
Industrial Reboots – Shipbuilding 101 – Published – July 20, 2018
Industrial Reboots – Fisheries 101 – Published – July 23, 2018
Industrial Reboots – Lottery 101 – Published – July 24, 2018
Industrial Reboots – Culture 101 – Published – July 25, 2018
Industrial Reboots – Tourism 2.0 – Published – July 27, 2018
Industrial Reboots – Cruise Tourism 2.0 – Published – July 27, 2018
Industrial Reboots – Reinsurance Sidecars 101 – Published Today – October 2, 2018

Reinsurance Sidecars – remember the name. While these, and other derivative products, are not commonly known in the Caribbean today, they will be. They are too important for our future.

Don’t ever forget, as this fact often gets overlooked, they are also vastly profitable investment products. See the VIDEO‘s in the Appendices for more details on Reinsurance Sidecar derivatives as investment products.

In summary, our Caribbean region needs a better industrial landscape so as to make our homeland better. In fact, one of the reasons why so many Caribbean citizens have emigrated away from the homeland is the lack of the ability to quickly recover after natural disasters. This is why Homeland Security – preparation and response of emergencies – is coupled with economic policies for rebooting the societal engines in the region. So creating a new economic landscape will require rebooting the industrial landscape.

So as an enterprise, an institution or an individual, we need good insurance options – a Continuity of Business. A bigger-better regional risk pool is paramount for a better Caribbean. This is how we can make our region a better homeland to live, work and play. We urge all Caribbean stakeholders to lean-in to this roadmap for industrial reboots, security enhancements and economic empowerments. 🙂

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

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

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Appendix A VIDEO – What is REINSURANCE? What does REINSURANCE mean? REINSURANCE meaning, definition & explanation – https://youtu.be/7Qe4-Ei2PHY

The Audiopedia

Published on May 17, 2017 – What is REINSURANCE? What doe REINSURANCE mean? REINSURANCE meaning – REINSURANCE pronunciation – REINSURANCE definition – REINSURANCE explanation – How to pronounce REINSURANCE?
Source: Wikipedia.org article, adapted under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/… license.

Category: Education
License: Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)

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Appendix B VIDEO – What Is Financial Reinsurance? – https://youtu.be/W45REh7Pt7I

ehowfinance

Published on May 25, 2015 – What Is Financial Reinsurance?. Part of the series: Small Business Tips. Financial reinsurance is a key component to any successful business. Learn about financial reinsurance with help from a business consultant and marketing expert in this free video clip. Read more: http://www.ehow.com/video_12214988_fi…

Category: Howto & Style

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Appendix C VIDEO – Reinsurance the perfect Hedge Fund Strategy to Diversify a Portfolio – https://youtu.be/rfp2gRsFD2M

BGN – Blockchain Global News

Published on Mar 2, 2016 – Jane King interviews Don Steinbrugge, Managing Director, Agecroft Partners. For more information please visit http://www.agecroftpartners.com

Category: People & Blogs

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Plastics and Styrofoam – A Mitigation Plan

Posted on August 21, 2018 in Government, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

So where do all the used plastics – and Styrofoam – go?

In a landfill …

… and may not degrade for a thousand years!

But for the ones that end up in the water (oceans and seas), they too do not degrade. They linger, pollute and disrupt eco-systems.

No one can just “stick their head in the sand”; this issue must be addressed, the crisis must be assuaged, the threat must be mitigated. See this crisis as depicted in this VIDEO here:

VIDEO – How Much Plastic is in the Ocean? – https://youtu.be/YFZS3Vh4lfI

It’s Okay To Be Smart

Published on Mar 28, 2017 – What can you do to make the oceans plastic-free?

Ocean plastic pollution is a massive environmental problem. Millions of tons of plastic waste enter the ocean every year, even plastic that goes in the trash can often ends up in the sea! This week we learn about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and look at the dangers ocean plastic poses to ocean animals. Plus, a few tips for you to reduce your own plastic use!

Sample Resources

Plastic Oceans Foundation: http://www.plasticoceans.org/

United Nations “Clean Seas” program: http://www.cleanseas.org/

Ocean plastic pollution resources from Monterey Bay Aquarium: https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/c…

Category: Education

Think global; act local!

What are we doing in our Caribbean region to mitigate the problem of plastics and Styrofoam? One member-state, St. Lucia, has proposed something; see the full news story here:

Title: Saint Lucia to ban Styrofoam and plastics

August 13th, 2018 – Saint Lucia plans to phase-out Styrofoam food service containers and plastics, both plates and cups, beginning December 1, 2018, with a total ban on their importation before the end of next year.

The announcement came in a statement from Minister of Education, Innovation, Gender Relations and Sustainable Development, Doctor Gale Rigobert.

Rigobert said the Government of Saint Lucia is cognizant of the negative impact on the environment and human health from food service containers made from Polystyrene and Expanded Polystyrene, also known as Styrofoam, along with Plastics.

However, she observed that the administration recognises that the healthier alternative to these products, such as biodegradable and compostable food service containers, are more costly.

” We are doing our very best to alleviate this issue,” the minister explained.

She disclosed that over the last few months, the Department of Sustainable Development, in partnership with other key agencies such as the Saint Lucia Solid Waste Management Authority, the Department of Finance, the Ministry of Commerce and the Customs and Excise Department, has been working towards the development of a strategy to eliminate single use plastics, polystyrene and expanded polystyrene from the Saint Lucia market.

“To date, we have completed fiscal analyses, conducted a survey of the key suppliers of these products and we have also identified suppliers of the biodegradable and compostable food service containers, all this to ensure that Saint Lucia creates the enabling environment to facilitate this process,” Rigobert stated.

She explained that in light of this, the Department of Sustainable Development will be taking a phased approach to facilitate a smooth transition for all stakeholders.

“The phase-out, along with a ban on the importation of Styrofoam food service containers, and plastics, both plates and cups, will commence December 1, 2018 with a total ban culminating by November 30, 2019:”

Rigovert revealed that in order to ensure adequate sensitisation, the Department of Sustainable Development will continue its campaign to educate the general public on the options they have available to them during this phase.

“With respect to plastic bottles, discussions are ongoing with major stakeholders to finalize legislation that would curb and control their use,” the minister noted.

“I encourage you to join the fight to reduce your dependency on single use plastics and Styrofoam by utilizing re-useable bottles, food containers, cutlery and shopping bags. Let us act responsibly in our everyday consumption and production,”Rigobert stated.
Source: St. Lucia Times – Daily Newspaper – Posted 08-13-2018; retrieved 08-21-2018: https://stluciatimes.com/2018/08/13/saint-lucia-to-ban-styrofoam-and-plastics/

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14832	Counter-culture: Manifesting Change – Environmentalism
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14174	Canada: “Follow Me” for Model on Environmental Action
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12724	Lessons from Colorado: Water Management Arts & Sciences
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12144	Book Review: ‘Sea Power’ – The Need for Good Oversight
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9455	Fix ‘Climate Change’ and other Environmental Issues? Yes, We Can
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2465	Book Review: ‘This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2276	Climate Change May Affect Food Supply Within a Decade
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1656	Blue is the New Green
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=915	Go ‘Green’ … Caribbean

“Here I am, send me” – The Bible; Isaiah 6:8

Why regional?

Because the national effort has been unsuccessful; in many cases, even unknown, unavailable and unfunded.

vi. Whereas the finite nature of the landmass of our lands limits the populations and markets of commerce, by extending the bonds of brotherhood to our geographic neighbors allows for extended opportunities and better execution of the kinetics of our economies through trade. This regional focus must foster and promote diverse economic stimuli.

viii. Whereas the population size is too small to foster good negotiations for products and commodities from international vendors, the Federation must allow the unification of the region as one purchasing agent, thereby garnering better terms and discounts.

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. …

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

“You break it, you fix it”.

No, we must unite and take our stand in this fight … to mitigate plastics and Styrofoam … and advocate for change!

Optimize the economic engines of the Caribbean to elevate the regional economy to grow to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establish a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines over the seas & land.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

We can all do more!

Some hotel resorts in the Caribbean have already embraced the strategy of being early-adopters of plastics-Styrofoam bans. See a related article here from St Lucia:

Bay Gardens Resorts discontinues use of Expanded Polystyrene EPS (Styrofoam) products https://stluciatimes.com/2017/02/17/bay-gardens-resorts-discontinues-use-expanded-polystyrene-eps-styrofoam-products/

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

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

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Disaster, Green Energy, Security, St Lucia, Transform

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Saint Lucia Recognized as ‘Best Island in the Caribbean’

Posted on May 29, 2018 in Economics, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Saying that “we are the best”, really does not bring any solace.

Just ask the people in St. Lucia! Do they feel like they are the “best island in the Caribbean”? (Economically, they are below average; their GDP ranking for the region is 18 of 30; see Table 1).

But it is true, the Caribbean does some things well; and some islands do the “well” even better than others:

There are features of Caribbean life that work very well now. We are currently the “best address” in the world. If one has the resources, there is no better place to call home – imagine a lottery winner relocating to a Caribbean paradise. Further, if someone has the resources for only a short time-frame, there is no better place to vacation. And thus, as a regional community, the Caribbean is best at servicing: Tourism, Cruise Operations, Offshore Banking, and Specialty Agriculture.

Tourism
Tourism is the primary economic driver for almost every “CU“ member-state. In economics, a measurement of demand is the price indicator. During the “high” season – winter peak – Caribbean hotels, of a high-quality rating, can be priced at thousands of (US) dollars … per night. There is the demand; then follows, the supply systems to meet the demand. This peak period, throughout the Caribbean, lasts from December to April. – Book Go Lean…Caribbean Page 58.

While we may have the “best of this and the best of that”, our dispositions in the Caribbean are still inadequate, bad and sometimes failing. On the one hand, we may have the best addresses on the planet for tourism, but on the other hand, we have blatant failures in so many other areas of society. So if the goal is to forge a better place to live, work and play, then we need to accept that only the “play” part is enjoying some measure of success and the ranking of “Best” is simply not enough.

See this news article here:

Title: Saint Lucia Recognized as Best Island In the Caribbean

Press Release: Saint Lucia has been recognized as the “Best Island in the Caribbean” by Global Traveler at their Sixth Annual Leisure Lifestyle Awards. Global Traveler is a monthly publication that attracts some 300,000 readers and connects with U.S.-based frequent, affluent, international travellers who have an average net worth of $2 million.

The awards cocktail took place on the rooftop of Sofitel Los Angeles, Beverly Hills. This award marks the destination’s second ‘Best Island in the Caribbean’ honour in the 6-year life of the Global Traveler Leisure Lifestyle Awards, Saint Lucia having won the inaugural award in 2013.

Saint Lucia registered a record-setting year in 2017, with year-to-date numbers for 2018 improving over the same period last year. First quarter figures for 2018 show a 17.8% increase in stay-over arrivals and a 13.5% increase in cruise arrivals over last year’s record.

Remarking on Global Traveler award, Minister for Tourism Hon. Dominic Fedee stated, “This is an award of recognition to the hard work and dedication of every hospitality worker and to every Saint Lucian. It is the Saint Lucian story and its majesty which continues to attract visitors to the destination making it a world-class holiday and business destination for travellers.”

Global Traveler also highlighted Saint Lucia as a ‘dream come true’ port of call for cruise visitors. The award survey was conducted in the Global Traveler magazine through an insert in subscriber copies, as a direct mail questionnaire, online and in emails. Saint Lucia beat out nine other destinations for the top honour, including Aruba, Grand Cayman, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, the Bahamas, Curaçao, Nevis, Jamaica the British Virgin Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

“We believe Saint Lucia is a unique Caribbean destination which offers something to every traveller and this award is in recognition of our destination’s appeal. We will continue to find creative ways to present Saint Lucia in the marketplace as we seek to increase market penetration, awareness and visitor arrivals,” stated the Executive Chairperson of the Saint Lucia Tourism Authority Agnes Francis.

Each year, Global Traveler awards the GT Tested Reader Survey awards, the Leisure Lifestyle Awards and the Wines on the Wing awards.

Source: Retrieved May 29, 2018 from: https://stluciatimes.com/2018/05/22/saint-lucia-recognized-as-best-island-in-the-caribbean/

So the appeal to the U.S.-based affluent traveler is “spot on” for Saint Lucian tourism; but maybe this is not good enough; see the still low GDP-Per-Capita figures in Table 1. Experiences shows that catering to the rich will ever only generate a limited success, because this is only a limited population – think the One Percent. Imagine if “we”, the entire Caribbean are able to appeal and deliver to the other 99 Percent. Maybe then, there would be more prosperity for a better Caribbean.

This is the assertion of the book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free. It posits that with a unified approach the Caribbean region can launch certain empowerments that can elevate all of the region to better deliver on the tourism product. The book explains that these empowerments will make the region better, not just to play, but to live, work and play.

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. The book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to transform the economic engines of the region. For example, to supplement the affluent market for tourism stay-overs, the book urges the targeting of an alternate special population with the following advocacies:

10 Ways to Enhance Tourism in the Caribbean Region (Page 19)

The Bottom Line on Snowbirds

A snowbird is someone from the U.S. Northeast, U.S. Midwest, Pacific Northwest, or Canada who spends a large portion of winter in warmer locales such as California, Arizona, Florida, Texas, the Carolinas, or elsewhere along the Sun Belt region of the southern and southwest United States, Mexico, and areas of the Caribbean. Snowbirds are typically retirees, and business owners who have a second home in a warmer location or whose business can be easily moved from place to place, such as flea market and swap meet vendors. Some snowbirds carry their homes with them, as RV’s or campers (mounted on bus or truck frames) or as boats following the east coast Intracoastal waterway. In the past snowbirds were frequently wealthy with independent income who maintained several seasonal residences and shifted residence with the seasons to avail themselves of the best time to be at each location; this custom has declined considerably due to changing patterns of taxation and the relative ease of long distance travel compared with earlier times. Many of these “snowbirds” also use their vacation time to declare permanent residency in low- or no-tax income tax states (where the tax bases are augmented by high tourism taxes), and claim lower non-resident income taxes in their home states. Canadian snowbirds usually make sure they retain residency in Canada in order to retain health benefits.

See Appendix VIDEO below.

10 Ways to Improve Transportation (Page 20)

# 3 Turnpike: Ferries

For the most part, the CU member-states are islands [or coastal states] thereby allowing for a viable means of transportation via sea navigation. By deploying ferries, the CU facilitates passenger travel for business and leisure.

APPENDIX IC – Alaska Marine Highway System (Page 28)

Model for the CU

The CU envisions a similar water-based highway system of ferries and docks to facilitate passenger, cargo and vehicle [(i.e. RV’s)] travel connecting the islands of the Caribbean region to the mainland ports. This ferry system will be a component of the Union Atlantic Turnpike.

So kudos to St. Lucia…

… but let’s do even better than the status quo. We have the opportunity to benefit from a year-round tourism product; plus the successful diversification of the regional economy. In fact, this CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The vision of an interconnected ferry system throughout the region requires a better interdependence among all the Caribbean islands. This is the quest of the Go Lean/CU roadmap. The book stresses that transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 14):

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

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

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 … [and] invigorate the enterprises related to existing industries like tourism … – impacting the region with more jobs.

The vision of an interconnected ferry system throughout the Caribbean region has been detailed before in these previous blog-commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12322	Ferries 101: Economics, Security and Governance
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9179	Snowbirds Tourism – First Day of Autumn – Time to Head South
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=510	Snowbirds Need for Winter Hospitality

Ferries will transform all areas of Caribbean life. So the Go Lean roadmap is conceivable, believable and achievable for transforming the regional tourism product. Our Best can be even better still.

Let’s do this; let’s make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

————

Appendix – Table 1

Click on Photo to Enlarge

————

Appendix VIDEO – Anne Murray ~ Snowbird (1970) – https://youtu.be/x0oc3IR4qGQ

Published May 26, 2011 – Music in this video; Learn more

Song: Snowbird
Artist: Anne Murray
Writers: Gene MacLellan
Licensed by: UMG (on behalf of Universal Music Canada); EMI Music Publishing, SOLAR Music Rights Management, CMRRA, and 10 Music Rights Societies.

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Canada, Model, St Lucia, Tourism

[Top]

Overseas Workers – Not the Panacea

Posted on May 23, 2018 in Economics, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

What do you want to be when you grow up?

This question is usually asked of young ones while they are still fostering their development. This question normally reflects the role models that the young ones perceive.

A similar exercise can be applied to developing countries. So we ask the question of the developing Caribbean nations:

What do you want to be when you grow up?
Who is your role model?
Which country’s template do you want to consider?

The easy answers could be the US, the EU or Canada, but our practices belie a different role model. Our region seems to be copying North Korea. There is a jobs program that exists in our region that is 100% modeled on North Korea; it is their Overseas Worker program. See more details on the North Korean program here:

Estimates of the number of North Koreans overseas vary considerably. Some researchers, as well as a 2015 report by the UN Special Rapporteur on North Korean Human Rights, cite roughly 50,000 overseas workers. Other analysts have given larger estimates, ranging as high as 120,000 overseas workers. A fact sheet published by the U.S. Mission to the UN in 2017 cites 100,000 overseas workers, bringing in revenue of over $500 million annually.

The reason for this variation hinges mostly on the difficulty of estimating the number of North Korean workers in China. The number of North Koreans legally entering China has increased significantly in recent years, with over 188,000 reported entrants in 2015, including 94,000 entrants identified as “workers and crew”. This may be connected to a reported2012 informal agreement between Beijing and Pyongyang allowing for an increased number of North Koreans to work in China. However, data on the number of reported entrants does not necessarily reflect the total number of North Korean workers in China. On the one hand, some North Korean workers may have been placed in entry categories other than “workers and crew,” and workers might stay longer than one-year periods. One the other hand, it is not clear whether the “worker and crew” category includes transportation workers who may enter China on a routine basis for very short terms, or how often North Korean workers (particularly those stationed in the border area) travel back and forth across the border — in either case, any given worker would be counted as an “entrant” multiple times in a single year.

Successive UN Security Council resolutions have imposed progressively stronger sanctions on the employment of North Korean overseas laborers. The most recent, Resolution 2397 adopted in December 2017, requires member states to repatriate all DPRK nationals earning income in their territory within 24 months.
…
North Korea’s overseas workers are typically closely managed by DPRK state-run enterprises, which contract with foreign partners to provide labor. While conditions may vary from place to place, human rights advocates note that North Korean overseas workers often labor under intense conditions, face restrictions on their movements, and keep little of their wages. Other analysts argue that work abroad nonetheless provides North Koreans with the opportunity to earn more money than they could at home, and that foreign work is often seen as desirable within North Korea.

While it appears that the majority of state-organized North Korean overseas workers are men, women comprise a majority of the undocumented North Koreans living in China. Due to their vulnerable status, undocumented North Korean women are often subject to sex trafficking or forced marriage.

Source: Retrieved May 23, 2018 from: https://www.northkoreaintheworld.org/economic/north-korean-overseas-workers

Overseas Workers?! There are so many dangers; so many threats; and so many downsides that no government should be encouraging this role model – the North Korean model – for any country. India – see Appendix B – had bad experiences with this practice and have now added new empowerments to better protect its people from the dangers of overseas employment. Yet, our Caribbean member-states seem to be “cruising for a bruising” by inviting their own overseas workers programme. Is this who we want to be when we grow up?

Sad!

Now see this news article here, reflecting the demand for overseas employment in one Caribbean member-state. The demand is so high that the abuse has begun; see the article here:

Title: St Lucia warns of false advertisements for Canadian farm worker programme

CASTRIES – The St Lucia government has warned of “false advertisements” in circulation on the social media and other platforms indicating that the Labour Department here is now accepting applications from nationals for work under the Canadian Farm Worker Programme.

In a statement, the Labour Department said that it has “been swamped with scores of citizens in recent days seeking to register in response to the false notice”.

“Citizens are informed that the Department of Labour is currently not in the process of accepting new applicants to the programme. The department currently has a database of over five hundred citizens registered for the programme. This database is the first point for consideration in the event new opportunities become available,” the Ministry of Labour said in the statement.

St Lucia is among a number of Caribbean countries whose nationals participate in the annual work programme in Canada and the statement quoted Labour Minister Stephenson King as saying that he is “working feverishly with existing and prospective employers for additional opportunities for St Lucians”.

The Department said it also wanted to take the opportunity “to thank employers and all citizens for continuous support,” adding “rest assured we will continue working for you”. (CMC)
Source: Posted May 20, 2018; retrieved May 23, 2018 from: http://www.nationnews.com/nationnews/news/159035/st-lucia-warns-false-advertisements-canadian-farm-worker-programme

So according to the foregoing – “St Lucia is among a number of Caribbean countries whose nationals participate in the annual work programme in Canada” – when the question is asked: Where are the jobs in the Caribbean? The answer in St. Lucia and these other Caribbean countries is:

Overseas!

Commentators conclude that North Korea is Hell on Earth! See the related story in the Appendix VIDEO. We must do better than copying their economic model!

The book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free – serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. Our quest is to do better for Caribbean jobs; in fact the CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

Overseas jobs in Canada is not the panacea for what ails the Caribbean economically. Rather than look to Canada, we must look inwardly at our region so as to fix our broken local economic engines, not just look “across the waters” for others to solve our problems for us.

The book stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean economic engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 14):

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

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

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

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the economic engines of Caribbean society. Just “how” can the stewards for a new Caribbean create local “innovative” jobs in our region? This is the actual title of one advocacy in the Go Lean book. Consider the specific plans, excerpts and headlines here from Page 152, entitled:

10 Ways to Create Jobs … in the Caribbean Region

1	Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market and Economy The CU will allow for the unification of the region into one market, thereby creating a single economy of 30 member- states, 42 million people and a GDP of over $800 Billion. The CU’s mission is to create high-paying jobs for the region, beyond the minimum wage (defined below). Many high-wage industries would be promoted, incentivized and regulated at the federal level, even new industries created. Jobs come from trade; the CU goal is to improve trade. The CU will thus institute Enterprise Zones and Empowerment Zones – SGE’s – with tax benefits: rebates, abatements – as job creation pockets. The CU will capture data, micro and macro-economic metrics, to measure the success/failure of these initiatives.
2	Feed Ourselves The industries of agri-business allow structured commercial systems to grow, harvest and trade in food supplies. Many of the Caribbean member states (Lesser Antilles) acquire all their food in trade, the agricultural footprint is very small, though some countries (Greater Antilles, Belize, Guyana & Suriname) have a low opportunity cost for producing food. But with the Trade Federation in force, intra-region trade will be the first priority. When the demand is qualified, quantified and assured, the supply and quality there in, will catch up.
3	Clothe Ourselves
4	House Ourselves In the US, it’s a truism of the National Association of Realtors® that “housing creates jobs”. With the repatriation of the Caribbean Diaspora, local building supplies and new “housing starts” will emerge in the Caribbean. Plus, the CU will facilitate mortgage secondary market and pre-fabulous construction thereby fostering new housing sub-industries.
5	Update Our Own Infrastructure and the Industries They Spun Roads, bridges, ports, ship-building dry-docks, utilities and media outlets create companies and jobs for implementation and maintenance. Many of the infrastructure projects will cover the transportation sector; with improvements here, the result will be more traffic (passenger & cargo). This opens new modes for travelers/visitors/tourists to come to their favorite resort destination. (Consider Fast Ferries boats and Spring Break). Also, the CU will correct the void of no auto manufacturing industry in the Caribbean region, despite a market of 42 million people.
6	Steer More People to S.T.E.M. Education and Careers
7	Help Regional Businesses Find Foreign Markets
8	Welcome Home Emigrants
9	Welcome “Empowering” Immigrants
10	Draw More Tourists The North American upper-middle-class market should not be the only target, better infrastructure and promotion can channel more tourists to the region. There can be a year round improvement in tourist arrivals, rather than just the “high” season. The CU will promote events with wide appeal to attract more tourists from around the world, year-round. The facilitation, support and promotion of the events will create multitudes of jobs, if only temporary.

Once these new “innovative” local direct jobs are created, then the job multiplier factor is engaged. The Go Lean book (Page 259) describes this factor and effect as follows:

… not only do innovative industries bring “good jobs” and high salaries to the communities where they cluster but that their impact is “much deeper” than their direct effect. … A healthy traded sector benefits the local economy directly, as it generates well-paid jobs, and indirectly as it creates additional jobs in the non-traded sector. What is truly remarkable is that this indirect effect to the local economy is much larger than the direct effect.

The subject of overseas jobs in Canada have been visited before. There was a previous blog-commentary from January 8, 2015 that detailed the experience for Jamaica; this previous study is one reason why we are able to conclude that this type of employment program, overseas, is not the panacea:

Jamaica has one of the highest rates of societal abandonment in the Caribbean. In a previous blog-commentary, it was revealed that the Caribbean loses more than 70 percent of tertiary educated to brain drain, but Jamaica’s rate is at 85%; (plus 35% of the secondary educated population leaves). This Foreign Guest Worker program, in the foregoing article, seems to be a “double down” on the itinerant Jamaican strategy. Imagine the analogy of a teenage runaway leaving his family behind; then when the parents finally discover that prodigal’s son’s whereabouts, they send another child to join them, rather than encourage a return home and a plea to prosper and be planted at home.

The people of Jamaica deserves better.

The people of the Caribbean deserves better. We do not have to repeat the same mistakes as India, North Korea or other Caribbean states; we can … and must do better. We must create local jobs. This is conceivable, believable and achievable. Yes, we can make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

————–

Appendix A VIDEO – North Korea Literal Hell On Earth – https://youtu.be/DGA0_4pyOrw

Paulraj P.

Published on Mar 15, 2017 – Must Read: WEIRD AND BIZARRE FACTS ABOUT NORTH KOREA, THE MOST REPRESSIVE AUTHORITARIAN COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, A LITERAL HELL ON EARTH

…

Listen to Yeonmi Park , escaped from North Korea and now a human right activist, who like any other North Koreans was once forced to collect human and animal poo for the government , knew about love for the first time, only after watching “Titanic”, speaking in One Young World Summit in Dublin. Keep tissues.

————–

Appendix B – India’s Overseas Workers Passport – Emigration Act, 1983

The Emigration Act, 1983 is an Act passed by the Government of India to regulate emigration of people from India, with the stated goal of reducing fraud or exploitation of Indian workers recruited to work overseas. The Act imposed a requirement of obtaining emigration clearance (also called POE clearance) from the office of Protector of Emigrants (POE), Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs for people emigrating from India for work. As of 2017, this requirement applies only for people going to one of 18 listed countries.^[1][2][3][4]

Background

Indians emigrated, both temporarily and permanently, to a number of countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Australia, and the economies of south-east Asia. The bulk of emigration from the 1970s onward was to the Arab states of the Persian Gulf.^[3] Recruiting agents played a role in connecting workers to foreign jobs and charged the workers or the employers some share of the revenue. The Emigration Act, 1983 was passed to address concerns related to defrauding and exploitation of workers by the recruiting agents and other problems they might face upon going abroad.^[3]

Provisions

Creation of the Office of Protector of Emigrants (Chapter II)

Chapter II, Section 3 of the Act provided that the Central Government may appoint a Protector General of Emigrants and as many Protectors of Emigrants (POE) as it sees fit, as well as their respective areas of operation. Later Sections of Chapter II defined the duties of Protectors of Emigrants in more detail, provided for emigration check-points, and provided for other emigration officers.^[2][3]

Registration of recruiting agents (Chapter III)

The Act made the Protector General of Emigrants and other Protectors of Emigrants the authorities who could register recruiting agents. A person could operate as a recruiting agent for emigrants only if registered. The Act also provided details on the application, terms and conditions, renewal, and cancellation of registration.^[2][3]

Permits for recruitment by employers (Chapter IV)

All employers were required to recruit either through a recruiting agent with a valid registration, or obtain a permit for recruitment. The procedure for obtaining, validity period, and cancellation of permits was detailed in the law.^[2]

Emigration clearance (Chapter V)

Any citizen of India seeking to emigrate was required to have emigration clearance from the Protectorate of Emigrants (POE). The application process for emigration clearance, and potential grounds for rejection, were detailed.^[2]

As of 2017, passport holders could either have ECR status (emigration check required) in which case they need to obtain emigration clearance, or have ECNR status (emigration check not required) in which case they do not need to obtain emigration clearance.^[3] The ECR/ECNR distinction does not appear to have been stated in the original language of the Emigration Act, 1983, which seems to suggest that anybody emigrating for work is required to obtain emigration clearance.^[2] The requirements for getting to ECNR status have been progressively relaxed over time, starting from being restricted to people such as graduates and income tax payers and now applying to a much wider set of people including those who have completed matriculation (class 10 of school).^[5][6]

Source: Retrieved May 23, 2018 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration_Act,_1983

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Calls for Repatriation Strategy

Posted on April 20, 2018 in Economics, Government, Locations, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

“Here I am, send me”!

There are some leaders in Caribbean governance that “see the light”. They know that the member-states in the region have suffered from acute societal abandonment and there is the need to reverse the trend and urge people to return, to repatriate.

This one Caribbean government official – see Appendix – even pleas for “someone” to develop a repatriation strategy.

To this leader, and all others, the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean is standing up, stepping up and speaking up:

“… Here I am, send me” – The Bible; Isaiah 6:8
(New International Version: Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”)

The basic premise of the economic analysis in the Go Lean book is that we need our population to stay, remain and return to the Caribbean; the more people we have in the market the better. Despite all the complexities in the field of Economics, societal growth comes down to this truism, as reported in a prior blog-commentary:

We tend to think economic growth comes from working harder and smarter, but economists attribute up to a third of it [growth] to more people joining the workforce each year than leaving it. The result is more producing, earning and spending.

Yes, the Caribbean needs to retain its people, and recruit its Diaspora to return, but in a previous blog-commentary, it was related that the prospect for return of the younger people – who have left – is not very pragmatic … until their retirement. Maybe though, a strategy can be designed, developed and deployed to recruit Diaspora members in earlier phases of their lives; as the St. Lucian Senator requests in the Appendix news story: “young people, mid-career and senior career” people.

The Go Lean book presented such a strategy …

… along with the tactics, implementations and advocacies to make such a repatriation plan work.

The Go Lean book asserts that the Caribbean region must reform and transform its societal engines, so as to:

Dissuade people from leaving, in the first place.
Invite people who have emigrated to consider a return.

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) so that all 30 regional member-states can work together – in a formal regional integration – to leverage to economies-of-scale to optimize the organizational dynamics in the region. To accomplish this objective, this CU/Go Lean roadmap presents these 3 prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs. There are limited economic (job creation and entrepreneurial) opportunities today, but a regional reboot can create a new industrial landscape with long-sought opportunities.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines. This includes the proactive and reactive empowerments to better prepare and respond to natural and man-made threats.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines, including regional integration with a separation-of-powers between each state and CU There is also a plan to provide stewardship that will help repatriates fully consume their entitlement benefits from foreign countries.

We – the movement behind the Go Lean book – are hereby presenting ourselves to do the heavy-lifting of preparing our society to better accommodate these repatriates, in all phases of life, young, mature adults and senior citizens. “Here I am, send me”! The book previews the required effort; it provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to reboot the region’s societal engines.

In addition to the book, there have been a number of previous blog-commentaries by the Go Lean promoters that have detailed the prospects and requisites for Caribbean repatriation. See a sample list of such blogs here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13604	Caribbean Communities Want Diaspora to Retire Back at Home
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11314	Forging Change: Home Addiction
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10629	Stay Home! – A Series Depicting the Cons > Pros of Leaving
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10566	Funding the Caribbean Security Pact to Better Protect Repatriates
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9214	Time to Go: A Series Relating Why Caribbean People Should Return
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7151	The Caribbean is Looking for Heroes … ‘to Return’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5695	Repenting, Forgiving and Reconciling the Past
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=665	Real Estate Investment Trusts explained for Repatriates Housing

The St. Lucia Senator – Honorable Dr. Adrian Augier, an Economist – is pushing further and farther than most politicians seeking outreach to the Diaspora. These ones have adopted the lazy approach of just asking for the Diaspora’s money (investments); Dr. Augier on the other hand, is asking for their outright return. This is a big departure from the “lazy approach”, where many Caribbean member-states do not allow their Diaspora to vote in national elections. So in this case, the “lazy” politicians want the money with “no strings attached”; they do not want to be accountable or answerable to these far-flung former residents. See the consistent pattern of these Caribbean member-states advocating for Diaspora investments in these previous blog-commentaries:

Grenada: https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13438
Dominica: https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13288
Jamaica: https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13040
Haiti: https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13105
Bahamas: https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12911
St. Lucia: https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10657

When people repatriate, they normally bring their new preferences and standards with them. They will no longer accept a Less Than standard for Social Contract obligations, like public safety and security provisions. For example, imagine hospitals (i.e. Trauma Centers) and first responder (i.e. police) quality levels.

Wanting the Diaspora to return without doing any of the heavy-lifting – to reform and transform – is just plain lazy. The Go Lean planners for a new Caribbean now want the full benefits of a full return. More and more, people are learning that foreign countries are not designed for the Caribbean’s Black and Brown. It is better for the people and the homeland if our citizens can prosper where planted here in the Caribbean.

Rather than being lazy, the Go Lean movement is volunteering – Here I am, Send Me – to do the heavy-lifting to optimize our regional society. We will do the work necessary to reboot the homelands so that our repatriates-prospects can finally have a opportunity to prosper where planted here in the region.

Yes, this is a regional effort. The Go Lean roadmap asserts this requirement; first calling for an interdependence among the 30 member-states in the region. This was the motivation for the CU/Go Lean roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13) of the book:

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, domestic and foreign. …

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

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.

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.

How is this for a repatriation strategy?!

This delivery should answer the urging of the Caribbean politician- Economist, as he urges more Diaspora members to come back to the islands. In fact, Going Back to the Islands is a familiar plea in the region; see this song-VIDEO here:

VIDEO – Baha Men – Going Back to the Islands – https://youtu.be/Zs2-p2MAq5k

Khodi Mack

Published on Feb 10, 2012 –

http://bit.ly/bahamentoday

The group was first called High Voltage for a number of years. In 1991, they changed their name to Baha Men and recorded “Back To The Island” which was their first single recorded as a group signed to “Big Beat” an international record label. Several years later, Baha Men recorded “Who Let The Dogs Out”, their biggest hit ever…..and the rest as they say…….is history. Get this song Directly @ http://bit.ly/back-to-the-island

Category: People & Blogs

License: Standard YouTube License

Music: “Back To The Island” by Baha Men Listen ad-free with YouTube Red

Yes, come back to the islands …

… all you who have fled. We need you here, not remaining in the Diaspora. Any policy that double-downs on the Diaspora is actually doubling-down on failure. We strongly urge Caribbean stakeholders – politicians and citizens alike – to lean-in to this roadmap to invite the Diaspora back home and make our homeland, all 30 member-states, better places to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

————

Appendix – Adrian Augier calls for repatriation strategy

Press Release:- [St. Lucian] Independent Senator Hon. Dr. Adrian Augier has called on the government to consider an aggressive repatriation strategy, in order to address the country’s brain drain.

Dr. Augier lamented the fact that too many Saint Lucians are finding their future outside their homeland.

In his presentation to the Senate during the debate on the 2018 Appropriations Bill, Dr. Augier called on the government to compile a database of Saint Lucian expertise residing overseas. He said an aggressive repatriation strategy may help to curb Saint Lucia’s constant reliance on borrowing institutions.

“I would like to see the creation of an environment that attracts not only our brightest and best young people back home, but an aggressive program developed by the government which encourages just that. One that seeks to find out where are human resources are located around the world, young people, mid-career and senior career Saint Lucians who are capable of assisting with the development of this country. I think we are losing out very rapidly, and what we are going to have left in this country is going to be less than optimal in terms of our young nation.”

Meantime, the independent senator has suggested that the mandate of the Saint Lucia National Lotteries Authority be expanded to include support not just to sports but to the creative industries.

“There is absolutely no reason why there should be a dearth of direct support to the arts and creative industries sector,” he said. “Right now there is absolutely nowhere to go for the proponents of our creative genius to be able to get support to express themselves and to express the values of their nation and their community in art and creativity. So I am making a specific recommendation to this honourable House. I am considering a private bill, but I am hoping that wouldn’t be necessary, so that we could have the mandate of the NLA expanded to include not just support for sports, but for arts as culture as well.”

Independent Senator Adrian Augier’s contribution to the debate focused primarily on the importance of maintaining balance and sustainability.

Source: Posted April 19, 2018; retrieved April 20, 2010 from: https://stluciatimes.com/2018/04/19/adrian-augier-calls-for-repatriation-strategy/

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Future Focused – College, Caribbean Style

Posted on November 10, 2017 in Economics, Government, Industries

Go Lean Commentary

College is good!

College is bad!

This has been the conclusion of the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free – from the beginning of our campaign to elevate Caribbean society. According to the book (Page 258), this bitter-sweet assessment is due to the fact that tertiary education in the Caribbean is:

Good for the individual (micro) – every additional year of schooling they increase their earnings by about 10%.
Good for the community (macro) – evidence of higher GDP growth in countries where the population has completed more years of schooling.
Bad for Brain Drain – if a person emigrates, all the micro and macro benefits transfer to the new country.

In the Caribbean status quo, our people do emigrate …

… far too often. Of the 30 member-states that constitute the Caribbean region, some lands are suffering from an abandonment rate where the population is approaching a distribution where half of the citizens live in the homeland while the others live abroad – in the Diaspora. For some other countries, according to a World Bank report, the vast majority of the college-educated population – 70 to 81 percent – have fled.

This is the present; surely the future must be different, better. Surely “the pupil can become the master”.

The Go Lean book provides a 370-page turn-by-turn guide for forging a new future; it details “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies so as to formulate change, to deviate from the current path and foster a new future. This would mean reforming and transforming the societal engines (education = economics) of Caribbean society. This Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) for the elevation of Caribbean economic engines. This is a Future Focused roadmap.

This commentary continues this series on the Caribbean Future; this is Part 2 of 5 on this subject. The full series flows as:

Future Focused – Personal Development and the Internet
Future Focused – College, Caribbean Style
Future Focused – Radio is Dead
Future Focused – Policing the Police
Future Focused – e-Government Portal 101

As initiated in the previous commentary, a focus on the future mandates that we focus on young people and their educational and developmental needs. That consideration asserted that a new era of Internet and Communications Technologies (ICT) has transformed the delivery of Kindergarten to 12^th Grade (K-to-12) offerings – Primary and Secondary. There are simple solutions in this sphere. But now we focus on the tertiary-level: College.

All of a sudden, it is not so simple anymore. This is because …

Primary-Secondary education is compulsory and mandated to be delivered by the government; college education is a privilege … and expensive.
State governments may fund an Education budget – for Primary-Secondary – with averages in the $4,000 range per student per year, while college tuition may average $4,000 per class per semester.
Student loans may be necessary and could burden students (and their families) for decades afterwards.
Peripheral activities forge their own industrial landscape, think textbooks and college athletics.
K-12 education caters to children, while college education caters to adults, therefore romantic entanglements can arise.
K-12 facilities may be around the corner, while college campuses may be around the world, thusly requiring visas, other travel authorization/documentation and relocations.

Can tertiary education be delivered better for the Caribbean without the travel/relocation?

Absolutely! We can study in the region, lowering the risks of abandoning the homeland.

This is not our opinion alone; see the recent news article/Press Relese here relating the new emphasis for regional college matriculation, by the facilitation of Intra-Caribbean College Fairs:

Title: St. Lucia College Fair 2017

PRESS RELEASE: The Department of Education, Innovation and Gender Relations will be staging the annual Saint Lucia College Fair at The Finance Administrative Centre, Pointe Seraphine, Castries on Wednesday 1^st November from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and Thursday 2^nd November from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Participating in this year’s College Fair will be representatives from local educational institutions and institutions from the Caribbean Region. The theme of this year’s College Fair is: “Empowering a Nation Through Education”.

The objectives of the Fair are to:

help prospective students and their parents make informed decisions about further education;

provide interested Saint Lucians with an opportunity to discover the diversity of higher education in the Caribbean;

provide interested participants with career guidance counseling which will be conducted through structured interviews that assesses the participants’ interests, skills, values, career decisions and lifestyle preferences;

limit the amount of time and money spent when applying to tertiary institutions; and

provide regional institutions with a unique opportunity to diversify their student population by recruiting a high calibre of students from St. [Lucia].

The public is was invited to attend the fair on the date and time specified to meet with the recruiters and advisors from the participating institutions.

For further information please contact the Human Resource Development Unit of the Department of Education, Innovation and Gender Relations, 4^th Floor, Francis Compton Building, Waterfront, Castries or at Telephone Numbers 468-5229/5434/5430/5431/.
Source: Posted October 20, 2017; retrieved November 9 from: https://stluciatimes.com/2017/10/20/st-lucia-college-fair-2017

The Go Lean book – published in November 2013 – also detailed the strategy of College Fairs, to showcase the local/ region offerings and also to introduce/highlight electronic learning (e-Learning) options. The book states (Page 85) this excerpt:

This Department in the Executive Branch [of the CU] coordinates the region’s educational initiatives across the member states. Education has been a losing proposition for the region in the past – many students studied abroad and never returned. Now, the CU posits that e-Learning initiatives are primed for ubiquitous deployment in the region. The CU will sponsor College Fairs for domestic and foreign colleges that deliver online education options. The CU’s focus will be to facilitate learning – without leaving.

In 2017, a focus on the future for college education must also consider “cyber reality” and/or the Internet. This consideration is embedded in the Go Lean roadmap. In fact, the book presents the good stewardship so that Internet & Communications Technologies (ICT) can be a great equalizing element for leveling the playing field in competition with the rest of the world.

Can tertiary education be delivered over the internet?

Absolutely! We can study here, without leaving; the future is now!

There are many offerings and options. See here, for an encyclopedic reference for “College Fairs”-like for Online Schools:

Quick Guide

Bottom of Form

Online colleges and online education are really just “distance learning” with a computer and wifi. And distance learning is now nearly 300 years old. The simple fact is that people have, for a very long time, needed to learn without being able to “go to school.”

Students needing to learn “offsite” and go “online” have included pioneers in far flung lands, persecuted minorities barred from conventional instruction for religious and other reasons, and ordinary folks like us with full-time responsibilities such as a day job and family.

Online colleges and universities make learning possible where otherwise it would be impossible: from the skills people need to advance in a job, to the subjects required for a college degree, to ideas that enrich their understanding of the world.

…

Using three different technologies—mail, TV, and telephone—allowed distance learning courses to meet all kinds of learning needs, but the hope existed that some newer technology would come along that could recreate the classroom experience.

A huge step in making that happen occurred with the development of the personal computer and the Internet. It took a while for modem technology to gain use in distance learning, but once it did, online educational platforms started popping up all over the place, first by connecting private computers directly, but later on the Internet. Add in the benefits of updated teleconferencing technologies, and it’s no wonder that six million postsecondary students take at least one fully online class every year.

Related:

100 Best Online Colleges

50 Best Online MBA Programs

25 Best Online Degrees

Source: Retrieved November 9, 2017 from: https://thebestschools.org/online-colleges/guide-online-colleges/

This CU/Go Lean roadmap details many aspects of the economic eco-system, not just education alone. In fact, the roadmap features these 3 prime directives – all Future Focused:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

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

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

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

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.

The Go Lean book presents a detail plan for elevating existing tertiary education options and adding new ones. This federal government – CU Trade Federation – will NOT be academicians, but it will facilitate new and better education options. The motivation of this charter is the recognition that college education has failed the Caribbean region. We need to double-down on the intra-Caribbean strategy – promoting the many universities among the 30 member-states – and e-Learning options.

This Caribbean-style is Future Focused.

See the many considerations of this strategy in these previous blog-commentaries from the Go Lean movement:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12645	Back to the Future: Textbooks or Tablets in School?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11520	Managing the ‘Strong versus the Weak’ – Lower Ed.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10845	Need Collegiate Sports in the Caribbean: Model of March Madness
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9724	Bahamas Welcomes the New University; Hoping to Meet Local Needs
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8373	A Lesson in Economic Fallacies – Student Loans As Investments
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4487	FAMU is No. 3 for Facilitating Economic Opportunity
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1256	Is Traditional 4-year Degrees Terrible Investments for the Caribbean?

This effort, as detailed in this commentary, is not the first time Caribbean-style college education has been presented to the world. No, there are a number of Medical Schools in the Caribbean that invite foreign students from around the world to come and study – matriculate here; see VIDEO in the Appendix below. The “pupil has become the master”. We are saying:

Be our guest!

Now we want to expand that invitation to the Caribbean world.

We will open our arms … and our offering … and our quality … and our delivery (e-Learning).

Can we improve college education in the Caribbean? Yes, we can! This is not easy; it is heavy-lifting; but it is conceivable, believable and achievable.

We can also be the guests of colleges and universities abroad, with e-Learning! This is the kind of Future Focused efforts that are needed to reform and transform Caribbean society, to make our homelands better places to live, work, learn and play. 🙂

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

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

————-

Appendix VIDEO – Which Caribbean Med School Should You Go To? – https://youtu.be/1cza2RUkrmg

Buck Parker, M.D.

Published on Jul 25, 2017 – Which Caribbean Med School Should You Go To? What are the best med schools in the Caribbean that will help you get residency in the United States as an international medical graduate? SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/user/JHSurgery

Dr. Buck tells his experience as an IMG and gives you advice on what medical schools in the Caribbean are the best for gaining a residency in the United States as a doctor, surgeon, nurse, etc. Where should you go to become and international medical graduate that plans on working in America? Dr. Buck Parker, MD is a Board Certified General Surgeon …

Category: Education
License: Standard YouTube License

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Caribbean proposes new US-Caribbean trade initiative

Posted on October 12, 2017 in Ethos, Government, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples’ money. – Margaret Thatcher

Many Caribbean member-states feature a governmental structure of democratic socialism; (see Appendix below).

In some places, socialism is a bad word – think Venezuela – but other states feature an advanced prosperous country despite the socialism tag – think Canada. In general, socialism can be depicted as a scale with leftist communism on one end and right-wing capitalism on the other end. The observation and analysis of these varying states during good times and bad times is that the left-leaning socialism countries tend to suffer from a lot of societal abandonment, especially when things go bad, for the reason as described by Margaret Thatcher above. (Consider for example, the Caribbean island of Barbuda, before their recent disaster, there was no private land-ownership).

So many Caribbean member-states have “run out of other people’s money”, thus ensuring a crisis. Alas, this …

… crisis is a terrible thing to waste – American Economist Paul Romer

The crisis in the Caribbean region right now is in response to Hurricanes Irma and Maria in September 2017 that have devastated many islands – think Puerto Rico, Barbuda and Dominica. It is a good time to re-think the affinity for democratic socialism. These natural disasters are forcing our region to re-think one of the hallmarks of capitalism; our policies on …

… Trade; American Trade to be exact.

Yet still, it becomes obvious what the problem is for so many Caribbean member-states, they seem to “just” want to spend other people’s money rather than do the heavy-lifting – Big Deal – of growing their own economy/wealth. Notice this theme in the news article here from the St. Lucia Times daily newspaper regarding the urgings of their Prime Minister Allen Chastanet:

Title: Prime Minister Chastanet proposes new US-Caribbean trade initiative

On the side-lines of the UN General Assembly in New York, Prime Minister Allen Chastanet has been speaking to the American business network CNBC.

Prime Minister Chastanet discussed the recent hurricanes that have devastated parts of the Caribbean, rebuilding the Caribbean and Caribbean – US relations.

He said recent events have showed that the Caribbean needs to diversify in terms of its sources of food, pointing to a shutdown of the American hub for several days.

“The support has had to come from the south because while we were going through this, you had two hurricanes heading up north. And literally Miami was on a shutdown. So unfortunately the American hub got shutdown almost for ten days out of Miami. And so it really has shown us that we need to diversify ourselves a bit and maybe look a bit more to Panama in terms of supplies of food,” Chastanet.

Chastanet said the resilience of the Caribbean is very strong and the region will band together to recover from the disasters.

Chastanet proposed the establishment of a new private sector led initiative what would allow US companies to invest in St Lucia tax free and have their resources sent back home without facing heavy US government taxes.

He said there are great investment opportunities in the Caribbean for American companies.

“Can we not get an incentive, and that’s what we’re in discussions with the US about, that if US companies invest into the Caribbean, that those investments in our books are always tax free that the US allow those funds to be repatriated back into the US tax-free, only on those investments. So 1, it accomplishes getting the funds back into the United States of America. It creates an avenue for the private sector to participate in this growth and brings a lot of money to the table, Chastanet said.

Prime Minister Chastanet is expected to address the UN General Assembly today.

Source: Posted September 21, 2017; retrieved October 11, 2017 from: https://stluciatimes.com/2017/09/21/prime-minister-chastanet-proposes-new-us-caribbean-trade-initiative

As related, the Prime Minister of St. Lucia – also Chairman of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States and a governing stakeholder of CariCom – wants to “count America’s money”! He is lobbying for a law – in the US – in which American investors will have tax concessions on their tax obligations to the US Treasury. (There would be no benefit to the US in this scheme).

He is the Chief Executive of a Caribbean member-state urging the US government to skip on their revenue collections so as to benefit the Caribbean; in effect he is “counting” America’s government revenues. See the full interview in the Appendix VIDEO below.

It should be noted that there is no such bill in the US Congress proposing these measures; so this is not lobbying. Rather the imagery of this whole appeal is just that of a foreign Head of Government begging for money with a sign that reads:

“Will NOT work for food”.

No, this is not the branding or image we should want to project to the watching world. But rather, the Honorable Prime Minister’s earlier words reflect the ethos we really need to portray:

Chastanet said the resilience of the Caribbean is very strong and the region will band together to recover from the disasters.

Rather than looking to the US to solve our problems, we want to band together – an interdependence – and work for our own remediation. This is the theme of the book Go Lean…Caribbean and the accompanying blog-commentaries. “Band together” should have been the only appeal at the United Nations. These words should have been echoed in public forums and private discussions with other Caribbean leaders. The Go Lean movement describes this “banding” as a confederation of the 30 Caribbean member-states, including the 2 US Territories of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. This formation of a Single Market and accompanying Security Pact would usher in the economic empowerments and security/emergency optimization that the region needs.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free – serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of this confederation, the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This complex organization structure is designed for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies. This includes Self-Governing Entities, bordered campuses that practice pure capitalism.

The book stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines can be successful, but only if it is a regional pursuit – all the member-states band together. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13):

i. Whereas the earth’s climate has undeniably changed resulting in more severe tropical weather storms, it is necessary to prepare to insure the safety and security of life, property and systems of commerce in our geographical region. As nature recognizes no borders in the target of its destruction, we also must set aside border considerations in the preparation and response to these weather challenges.

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

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

Our appeal to the PM of St. Lucia and to the leaders of all the other member-states:

This is not our first hurricane nor will it be our last. We must recover from these ones and be prepared for others, a lot more of them. “Begging” should not be our recovery plan!

On the other hand, the Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

The branding of the CU is a Trade federation, so there is emphasis for optimizing trade for the Caribbean region. Yes, there is tactical plan to establish trade routes beyond Miami-to-the-Caribbean. The Go Lean roadmap posits that with the close proximity of Trinidad to the South American country of Venezuela (7 miles), there could be an elaborate network of transportation options to facilitate the shipment of goods (and passengers) into the Singe Market.

This roadmap is a Big Deal / Big Idea for the Caribbean region; in many ways, the community commitment for the Caribbean may be similar to the American commitment in the 1960’s to Go to the Moon. The Go Lean book relates this on Page 127:

The Bottom Line on Kennedy’s Quest for the MoonOn 25 May 1961, US President John F. Kennedy announced his support for the American Space program’s “Apollo” missions and redefined the ultimate goal of the Space Race in an address to a special joint session of Congress:

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth”.

His justification for the Moon Race was both that it was vital to national security and that it would focus the nation’s energies in other scientific and social fields.

This quest was succeeded. At 10:56 pm EDT, on 20 July 1969, the first human (American Astronaut Neil Armstrong) ventured out of the Apollo 11 landing craft and set foot on the Moon declaring: “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind“.

Other countries have had subsequent moon landings.

Can we get the support of the Prime Minister of St. Lucia and the other Heads of Government throughout the whole region for our “Moon Shot” equivalent, our Big Deal / Big Idea? This is the actual title of one advocacy in the Go Lean book. Consider the specific plans, excerpts and headlines here from Page 127, entitled:

10 Big Ideas … in the Caribbean Region

1	Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market The CU is a big idea for the Caribbean, our parallel of the American “moon quest”, allowing for the unification of theregion into one market of 42 million people. This creates the world’s 29th largest economy, based on 2010 figures.The pre-ascension GDP figures are actually less that $800 Billion, but the aggregation into a Single Market willmanifest the economic “catch-up” principle, in 5 years. Further, after 10 years the CU’s GDP should double andrank among the Top 20 or G20 nations.
2	Currency Union / Single Currency
3	Defense / Homeland Security Pact
4	Confederation Without Sovereignty
5	Four Languages in Unison
6	Self-Governing Entities (SGE)
7	*Virtual “Union Atlantic Turnpike” Operations* Ferries, Causeways/Bridges, Pipelines, Tunnels, Railways and limited access highways will function as “blood vessels to connect all the organs” within the region, thus allowing easier transport of goods and people among the islands and the mainland states (Belize, Guyana or Suriname) – See Appendix IC Alaska Marine Highway [on Page 280].
8	Cyber Caribbean Forge electronic commerce industries so that the Internet Communications Technology (ICT) can be a great equalizer in economic battles of global trade. This includes e-Government (outsourcing and in-sourcing for member-states systems) and e-Delivery, Postal Electronic Last Leg mail, e-Learning and wireline/wireless/satellite initiatives.
9	e-Learning – Versus – Studying Abroad
10	Cuba & Haiti

There have been a number of blog-commentaries by the Go Lean movement that highlighted the art and science of optimizing our eco-system for “Trade and Transport”. See a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13140	Region-wide Industrial Reboot of Caribbean Pipelines
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12322	Ferries 101 – Launch of a Region-wide Inter-Island Ferry System
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9179	The Vision of Ferries for Snowbirds to Head South
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4897	Plan for Natural Gas Distribution for Caribbean Consumption
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3225	Caribbean is Less Competitive Due to Increasing Aviation Taxes
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=829	Facilitating Trade with Trucks and Trains
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=673	Future Model: Ghost Ships – Autonomous Cargo Vessels

In summary, it is only logical to expect any stewards of society to “corral” the resources, assets and people of the community to effect change, to elevate. On the other hand, it is not logical to expect others to do it for us. This is a child’s expectation for his/her parents. This is inappropriate for independent Caribbean member-states. The aforementioned Economist, Paul Romer, asserted the appropriate strategic plan:

“Economic growth occurs whenever people take resources and re-arrange them in ways that are more valuable”.

Obviously, this economist was advocating a capitalist agenda, in contrast to the democratic socialism practice in the region.

There is only a 7-mile strait between the Caribbean island Trinidad of and its southern neighbor. It is only logical to consider that trade route when the northern route – Miami – is impeded. Such a tactical plan will allow for resiliency for post-disaster scenarios. A potpourri of transportation options – Union Atlantic Turnpike – to facilitate interstate commerce among the islands and coastal states is a better plan than begging for other people’s money.

To all you Caribbean leaders: Do not be surprised when a hurricane hits. Count on it! There will be more … such scenario’s. Climate Change is undeniable! Destructive storms will manifest! Bad actors will emerge. There is a need for security empowerments along with economic empowerments. The economic solution for the Caribbean cannot be: Counting other people’s money.

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean – the leaders and the people – to lean-in for the empowerments described here in the book Go Lean…Caribbean. It is conceivable, believable and achievable to prosper ourselves where planted here in the region; to reform and transform and make our own homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

———–

Appendix VIDEO – Saint Lucia PM Allen Chastanet: Caribbean Needs To Diversify Search For Relief | CNBC – https://youtu.be/asg87s29c4E

Published on Sep 20, 2017 – Allen Chastanet, Prime Minister of Saint Lucia, talks about rebuilding the hard-hit Caribbean after recent storms left the islands devastated. Also Prime Minister Chastanet addresses insurance coverage.

Category: News & Politics
License: Standard YouTube License

———–

Appendix – Democratic Socialism

Democratic socialism is a political ideology that advocates political democracy alongside social ownership of the means of production, often with an emphasis on democratic management of enterprises within a socialist economic system.

Democratic socialists see capitalism as inherently incompatible with the democratic values of liberty, equality and solidarity; and believe that the issues inherent to capitalism can only be solved by superseding private ownership with some form of social ownership. Ultimately, democratic socialists believe that reforms aimed at addressing the economic contradictions of capitalism will only cause more problems to emerge elsewhere in the economy, that capitalism can never be sufficiently “humanized” and that it must therefore ultimately be replaced with socialism.^[1][2]

Democratic socialism is distinguished from both the Soviet model of centralized socialism and from social democracy, where “social democracy” refers to support for political democracy; the nationalization and public ownership of key industries but otherwise preserving and strongly regulating, private ownership of the means of production; regulated markets in a mixed economy; and a robust welfare state.^[3] The distinction with the former is made on the basis of the authoritarian form of government and centralized economic system that emerged in the Soviet Union during the 20th century,^[4] while the distinction with the latter is made on the basis that democratic socialism is committed to systemic transformation of the economy while social democracy is not.^[5]

The term “democratic socialism” is sometimes used synonymously with “socialism” and the adjective “democratic” is often added to distinguish it from the Leninist, Stalinist and Maoist types of socialism, which are widely viewed as being non-democratic in practice.^[6]

Democratic socialism is not specifically revolutionary or reformist, as many types of democratic socialism can fall into either category, with some forms overlapping with social democracy, supporting reforms within capitalism as a prelude to the establishment of socialism.^[7] Some forms of democratic socialism accept social democratic reformism to gradually convert the capitalist economy to a socialist one using pre-existing democratic institutions, while other forms are revolutionary in their political orientation and advocate for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the transformation of the capitalist economy to a socialist economy.^[8]

…

Relation to economics

Democratic socialists have espoused a variety of different socialist economic models. Some democratic socialists advocate forms of market socialism where socially-owned enterprises operate in competitive markets and in some cases are self-managed by their workforce. On the other hand, other democratic socialists advocate for a non-market participatory economy based on decentralized economic planning.^[38]

Democratic socialism has historically been committed to a decentralized form of economic planning opposed to Stalinist-style command planning, where productive units are integrated into a single organization and organized on the basis of self-management.^[39]

Contemporary proponents of market socialism have argued that the major reasons for the failure (economic shortcomings) of Soviet-type planned economies was the totalitarian nature of the political systems they were combined with, lack of democracy and their failure to create rules for the efficient operation of state enterprises.^[40]

Source: Retrieved October 11, 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism

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Caribbean Island Honors Joseph Marcell

Posted on September 7, 2017 in Ethos, Industries, Social

Go Lean Commentary

The movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean – and accompanying blog-commentaries – asserts that movies, music, theater, TV shows and other forms of the arts can greatly impact society; in addition to the entertainment value, there is also image and impression.

People can change their views and perceptions; prejudices can be overridden. There is the media; there is the message and there are the models: people who elevate to ‘role model’ status by their excellent deliveries and contributions. All of this in a barrage of message frequency – think: a weekly TV show – can dilute false precepts.

Caribbean = ‘Less Than‘? Hardly!

This language adequately describes the artist Joseph Marcell. We all know him as the actor that played “Geoffrey” on the TV show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in the 1990’s. He is in the news again, as he is being honored by his birth country, the Caribbean island of St. Lucia; see this news article here:

Title: Saint Lucia honours Joseph Marcell
Press Release:–(Thursday, 07 September 2017) (TORONTO, ON) – The Saint Lucia Tourism Authority and the Consulate General of Saint Lucia, in partnership with CaribbeanTales International Film Festival honors Joseph Marcell (best known for his role as “Geoffrey” in Fresh Prince of Belair).

Marcell is in Toronto attending the 12th annual CaribbeanTales International Film Festival for the world premiere of a brand-new TV series, BATTLEDREAM CHRONICLES on September 6th at The Royal Cinema with an encore screening on September 7th at the Cineplex Cinemas, Scarborough.

On September 7th Marcell will appear as a guest on the hit TV Show – The Social. He will be talking to the hosts about what he’s been up to since the Fresh Prince, his Saint Lucia connection and love for theatre.

Saint Lucian nationals will have a unique opportunity to meet with Marcell at an exclusive VIP reception in Toronto from 12:30 – 2:30pm on September 8th, 2017. The Consulate General of Saint Lucia in Toronto, co-hosts of the event, will honor Marcell for his contributions to the arts worldwide.

The VIP reception will feature a travel presentation by the Saint Lucia Tourism Authority with product updates from Sunwing Vacations and Royalton Saint Lucia. Autograph signing will take place following the reception.

Source: Retrieved September 7, 3017 from https://stluciatimes.com/2017/09/07/saint-lucia-honours-joseph-marcell

Joseph Marcell is familiar to this commentary. He was among the many Caribbean-bred cast-members of the Fresh Prince show that was featured in the blog submission from February 25, 2017. That blog, encored below, portrayed how the Caribbean image was accentuated by those artists.

The purpose of the Go Lean movement, described as the prime directive, is the optimization of the Caribbean societal engines: economics, security and governance. A secondary directive is clearly an accentuation of the Caribbean image. For that quest, we honor Joseph Marcell …

… we are so proud!

See the original February 25, 2017 blog-commentary here:

—————-

Commentary Tile: Caribbean Roots: Cast of ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’

For the generation born between 1980 and 2000 – Millennials – this TV show is an icon of their generation:

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

It was a situation comedy (sit-com) with laughter, hip-hop music, urban cool lifestyle, family values and thought-provoking drama. This show was formative for all demographics of this generation – White and the Black-and-Brown – but most people do not realize that a large number of the cast members had Caribbean roots.

We are so proud!

The movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean recognizes the significance of this art-form: sit-com television. On a consistent basis, audiences tuned into this show for entertainment and walked away with enlightenment as well – average ratings were 13 – 14 million viewers. They were constantly exposed to an affluent African-American household with an intact family structure: father, mother, and compliant children navigating a changing world. That was a different perspective – see Image Awards details in the Appendix below – compared to the realities of Black America and the pervasive media portrayals.

The show was not a docu-drama of “Black versus White America”, though many times, plotlines covered these dynamics. In general the storylines addressed teenage angst, but many plotlines addressed the family’s affluence versus working class families; this exposes a familiar rift in the Black community with passionate advocates for a Talented Tenth versus a ‘Power to the People’ contingent. See these encyclopedic details and VIDEO of the show here:

Title: The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is an American sitcom that originally aired on NBC from September 10, 1990, to May 20, 1996. The show stars Will Smith as a fictionalized version of himself, a street-smart teenager from West Philadelphia who is sent to move in with his wealthy aunt and uncle in their Bel Air mansion after getting into a fight on a local basketball court. In the series, his lifestyle often clashes with the lifestyle of his relatives in Bel Air. The series ran for six seasons and aired 148 episodes.^[1][2]

Starring Cast
Will Smith as Will “The Fresh Prince” Smith
James Avery as Philip Banks
Janet Hubert-Whitten as Vivian Banks (1st)
Alfonso Ribeiro as Carlton Banks
Karyn Parsons as Hilary Banks
Tatyana M. Ali as Ashley Banks
Joseph Marcell as Geoffrey The Butler
Daphne Maxwell Reid as Vivian Banks (2nd)
Ross Bagley as Nicholas “Nicky” Banks (Seasons 5 & 6 only)

Development
In December 1989, NBC approached Will Smith, a popular rapper during the late 1980s.^[3] The pilot episode began taping on May 1, 1990.^[4] Season 1 aired in July 1990 and ended in March 1991. The series finale was taped on Thursday, March 21, 1996.^[5][6]

The theme song was written and performed by Smith under his rap stage name, The Fresh Prince. The music was composed by QDIII (Quincy Jones III), who is credited with Smith at the end of each episode.

The music often used to bridge scenes together during the show is based on a similar chord structure. The full version of the theme song was used unedited in the first three episodes. The full length version, which is 2:52, was included on Will Smith’s Greatest Hits album and attributed to him only, as well as DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince in 1998. A 3:23 version was released in the Netherlands in 1992, reaching #3 on the charts.

In the second season, the kitchen and living room sets were rebuilt much larger with a more contemporary style (as opposed to the much more formal style of the first season), and were connected directly by an archway, allowing scenes to be shot continuously between the sets.

Plot
The theme song and opening sequence set the premise of the show. Will Smith is a street-smart teenager, born and raised in West Philadelphia. While playing basketball, Will misses a shot and the ball hits a group of people, causing a confrontation that frightens his mother, who sends him to live with his aunt and uncle in the town of Bel Air, Los Angeles.

He flies from Philadelphia to Los Angeles on a one-way ticket in first class. He then whistles for a taxi that has dice in the reflection screen and the word “FRESH” on its vanity plates. Will’s working class background ends up clashing in various humorous ways with the upper class, “bourgeois” world of the Banks family – Will’s uncle Phil and aunt Vivian and their children, Will’s cousins Hilary, Carlton, and Ashley.
Source: Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia – Retrieved February 24, 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fresh_Prince_of_Bel-Air

————

VIDEO – The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air Theme Song – https://youtu.be/1nCqRmx3Dnw

Published on Feb 3, 2013 – This was obviously the first episode.

The reference to The Fresh Prince refers to the hip-hop rapper Will Smith; the show revolved around him.

The Go Lean book identifies that music – even hip-hop – and the arts can greatly impact society; in addition to the entertainment value, there is also image and impression. People can override many false precepts with excellent deliveries and contributions from great role models.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This CU strives to advance Caribbean image and culture in the region and throughout the world, with these 3 prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance.

This roadmap recognizes that a prerequisite for advancing society is a change in the Caribbean “community ethos”; (the underlying attitude/spirit/sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices). Early in the book, the contributions that culture (music, television, film, theater and dance) can make is pronounced as an ethos for the entire region to embrace, (opening Declaration of Interdependence – DOI – Pages 15) with this statement:

xxxii. Whereas the cultural arts and music of the region are germane to the quality of Caribbean life, and the international appreciation of Caribbean life, the Federation must implement the support systems to teach, encourage, incentivize, monetize and promote the related industries for arts and music in domestic and foreign markets. These endeavors will make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play.

The Go Lean/CU asserts that change has now come to the Caribbean, collectively and for each of the 30 member-states. The people, institutions and governance of the region are all urged to “lean-in” to this roadmap for change. We know it is important to highlight the positive contributions of Caribbean people, even their descendants and legacies.

The great role models being considered here are the many cast members of this iconic TV show – The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air – who had Caribbean roots. We learn lessons from these great role models: lessons that are good, bad and ugly.

The cast members for consideration are:

Alfonso Ribeiro as Carlton Banks
This American-born actor has displayed many talents, beginning his career at the age of eight but securing his first TV sit-com on the series Silver Spoons at the age of 13; he is also accomplished as a television director, dancer, and show host. He was born in New York City to Trinidadian parents Michael and Joy Ribeiro (née De Leon) of Portuguese, Spanish and Afro-Trinidadian descent from Trinidad and Tobago. His mother was the daughter of Trinidadian Calypsonian the Roaring Lion, Rafael de Leon.^[2][3]
Tatyana M. Ali as Ashley Banks
This artist has excelled in her roles as an actress, model and R&B singer. She was born in New York to a mother of Afro-Panamanian^[2][3] heritage and a father who is Indo-Trinidadian.^[3] She began her acting career at the young age of six, starting as a regular child performer on Sesame Street starting in 1985. She has not stopped working in the entertainment industry, featuring acting and singing roles right up to the present day.
Joseph Marcell as Geoffrey The Butler
This Saint Lucian-born British actor moved to the United Kingdom at the age of nine, grew up in South London, and still lives in that metropolitan area. He studied theatre and science at college, then took courses in speech and dance. As a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he appeared in productions of Othello and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He has also appeared often on British television and in feature films.^[2]

These artists have placed their signatures on the entertainment world – The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air show delivered 148 episodes – notwithstanding their Caribbean heritage. This is among the ‘Good‘ lessons.

What is ‘Bad and Ugly‘ is how they have excelled in their crafts in the US and the UK as opposed to their ancestral homelands. Their parents left the islands for greater opportunities 50 – 70 years ago and despite the passage of time we still do not have any manifestations that would have allowed their artistic expressions in the Caribbean region.

What is sad is that most of the Caribbean Diaspora left their beloved homelands with some aspirations of returning some day. This is depicted in the Go Lean book with this quotation (Page 118):

The Bottom Line for the Caribbean Diaspora
The Caribbean is the best address in the world. However for over 50 years many Caribbean citizens left their island homes to find greater opportunity in foreign lands: USA, Canada and Europe. Though the “man was taken out of the island, the island was never taken out of the man”, and as such many of the Diaspora live in pockets with other Caribbean expatriates in their foreign homelands (i.e. Flatbush in Brooklyn, New York, USA). What’s more, their children, legacies, are still raised and bred with Caribbean values and culture. Many left initially with the intention of returning someday, but life, loves and livelihoods got in the way of a successful return. Worse, many tried to return and found that they were targets of crime and terrorism, mandating that they abandon all hopes and dreams of a successful repatriation. The CU therefore must allow for the repatriation of peoples of the Diaspora, in all classes of society, “the good, the bad and the ugly”.

We salute these artists from the TV show ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’. Great job; great performances and great portrayals. We accept that these artists are great Americans and Britons; they may never be grouped with Caribbean artists.

This is our loss.

May we do better with our next generation. We can and have done some good in the past; Caribbean people have impacted the art world (music and culture) right from their Caribbean homeland. Consider Caribbean musical icon, Bob Marley; he set a pathway for success for other generations of talented, inspirational and influential artists to follow. More artists of Caribbean heritage are sure to emerge to “impact the world” with their artistry. The planners for a new more opportunistic Caribbean – the Go Lean movement – are preparing for it, as specified in the same DOI – Page 13:

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

The foregoing three artists should be proud of their executions; we are proud of their heritage and thusly have an affinity for their works. We acknowledge those ones from our past who left their Caribbean homelands for better opportunities in the world of entertainment and we know that there are “new” artists who are just waiting to be fostered throughout the Caribbean member-states. We salute these ones as our future, and pledge to do better. The following list details the community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to foster future entertainment options in the Caribbean:

Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius – All Artists	Page 27
Community Ethos – Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness	Page 36
Community Ethos – Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Caribbean Vision	Page 45
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Patents & Copyrights	Page 78
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Culture Administration	Page 81
Implementation – Ways to Impact Social Media	Page 111
Advocacy – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better	Page 131
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Hollywood	Page 203
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Diaspora	Page 217
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage	Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Improve the Arts	Page 230
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Music	Page 231

These foregoing artists – all good people in their own rite – have been impactful for their communities:

Alfonso Ribeiro has been front-and-center in charitable endeavors, exerting much time and resources in helping with children’s medical needs through his Shriners Hospital association.
Tatyana Ali has been very active politically, campaigning for “hope and change” with Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008.^[10][11] In 2012, she continued showing her support for the re-election campaign and other Democratic Party causes.^[12]
Joseph Marcell devotes a lot of time, talent and treasuries to educational causes within the theater community.

These examples continue the theme of the impact of good role models in their community. We need, want and deserve more of this in the Caribbean. This thought has been presented many times in this commentary; consider these previous Go Lean blogs that identified other role models, from many cultures, with these submissions:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10114	Esther Rolle – Caribbean Roots
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9948	Sammy Davis, Jr. – Caribbean Roots
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8724	Remembering Marcus Garvey: A Role Model; Still Relevant Today
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8619	Clive Campbell – Jamaican Innovation for Hip Hop
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8495	NBA Greatness and Caribbean Roots: Tim Duncan Retires
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8328	YouTube Role Model with Caribbean Roots: ‘Tipsy Bartender’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7682	Frederick Douglass: Role Model for a Single Cause
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6593	Dr. Mobley – Role Model as a Business School Dean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2726	Caribbean Role Model – Oscar De La Renta – RIP
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2297	The Black Contrast: Booker T Washington versus W.E.B. Du Bois
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1037	Role Model and Humanities Advocate – Maya Angelou – R.I.P.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=866	Caribbean Musical Icon and Role Model: Bob Marley

The world is a better place, arts-wise, because of Caribbean contributions. Thank you to all past, present and future artists.

Just one more thing: Let’s make these contributions at home, from home; let’s prosper where we are planted.

This helps us to make our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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

————–

Appendix Title: The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air‘s NAACP Image Awards

Outstanding Comedy Series	Nominated		1997
Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series	Won	Alfonso Ribeiro	1996
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series	Nominated	Will Smith	1997
Outstanding Youth Actor/Actress	Won	Tatyana M. Ali	1997
Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series	Nominated	Janet Hubert-Whitten	1991
Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series	Nominated	Nia Long	1996
Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series	Nominated	Daphne Maxwell Reid	1996

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Economy Doctor: ‘The Patient is Terminal’

Posted on June 29, 2017 in Economics, Government, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

If you need a new roof on your house – a traumatic event when it starts to rain – do you go to your doctor to do the work?

He might know something about roofing and he might be able to help; surely he can lift shingles up to the roof; spread hot tar; hammer in nails and tacks. As a homeowner, you may get some relief from the elements because of your new doctor-installed roof, but frankly, it is not best-practice. The service provided may not be the most efficient nor most effective.

A professional roofer may have better tools and techniques.

How about an economy?

Is there a professional for economic “roof jobs”? Yes, indeed! They are called Economists! Many times, they too are doctors; they may have a PhD in Economics.

A Doctor (Economist) in the Caribbean is looking at the regional economics as if a medical trauma and declaring:

The patient is “terminal” … dying, unless remediated in some way.

Welcome to the Caribbean 2017. This is the assessment: the Caribbean economy is moribund, due to defects in the region’s governing engines, with its mono-industrial service economy! See the full story of the Doctor’s assessment-diagnosis in the news article here:

Title: Saint Lucian Economist warns: “We are in trouble!”
Saint Lucian Economist, Doctor Adrian Augier, has sounded a grim warning that this country is in trouble economically.

Delivering a lecture on Tuesday to the 39th annual general meeting of the Elks Credit Union, Augier compared the national economy to an old farm that is under-fertilised, over exploited, ruined by bad farming and yielding smaller harvests every year.

He was speaking on the theme: “Time to Call a Spade – Why the Caribbean is digging its own economic grave.”

“ I want to frighten you; I want to shock you; I want to jolt you to the realization that we are in trouble – that you are in trouble along with your job, your family your savings your home and your sanity,” the Saint Lucian Economist told his audience at the National Cultural Centre.

He said he wanted to cause the kind of discomfort that prevents his listeners from sleeping at night and rise up, not only to demand that better be done to prevent development disaster, but to be part of a revolution in thought and action which causes this country to dramatically change its course.

“When I say the country I am not speaking about Mr. Chastanet or Doctor Antony, I am speaking of us – every one of us here who believes that the sun will rise tomorrow as it did today,” Augier said.

He disclosed that growth rates have been declining for the past three decades, with just a bit of growth in the past year or so.

“The world has changed and so must we,” Augier observed.

According to him, the return to normalcy will not be easy.

He said that many banks in the region have lent out money that was not theirs to people who cannot now pay.

Augier said they cannot pay not because they do not want to, but because jobs have disappeared, markets have shrunk and real property values have fallen.

He explained that in certain areas, crime and instability have diminished the value of properties.

Augier said the economic situation is not only true of Saint Lucia, but across the Caribbean as well.

“We have to look at these issues and not pretend that they are going to go away or suddenly improve because they are not,” the Economist said.

He noted that the social and economic structure of these Islands have changed.

“It is not only true of Saint Lucia but it is a problem across the Caribbean,” he told the Elks AGM.

Augier asserted that there are some things that can happen in the market such as a change of legislation so that banks and credit unions can dispose of assets.

By way of explanation, he spoke of a house with a mortgage that is not being serviced.

“You need to turn it over quickly, reduce the price, put it on the market and get it sold. That’s not nice when you have to put families out of their homes, but it’s your savings in the credit union underwriting the mortgage and if you don’t return the asset to the market you are going to hold an asset that is deteriorating,” Augier explained.

“We have to take some of the hard knocks and do what we have to do,” he declared, adding that banks have been unable to dump their bad loans which have stayed and corroded the balance sheets.

He explained that people save money in banks and credit unions in the hope of getting their investment back with some interest.

Augier, who is a Director of the First National Bank, said he is worried that the ability to bail out is dwindling.

“We wait and we hope and what is actually happening is that foreign interests are coming into the country and buying up things that we should be able to buy, investing in areas that we should be able to invest in,” he said.

According to him, it is a source of worry that Saint Lucia has a government apparatus designed to ‘help people to buy us out.’

“Foreign investment does not come here because they love us, foreign investment comes here because they see an opportunity which we cannot access or we have not begun to access or we are not positioned to access,” Augier observed.

He said the investors are looking for a return.

“If they are coming here to develop some brand new thing that we are not able to do for ourselves and they want to come in and help us do it or start it up with a possibility of Saint Lucians participating in that venture at some point in time, then that’s another matter,” Augier told his audience.

But the Saint Lucian Economist said when industries that are ‘exploitative’ are coming in to use unsustainable cheap labour and exploiting high unemployment by providing menial jobs, it is not good for this country.

Augier said there was need to contemplate what kind of investment is being encouraged here.
Source: Posted March 30, 2017; retrieved June 28, 2017 from: https://stluciatimes.com/2017/03/30/saint-lucian-economist-warns-trouble#comment-114747

The foregoing news article quotes an Economist – Dr. Adrian Augier – in St. Lucia; speaking of the sad state of affairs for that country and all of the Caribbean. This is not a unique assessment-diagnosis; other countries and states are also suffering economic trauma, dire consequences from dysfunctional economic and governing stewardship. Nor is this assessment only to be found in the Third World (developing countries). No, even the First World or advanced economies have this disposition. Take for example the US State of Kansas. We have a fitting example of economic trauma and dysfunction, brewing there …

Kansas, Sam Brownback, and the Trickle-Down Implosion

The Kansas governor’s attempt to create Supply-side nirvana in Middle America not only failed to grow the economy — it created a crippling crisis of government that led to a statewide rejection of his politics.

See the excerpt of the news article in the Appendix below or the full article here: http://prospect.org/article/kansas-sam-brownback-and-trickle-down-implosion-0. The summary of the article in the Appendix, is that the State of Kansas experimented with a Supply-side Economic Model and the end-result is traumatic. See these headlines here:

“Brownback’s Kansas has produced one of the worst-performing state economies in the country”.

“The severely imbalanced budget led Moody’s to downgrade Kansas’s bond rating; three months later, Standard & Poor’s followed suit.”

“The failure to restore pre-recession funding has disproportionately impacted urban school districts like Kansas City’s and Wichita’s.”

“Throughout all this, Brownback’s trickle-down obsessions have continued to play out.”

“Many moderate Republicans were fed up with Brownback’s intransigence and eager to get something done.”

Consider also the rendition of this Kansas trauma-drama in this AUDIO-PODCAST from NPR’s All Things Considered show:

AUDIO-Podcast – Kansas Lawmakers Reverse Governor’s Massive Tax Cuts – http://www.npr.org/2017/06/07/531945495/kansas-lawmakers-reverse-governors-massive-tax-cuts

Posted June 7, 2017 As Heard on All Things Considered – Kansas lawmakers charted a major change of course Tuesday night when it comes to tax policy. Both the House and Senate voted to override a veto from Gov. Sam Brownback and roll back many of the 2012 tax cuts that were a model for conservatives across the country.

So Economy Doctors have assessed-diagnosed these 2 dysfunctional communities – lessons abound. The Caribbean economy (‘patient’) is terminal … and the ‘patient’ that is the State of Kansas is terminal.

This Governor Sam Brownback is now a tarnished brand in American politics. At one time he was a “Star on the Rise” of the national stage, even running for President in 2008. But his now-failed experiment in Tickle-down economics has shifted his reputation from fiscal conservatism to fiscal irresponsibility. This trauma and drama in Kansas should be a cautionary tale for other government leaders in the US and in the Caribbean – economic engines must be optimized; continuation of failed economic policies should not be tolerated. When a patient is in trauma – dying – drastic measures must be taken or the patient dies. This is true for medical trauma and economic trauma. This is the lesson from Kansas and the caution from the Economist – Dr. Adrian Augier – in St. Lucia.

“The world has changed and so must we,” Augier observed.

There is the need for change! Drastic measures must be pursued to reform and transform Caribbean society. But these changes must be planned, implemented (based on best-practices), reviewed and measured against success metrics. This is the methodology of Plan, Do and Review urged in the book Go Lean…Caribbean (Page 147). The book – available to download for free – serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean economy – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The mono-industrial service economy in the Caribbean and the failed Supply-side experiment in Kansas are 2 bad examples. But our scope for reforming communities is the Caribbean only!

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

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

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

xxxiii. Whereas lessons can be learned and applied from the study of the recent history of other societies, the Federation must formalize statutes and organizational dimensions to avoid the pitfalls of communities …

We can do better! We can deploy industrial solutions with no plutocratic abuses.

In response, the Go Lean roadmap presents a strategy of Self-Governing Entities (SGE’s). This scheme was fully detailed in the Go Lean book; see some headlines from this sample advocacy on Page 105:

10 Steps to Implement Self-Governing Entities

1	Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market The CU treaty unifies the Caribbean region into one single market of 42 million people across 30 member-states, there-by empowering the economic engines in and on behalf of the region. Many times, these engines will be independent, self-governing entities (SGE) that are only physically located in a member state, but not administered by the states. SGE’s are necessary features of the CU roadmap, allowing for industrial parks, technology labs, medical campuses, agricultural ventures, airport cities (see Appendix IJ) and even the Capital District. All aspects of their administration are managed by the CU, including monetary issues managed by the Caribbean Central Bank-CCB.
2	CU Constitution; SGE’s Bylaws
3	Negotiate With Local Municipalities for Resources The need for local resources is what makes SGE’s such an economic engine. They may have to acquire their basic needs (food, clothing, shelter, energy) from trade with their neighbors. The spirit of negotiations should reflect a partnering relationship as opposed to adversarial, but SGE’s have rights to supply every need internally or from abroad. With free market conditions the norm, price and quality is the determination; the neighbors must compete.
4	Ease-ways When the SGE physical plant is land-locked, there is a need for an ease-way to convey utilities and supplies in and out. When member-states accede to the CU treaty, they in effect declare that they are ready, willing and able to accommodate the needs of SGE’s. The rights-duty duality is at play, but financial-jobs benefits will be worth the effort. Ease-ways must be inclusive to the municipal negotiations, and may include above-ground and subterranean (pipeline) options.
5	Technology & Infrastructure The nature of a SGE means monopolies outside the perimeter do not apply inside the perimeter. It is the choice of the SGE whether or not to avail some monopolistic utility or “go solo”. This applies to energy, telecoms, water-sewage, and logistical technologies (transportation, pipeline, pneumatic tubes, etc) as long as the good neighbor status remains.
6	Housing Options
7	Security and JusticeThe CU accedence grants authority for homeland security in the SGE’s to CU institutions. There are Rangers that have direct patrol duties; CariPol that has the investigation responsibility and District Attorneys for federal prosecutions.
8	EmergenciesThough the SGE tenant has near-sovereign rights, there are special provisions for CU intrusions, limited to declared emergencies. This declaration can come from responsible parties internal to the SGE (as simple as dialing 911, or exigent circumstances) or external declarations from federal court orders or CU constitutional officers.
9	Jurisdictional Liaisons with CU State Department
10	Measuring Results

The business models of SGE’s have been further elaborated upon in previous blog-commentaries. Consider this sample:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12148	Perfect SGE Application: Ship-breaking Model
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12146	Perfect SGE Application: Shipbuilding Model
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8379	Stewardship for Centers of Economic Activity
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5921	Socio-Economic Change: Impact Analysis of SGE’s
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2750	Disney World – Role Model for Self-Governing Entities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2338	Using SGE’s to Welcome the Dreaded ‘Plutocracy’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2003	Ship-breaking under SGE Structure
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1214	Fairgrounds as SGE and Landlords for Sports Leagues

SGE’s can bring new economic opportunities, and these opportunities must abound in the Caribbean … if we want to avert our terminal condition. The existing economic engines are not sustainable; the mono-industrial strategy – based on a service industry (i.e. tourism) – has led to a dying economy. Everyone is hereby urged to lean-in to this regional change.

The Go Lean roadmap advocates for a pluralistic democracy where all Caribbean stakeholders get a chance for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This is an American ideal, but we can learn lessons from their failure – as in Kansas – to execute on these principles. In a previous blog-commentary, the role model of Hammurabi was disclosed as a missing functionality in the New World. This is where the “weak is protected from abuse from the strong in society” – this is truly missing in Kansas.

The purpose of this roadmap is not to fix the defects in Kansas nor the America political system, but rather to reform and transform the Caribbean, without engaging any unjust schemes, like the Supply-side economics depicted in this commentary.

Yes, we can make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. Let’s do this! 🙂

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

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

————

Appendix – Article Except: Kansas , Sam Brownback, and the Trickle-Down Implosion

Sub-title: The Kansas governor’s attempt to create supply-side nirvana in Middle America not only failed to grow the economy — it created a crippling crisis of government that led to a statewide rejection of his politics.
By: Justin Miller

Near midnight on Tuesday, June 6, a number of Republicans in the Kansas legislature did something that few other elected Republicans had done in years: They acted responsibly. Joining with Democrats, they voted to roll back the huge tax cuts that Republican Governor Sam Brownback had inflicted on the state, which had devastated schools and other essential services while also depressing the state’s economy. But after five years of this exercise in trickle-down, the damage had been done.

THE ROBERT B. DOCKING State Office Building looms large amid the sparse downtown Topeka landscape. …

The decaying, hollowed-out building stands as a grim testament to the blunt-force trauma that Brownback’s 2012 tax cuts visited on his state, and to the ensuing budgetary crises that led lawmakers to cut government services to the bone.

For years, Brownback has called for Docking to be demolished rather than renovated. It’s an apt metaphor for his approach to government.

The state’s health-care system teeters on the verge of catastrophe, as Brownback’s privatization of state Medicaid services and further refusal to expand Medicaid has squeezed low-income Kansans and health-care providers alike. Dozens of struggling hospitals across the state are on the verge of closing. “We have to make decisions every day, on which bills to pay. I mean that literally,” one small-town hospital CEO says. Brownback’s decision to cut taxes rather than restore K–12 public education funding has strained both urban and rural school districts, compelling two districts to end the school year early. Meanwhile, he’s ushered in drastic cuts to social services and placed strict work requirements and other limits on welfare programs.

By last year, even Republicans in this heavily Republican state (which Donald Trump carried last November by 21.5 percentage points) had had it with their governor’s insistence on turning the SunflowerState into a Petri dish for radical conservative economics. A number of Republican candidates ousted Brownback supporters in legislative primaries, and this year they teamed up with the minority Democrats in the legislature (whose numbers increased after last year’s elections) to begin rolling back the Brownback catastrophe. Overturning the governor’s vetoes, which required a two-thirds majority in each house, legislators this June voted to repeal the tax cuts enacted by Brownback and a Tea Party–dominated legislature in 2012.

But the devastation has been profound.

IN 2010, SAM BROWNBACK rode the Tea Party wave into the Kansas governorship, pledging to turn the state into a bulwark against President Barack Obama’s big-government liberalism. By 2012, through aggressive backroom politicking, he pressured hesitant moderate Republicans in the legislature to join conservatives in passing a radical tax plan that eliminated the state’s top income tax bracket, drastically slashed rates, and instituted an outright income tax exemption for limited liability companies—a huge tax break for a tiny segment of the population. Conversely, in a nod to “fiscal responsibility,” the plan did away with a number of tax credits that benefited low- and middle-income Kansans. Moderate Republicans in the Senate had thought they’d be able to engineer a less-extreme version of the cuts while in a conference committee with the House. They didn’t, and days later, Brownback signed into law perhaps the most radical version of trickle-down economics any state had ever embraced.

…

Brownback’s promise that the cuts—particularly the LLC exemption—would be “a shot of adrenaline” for the Kansas economy will be written on his political headstone.

The LLC exemption, the crown jewel of the governor’s tax policy, has allowed some 330,000 independent business owners—almost double the original estimates—to avoid state tax on most, if not all, their income, costing the state roughly $500 million in revenue in 2015 alone. A recent report from a team of researchers who scoured Kansans’ income tax returns concludes that the exemption has fueled more tax evasion than job creation.

Though Brownback argued that exempting owner-operated businesses from taxes would increase investment and jobs in the state, the report found no such results. “We can’t, to the best of our ability, find support for real responses in terms of economic activity because of the tax cuts,” report co-author and University of South Carolina economics professor Jason DeBacker says. Instead, the policy drove more people to simply reclassify their income as a pass-through to avoid taxation.

The small-business owners who were the intended beneficiaries suddenly had no tax liabilities each year. But with average savings of about $1,000 a month, according to one estimate, it was hardly enough to hire more workers or expand operations. One lawyer in suburban JohnsonCounty told a Kansas City Star columnist in 2014 that he was saving as much as $10,000 a year—as were the 15 other partners in his practice—while the paralegals and other staffers with no ownership stake were still stuck paying income tax. He told the columnist that he planned to use his tax savings for a family vacation to Cancún. “I’m making out like a bandit, and it’s completely unfair,” he said.

Perhaps the most enlightening example of how the exemption worked came when a public radio station discovered in May 2016 that Bill Self, the head coach of the storied University of Kansas Jayhawks men’s basketball team, was not paying taxes on about 90 percent of his annual $3 million compensation.

…

WHAT BROWNBACK’S TAX CUTS have accomplished is to have created a crisis of catastrophic proportions for state residents. The tax cuts blew an immediate hole in the $6 billion state budget, as revenue levels fell an astounding $713 million from fiscal years 2013 to 2014. Those revenue shortfalls have not abated in the years since. To help plug the hole, Brownback has run through all the state’s reserve funds and has increased borrowing, adding $1.3 billion to the state’s debt. “We are essentially the poorest state by now, with no rainy day fund—nothing in the bank,” says Duane Goossen, the former Kansas budget director for both Democratic and Republican governors.

The severely imbalanced budget led Moody’s to downgrade Kansas’s bond rating; three months later, Standard & Poor’s followed suit. The hit to the credit rating, though, was an inadequate measure of the damage to Kansans’ lives.

…

BY PRIORITIZING HIS trickle-down tax cuts over all else, Brownback has also allowed a long-standing public school funding shortage to metastasize into a full-blown constitutional crisis.

…

The failure to restore pre-recession funding has disproportionately impacted urban school districts like Kansas City’s and Wichita’s. The state funding formula includes an “equalization” provision that helps even out funding between wealthy school districts that can rely more on a large base of property tax revenue and poorer districts that can’t. When the school cuts took effect, however, the poorer districts couldn’t take up the slack with higher property taxes.

…

Throughout all this, Brownback’s trickle-down obsessions have continued to play out. He has called for regressive increases to the sales tax and higher taxes on alcohol and cigarettes. At the same time, he continued his war on progressivity, asking the legislature to institute a flat tax—a proposal that garnered just three votes in a clearly fed-up state Senate earlier this year.

That vote reflected a sea change in Kansas politics. Last August, Kansan Republican primary voters across the state supported a group of moderate challengers to more than a dozen ultra-conservative incumbents in legislative elections. Last November, even as Trump took the state with 57 percent of the vote, Democrats managed a pick-up of 12 seats in the state’s House and one in the Senate. Heading into the January session, there was a new legislature with a class of freshmen determined to undo Brownback’s damage.

The budgetary implications of that damage were very clear. When the new legislators took their seats at the start of this year, they confronted a proposed budget with close to a $1 billion shortfall over the next two years. Soon after the session began, the state Supreme Court announced its ruling that mandated adequate school funding, which required the appropriation of an additional $750 million over the next several years.

The legislatures of the preceding six years had been complicit in creating these shortfalls, but those legislatures were gone. “The [new] legislature looks a lot like it did before 2010,” when there was a stronger bloc of moderates, says Burdett Loomis, a political science professor at the University of Kansas. “People understand that in order to get things done, you have to run through this moderate [Republican]-Democratic coalition.”

…

Passing a budget that accomplished these goals was anything but easy, since overcoming a Brownback veto requires two-thirds support in each house, and the House speaker and Senate president were both staunchly opposed to tax hikes. The moderates’ and Democrats’ task was eased, however, by a collapse in Brownback’s popular support. In 2016, a Morning Consult poll found him to be the least-popular governor in the country, with only 26 percent of the surveyed Kansans approving of his job performance. This year, the only governor less popular with his constituents was New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, bogged down in Bridgegate and the anti-Trump backlash.

…

Legislators still needed to pass a budget, and they needed to pass a school-financing bill that would meet the state Supreme Court’s call for adequate funding. To fund both the budget shortfall and the public school system, they were faced with the necessity of passing a tax reform plan even more far-reaching than the one Brownback had already vetoed. Many wanted to undo Brownback’s rate cuts by reinstituting a third bracket, raising rates closer to pre-2012 levels, and most of all, eliminating the LLC loophole. The challenge they faced was how to align enough Democrats and Republicans to vote for a package that was substantial enough to satisfy the former and frugal enough not to dissuade the latter.

…

Still, the political gymnastics required to cobble a veto-proof majority were daunting. …

…

As the session spilled into June, the legislature was approaching the record for longest legislative session in the state’s history. In the very early hours of June 5, the legislature passed a tax plan that rolled back Brownback’s tax policy and would raise about $1.2 billion over the next two years by doing away with the LLC exemption, ending the March to Zero, and reinstituting a third tax bracket with higher rates across the board. One factor that brought Ward and the Democrats on board was that the bill reinstated a number of tax credits benefiting poor and middle-income Kansans (including a child tax credit), which Brownback had scrapped. The legislature also passed a school-financing plan that would direct nearly $300 million more to schools over the next two years while tethering future aid to the rate of inflation.

In a matter of hours, Brownback announced that he would veto the tax rollback.

Later that night, the Senate approved a veto override by a one-vote margin. …

The lessons of Sam Brownback’s disastrous experiment have become all the more important nationally as President Trump, whose economic doctrine is cut from the same cloth napkin on which Arthur Laffer first sketched his supply-side curve more than 40 years ago, tries to advance a similarly radical series of tax cuts in Washington. (Indeed, Brownback flew Laffer out to Kansas in 2012, where he was paid $75,000 to advise the legislature on the wisdom of slashing taxes, promising astounding dividends of economic growth in exchange.) Trump’s proposed budget echoes the Kansas experiment, slashing income tax rates for the wealthiest few and calling for a drastic rate cut for pass-through entities—a move that would inflict Brownback’s LLC debacle on the nation.

Brownback’s should be a cautionary tale, of course, for the Republicans in Congress and the White House. Should they slash the provision of affordable health coverage to cut taxes for the rich, should they decimate government services while eliminating taxes on the wealthiest Americans, all their invocations of trickle-down economics—that the rich will invest their tax savings in job-creating enterprises, a theory disproved again, again, and again—ultimately won’t win them popular support. The fate of Sam Brownback—scorned by his state, overridden by his legislature, rejected by his party—should make that crystal clear.

Tax Cuts for the rich. Deregulation for the powerful. Wage suppression for everyone else. These are the tenets of trickle-down economics, the conservatives’ age-old strategy for advantaging the interests of the rich and powerful over those of the middle class and poor. The articles in Trickle-Downers are devoted, first, to exposing and refuting these lies, but equally, to reminding Americans that these claims aren’t made because they are true. Rather, they are made because they are the most effective way elites have found to bully, confuse and intimidate middle- and working-class voters. Trickle-down claims are not real economics. They are negotiating strategies. Here at the Prospect, we hope to help you win that negotiation.

Source: Posted in “The American Prospect” on June 28, 2017; retrieved June 28, 2017 from: http://prospect.org/article/kansas-sam-brownback-and-trickle-down-implosion-0

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