Every year or two, our local politicians and their cronies go through the solemn ritual of examining Cayman’s foreign-labour rules and changing them. Oh dear, employers still don’t want to hire ethnic Caymanians because they’re not up to standard or because they are impossible to fire. Huh. Who do these employers think they are? We are the masters now. We will tell them who to hire and who not. And if our latest fiddling doesn’t work, we’ll come back in another year or two and do some more.
This quaint ritual has been going on since the first Caymanian Protection Law in 1973, nearly forty years ago. Hasn’t anybody in authority had the brains to wonder why it’s taking so long to get it right? Yes, yes, we can all point to true-born Caymanians who have made the grade. But some of them would have made it on their own, if the protection hadn’t been there. The trouble is, we don’t know which ones. It takes new immigrants a while to figure out whose promotions and appointments were deserved, and whose were made to appease the Work Permit authorities.
In any case, it’s reasonable to wonder: how come, after forty years of effort, tokenism and protection is still needed for ethnic Caymanians to succeed in business? What’s gone wrong? Does the failure reflect incompetence of a very high order, or was it all just a sham from the beginning?
Maybe it was a sham, you know. As I’ve written in this week’s CaymanNetNews, the United Nation’s CERD Convention (the Convention for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination) requires all its member-states to ensure “the adequate development and protection” of all members of identifiable ethnic groups. The 15,000 or so true-born Caymanians are one such group; Britain has supposedly been developing and protecting them for the past forty years. The fact that so many of them are still not able to compete on equal terms with newcomers to the Islands is bizarre. Forty years? Fifteen thousand people? Are you kidding me? Nobody could be that incompetent.
But wait... The CERD Convention goes on to forbid UN member-states from continuing special privileges for any protected ethnic group beyond the moment when adequate development has been achieved. That would be apartheid, if you think about it; and many people at the UN do think about it sooner or later. So a cynic might suggest that Britain’s failure to achieve “adequate development” for Caymanians was a deliberate ploy to delay independence- not incompetence at all. Hmmm.
I have never believed the theory that Britain wants to get rid of Cayman. To me, it wouldn’t make sense for the FCO and its agencies to give up control of such a strategically valuable site in the Caribbean region. That would not be in Britain’s national interests.
Keeping the locals under-educated and under-developed would be a clever way to delay the evil day more or less indefinitely. I suspect that’s exactly what has happened. You’d think the UN might have twigged, sometime during that forty years; but apparently not. The native Caymanians themselves didn’t twig. If they had done, they might have demanded a decent education system instead of demeaning themselves by accepting the patronising protection that locks so many of them below the glass ceilings.
Over the years, the Caymanians have watched billions of dollars being wasted on state bureaucracies (Immigration, Education, Labour Office) that could and should have educated the people to the point where they could compete on equal terms with middle-class expats. Sorry, boys and girls: it looks very much as though you’ve been bamboozled all these years. Wakey, wakey!
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Tribal Jostling (exploiting migrants in Cayman)
My column in this weekend’s Cayman Net News explains the 2009 election results in terms of how and why the PPM got tossed out of office so unexpectedly. The topic was prompted by the sudden burst of rhetoric from the PPM after nearly two years of sulking.
I quoted the standard axiom of politics, that Oppositions don’t win general elections so much as Governments lose them. It’s way too early to get caught up in the excitement (?) of the 2013 campaign, but can we discern any of the issues yet? Well, no, because there never are any issues in Cayman elections. Our two Parties don’t differ in their policies, only in the personalities of their spokesmen and representatives. Both Parties subscribe to semi-Marxist economic ideas and to a semi-fascist approach towards bond-service for migrant workers.
Both Parties rank Caymanian bloodline as a superior qualification for job-seekers at all levels, over ability or aptitude. Some occupations are actually reserved for ethnic Caymanians, again regardless of ability or aptitude. Most prominent among these are the offices of MLA and managers of the indentured-service system. No immigrants need apply for those or dozens of other reserved jobs. They are not reckoned to be loyal enough to the interests of the bloodline Caymanian community.
This set-up wasn’t designed (by the British FCO) to last forever- but, yet, it has lasted for more than a full generation after the influx of immigrants that began in the mid-1970s. The FCO’s embarrassment threshold has been raised quite a lot in recent decades. Its clerks are no longer fazed by faint intimations of slavery- namely, in the exploitation of low-paid indentured-servants recruited from thousands of miles away. Compared with what goes on in the British-controlled enclaves in the Middle East, the exploitation is small beer.
Yet, to innocents whose souls are not dead to humanitarian feelings, the exploitation is offensive. Of course, the offence is leagues away from slavery; it is semi-slavery only in its worst manifestations. However, it does sit uncomfortably with the FCO’s championing of international standards of human rights. Ah well... colonial masters are allowed to be hypocritical; that’s one of the privileges.
Regrettably, neither of our political Parties wants a free labour market in Cayman. Party doctrine requires the state control of labour, and that’s what we get. During boom times, an economy can afford to pay for the inefficiencies of bond-service; but in less prosperous times, not so much. None of our MLAs or their cronies have any real concept of those inefficiencies or of how to remove them. Some of our immigrants do. The office of MLA needs to be opened up to immigrants, if our Islands are to progress beyond the present silly tribal jostling.
It doesn’t seem to bother our MLAs that they are figures of amusement to so many neutral observers. There is no dignity in the narcissism of village Napoleons, after all. It isn’t conducive to good governance to exalt vanity above talent. The FCO’s tolerance can only be explained by reference to the secret national interests of the mother country. You would think those interests could survive the addition of two or three foreign immigrants to the list of candidates for the 2013 general election; but maybe not.
They would receive the standard death threats, of course; but foreign-born candidates in our beauty pageants - Miss This or Miss That - often receive similar threats, and nothing much ever comes of those.
I quoted the standard axiom of politics, that Oppositions don’t win general elections so much as Governments lose them. It’s way too early to get caught up in the excitement (?) of the 2013 campaign, but can we discern any of the issues yet? Well, no, because there never are any issues in Cayman elections. Our two Parties don’t differ in their policies, only in the personalities of their spokesmen and representatives. Both Parties subscribe to semi-Marxist economic ideas and to a semi-fascist approach towards bond-service for migrant workers.
Both Parties rank Caymanian bloodline as a superior qualification for job-seekers at all levels, over ability or aptitude. Some occupations are actually reserved for ethnic Caymanians, again regardless of ability or aptitude. Most prominent among these are the offices of MLA and managers of the indentured-service system. No immigrants need apply for those or dozens of other reserved jobs. They are not reckoned to be loyal enough to the interests of the bloodline Caymanian community.
This set-up wasn’t designed (by the British FCO) to last forever- but, yet, it has lasted for more than a full generation after the influx of immigrants that began in the mid-1970s. The FCO’s embarrassment threshold has been raised quite a lot in recent decades. Its clerks are no longer fazed by faint intimations of slavery- namely, in the exploitation of low-paid indentured-servants recruited from thousands of miles away. Compared with what goes on in the British-controlled enclaves in the Middle East, the exploitation is small beer.
Yet, to innocents whose souls are not dead to humanitarian feelings, the exploitation is offensive. Of course, the offence is leagues away from slavery; it is semi-slavery only in its worst manifestations. However, it does sit uncomfortably with the FCO’s championing of international standards of human rights. Ah well... colonial masters are allowed to be hypocritical; that’s one of the privileges.
Regrettably, neither of our political Parties wants a free labour market in Cayman. Party doctrine requires the state control of labour, and that’s what we get. During boom times, an economy can afford to pay for the inefficiencies of bond-service; but in less prosperous times, not so much. None of our MLAs or their cronies have any real concept of those inefficiencies or of how to remove them. Some of our immigrants do. The office of MLA needs to be opened up to immigrants, if our Islands are to progress beyond the present silly tribal jostling.
It doesn’t seem to bother our MLAs that they are figures of amusement to so many neutral observers. There is no dignity in the narcissism of village Napoleons, after all. It isn’t conducive to good governance to exalt vanity above talent. The FCO’s tolerance can only be explained by reference to the secret national interests of the mother country. You would think those interests could survive the addition of two or three foreign immigrants to the list of candidates for the 2013 general election; but maybe not.
They would receive the standard death threats, of course; but foreign-born candidates in our beauty pageants - Miss This or Miss That - often receive similar threats, and nothing much ever comes of those.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Intolerable Criminality (violence in Cayman)
The three muggings of tourists reported last week stirred one or two of our MLAs into action, or at least the rhetoric of action. The Police were embarrassed, because it is their responsibility to protect our community from street criminals. Private tourism-service providers were disappointed, as were merchants and householders.
“Something must be done!” We all cried. Well, something always needs to be done, doesn’t it? Recommendations are flying left, right and centre. TV cameras at street corners, fingerprintings and ID cards for migrants working in the private sector, biometric IDs for overseas visitors, assassination squads, armed vigilantes, helicopters, more policemen, tougher policemen... We have a grandly named National Security Council to make recommendations for the long-term. Better schooling, better parenting, better policing, bigger prisons, tougher prisons... Anybody could write the NSC’s report between the first and second coffee of the day.
The NSC is a bit of a joke, so far – just politicians and their chums. Nobody outside the magic circle knows what they do when they meet, if they do meet. Will its members have the guts to recommend decriminalising the local consumption of recreational drugs? That will show how useful (or useless) the NCS is. Will they have the wit to devise a detailed strategy to improve the quality of parenting, especially among native Caymanians? The prevalence of home-grown young thugs is a predictable consequence of bad parenting.
In a rich and tiny place like ours there has never been a shortage of money to pay for parental training. Even in this current economic decline, government has more money than it knows what to do with; the waste of Public Revenue is as irresponsible as ever. The problem has always been that politicians and voters have preferred government’s revenues to be spent on subsidies and bureaucratic boondoggles like Cayman Airways, the Turtle Farm and the Department of Tourism. In effect, those ventures have been judged to be more important than pre-empting the growth of those home-grown thugs. Say wha’? How could any sane person make such a cockamamie choice?
Yet even now, in light of all the muggings and burglaries, the choice would probably be confirmed. If a referendum were held on whether to re-allocate the money spent on those subsidies and boondoggles, I doubt the vote would favour re-allocation. McKeeva deplores the incidence of street-crime as “intolerable”, but does he really mean it? I don’t think he does. I think it’s political rhetoric. He is a canny politician, and he is confident that his constituents would never vote to allow Cayman Airways and the other boondoggles to go to the wall. They would rather tolerate the crimes.
Some people do think local crime-levels are intolerable – both violent crimes and non-violent crimes such as corruption and theft. But most of us are immigrants who would happily throw CAL & the DOT under the bus, in exchange for crime-prevention measures. We have a different order of priorities. We also tend not to give non-violent crimes the free pass that native Caymanians give them. To us, corruption is equally unacceptable. We know that the culture of bloodline entitlement is a perversion, and that corruption in small things leads inevitably to corruption in large things.
Let’s face it: criminal violence is a tough way to make a living. Most muggers would far rather steal money from the comfort of air-conditioned offices, if they could choose. Who wouldn’t? Mugging and burglary are risky activities; you can get killed doing that. Corrupt individuals are excellent role models for street criminals. It doesn’t make sense for us to distinguish between the two.
“Something must be done!” We all cried. Well, something always needs to be done, doesn’t it? Recommendations are flying left, right and centre. TV cameras at street corners, fingerprintings and ID cards for migrants working in the private sector, biometric IDs for overseas visitors, assassination squads, armed vigilantes, helicopters, more policemen, tougher policemen... We have a grandly named National Security Council to make recommendations for the long-term. Better schooling, better parenting, better policing, bigger prisons, tougher prisons... Anybody could write the NSC’s report between the first and second coffee of the day.
The NSC is a bit of a joke, so far – just politicians and their chums. Nobody outside the magic circle knows what they do when they meet, if they do meet. Will its members have the guts to recommend decriminalising the local consumption of recreational drugs? That will show how useful (or useless) the NCS is. Will they have the wit to devise a detailed strategy to improve the quality of parenting, especially among native Caymanians? The prevalence of home-grown young thugs is a predictable consequence of bad parenting.
In a rich and tiny place like ours there has never been a shortage of money to pay for parental training. Even in this current economic decline, government has more money than it knows what to do with; the waste of Public Revenue is as irresponsible as ever. The problem has always been that politicians and voters have preferred government’s revenues to be spent on subsidies and bureaucratic boondoggles like Cayman Airways, the Turtle Farm and the Department of Tourism. In effect, those ventures have been judged to be more important than pre-empting the growth of those home-grown thugs. Say wha’? How could any sane person make such a cockamamie choice?
Yet even now, in light of all the muggings and burglaries, the choice would probably be confirmed. If a referendum were held on whether to re-allocate the money spent on those subsidies and boondoggles, I doubt the vote would favour re-allocation. McKeeva deplores the incidence of street-crime as “intolerable”, but does he really mean it? I don’t think he does. I think it’s political rhetoric. He is a canny politician, and he is confident that his constituents would never vote to allow Cayman Airways and the other boondoggles to go to the wall. They would rather tolerate the crimes.
Some people do think local crime-levels are intolerable – both violent crimes and non-violent crimes such as corruption and theft. But most of us are immigrants who would happily throw CAL & the DOT under the bus, in exchange for crime-prevention measures. We have a different order of priorities. We also tend not to give non-violent crimes the free pass that native Caymanians give them. To us, corruption is equally unacceptable. We know that the culture of bloodline entitlement is a perversion, and that corruption in small things leads inevitably to corruption in large things.
Let’s face it: criminal violence is a tough way to make a living. Most muggers would far rather steal money from the comfort of air-conditioned offices, if they could choose. Who wouldn’t? Mugging and burglary are risky activities; you can get killed doing that. Corrupt individuals are excellent role models for street criminals. It doesn’t make sense for us to distinguish between the two.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Working Mothers
A few weeks ago, four or five Caymanian mothers mounted a street protest to beg for jobs. As you would expect, the authorities got all their knickers in a twist. The Labour Office vowed to find out why they had been turned down for jobs in favour of some less qualified foreigners. Sigh. We never heard what happened to them in the end; did they get jobs or not?
I rather hope they didn’t get jobs - and here’s why. Being a mother is already a full-time job, pretty much - especially a mother of four children, as one of the protestors was. Children get sick, and in trouble at school. They need milk and cookies after school, and supervision at weekends and during school holidays, and tender loving care most other times. The last thing these protesting mothers needed or wanted was extra work. What they needed and wanted was extra money. Theirs was a Social Services problem, not a Labour Office one.
I’ve gone into this in some detail in my column in this weekend’s edition of Cayman Net News. The topic of working mothers with at-risk children deserves a lot more attention than it receives; it deserves debate.
All unemployed Caymanians - including of course the protesting mothers - are victims of Cayman’s wretched Immigration law. Once hired, most native Caymanians can never be fired - except with the payment of a bribe to some official. I don’t know if all Caymanians are aware of this, but all expat employers are. So who in his right mind would hire a Caymanian who has been turned down for every other job he or she has applied for, and who would be nigh impossible to get rid of?
We all grumble about Cayman’s bad parents, who don’t spend enough quality time with their children. Children who are uncared-for and undisciplined are at high risk of becoming criminals or druggies or both. So why on earth would we want these protest-mothers to join the workforce? Are we mad? Surely it would be better to pay them to stay at home and mind their kids, than to wait until the kids grow up and are shot while burgling, or locked away for life as drug addicts.
I don’t advocate paying all mothers to stay home and mind their babies - but some, yes. I have two grandchildren in Norway whose unmarried mother is paid to stay out of the workforce during their formative years. Norway is a rich little country ("little" by world standards, though with 100 times the population of Cayman), but it’s no richer than Cayman, per capita. Its politicians’ priorities are different from ours, that’s all. It pays as much to unmarried mothers as Cayman pays in subsidies to Cayman Airways over the years.
Looking for a Norwegian town to compare with Cayman for size, I found Lillehammer, which has about the same number of voters as Cayman. It’s a sophisticated tourist resort, famous for hosting the 1994 Winter Olympics. The remarkable thing about Lillehammer is that its governing council has (so far!) resisted the temptation to operate its own airline - or its own ridiculous turtle farm, come to that.
Like every other Norwegian town of its size, it chooses child-care over hugely expensive vanity projects. Why don’t we do that?
I rather hope they didn’t get jobs - and here’s why. Being a mother is already a full-time job, pretty much - especially a mother of four children, as one of the protestors was. Children get sick, and in trouble at school. They need milk and cookies after school, and supervision at weekends and during school holidays, and tender loving care most other times. The last thing these protesting mothers needed or wanted was extra work. What they needed and wanted was extra money. Theirs was a Social Services problem, not a Labour Office one.
I’ve gone into this in some detail in my column in this weekend’s edition of Cayman Net News. The topic of working mothers with at-risk children deserves a lot more attention than it receives; it deserves debate.
All unemployed Caymanians - including of course the protesting mothers - are victims of Cayman’s wretched Immigration law. Once hired, most native Caymanians can never be fired - except with the payment of a bribe to some official. I don’t know if all Caymanians are aware of this, but all expat employers are. So who in his right mind would hire a Caymanian who has been turned down for every other job he or she has applied for, and who would be nigh impossible to get rid of?
We all grumble about Cayman’s bad parents, who don’t spend enough quality time with their children. Children who are uncared-for and undisciplined are at high risk of becoming criminals or druggies or both. So why on earth would we want these protest-mothers to join the workforce? Are we mad? Surely it would be better to pay them to stay at home and mind their kids, than to wait until the kids grow up and are shot while burgling, or locked away for life as drug addicts.
I don’t advocate paying all mothers to stay home and mind their babies - but some, yes. I have two grandchildren in Norway whose unmarried mother is paid to stay out of the workforce during their formative years. Norway is a rich little country ("little" by world standards, though with 100 times the population of Cayman), but it’s no richer than Cayman, per capita. Its politicians’ priorities are different from ours, that’s all. It pays as much to unmarried mothers as Cayman pays in subsidies to Cayman Airways over the years.
Looking for a Norwegian town to compare with Cayman for size, I found Lillehammer, which has about the same number of voters as Cayman. It’s a sophisticated tourist resort, famous for hosting the 1994 Winter Olympics. The remarkable thing about Lillehammer is that its governing council has (so far!) resisted the temptation to operate its own airline - or its own ridiculous turtle farm, come to that.
Like every other Norwegian town of its size, it chooses child-care over hugely expensive vanity projects. Why don’t we do that?
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Apples And Oranges (comparisons with Cayman)
My column in this weekend’s Cayman Net News expresses some disdain for our local custom of comparing Cayman with Britain, the USA or some other huge nation. The comparisons are ridiculous. It’s a point worth repeating here in this blog.
Britain contains a thousand communities the size of ours, and the US six thousand. It’s reasonable to select one of those communities for comparison, or one at a time, but to compare Cayman with all of them together is statistically futile. It reflects poorly on the logic of those who do it.
In Britain and America, town and parish councillors keep track of their resident populations through property-tax records. Separate figures for immigrants aren’t readily available, nor are the effects of immigration on the local economies or government finances. (Even in Cayman, with all the fortune spent on the collection of statistics, we don’t know exactly how many “ethnic” Caymanians live here. 15,000 – 20,000 is a common estimate, but even the 15,000 figure must include a lot of immigrant parents.)
Might Hayward’s Heath in England or Little Haiti in Miami provide fair comparisons, just to take two examples? Hayward’s Heath had a population explosion in the early 1960s comparable with Cayman’s in the ‘80s. Little Haiti has always welcomed newcomers from the Caribbean homeland, and its proportion of immigrants and locally-born may be similar to Cayman’s. Is it sensible to compare Cayman with either of those places? Well, why not? But do the native-born people of those two communities compare their statistics with Britain or America, the way Caymanians do? Of course they don’t.
There are plenty of other places that could be chosen- a thousand others in Britain alone and six thousand in the US. What about Hereford (UK) and Port Arthur (USA), instead? Maybe they’re more our size. We’d certainly be better off comparing ourselves with them than with the huge nations they’re parts of.
My mother lived in retirement in Hereford for the last fifteen years of her life. She lived on a budget, but over the years put a fair amount of money into the local economy by way of rent, restaurants and local shops. Nobody required her to spend two million dollars on a house, or limited her to 25 years’ residence. Nobody made her take a blood test every year, or made her break her residence after seven years, or told her she wasn’t entitled to the same rights as the natives. She was free to speak her mind. Nobody threatened to expel her for speaking it or writing it. Why don’t we compare Cayman with Hereford?
It’s really sad that so many Caymanians have no idea what a mean and small-minded place they make their Islands appear to be, when they ban free speech by newcomers. You would think that some of the people in charge of our Immigration practices would be sophisticated enough to realise it- but, apparently not.
All they want to do is compare themselves with the policy-makers of large nations- they believe that makes them look more important. Our authorities strongly discourage free debate on their hostility towards immigrants. If I had any say in the matter, it would be front and centre at every discussion.
Our statisticians, politicians, Immigration authorities etc. need to get their frozen little minds around the absurdity of continual comparisons with the great nations of the world. If they can’t, they will continue to make themselves look stupid by pretending to be something they’re not.
Britain contains a thousand communities the size of ours, and the US six thousand. It’s reasonable to select one of those communities for comparison, or one at a time, but to compare Cayman with all of them together is statistically futile. It reflects poorly on the logic of those who do it.
In Britain and America, town and parish councillors keep track of their resident populations through property-tax records. Separate figures for immigrants aren’t readily available, nor are the effects of immigration on the local economies or government finances. (Even in Cayman, with all the fortune spent on the collection of statistics, we don’t know exactly how many “ethnic” Caymanians live here. 15,000 – 20,000 is a common estimate, but even the 15,000 figure must include a lot of immigrant parents.)
Might Hayward’s Heath in England or Little Haiti in Miami provide fair comparisons, just to take two examples? Hayward’s Heath had a population explosion in the early 1960s comparable with Cayman’s in the ‘80s. Little Haiti has always welcomed newcomers from the Caribbean homeland, and its proportion of immigrants and locally-born may be similar to Cayman’s. Is it sensible to compare Cayman with either of those places? Well, why not? But do the native-born people of those two communities compare their statistics with Britain or America, the way Caymanians do? Of course they don’t.
There are plenty of other places that could be chosen- a thousand others in Britain alone and six thousand in the US. What about Hereford (UK) and Port Arthur (USA), instead? Maybe they’re more our size. We’d certainly be better off comparing ourselves with them than with the huge nations they’re parts of.
My mother lived in retirement in Hereford for the last fifteen years of her life. She lived on a budget, but over the years put a fair amount of money into the local economy by way of rent, restaurants and local shops. Nobody required her to spend two million dollars on a house, or limited her to 25 years’ residence. Nobody made her take a blood test every year, or made her break her residence after seven years, or told her she wasn’t entitled to the same rights as the natives. She was free to speak her mind. Nobody threatened to expel her for speaking it or writing it. Why don’t we compare Cayman with Hereford?
It’s really sad that so many Caymanians have no idea what a mean and small-minded place they make their Islands appear to be, when they ban free speech by newcomers. You would think that some of the people in charge of our Immigration practices would be sophisticated enough to realise it- but, apparently not.
All they want to do is compare themselves with the policy-makers of large nations- they believe that makes them look more important. Our authorities strongly discourage free debate on their hostility towards immigrants. If I had any say in the matter, it would be front and centre at every discussion.
Our statisticians, politicians, Immigration authorities etc. need to get their frozen little minds around the absurdity of continual comparisons with the great nations of the world. If they can’t, they will continue to make themselves look stupid by pretending to be something they’re not.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Cayman's Culture
McKeeva’s “CaymanKind” idea isn’t a bad one. It just doesn’t go far enough. Tourists in the Caribbean region often have bad experiences, even though all the destinations claim that their natives are the Friendliest People in the World (FPW). Cayman’s US advertising agents have always pushed the FPW factor, and there will be nothing revolutionary about adding a “CK” factor to the mix. The problem will be that native Caymanians are too thin on the ground among our local tourism providers.
But is it really important to have native Caymanians as the Kind face of Cayman? If we’re looking to distinguish our Islands from our Caribbean neighbours, why not play to our strength? Our visitors (tourists, Offshore clients, expats’ families) encounter many more expats than natives anyway, so why not make a virtue of the expat varieties available? Our waiters, bartenders and shop assistants come from India, Philippines, the Caribbean (including our Islands), China, Latin America and North America. Visitors don’t care where the locals come from as long as they’re polite, helpful and kind. Almost invariably, they are all those things.
See, here’s the thing. Our visitors can’t tell the difference between Caribbean islands or their peoples. They think we all look alike, pretty much. After all, Caymanians don’t distinguish between the natives of Iowa and Illinois, do they? When we visit the birthplace of Herbert Hoover in Cedar County, Iowa, are we really impressed when a hotel clerk tells us he’s a native of the County? (There are about as many natives of Cedar County as there are natives of Cayman, and we both get the same number of tourists. I wonder if Cedar County has a “CedarKind” campaign. Possibly not, you know.)
It’s a myth, that our visitors want to meet native Caymanians. Native West Indians – well, maybe, though I don’t think so. How many visitors to Trinidad go around ticking off a list of Trinidad’s ethnic varieties? “Chinese – check; Chinese-African – check; Indian-Chinese – oh my God we haven’t seen an Indian-Chinese Trinidadian yet! Excuse me, sir: where can we find…?” No, it just doesn’t matter.
Cayman has people from everywhere; our neighbours don’t. We should advertise that. Attention all prospective tourists! You don’t know who you’re going to get. A Cambodian or Mauritanian kindness is as good as a Patagonian Kindness or a Caymanian one. What our tourism-promotion people need to do is ensure that our migrants have reason to be kind to strangers. Introduce the “CaymanKind” idea to the Immigration authorities, why don’t they? Immigration would be a hard sell, but it might be worth while making an effort. You never know.
Once, I overheard a Filipino answering a question put to him by his tricycle passengers, on Harbour Drive. “It’s a very pleasant place to live”, he said; and he sounded sincere. His statement may well have meant more to his passengers than if he’d been a Caymanian. They didn’t care that he wasn’t born and bred here, Caymanian-to-de-bone. Trying to protect our visitors from the 60% of us who aren’t Caymanians-to-de-bone is futile, stupid and rude. We put up with a lot of crap from the Immigration authorities; please will the DOT refrain from pouring more of it on us.
Somebody needs to teach both the DOT and the Immigration authorities the high value of our migrant workers to Cayman’s tourism industry, and the importance of persuading all migrant workers that this is indeed “a very pleasant place to live”. Until that happens, our officials’ ongoing hostility towards expats will make a mockery of the whole CaymanKind campaign. McKeeva & Co should have thought of that before they started.
But is it really important to have native Caymanians as the Kind face of Cayman? If we’re looking to distinguish our Islands from our Caribbean neighbours, why not play to our strength? Our visitors (tourists, Offshore clients, expats’ families) encounter many more expats than natives anyway, so why not make a virtue of the expat varieties available? Our waiters, bartenders and shop assistants come from India, Philippines, the Caribbean (including our Islands), China, Latin America and North America. Visitors don’t care where the locals come from as long as they’re polite, helpful and kind. Almost invariably, they are all those things.
See, here’s the thing. Our visitors can’t tell the difference between Caribbean islands or their peoples. They think we all look alike, pretty much. After all, Caymanians don’t distinguish between the natives of Iowa and Illinois, do they? When we visit the birthplace of Herbert Hoover in Cedar County, Iowa, are we really impressed when a hotel clerk tells us he’s a native of the County? (There are about as many natives of Cedar County as there are natives of Cayman, and we both get the same number of tourists. I wonder if Cedar County has a “CedarKind” campaign. Possibly not, you know.)
It’s a myth, that our visitors want to meet native Caymanians. Native West Indians – well, maybe, though I don’t think so. How many visitors to Trinidad go around ticking off a list of Trinidad’s ethnic varieties? “Chinese – check; Chinese-African – check; Indian-Chinese – oh my God we haven’t seen an Indian-Chinese Trinidadian yet! Excuse me, sir: where can we find…?” No, it just doesn’t matter.
Cayman has people from everywhere; our neighbours don’t. We should advertise that. Attention all prospective tourists! You don’t know who you’re going to get. A Cambodian or Mauritanian kindness is as good as a Patagonian Kindness or a Caymanian one. What our tourism-promotion people need to do is ensure that our migrants have reason to be kind to strangers. Introduce the “CaymanKind” idea to the Immigration authorities, why don’t they? Immigration would be a hard sell, but it might be worth while making an effort. You never know.
Once, I overheard a Filipino answering a question put to him by his tricycle passengers, on Harbour Drive. “It’s a very pleasant place to live”, he said; and he sounded sincere. His statement may well have meant more to his passengers than if he’d been a Caymanian. They didn’t care that he wasn’t born and bred here, Caymanian-to-de-bone. Trying to protect our visitors from the 60% of us who aren’t Caymanians-to-de-bone is futile, stupid and rude. We put up with a lot of crap from the Immigration authorities; please will the DOT refrain from pouring more of it on us.
Somebody needs to teach both the DOT and the Immigration authorities the high value of our migrant workers to Cayman’s tourism industry, and the importance of persuading all migrant workers that this is indeed “a very pleasant place to live”. Until that happens, our officials’ ongoing hostility towards expats will make a mockery of the whole CaymanKind campaign. McKeeva & Co should have thought of that before they started.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Indentured Servitude in Cayman
Discussing the prospect of a formal minimum wage in my Cayman Net News column this weekend, I point out the absurdity of such a thing in Cayman. Our indentured-labour system is set up to exploit unskilled and low-skilled migrant workers; formal minimum wages only make sense in a free labour market subject to the rule of law. We have laws all right, and generally enforce them, but they aren’t used to protect all our indentured servants.
For migrants and immigrants above a certain wage-level, the indentures are no more restrictive than standard employment contracts. But for economic refugees from Jamaica, Latin America, Philippines and India, bond-service can be much harsher. Some migrants have to pay recruiters in their own countries to arrange jobs in Cayman, and have to repay the Work Permit fees out of their wages. Yet they sometimes don’t receive the wages agreed, when they’re here. Sometimes they find themselves bonded to employers who cheat them by short-paying, or by confiscating legitimate deductions.
Of course, poor migrants all over the world are vulnerable in this way. But in Cayman, as in some notorious Arabian Gulf countries, the law is on the side of the cheats. For this situation to exist in a British colony in the 21st Century, is remarkable. Nearly 170 years ago, Britain was the first European nation to abolish slavery in its colonies; it’s shameful that some migrants are held in oppressive servitude in Cayman today.
(The precise way in which some employers hold them in servitude is to withhold a portion of their wages and to threaten summary deportation if they protest. Once deported, they forfeit all the money owed to them. The indentures don’t allow formal hearings. Government Departments and agencies happily cooperate in the deportation.)
In the absence of a local labour union, there is no recourse for the victims. Private unions are in effect banned through operation of the Work Permit legislation. The only de-facto union we have is the state Labour Office. No Caymanian politician will help them- unless specifically asked by one of their own relatives or cronies. Perhaps most disappointing of all, our local Human Rights Commission is cowed into silence on the issue- as their predecessor Committees were.
Now, “the rule of law” is not just an abstract concept. When one segment of the population is openly excluded from the protection of the law, it sets a precedent. When our colony’s government wilfully flouts the European Convention on Human Rights – week in, week out – it sets another precedent. Can anybody trust it to observe other treaties? Probably not. Maybe our Islands’ representatives (the British FCO, in this case) had their fingers crossed when they signed the Convention. It doesn’t count if you have your fingers crossed, right? Did they have their fingers crossed when they signed all those Tax Information Exchange Agreements, too?
Where does “Cayman Finance” (the official voice of our Offshore sector) stand on this issue? It has made an impressive 11th-hour attempt to pull Cayman’s tax-haven chestnuts out of the fire; its public-relations blitz has been pretty sound. Nevertheless, its credibility must surely be put at risk by its tacit acceptance of our government’s selective disdain for the rule of law. Are its directors working behind the scenes to change that situation? Or are they gambling that international observers don’t know about it and won’t find out about it. Hmmm. That would be quite a gamble.
For migrants and immigrants above a certain wage-level, the indentures are no more restrictive than standard employment contracts. But for economic refugees from Jamaica, Latin America, Philippines and India, bond-service can be much harsher. Some migrants have to pay recruiters in their own countries to arrange jobs in Cayman, and have to repay the Work Permit fees out of their wages. Yet they sometimes don’t receive the wages agreed, when they’re here. Sometimes they find themselves bonded to employers who cheat them by short-paying, or by confiscating legitimate deductions.
Of course, poor migrants all over the world are vulnerable in this way. But in Cayman, as in some notorious Arabian Gulf countries, the law is on the side of the cheats. For this situation to exist in a British colony in the 21st Century, is remarkable. Nearly 170 years ago, Britain was the first European nation to abolish slavery in its colonies; it’s shameful that some migrants are held in oppressive servitude in Cayman today.
(The precise way in which some employers hold them in servitude is to withhold a portion of their wages and to threaten summary deportation if they protest. Once deported, they forfeit all the money owed to them. The indentures don’t allow formal hearings. Government Departments and agencies happily cooperate in the deportation.)
In the absence of a local labour union, there is no recourse for the victims. Private unions are in effect banned through operation of the Work Permit legislation. The only de-facto union we have is the state Labour Office. No Caymanian politician will help them- unless specifically asked by one of their own relatives or cronies. Perhaps most disappointing of all, our local Human Rights Commission is cowed into silence on the issue- as their predecessor Committees were.
Now, “the rule of law” is not just an abstract concept. When one segment of the population is openly excluded from the protection of the law, it sets a precedent. When our colony’s government wilfully flouts the European Convention on Human Rights – week in, week out – it sets another precedent. Can anybody trust it to observe other treaties? Probably not. Maybe our Islands’ representatives (the British FCO, in this case) had their fingers crossed when they signed the Convention. It doesn’t count if you have your fingers crossed, right? Did they have their fingers crossed when they signed all those Tax Information Exchange Agreements, too?
Where does “Cayman Finance” (the official voice of our Offshore sector) stand on this issue? It has made an impressive 11th-hour attempt to pull Cayman’s tax-haven chestnuts out of the fire; its public-relations blitz has been pretty sound. Nevertheless, its credibility must surely be put at risk by its tacit acceptance of our government’s selective disdain for the rule of law. Are its directors working behind the scenes to change that situation? Or are they gambling that international observers don’t know about it and won’t find out about it. Hmmm. That would be quite a gamble.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Cayman's Anti-Immigrant Lobby
Our MLAs are all captives of the anti-immigrant lobby, and likely to remain so. That means there is no hope that our Islands’ official hostility towards new immigrants (or old) will change any time soon. The longer the official policy of unwelcome endures, the less likelihood there is of our attracting enough new residents to make these Islands economically viable in the long term. The continuing tension between ethnic Caymanians and immigrant communities will continue to block any trust between private-sector employers and their ethnic-Caymanian employees. The glass ceilings will endure forever. All the political rhetoric in the world won’t solve the problem.
In several issues of the Cayman Net News last November, my “Everybody’s Business” columns explained the connection between the glass ceilings and Cayman’s inadequate education system- specifically, its failure to ensure that its pupils all learn to write in standard English. (CNN may still have copies of issues 2190, 2191 & 2192. If they don’t, e-mail me and I will send you copies of the original columns.)
The state education system’s weakness is that it measures success by the number of A-Levels gained. It pays little mind to children who aren’t in the A-Levels stream. Some Caymanian children are so far behind their peers when they enter kindergarten that they never catch up. Instead of acknowledging this fact, our politicians blame private-sector employers for not accommodating poorly educated Caymanians in the workforce.
The MLAs (all ethnic Caymanians, at the FCO’s insistence) lack the courage to face up to the facts and change them. They also lack commitment to Cayman’s long-term future. It’s much easier to build fancy new schools than to change the ethos of our education bureaucracy. Our tiny community ought to be better served by its representatives.
Politicians during the past forty years have chosen to nourish a culture of birthright-entitlement in their electors, as an alternative to a decent education. Most Caymanians from government schools are poorly equipped to compete with foreigners in office jobs at any level- especially in respect of written English. This inadequacy and culture are largely responsible for the resentment towards immigrants, and vice versa.
In all the platitudes trotted out by McKeeva and other public servants, this causality isn’t even mentioned. They are of course aware of it; but they never mention it in public. Their pious pleas to The Lobby to welcome new residents (or at least white middle-class “Offshore” professionals) are a waste of breath. The professionals are not taken in by rhetorical welcomes. They know that the smiles are false, and that our Immigration officials are available at a moment’s notice to harass or expel immigrants on the say-so of locals with influence in high places.
Those public servants who love playing favourites between different ethnic groups know the harm their game does to Cayman’s economic prospects, but they do it anyway. They can’t help themselves. Jamaicans, Filipinos, Latinos and Indians are discriminated against in the grants of Key Employee, Permanent Residence and citizenship. Immigration’s points-systems are biased against those nationalities, and there is little likelihood of change. The Immigration establishment is fighting a quiet war against McKeeva’s rhetoric, and they are winning hands down.
The best thing our rulers can do to ensure a prosperous 2011 is to look beyond their cronies for advice on how to recruit immigrants to the cause. That is really the only way out of the present cul-de-sac. Communal tensions will only be eliminated by radical changes in the rules governing the workforce.
In several issues of the Cayman Net News last November, my “Everybody’s Business” columns explained the connection between the glass ceilings and Cayman’s inadequate education system- specifically, its failure to ensure that its pupils all learn to write in standard English. (CNN may still have copies of issues 2190, 2191 & 2192. If they don’t, e-mail me and I will send you copies of the original columns.)
The state education system’s weakness is that it measures success by the number of A-Levels gained. It pays little mind to children who aren’t in the A-Levels stream. Some Caymanian children are so far behind their peers when they enter kindergarten that they never catch up. Instead of acknowledging this fact, our politicians blame private-sector employers for not accommodating poorly educated Caymanians in the workforce.
The MLAs (all ethnic Caymanians, at the FCO’s insistence) lack the courage to face up to the facts and change them. They also lack commitment to Cayman’s long-term future. It’s much easier to build fancy new schools than to change the ethos of our education bureaucracy. Our tiny community ought to be better served by its representatives.
Politicians during the past forty years have chosen to nourish a culture of birthright-entitlement in their electors, as an alternative to a decent education. Most Caymanians from government schools are poorly equipped to compete with foreigners in office jobs at any level- especially in respect of written English. This inadequacy and culture are largely responsible for the resentment towards immigrants, and vice versa.
In all the platitudes trotted out by McKeeva and other public servants, this causality isn’t even mentioned. They are of course aware of it; but they never mention it in public. Their pious pleas to The Lobby to welcome new residents (or at least white middle-class “Offshore” professionals) are a waste of breath. The professionals are not taken in by rhetorical welcomes. They know that the smiles are false, and that our Immigration officials are available at a moment’s notice to harass or expel immigrants on the say-so of locals with influence in high places.
Those public servants who love playing favourites between different ethnic groups know the harm their game does to Cayman’s economic prospects, but they do it anyway. They can’t help themselves. Jamaicans, Filipinos, Latinos and Indians are discriminated against in the grants of Key Employee, Permanent Residence and citizenship. Immigration’s points-systems are biased against those nationalities, and there is little likelihood of change. The Immigration establishment is fighting a quiet war against McKeeva’s rhetoric, and they are winning hands down.
The best thing our rulers can do to ensure a prosperous 2011 is to look beyond their cronies for advice on how to recruit immigrants to the cause. That is really the only way out of the present cul-de-sac. Communal tensions will only be eliminated by radical changes in the rules governing the workforce.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Criminal Violence (in Cayman)
Our community disapproves of criminal violence, at least in our home territory, at least when the victims are people like us. Let the drugs gangs wipe each other out. Beg the Police to assassinate people whom they believe to be burglars and muggers. Let’s not worry when low-level migrants get cut with machetes or run down by forklifts. As long as the tourists don’t hear about those things, they don’t matter. They’re not even worth investigating properly. As long as the victims aren’t people like us, never mind.
Most communities in the world are morally ambivalent about violent conduct. When Western soldiers come back from the Middle East and carve up their families, we excuse the violence. “Well, it’s because of the terrible things they’ve seen. Watching their friends being blown up by those filthy Arabs or Afghans or whatever they are… Moslem bastards! It’s all their fault.”
Why don’t we have sympathy for the Moslem bastards? They too watch their friends and families blown up- by foreign armies from thousands of miles away. Why do most of us shrug off criminal violence visited on people who are NOT like us? Why don’t we in our Cayman community, for instance, see the hypocrisy of distinguishing between violence committed ON people like us (by our local scumbag criminals), and violence committed BY people like us (noble NATO soldiers and drones), on the innocent civilians of occupied countries?
There is a lot of common ground between gangs and armies. They share common goals – control more turf, make more money. The people who benefit, in both cases, are the planners and investors. The foot soldiers are only pawns in the game. After an American ex-Marine war-hero murdered a civil-rights activist in 1963, Bob Dylan wrote, “He’s only a pawn in their game”. You can Google those words for the whole story. Black Americans were not “people like us”, at the time.
Each side in every war- whether local or international- buys weapons, equipment and supplies from the organizers. Criminal gangs are simply guerrilla resistance forces, on a very small scale. They control their territories informally, operating mostly at night. They can’t compete with official security forces- mainly because they don’t have direct access to official tax revenues.
Supplying weapons to warring parties is so profitable as to cause intense rivalry among financiers and manufacturers. More often than you would think, they don’t really care who they sell to. Western banks financed much of the German and Allied war machines in the 1930s, and the Soviet and Western ones after the War. Today there is cooperation between some US government agencies and illegal- drugs distributors. That’s just the way things are. Western armies are reckoned to be the main players in the opium (heroin) trade in Afghanistan. The Taliban destroyed the opium crops; Britain and America now protect them. Go figure, eh?
Expanding a gang’s territory - and an army’s - is almost always at the expense of innocent civilians. Most times, they don’t actually set out to kill civilians; the intention is to frighten them into buying protection. “Buy your heroin from us, and we’ll make sure nobody bothers you.” “Betray your friends to us, and we’ll make sure your village isn’t wiped out by a drone strike from Texas.” The latter is a war crime, and not prosecuted; the former is just a plain ol’ crime, for which the perpetrators are sent to prison for a long time. And serve them right, for not being more like us.
Most communities in the world are morally ambivalent about violent conduct. When Western soldiers come back from the Middle East and carve up their families, we excuse the violence. “Well, it’s because of the terrible things they’ve seen. Watching their friends being blown up by those filthy Arabs or Afghans or whatever they are… Moslem bastards! It’s all their fault.”
Why don’t we have sympathy for the Moslem bastards? They too watch their friends and families blown up- by foreign armies from thousands of miles away. Why do most of us shrug off criminal violence visited on people who are NOT like us? Why don’t we in our Cayman community, for instance, see the hypocrisy of distinguishing between violence committed ON people like us (by our local scumbag criminals), and violence committed BY people like us (noble NATO soldiers and drones), on the innocent civilians of occupied countries?
There is a lot of common ground between gangs and armies. They share common goals – control more turf, make more money. The people who benefit, in both cases, are the planners and investors. The foot soldiers are only pawns in the game. After an American ex-Marine war-hero murdered a civil-rights activist in 1963, Bob Dylan wrote, “He’s only a pawn in their game”. You can Google those words for the whole story. Black Americans were not “people like us”, at the time.
Each side in every war- whether local or international- buys weapons, equipment and supplies from the organizers. Criminal gangs are simply guerrilla resistance forces, on a very small scale. They control their territories informally, operating mostly at night. They can’t compete with official security forces- mainly because they don’t have direct access to official tax revenues.
Supplying weapons to warring parties is so profitable as to cause intense rivalry among financiers and manufacturers. More often than you would think, they don’t really care who they sell to. Western banks financed much of the German and Allied war machines in the 1930s, and the Soviet and Western ones after the War. Today there is cooperation between some US government agencies and illegal- drugs distributors. That’s just the way things are. Western armies are reckoned to be the main players in the opium (heroin) trade in Afghanistan. The Taliban destroyed the opium crops; Britain and America now protect them. Go figure, eh?
Expanding a gang’s territory - and an army’s - is almost always at the expense of innocent civilians. Most times, they don’t actually set out to kill civilians; the intention is to frighten them into buying protection. “Buy your heroin from us, and we’ll make sure nobody bothers you.” “Betray your friends to us, and we’ll make sure your village isn’t wiped out by a drone strike from Texas.” The latter is a war crime, and not prosecuted; the former is just a plain ol’ crime, for which the perpetrators are sent to prison for a long time. And serve them right, for not being more like us.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Leaders And Followers (Cayman politics)
One of the most irritating things about our local politics is that people are always begging for leadership. Why do they do that? Small towns like ours (14,000 voters) don’t need political leaders, except for occasional specific purposes. Even then it’s unlikely we’d choose from among our professional politicians, if we could avoid it. Maybe we need a Cabinet spokesman, but we don’t need a political leader.
A leader is a boss, not a figurehead. The most obvious government leaders in Cayman are probably the Chief Immigration Officer and the Commissioner of Police. Nobody tells them what to do. They decide where they want their minions to go and for what purposes, and (figuratively) they lead them there. I’m not sure whether our Governor is required to be a leader or not. The FCO decides general policy for the governance of Cayman. Our Governors do have some discretionary power, though they rarely use it. Perhaps their function is merely to be FCO spokesmen.
Are we all sheep, that we need leaders to tell us what to think and do and hope for? Can’t we think and do and hope for ourselves? Apparently not.
This topic is very relevant at the present time. Our MLAs- elected by a third of the total adult population- are hopelessly out of their depth in the present economic recession. They truly haven’t a clue how to cope with it. McKeeva (elected by eight MLA cronies as their spokesman and occasional leader) is fizzing around like a fart in a bottle. Kurt (elected by four MLA cronies as their nominal leader) is doing whatever it is that Kurt does. They’re not leading anybody (besides the cronies), and that’s all right because they don’t have to. We don’t need leaders.
What we need are policy-makers with enough financial nous and prudence to cut out government extravagance, especially off-Island expenditure. We need policy-makers with the courage to defy the anti-immigrant lobby and reach out to newcomers for advice on immigration matters. The proposed changes to the Immigration Law will do absolutely nothing to ease the tensions between native-born Caymanians and our ethnic minorities. We need politicians with a sense of responsibility towards the whole community.
We need politicians who genuinely believe in the virtues of free private enterprise and who scorn the vices of big government. Government’s proper job is to monitor the private sector, not to compete with it or to try to micro-manage its payrolls. That’s socialism, bordering on communism. Stop doing it.
We need politicians who are self-confident enough to rise above personal vanities, and strong enough to ignore the siren-call of corruption. Cash-corruption and crony-corruption are killing us, down here below the Ivory Tower. Senior public servants (i.e. bureaucrats and MLAs) should never be paid more than taxpayers can afford to pay them. The accrued public-service pensions and medical benefits are well set to bankrupt these islands. There are American towns our size that are going broke each week, because of pension-fund deficits. The writing is on the wall for us too.
Instead of political leaders, we need representatives- a few good men and women with enough smarts to know we’re in trouble and enough sense and courage to pull the plug on government extravagance. Only the sheep among us should disagree with that.
A leader is a boss, not a figurehead. The most obvious government leaders in Cayman are probably the Chief Immigration Officer and the Commissioner of Police. Nobody tells them what to do. They decide where they want their minions to go and for what purposes, and (figuratively) they lead them there. I’m not sure whether our Governor is required to be a leader or not. The FCO decides general policy for the governance of Cayman. Our Governors do have some discretionary power, though they rarely use it. Perhaps their function is merely to be FCO spokesmen.
Are we all sheep, that we need leaders to tell us what to think and do and hope for? Can’t we think and do and hope for ourselves? Apparently not.
This topic is very relevant at the present time. Our MLAs- elected by a third of the total adult population- are hopelessly out of their depth in the present economic recession. They truly haven’t a clue how to cope with it. McKeeva (elected by eight MLA cronies as their spokesman and occasional leader) is fizzing around like a fart in a bottle. Kurt (elected by four MLA cronies as their nominal leader) is doing whatever it is that Kurt does. They’re not leading anybody (besides the cronies), and that’s all right because they don’t have to. We don’t need leaders.
What we need are policy-makers with enough financial nous and prudence to cut out government extravagance, especially off-Island expenditure. We need policy-makers with the courage to defy the anti-immigrant lobby and reach out to newcomers for advice on immigration matters. The proposed changes to the Immigration Law will do absolutely nothing to ease the tensions between native-born Caymanians and our ethnic minorities. We need politicians with a sense of responsibility towards the whole community.
We need politicians who genuinely believe in the virtues of free private enterprise and who scorn the vices of big government. Government’s proper job is to monitor the private sector, not to compete with it or to try to micro-manage its payrolls. That’s socialism, bordering on communism. Stop doing it.
We need politicians who are self-confident enough to rise above personal vanities, and strong enough to ignore the siren-call of corruption. Cash-corruption and crony-corruption are killing us, down here below the Ivory Tower. Senior public servants (i.e. bureaucrats and MLAs) should never be paid more than taxpayers can afford to pay them. The accrued public-service pensions and medical benefits are well set to bankrupt these islands. There are American towns our size that are going broke each week, because of pension-fund deficits. The writing is on the wall for us too.
Instead of political leaders, we need representatives- a few good men and women with enough smarts to know we’re in trouble and enough sense and courage to pull the plug on government extravagance. Only the sheep among us should disagree with that.
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