Home Blog Page 451

Reyes, Jeb Bush blows it on race

0

Ben Dib
His quip that black voters want “free stuff” is pretty rich

Jeb Bush blows it on race

by Raul A. Reyes — OtherWords

The Republican Party has struggled for years to attract more voters of color. In a recent campaign appearance, candidate Jeb Bush offered yet another useful case study of how not to do it.

At a campaign stop in South Carolina, the former Florida governor was asked how he’d win over African-American voters. “Our message is one of hope and aspiration,” he answered. So far, so good, right?

“It isn’t one of division and get in line and we’ll take care of you with free stuff. Our message is one that is uplifting — that says you can achieve earned success.”

Whoops.

With just two words — “free stuff” — Bush managed to insult millions of black Americans, completely misread what motivates black people to vote, and falsely imply that African Americans are the predominant consumers of vital social services.

First, the facts.

Bush’s suggestion that African Americans vote for Democrats because of handouts is flat-out wrong. Data from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies shows that black voters increasingly preferred the Democratic Party over the course of the 20th century as it stepped up its support for civil rights.

These days, more than 90 percent of African Americans vote for the Democratic Party’s presidential candidates because they believe Democrats pay more attention to their concerns. Consider that in the two GOP debates, there was only one question about the “Black Lives Matter” movement. When they do comment on it, Republican politicians feel much more at home criticizing that movement against police brutality than supporting it.

Bush is also incorrect to suggest that African Americans want “free stuff” more than other Americans. A plurality of people on food stamps, for example, are white.

Moreover, government assistance programs exist because we’ve decided, as a country, to help our neediest fellow citizens. What Bush derides as “free stuff” — say, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, and school lunch subsidies — are a vital safety net for millions of the elderly, the poor, and children, regardless of race or ethnicity.

How sad that Bush, himself a Catholic, made his comments during the same week that Pope Francis was encouraging Americans to live up to their ideals and help the less fortunate.

Finally, Bush’s crass comment is especially ironic coming from a third-generation oligarch whose life has been defined by privilege.

Bush himself is a big fan of freebies. The New York Times has reported that, during his father’s 12 years in elected national office, Bush frequently sought (and obtained) favors for himself, his friends, and his business associates. Even now, about half of the money for Bush’s presidential campaign is coming from the Bush family donor network.

And what about those corporate tax breaks, oil subsidies, and payouts to big agricultural companies Bush himself supports? Don’t those things count as “free stuff” for some of the richest people in our country?

It’s also the height of arrogance for Bush to imply that African Americans are strangers to “earned success.” African Americans have been earning success for generations, despite the efforts of politicians like Bush — who purged Florida’s rolls of minority voters and abolished affirmative action at state universities.

If nothing else, this controversy shows why his candidacy has yet to take off as expected. His campaign gaffes have served up endless fodder for reporters, pundits, and comics alike.

Sound familiar?

As you may recall, Mitt Romney helped doom his own presidential aspirations by writing off the “47 percent” of the American people he said would never vote Republican because they were “dependent upon government.”

In Romney’s view, they’re people “who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”

Sorry, Jeb. The last thing this country needs is another man of inherited wealth and power lecturing the rest of us about mooching.

 
Raul A. Reyes is an attorney and columnist based in New York City.

~ ~ ~
The announcements below are interactive. Click on them for more information

OVF

Boquete Jazz

little donor button

Lo que dijo Varela en la ONU – What Varela said at the UN

0
Varela at the UN
Presidente Juan Carlos Varela de Panamá en su discurso frente la Asamblea General. Foto por la ONU.

Lo que dijo Varela en la ONU ~ What Varela said at the UN

videos de la ONU en español e inglés ~ UN videos in Spanish and English

En español

In English

~ ~ ~
Estos anuncios son interactivos. Toque en ellos para seguir a las páginas de web

Boquete jazz es

Spanish PayPal button

GUPC: both sets of locks poorly designed, pins and glue fix suggested

0
What nobody at the ACP or in Panama's rabiblanco media want to mention is that Alemán Zubieta's family owns one of the companies in the GUPC consortium that was awarded the locks design and construction contract on a flagrantly lowball bid. Graphic by the ACP.
What neither the ACP nor Panama’s rabiblanco media want to mention is that Alberto Alemán Zubieta’s family owns one of the companies in the GUPC consortium that was awarded the locks design and construction contract by way of a lowball bid. Alemán Zubieta was CEO of that company, Constructora Urbana SA (CUSA), just before he became canal administator. Graphic by the ACP.

La Prensa reports that the GUPC consortium submitted an interim report on the leaking locks on September 25

GUPC says both sets of locks are badly designed, suggests cement and more rebar

by Eric Jackson
Bechtel reps state a consortium cannot even “pour the concrete” for $3.1 billion and hinted even their $4.2 billion price was closer to a lowball bid than a value bid. It is widely expected that during construction, Sacyr will attempt to renegotiate the price with the ACP.
Former US Ambassador Barbara J. Stephenson
July 9, 2009 cable to Washington (via WikiLeaks)

 

They come in with drills to bore holes of a diameter where they can put the steel and a sealant. They’re going to put in vertical bars. In the first design, for reinforcement of one of the Atlantic jambs, they will put in some 60 bars in an area identified as where they should be placed. In addition, diagonal bars will be placed on the same side of the jamb.
ACP Executive Vice President of Engineering and Project Administration
Ilya Espino de Marotta, quoted in La Prensa, September 30, 2015

 

The Panama Canal Authority administration, board of directors and advisory board are notorious men’s clubs, with a few exceptions. So, what to do when on a Friday some bad news and dubious suggested remedies come in from the troubled GUPC consortium? Canal Administrator Jorge Luis Quijano didn’t have anything to say about it — the following Monday he was busy receiving an award from the Real Estate Brokers Association (ACOBIR) for excellence in running a public infrastructure project. Minister of Canal Affairs Roberto Roy also held his tongue — the following Tuesday he took off for Washington to speak to the American Chamber of Commerce. They left it to the sole female near the top of the canal administration, Ilya Espino de Marotta, to break the news softly through the most sympathetic to the ACP of all Panamanian media (because of lots of business, family and political ties between their respective managements), La Prensa.

The news does look bad, and it may be a lot worse than GUPC and the ACP let on. GUPC calls it a design problem with both sets of locks, a problem with not enough rebar. Widely published photos of core samples suggest defective, improperly poured concrete. So will a retrofit with some 18-guage rebar and some sealant make for a construction job that will last the specified 100 years? Or will it not? And if it won’t, will the current ACP management just accept it anyway in order to avoid being too far behind deadline, and leave it for a future set of execs when things start to crumble? Or if it won’t, will the ACP insist that the defective work be torn out and redone? The canal expansion was originally scheduled to be done in August of 2014, and after several delays the open for traffic date has been moved back to April of 2016, but if parts or all of both new sets of locks have to be torn out and redone it will mean another major delay and probably bankrupt one or more of the companies in the GUPC consortium.

~ ~ ~
The announcements below are interactive. Click on them for more information

OVF

Boquete Jazz

little donor button

What Obama said at the UN – Lo que dijo Obama en la ONU

0
Obama
Barack Obama speaks to the 70th United Nations General Assembly. UN photo.

Obama at the UN ~ Obama en la ONU

videos in English and Spanish ~ videos en inglés y español

Obama in English

Obama en español

~ ~ ~
The announcements below are interactive. Click on them for more information

OVF

Boquete Jazz

little donor button

Spanish PayPal button

What Latin American leaders are saying at the UN (1)

0
President Juan Manuel Santos Calderón of Colombia talks about his country's peace process. UN photo.
President Juan Manuel Santos Calderón of Colombia talks about his country’s peace process. UN photo.

What Latin American leaders are saying (1)

videos with English translation from the first two days of the UN General Assembly

Argentina

Brazil


 

Chile


 

Cuba


 

Bolivia


 

Colombia


 

Uruguay


 

Venezuela

 

~ ~ ~
The announcements below are interactive. Click on them for more information

OVF

Boquete Jazz

little donor button

Soldier’s US trial for Los Santos slaying delayed as DR rejects such procedures

0
Family of 25-year-old law student Vanesa Rodríguez demand justice for her slaying. Photo by Eric Jackson.
Family of 25-year-old law student Vanesa Rodríguez demand justice for her slaying. Photo by Eric Jackson.

As a Fort Bragg court-martial is delayed until next year, the Dominican Republic strikes down their country’s similar Status of Forces Agreement that shields “War on Drugs” soldiers from the jurisdiction of Dominican courts

“Drug Warrior” trial put off

by Eric Jackson

The US military prosecutors’ theory is that Master Sergeant Omar Velez murdered Vanesa Rodríguez but it wasn’t premeditated. Velez’s defense lawyers are arguing that the woman’s death at a Panamanian National Police training site in Los Santos was an accident. If Panamanian prosecutors have a theory about what happened, they aren’t saying: the official position is that this crime is none of their business.

The arguments about what happened and what to call it will happen sometime next year in North Carolina. On September 28 in a military courtroom on Fort Bragg a series of pretrial motions made by the defense were heard. One of the defense requests was to delay the trial until next March and as the prosecutors did not object the military judge, Colonel Christopher T. Fredrikson, granted that postponement.

The motions that ought to be the most politically controversial, but probably won’t be, were attempts to suppress evidence taken in a search of Velez’s Panama apartment and from the taking and testing of blood and urine samples from the soldier. It’s about wheher this “War on Drugs” operative, assigned to the US Army Security Assistance Training Management Organization and sent to Panama to train police officers to be soldiers who carry out US anti-drug policies, was himself under the dangerous influence of steroids at the time. Steroids are and have been a major problem in the US Armed Forces and information about the extent of it is often suppressed by the military itself or by the politicians who give them their orders because it’s embarrissing and could have some far-reaching legal consequences. At Velez’s initial booking steroids did not enter into the story, by a US Army magistrate issued warrant to search Master Sergeant Velez’s quarters in Panama, and because steroids were found, issued a warrant for the drug testing. (At about the same time The Panama News raised the steroids issue, because photos of the soldier suggested that and because friends of the slain woman told this reporter that Velez used steroids.) Velez is charged with second degree murder, aggravated assault, adultery, obstruction of justice, possession of steroids and use of steroids. He could get life in prison. The judge did not rule on the defense motions to suppress the steroids evidence. If he rules in favor of the defense on those points it would remove the steroids charges from the case.

Were the case to have been tried here, there probably would not have an instant decision like that of the US authorities to declare the crime unpremeditated. Certainly a “roid rage” theory of the crime would suggest a murder arising from a sudden emotional outburst. However, Velez was in Los Santos training National Police lince units — the cops on the motorcycles with automatic weapons — and called Rodríguez to come from Panama City, where she lived and studied law at the University of Panama, to visit him in Los Santos. He killed her there, near a National Police training facility on the Guarare River. He was in the process of burying the body when he was detected and arrested by some of the police officers he had been training. That Velez called Rodríguez to the place where he killed her might suggest premeditation.

However, Velez was quickly surrendered to the US Embassy by Panamanian authorities pursuant to a secret Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) made between the Martín Torrijos and George W. Bush administration. This agreement, which is not a treaty that was presented to either the US Senate or the Panamanian National Assembly for ratification, provides that US military personnel sent to Panama on training missions get diplomatic immunity.

On the same day that Velez was in court, in the Dominican Republic that country’s Constitutional Tribunal struck down a SOFA that gave diplomatic immunity not only to US “War on Drugs” military personnel but also to civilian mercenaries such as people from DyncCorp or Blackwater/Xe. That SOFA also gives diplomatic cover for American military and civilian personnel who come to the DR on disaster relief missions.

The Dominican court’s decision was unanimous. All 12 judges agreed that the SOFA is “a violation of national sovereignty and, consequently, the Dominican state.” So far neither the US nor the Dominican administrations have commented on the decision. SOFAs are well nigh ubiquitous wherever American soldiers go. However, they are increasingly controversial in the world, particularly because the US justice system has usually neither sought nor done justice for cases of torture or other serious violations of international law. Although a limited number have since returned for special operations against the Islamic State, US troops were withdrawn from Iraq when the government of that country refused to sign a SOFA providing immunity to US troops.

~ ~ ~
The announcements below are interactive. Click on them for more information

OVF

Boquete Jazz

little donor button

The 39 Steps, coming up at the Ancon Theater

0

39 Steps-Poster-FinalIt’s NOT a hyped-up variant of a 12-step program for Theatre Guild of Ancon members to stop smoking…

The 39 Steps

The play The 39 Steps is an adaptation of the 1915 novel by John Buchan and the 1935 Alfred Hitchcock movie. The play is about a man living a boring life when he meets a mysterious woman who claims to be a spy. When he takes her home, she is murdered and he, falsely accused of her death, runs from the law. This initiates an adventure that will take him all across Great Britain to find the true murderers and uncover the secret behind the mysterious 39 steps.

This adaptation requires that all the adventure from the movie be reenacted by a four-person cast interpreting multiple roles. One actor plays the hero, one actress plays the three women with whom he finds himself romantically involved, and two additional actors play all the other role in the play: heroes, villains, men, women, children, and occasionally, inanimate objects. It is a spy comedy that reflects multidimensional talent from its actors, accompanied by an exciting light design. This play will be presented on the 8-10, 15-17 and 22-24 of October at 8:00 p.m. under the direction of Giancarlo Benedetti and Rob Getman.

Author: John Buchan, adapted for screen by Alfred Hitchcock, adapted for the stage by Patrick Barlow
Directors and Producers: Giancarlo Benedetti & Rob Getman
Assistant Producers: Stephanie Lezcano & Maria Isabel Vega

Starring:
Jirac Caro
Ana Victoria Esquivel
Ingrid MacCartney
Jose Manuel Lopez

Reserve tickets here: http://anconguild.com/reservations

About The Theatre Guild of Ancon

The Theatre Guild of Ancon is a national treasure in Panama since it is the oldest theatre in continuous operation. It was founded in 1950 by a group of Panamanian and American citizens who were interested in developing English language theatre in Panama. Our productions run the gamut of the theatrical spectrum — from modern dramas to comedies and family entertainment to musicals. Our stage has been the first step for performers such as Robert Loggia and Rubén Blades, successful directors such as Bruce Quinn and John Aniston (Jennifer’s father), and other professionals like Rick Belzer, currently a lighting designer on Broadway, and George Scribner, currently a Walt Disney imagineer. Today, the Theatre Guild is a nonprofit community theatre dedicated to developing the performing arts in Panama.

 

~ ~ ~
The announcements below are interactive. Click on them for more information

OVF

Boquete Jazz

little donor button

An unusual birthday…

0
"Greetings citizen non grata "10."
“Greetings citizen non grata #10.”

Rumors that the Rector Magnifico tried to send in a provocateur disguised as the Bluebird of Happiness but couldn’t get one to cooperate are most probably exaggerated

Strange birthday

On September 28, 2005 rector Gustavo García de Paredes prevailed upon the University of Panama faculty council do declare Dr. Miguel Antonio Bernal, a constitutional law professor at the law school, who got his doctorate at the University of Bordeaux, “non grata” for among other denigrating things, calling the self-proclaimed “Rector Magnifico” García de Paredes, who bought a supposed doctoral diploma from a Franco-era diploma mill in Spain, “señor” instead of “doctor.” University attempts to fire Bernal and expel him from the campus have met with resistance from his students, public indignation and mixed results in the court. Most recently the high court ruled that it would be disproportionate for the university to fire Bernal for the sort of disrespect that characterized his expressions about the rector.

To mark the tenth anniversary of his being declared non grata, Bernal’s students gave him a birthday cake.

~ ~ ~
The announcements below are interactive. Click on them for more information

OVF

Boquete Jazz

little donor button

The Panama News blog links, September 28, 2015

0

The Panama News blog links, September 28, 2015

BBC, Panama murder rate drops

Fayetteville Observer, Soldier accused in Panama killing in court

The Barrel, LNG industry doesn’t much care about canal expansion woes

Reuters, ACP sells bonds in a tough market

Port Technology, Delays rock Nicaragua Canal build

AFP, HKND: Canal de Nicaragua pasará por lago Cocibolca

PR, Copa begins daily Panama City-San Francisco flights

Xinhua, Panama to host cycling tour in October

Sounders FC, Torres knee surgery goes well

Caribbean News Now!, Trinidad court postpones Warner extradition decision

Baker, The corporate crime epidemic

Harten, Porterfield & Gallagher, Investment provisions in trade treaties

NASA, Evidence that liquid water flows on today’s Mars

Video, Limpieza de la playa en Palenque

STRI, Panama designates two new marine protected areas

Solar Thermal Magazine: A tidal energy fence for Bristol, UK

news.com.au, An adventure tourism spin on Coiba

Video, Whale watching in Panama

McLaughlin, The big secret that makes the FBI’s anti-encryption campaign a big lie

Soros, Rebuilding the asylum system

Corbyn, The kind of society we want

Daily Kos, The white supremacy chic in today’s GOP

Abdul-Jabbar, Ignorance vs. reason in the War on Education

Reich, The tide is beginning to turn

La Razón, Jimmy Carter exhorta a Chile a dialogar ‘de buena fe’ con Bolivia

La Prensa (Nicaragua), Ortega escondió invasión de tierras a Miskitos

Reuters, Venezuela and Guyana restore ambassadors to calm border dispute

Verdad Abierta, Urabá: escéptica ante los anuncios desde La Habana

Carlsen: Government lies, human bonfires and the search for truth about Ayotzinapa

EFE, Izquierda latinoamericana discutirá en Quito sobre democracias en revolución

Feffer, Whatever happened to Brazil?

TheStreet, Deutsche Bank fears Petrobras will poison US junk bond market

The Gleaner, Jamaican impact noted in Panama Canal Museum

Video, Lord Kitty — Rum

Barbados Today, Migration to Panama ‘captured’ on camera

Beluche, Retienen ilegalmente a 10 estudiantes de secundaria

Video, Panameños piden acelerar investigaciones contra Martinelli

The Mejorana Festival in Guarare

0

Festival de la Mejorana

videos by Allan Hawkins V.

 

~ ~ ~
The announcements below are interactive. Click on them for more information

OVF

Boquete Jazz

little donor button