At the Senate meeting on Tuesday, the brash AG Pere proclaimed to the world that he wasn’t a rude boy, and that got a mile-wide smile out of Senator Rocke. I don’t know if the AG and Rocke are church brothers, but I can tell you for sure that Pere is no Catholic. If he were, he would flog himself, no, soap his own mouth. Does Pere have respect for no one?

When Senator Rocke started talking about the church bringing a different perspective, Senator Lizarraga pursed his lips to prevent himself from kossing, and he leaned backward and stretched until his shoulder blades almost met, must be to stop himself from punching the rails before him.

Intriguingly, Rocke, to show the loving nature of church folk, didn’t go to the Bible, he went to Shakespeare. Rocke’s call for love before right and duty, and a soft bed for politicians that break the law, caused the normally restrained Senator Bennett to get off her stool and pummel his misguided misunderstanding of his purpose in the important Upper House.

We learned two things at the Senate meeting about Brother Rocke, who singlehandedly made the 13th senator Senate into another rubber stamp. One, he finds Pere’s rudeness very amusing, and two, he does have shame. I wasn’t there for the live show, but what I picked up from the cameras is that he hung his head throughout Senator Bennett’s lecture about the kind of mettle it takes to ensure good governance.

Mr. Godwin, I too can’t believe how the PUP 1998 to 2008 was so wikid. In my gut I knew dehn mi haffu goh, but all those gory details, from Galleria Maya to Intelco to our newest city, Mahogany Heights, it is hard to believe that people spawned in this country could be so greedy.

What I don’t know is why you regurgitated all that to justify the UDP’s disrespect for the most important prize the tens of leaders and thousands of Belizeans wrested from the spendthrift PUP in 2005. The Finance Reform Act of 2005, Sir, you are not the lone architect of that. You can be part of a government that violates it, but you have no justification. You are not the sole architect of that reform.

Campaign Financing can’t go without UNCAC

I would suggest to the NTUCB that campaign financing must come simultaneously with the implementation of UNCAC, or it will create an even more unequal system. If the incumbent government can still abuse public properties and give rich contracts to party favorites —what they can and have shown they will do in a world where there is no UNCAC —their money advantage will be too much over rival parties.

Not everyone motivated to be filthy rich

The cap which represents the fact that the savage dog-eat-dog world brings out the best talent in human beings fits only those of us who possess that vicious nature. It cannot be natural for the Darwinian principle to apply to the people in our world who truly want to live and let live, the people who are nice guys. When we look at children, we see many kinds of character traits, ranging from the savage beasts to the gentle souls. These nice guys/girls are motivated by doing good things, not by getting rich.

If we look at the coronavirus spreading across the world, we know there are capitalists who see the opportunity to make a mint off the situation. Ugh, the worst capitalists have been known to withhold valuable information they happen upon because the time wasn’t right for them to gain the most riches from what they knew. We know of capitalists who led the fight against marijuana because if it was legalized it would replace a drug that they had invested in.

There is no altogether-bad thing under the sun, and the capitalists’ hoarding of wealth does allow for cash to be released toward finding a cure for the disease. However, cash being only a vehicle to purchase goods, a government could easily make goods (land, contracts, etc.) available that would attract scientists with the greed within them, so they lend their talent to the cause.

Ah, when there are crises many persons see an opportunity for them to fill their need to do good things for people. There are scientists who will work for a cure or an easing of the suffering because they are gentle souls who give a daam about the wellbeing of their brothers and sisters.

I don’t want anyone to think that I hate capitalism. What I hate is lies, misinformation. Capitalism is a good system, when it is not rapacious. It is the system that allows for the most freedom, and freedom is a good thing in a country where the basic needs of everyone is taken care of.

These two men debunk claim that the pursuit of money is the mother of greatness

The way the base capitalists go on, you would think that every manmade thing in this world, from the wheel to the sailing boat to the motor car to the airplane, came from a mind that dreamed all day about being rich and from a system that was devoted to pampering rich people. They would have us believe that in our modern world the Cubans, the Russians, the Chinese have made no contributions to technological advances. They tell us that the Chinese, well, they are all pirates if you believe the base capitalists.

For what I can see, human beings respond to different stimuli, and it is freedom that allows the spirit to soar to its highest. Poverty in the capitalist system suffocates freedom, and the most repressive state can make freedom reign for those selected few who show the most capacity in their fields. The capitalist argues that the repressive state unnaturally selects who will have freedom, while in the capitalist system it is a process of natural selection, the dog-eat-dog. The capitalist is only partly right. The capitalist system only allows one the freedom they can afford.

It is a constant of successful enterprises in capitalist, socialist, and communist states that they all depend on favorable government. The capitalists like to argue otherwise, but the facts on the ground are that the ones who are successful find favor with the government, or they had the resources to ride out an unfriendly government until a friendly one took power. If that is a lie, why then do progressive countries insist on tough campaign financing laws? The answer to that is obvious. Businesses want to be friendly with government.

Two brilliant men that the capitalist system boasts about, George Washington Carver and Nikola Tesla, were not motivated by greed. Those men profited from the freedom the capitalist state gives, but serving mankind, not personal wealth, was what motivated them.
Biography.com says Carver “devised over 100 products using one major crop — the peanut — including dyes, plastics and gasoline. Carver’s epitaph reads: ‘He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world.’”

Nikola Tesla designed the alternating-current (AC) electrical system, “which would quickly become the preeminent power system of the 20th century and has remained the worldwide standard ever since…Throughout his career, Tesla discovered, designed and developed ideas for a number of important inventions — most of which were officially patented by other inventors — around 1900 Tesla set to work on his boldest project yet: to build a global, wireless communication system — to be transmitted through a large electrical tower — for sharing information and providing free energy throughout the world.”

The capitalist world is still making money off what these men did over a century ago, and it is right for us to build on what is there; however what we have is oftentimes not the product of people who were driven by profit or needed to live in a capitalist state.