{"id":53568,"date":"2019-06-07T08:00:34","date_gmt":"2019-06-07T12:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/?p=53568"},"modified":"2019-06-07T12:28:01","modified_gmt":"2019-06-07T16:28:01","slug":"snake-oil-salesman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/snake-oil-salesman\/","title":{"rendered":"Snake oil salesman\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u2026in the Presidency<br \/>\nHere we go again!! It\u2019s clear that President Granger is a devout practitioner of the advice given by WC Fields: \u201cIf you can\u2019t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit!!\u201d And in this he\u2019s following in the footsteps of that other snake-oil salesman, Forbes Burnham. But that shouldn\u2019t surprise us, should it? He\u2019s publicly sworn to \u201ccomplete the legacy\u201d of his mentor Burnham.<br \/>\nTake his promise a few days ago on housing: \u201cI would like to leave office where there is not a single homeless Guyanese. Every single Guyanese will have a roof over their head.\u201d Now what else is this but a reprise of Burnham\u2019s \u201cFeed, house and clothe the nation\u201d promise, which he made in 1972 and was to be completed in four years?? And of course we know he failed abysmally with not even one-tenth of the 60,000 houses completed!! And even those were created just for the PNC faithful, mainly in Georgetown. Burnham was in power for another decade after the plan\u2019s ending of 1976, but we know he left the nation even hungrier, more homeless, and more naked than when he was handed power on a platter by outside forces.<br \/>\nAnd Granger will fail for the same reason Burnham did: a wilful and stubborn disregard of economic realities, and a willingness to believe his own BS. He told his captive audience at Perseverance Scheme \u2013 which was launched by the PPP administration! \u2013 in what was clearly a campaign stop on state funds, \u201cHousing helps to take (poor people) out of poverty\u2026and it is my mission to completely abolish homelessness in this country.\u201d Now, let us look at that statement a bit closer.<br \/>\nHow can being you pull people out of poverty without creating the environment wherein they can get jobs to enable them to pay their mortgages?? Granger and Burnham are putting the cart before the horse, since they\u2019ve both destroyed jobs and squeezed the business sector, which actually creates jobs, with their fiscally repressive policies. What\u2019s going to happen is that these schemes will become as crime-ridden and decrepit as other new schemes, such as Caneville, because of the unemployment level. The spirits of the homeowners who\u2019ll be forced to give up their homes when the Banks foreclose on them will become broken, since they\u2019d have succumbed to the snake-oil patter of people like Granger and sunken the meagre savings into the homes. They would\u2019ve lost \u201ccorn and husk\u201d.<br \/>\nBut we did learn something from Granger\u2019s patter. Realising how outrageous his promise must\u2019ve sounded, he said it could be fulfilled, \u201ccause I ain\u2019t leffing for just now.\u201d<br \/>\nLike with Burnham, a rig is in the cards!<\/p>\n<p>\u2026and vision problems<br \/>\nPrime Minister Nagamootoo took time to inform us in his column this week that he was jetting off to New York. First class, of course!! But that\u2019s understandable. After all, he\u2019d just completed his only chore: writing that column!! But the column, captioned \u201cVision 2040\u201d, was revealing \u2013 no pun intended. He boasted that his last eye test showed he had 20\/20 vision \u2013 normal eyesight. But we know that ain\u2019t so, don\u2019t we? The challenge from Ramjattan demonstrates that he didn\u2019t see the writing on the wall!!<br \/>\nBut in boasting of his Govt\u2019s \u201cGreen State Development Strategy (GSDS) \u2013 Vision 20\/40, which was just handed back by the UN Environment Programme Director \u2014 he should know the PNC coalition\u2019s been given a signal that they\u2019re very shortsighted. For if 20\/20 is normal eyesight, 20\/40 means your eyesight\u2019s been cut by half!! And that\u2019s exactly what has happened to this Government, with their refusal to accept that Jagdeo\u2019s LCDS is light years better for Guyana that the GSDS.<br \/>\nThose that have eyes, let them see!!<\/p>\n<p>\u2026and integrity<br \/>\nThe Integrity Commission\u2019s Chair says he\u2019s \u201cunaware\u201d of President Granger not filing his assets report with the Commission \u2013 as mandated by the law the Chairman\u2019s supposed to enforce.<br \/>\nAnd this AFTER the President himself was forced to confess he hadn\u2019t filed!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2026in the Presidency Here we go again!! It\u2019s clear that President Granger is a devout practitioner of the advice given by WC Fields: \u201cIf you can\u2019t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit!!\u201d And in this he\u2019s following in the footsteps of that other snake-oil salesman, Forbes Burnham. But that shouldn\u2019t surprise us, should it? He\u2019s publicly sworn to \u201ccomplete the legacy\u201d of his mentor Burnham. Take his promise a few days ago on housing: \u201cI would like to leave office where there is not a single homeless Guyanese.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eyewitness"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"gutentor_comment":0,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53568"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53569,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53568\/revisions\/53569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}