The bottom-line here is that Simple Simon, who is so obviously unable to control his innate blood boiling rage and anger, is much too unfit to serve the public as Financial Secretary. This guy has a lot in common with that arrogant, wicked and demonic tyrant Hubert Minnis who proved himself to be the most malicious, vindictive, wicked, cruel and harmful government official our people have ever known.

Davis should demand a resignation letter from Simple Simon because is now a permanently broken vessel with no ability to carry water for the minister of finance.

You miss the key point in the awarding of this monopolistic government contract without a proper competitive bidding process imbued with complete transparency.

I suspect Youri Kemp has knowledge of the principals behind JDL and the tight connections they enjoy with certain government officials who stand to benefit greatly from the windfall profits the contract is virtually guaranteed to produce for them.

Bahamians should by now know that the term Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) is a euphemism for an exploitative arrangement whereby certain corrupt politicians partner with their cronies in the private sector get to enjoy unjust riches from unfairly heaving on to the people much higher costs for goods or services than they would otherwise have to pay.

And too often the monopoly subject to the exploitative PPP arrangement is not a natural one but rather one very deliberately created by unfair, and all too often, unconstitutional legislation that is financially harmful to the people.

I see this $10 million as but one small example of a budget glaringly set up for future outright theft as opposed to "wastage". The budget announced by corrupt Davis and now being defended by his two lackeys singing for their supper, namely Shuffler Halkitis and Angry Simon, is loaded with countless such examples, including the shockingly enormous increase in the amount budgeted for the Office of The PM.

I've always had zero respect for Carl Culmer and his admissions here only serve to prove why.

Had Carl been much more concerned about the Bahamian people and much less concerned about keeping the FNM party in power under the prime ministership of tyrant Minnis for as long as possible, tyrant Minnis might have been forced to call an election much sooner than he did, thereby ending much earlier his most wicked and evil authoritarian rule over us.

Carl Culmer did a great disservice to all Bahamians by choosing not to speak out back then on the matters he now chooses to speak about in order to curry as much political favour as possible with Pintard. It is a sad reality that the more senior lodge brothers in our political system are always much too loathe to speak out against a fellow senior lodge brother even when doing so is in the much greater interest of the Bahamian people at large.

Sadly, the only reason Terrance Bastian held his auditor-general job for 24 years is because the leadership of PLP and FNM governments over that span of time knew they could count on him not to aggressively tackle corruption, waste, fraud and outright theft within government departments and agencies. He kept his job for 24 years by making it a point to not rock the boat too much. But preserving his job came at very dear cost to the financial well-being of our nation.

The auditor-general job takes a tenacious blood hound who is tirelessly dedicated to sniffing out and aggressively acting on the most egregious instances of corruption, waste, fraud and outright theft within government departments and agencies involving millions of dollars. One who is not afraid to let the chips fall where they may notwithstanding the political heat. We can only hope and pray that Terrance Bastian's replacement is such a fearless blood hound.

Yup. Stumpy Davis has set the stage for much outright theft to come.

These laws should be ignored because they are so blatantly unconstitutional and an outright assault on basic private property rights.

Governments that stop respecting the most basic property rights and start seizing the vehicles and homes of the citizenry under threat of imprisonment no longer represent or serve the interests of the people and fully deserve to be deposed one way or another.

This latest budget unabashedly shows that The Bahamas is for sale to foreigners by the elitist political ruling class and their wealthy cronies and favoured friends who stand to benefit from the influx of foreigners. We have a limited and ever dwindling supply of inhabitable residential property with fewer and fewer Bahamians being able to afford even the most modest home.

And to think the PLP have always held themselves out to be progressives who represent the interests of the poor "have nots" in our society. Nothing could be further from the truth!

Davis is in fact a pathological liar and Simple Simon takes his cue from him.

This article is very poorly written and The Tribune's business editor, Neil Hartnell, should be ashamed of himself. Frankly I am left to wonder whether it was deliberately written so badly as to intentionally mask by confusion the great significance and importance of the unexpectedly low amount of VAT collected on high-end properties, not to mention the absurdly ridiculous explanation given for it by Davis.

Corruption under this Davis led PLP government is beyond rife. And while our minister of finance (Davis) is unable and unwilling to transparently account for enormous actual vs budget discrepancies, he goes about increasing the tax burden on the Bahamian people in any and every way that he possibly can.