Please send the New Zealand "experts" back "Down Under". Idiotic advice is not made less idiotic by increasing the number of idiots publishing it.

This is a reply to Birdie and Generalcrazy:

Of course there is a political element to any statement made by any politician, but the fact is that in a parliamentary system there is a government in power, and politicians in opposition. Your only regard in these pages seems to be unremitting opposition to any politician's statements, factual or not, if the politician is in opposition. Your criticism is always that those politicians, when in power, were not perfect either.

So what? Who can speak and gain public attention better than politicians in opposition. It is the duty of the opposition to point out the errors of the party in power. When the FNM was in power that was the duty of the PLP.

This Nygard matter is above politics. Asiseeit, has it exactly right. This is not about competing policies. This is about rule of law. Civil society is under threat in the Bahamas. We are seeing our democratic institutions crumbling before our eyes. Thieves stealing copper grounding wire from electricity poles, causing catastrophic damage to homes during lightening storms. Murders on the street. Rule of law is our only hope. You cannot continue to support crony deals, back room sales of the public trust, grossly incompetent governance, all because the people pointing out the problems are politicians in opposition. If they need to be criticized for their conduct in office fine, but don't use that premise to ignore the evil that is being practiced right in front of your eyes.

Task Force Brief:
1. Prepare a report but delay delivery significantly so hopefully everyone will forget about this. The "Nothing to see here. Move on." strategy.
2. Be sure the report supports whatever deal we made before the abortive referendum on the numbers shops. We can't go back on that deal. Those guys own us.
3. Be sure the report has a lot of schedules, tables and long run-on sentences. The voters don't like to read things that are lengthy, complicated and boring, and filled with lots of confusing numbers.
4. And far most important, never mention how if it makes sense to tax the Hell out of the illegal numbers shops, because they can afford to pay out of the interest on the interest of their earnings, why wouldn't it make sense for the government to run a lottery instead. That would be simply too embarrassing.

Tal: The restrictions relate to "bringing" cash into the U.S. and are not designed to single out the country the traveler is coming from; in this case the Bahamas.

Because U.S. Customs operates inside the Bahamas for commercial flights coming from the Bahamas to the U.S., arrests for carrying undeclared cash in excess of the $10,000 limit, occur in the Bahamas.

The reason for the law is to try to control use of cash in illicit activities such as the drug business and terrorism. There is no law proscribing carrying cash into the U.S., but any traveler, U.S. or otherwise, is required to declare it if he is carrying more than $10,000. If you file the declaration and have a legitimate reason for carrying so much cash, U.S. Customs does not give you any problem. For example: "We won at the gambling tables." might well be a good reason.

There are all kinds of warning signs about the requirement to declare cash in excess of $10,000. at all U.S. Customs entry locations, including those at the Nassau Airport. Anyone who violates this law is very unlikely to be an "innocent". For example, it would not be unreasonable to attribute some bad motives to the couple reported here, who simply abandoned a significant sum, versus going to court to explain the circumstances, no?

I did not realize that Reverend C.B. Moss was a lawyer.

Got a free T-Shirt and $25? "Nothing to see here. Move on."

Typical commentary in these pages. No way to defend photographic facts providing detailed documentation of the long standing, ongoing, illegal, environmental degradation this fellow has imposed on our beautiful land. The only defense offered is "someone else did something bad, so nothing to see here, move on". What a sad commentary for the country.

Counsel before the Bar. "Vindicated by jail time." "Nuff said.

This whole process smells to High Heaven.

You've got it This is Ours. The serving government and all it's supporters on these pages, never respond to the open, obvious, factual reports of total incompetence or worse.

The response is always, well the FNM was bad too, or the U.S. is not perfect either.

What does that have to do with it? By the way, lets get real, the FNM and the U.S. have had their many faults, no reasonable person would deny that, but in contrast with the stark, embarrassing, incompetence and dare we say it, total corruption that has been visited on the Bahamas over the past two years, there is no apt comparison.

There is more than something "rotten" in the Bahamas and the smell has now reached worldwide. Watch this Nygard matter closely. Someone who supports the PLP in these pages give me an explanation, other than gross corruption, for the government climbing into bed with that guy and supporting his environmental depredations. The FNM tried to stop him, so he went out and purchased the opposition. What Bahamian interest is being served there?