The Constitutional issue here does not turn on whether items were "grabbed" or "requested and taken. The demeanor of the police is a managerial issue, not a Constitutional one. The Constitutional issue is whether a valid warrant was legally obtained and whether it is Constitutional for police when serving such a warrant, to refuse to leave a copy with the person on whom it was served.

These clowns need to go back "Down Under".

Seriously, New Zealand has a significant export economy. That is why a VAT tax scheme makes sense there. The Bahamas exports nearly nothing!!!

When will someone get it. Without a significant export economy, VAT simply imposes a super complex reporting regime on everyone for no purpose whatsoever. A simple sales tax which is much more easily administered will work just as well.

Further I cannot agree more with the commentator above who points out that any government that cannot effectively collect a real property tax, is ipso facto incompetent to collect any other form of taxation. Implementation of a VAT tax in this country will prove an administrative nightmare and a total joke.

Fred is a joke....a bad joke. If you don't think the serious diplomatic community resents being "used" as a purely political football, you have no idea how real diplomacy works. This is a national embarrassment, yet one more from Fred's idiotic mouth.

So you are suggesting with the hand gun ban in place this exact thing is not happening now? Please read the newspapers. Of course there are incidents that are perfectly awful that occur in jurisdictions where hand guns are not criminalized, but what about those where they are? Any less? In fact statistics support the proposition that crime goes down when lawful citizens can legally be armed.

For a small multi-island nation, situated nearly adjacent to a continent sized country of 400 millions, that is literally awash in firearms, to attempt to control the crime issues associated with guns by banning their ownership, is the functional equivalent of trying to write laws banning mosquitoes in an effort to halt dissemination of insect born disease.

In a better world it might be possible for a peaceful Bahamas to exist with a ban on handguns, but we had better start writing laws to address the world we actually live in. Without doubt, the attempt to disarm the law abiding, while pretending that the police will ever find any effective means of controlling illegal gun proliferation among the criminal class is a fools errand.

This is of a piece with efforts to pretend there is a ban illegal gambling, while accepting retirement funding and economically significant employment from a proliferating numbers racket. In the words of Pete Seeger, "When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn."

The fundimental reason VAT was designed, was to permit a "sales" based tax that would not adversely impact exports. Economies such as those of northern Europe are export dependent. If a "sales" type tax were to be added to each stage of the purchase of materials and provision of services associated with the production of their exported goods, the resulting price would render their cars, washing machines, computers etc. too expensive and they would lose market share to other competitor countries, like the U.S. who are less dependent on a sales based tax.

The "cost" for this export friendly benefit, is a very complex accounting process that must be scrupulously applied at each stage of purchase associated with production. Those economies who have successfully employed VAT are those that have developed through their primary dependence on the income tax, a highly sophisticated accounting structure, involving multiple layers of business based and independent accounting personnel. To impose and enforce their income based taxes, pre VAT, their governments were staffed with large, well trained, accounting and audit staff fully capable of administering and regulating such a complex regime.

I will leave it to the reader to answer these three basic questions:

1. Who in the Bahamas can suggest that this country has either the industry based, or private independent accounting structure to support such a complex tax scheme?
2. Who in the Bahamas would even suggest that the government has the management skill and trained staff to administer and regulate such a complex tax scheme?
3. As the Bahamas exports nearly nothing, and inasmuch as a simple sales tax on retail consumers which could be easily implemented, collected and administered, at a much lower rate, would work just as well, who in the Bahamas thinks going to a VAT under such circumstances is a good idea?

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

A remotely effective Minister of Foreign Affairs would have made diplomatic inquiries to his counterparts in the U.S. regarding this fly by night group before government authorized the myriad necessary permits permitting this build out, which now leave Bimini holding the bag.

Of course Fred was too busy meeting with his pals in Cuba trying to gin up slavery reparations payments to attend to this real business that actually has a serious impact on Bahamians.

Is there a thought in here?

So did this journalist.