{"id":50434,"date":"2014-02-28T10:16:28","date_gmt":"2014-02-28T15:16:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/target\/gibson-threatens-to-expose-fnm-tax-dodgers"},"modified":"2014-02-28T10:18:48","modified_gmt":"2014-02-28T15:18:48","slug":"shameless-shane-gibson-a-petty-little-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/2014\/02\/shameless-shane-gibson-a-petty-little-man","title":{"rendered":"Shameless Shane Gibson:  A Petty Little Man"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-31476\" alt=\"shane\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/shane.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/shane.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/shane-150x112.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/>Shameless Shane Gibson, the man who granted <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wmview.php?ArtID=9196\"> special privileges to Anna Nicole Smith<\/a> when he was Minister in charge of Immigration, is back to his old tricks again.<\/p>\n<p>Gibson&#8217;s tenure as immigration Minister was fraught with problems and roundly<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wmview.php?ArtID=9032\"> condemned<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>He also got into <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/2010\/12\/shane-gibson-accused-of-criminal-acts-again-5389.html\">hot water<\/a> while acting as Minister of Housing.<\/p>\n<p>Even<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/2011\/05\/plp-taking-out-the-trash-8608.html\"> top-ranking PLPs thought Gibson was political trash<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This is the same clown who once threatened to reveal the FNM Parliamentarians who might have been involved in gay orgies.\u00a0 That was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/2010\/08\/how-prosecutors-botched-harl-taylor-murder-trial-276.html\">Gibson&#8217;s response<\/a> to potential revelations of his own wrong doings.\u00a0 Childish tit-for-tat.<\/p>\n<p>Gibson was also the guy who said <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/2012\/06\/bahamas-minister-foreign-workers-not-welcome-22599.html\">The Bahamas doesn&#8217;t need foreign workers<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Now, Gibson is threatening to disclose the names of past and present Opposition Members of Parliament who, at one time or another, were delinquent in paying their taxes.\u00a0 This is Gibson&#8217;s response to the criticism of Ishmael Lightbourne, the government&#8217;s top official on Value Added Tax (VAT), who hasn&#8217;t paid his property taxes in ten years.<\/p>\n<p>Lightbourne, admitted that he had not paid the property taxes on his upscale western New Providence beachfront home for almost 10 years.<\/p>\n<p>This spurred numerous calls for Mr Lightbourne&#8217;s dismissal, a reasonable request given the fact that he has lost all credibility on the subject of taxes.<\/p>\n<p>But Mr. Gibson, being the immature fool that he is, is threatening to expose Free National Movement (FNM) and other opposition public officials who have fallen behind in meeting their financial obligations.<\/p>\n<p>What a lout!\u00a0\u00a0 If he gave a damn about The Bahamas, and the people of The Bahamas, he would expose ALL corrupt politicians who are not paying their taxes&#8230; not just FNM&#8217;s.\u00a0 But all selfish Shane thinks about is childish, political tit-for-tat.\u00a0 He lacks any integrity, ethics or concern for The Bahamas.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen you look historically at the persons in high positions currently and formally here in The Bahamas who never paid their real property taxes\u2026 to me, it is a concern because you should always pay your taxes particularly when you are in government,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it is hypocritical.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Really Shane?!?<\/p>\n<p>If he is really concerned, why has he not called for the full disclosure of tax info on ALL politicians.\u00a0 And why would he not support the firing of Mr Lightbourne, if he thinks government officials who don&#8217;t pay their taxes are hypocritical?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I finish disclosing the details of all of the persons and I am not going to limit it to persons who are serving now, I\u2019m going to expand it to persons who previously served and didn\u2019t pay their real property taxes and who subsequently ran ahead and caught some of the amnesty periods that we would have offered and show the hypocrisy of this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yet, the fool doesn&#8217;t see the hypocrisy in his own threats.\u00a0 Why limit his revelations to FNM politicians?\u00a0 Either he thinks politicians should pay their taxes or he doesn&#8217;t.\u00a0 But only a selfish, petty, hypocritical little man would think that opposition MP&#8217;s should have to pay their taxes&#8230; but not the people in his own party.<\/p>\n<p>The ultimate irony is that Mr Gibson himself has been delinquent with his taxes.<\/p>\n<p>Gibson didn&#8217;t give a timeframe for when he will disclose the names of the delinquent officials but he assured that the information will be shared with the public.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I have completed my research I will disclose the information and let the chips fall where they may and let the public decide who\u2019s being a hypocrite,\u201d the minister said.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, FNM Chairman Darron Cash fired back at Mr. Gibson\u2019s comments late Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[Tuesday\u2019s] announcement from Minister Shane Gibson was simple &#8211; open your mouth and say anything against me that I do not like and I will use my high office to expose you and all of your sins,\u201d Mr. Cash said.<\/p>\n<p>If you are a public official, and you know of other politicians breaking the law, you have an obligation to disclose that information, not just use the revelations as a threat to quiet your enemies.<\/p>\n<p>For an elected official, a representative of the government, to hide information of wrong doing may be a crime in and of itself.<\/p>\n<p>What all of this shows is that our country is being run by a bunch of unethical crooks.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe fact that people of prominence owe taxes is a clear indication of what might be wrong with the current system. Being broke is not a sin. This administration\u2019s unwillingness to fix a broken system is,&#8221; said Mr Cash.<\/p>\n<p>Bahamians should demand an accounting of the tax obligations of all elected officials.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, tax-dodger Ishmael Lightbourne remains in his position and has stated that he has no intentions of resigning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shane Gibson is threatening to expose Free National Movement (FNM) and other opposition public officials who have fallen behind in meeting their financial obligations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":31476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[93,40,142,60,108],"class_list":["post-50434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-corruption","tag-government","tag-incompetence","tag-plp","tag-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}