If I were 'P-Noy'

YESTERDAY, TODAY & TOMORROW
Linggoy Alcuaz
9/12-14/2011



If I were P-Noy, on the eve of my second visit to the USA, I would be very worried. I have lost most of the moral high ground that I inherited from my parents, Hero Ninoy and Saint Cory, and that the people raised, reinforced and maintained for me.

My twin campaign slogans, “Walang Mahirap Pag Walang Korap!” and “Matuwid na Daan!” (or something sounding like so) are in tatters. They are now embarrassing to recall.

My poor governance has slowed the economy down.

My government is hoarding fiscal resources while at the same time raising taxes contrary to my promise of no new taxes.

Blown Beyond Proportion
The morale of my appointees has gone down because of unabated internal intrigues.

I have parted with a few of my key none-“Ka …” appointees in messy firings or resignations.

Balay and Samar refuse to disappear.

The mainstream mass media holds my administration in contempt.

My Communications Group is adding to our perception problems instead of solving them.

Our accomplishments are not communicated and seen.

The smallest of our mistakes are blown beyond proportion.

Vengeance, not Reform
We have lost the perception game.

We have lost the survey wars no matter how high our scores are.

The only thing we have improved on a lot is in the persecution and prosecution of our enemies.

However, due to the long stalled anti-corruption efforts, the enemy was able to recover, delay and fight back.

Our efforts are seen as mere vengeance and no longer as reform.

The business community derives no satisfaction from these drives. They want me to move on.

But how can I? This is what I know.

From Regular to Zero, vice versa
Our efforts have aroused the persecuted and prosecuted.

From an initial defensive posture they may and have actually assumed an offensive posture.

They have manipulated the media from the very beginning. That is why I never had the luxury of a honeymoon.

Already, elements of both the old administration and old opposition are getting together in a combined effort to sabotage our efforts.

If, as I put it, my love life, like Coca Cola, has gone from Regular to Zero, my political life has remained close to Zero.

I have to change my lifestyle and workstyle in order to go from Zero to Regular.

I have to extricate myself from the Ka … How can I let go of Jojo, Rico, Virginia and the likes of them.

My narrow experience and small world of existence do not make it easy for me to trust others.

OJT Forever
I need a paradigm shift to mature politics.

I and my Administration cannot remain at “On-the-Job Training” forever.

Governance is not a student council.

I have to extricate myself from family and friends and operate in the political realm of my political party and its political alliances.

I have to recognize, accept and trust strangers.

I have to see through my kabarkada, kabarilan, kaklase, kamaganak, etc…

Political Dwarf
I need a top-to-bottom overhaul in my anemic administration.

I have to start with my Executive Secretary and the Cabinet Secretaries.

I chose most of them when I was still a boy.

Now, although late, I have to become a man. I have to choose stout-hearted men rather than boys with big egos and pockets.

I now have to think, “What would Dad Ninoy and Mom Cory, rather than me, Noynoy, the boy, have done?”

I now realize that being a political dwarf myself, standing on the shoulders of another political dwarf, Midget President Paquito Jojo Ochoa, still makes the two of us shorter than my predecessors.

This is very clear in relation to Manuel L. Quezon, Sergio Osmena, Manuel A. Roxas, Ramon Magsaysay, Jr., Carlos P. Garcia, Diosdado Macapagal, Ferdinand E. Marcos, Cory S. Aquino, Fidel V. Ramos, and Joseph “Erap” Ejercito Estrada .

There were Men, only
Even the diminutive Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was a giant in corruption.

I fail to tower over her. Only my parents’ shadow can look down on her.

In the realm of economics, I still look up to her as when she was my teacher with me seated on my desk and she standing short but walking about.

However, my hard-headedness and pride prevent me from using the lessons I learned from her.

When we make comparisons at the level of the Executive Secretary, just imagine, how does Jojo Ochoa compare with Eddie Ermita, Bert Romulo, Rene de Villa, Edong Angara, Ronnie Zamora, Alexander Aguirre, Teofisto Guingona, Jr., Peter Garrucho, Oscar Orbos, Catalino Macaraig, Joker Arroyo, Alejandro Melchor, Ramon Diaz, ……, Jorge Vargas? Sorry, if I forgot the others, I was still a boy or unborn during their era.

What I do know is that there were no boys in government then, only men.

Kitchen Cabinet
Before I fire another one of my officials, I have to learn to fire then straight to their faces and not through intrigues, rumours and the media.

I will start with my 24/7 kabarkada, Jojo Ochoa. I will ask him to please understand. I have to sacrifice him for the common welfare as well as for my administration’s survival.

Then, in the long run, I will be able to save him too.

However, I will give him another position. I will transfer him from the Palace to the Park across the Pasig River. He will be the Chief of the Kitchen Cabinet.

Since I’m male and I don’t have a First Lady, my Kitchen Cabinet can be composed mostly of males and third-sexers.

We can limit females to just a very few.

Then, I don’t have to fire anyone anymore. I will just transfer them across the Pasig River.

More Suitable E.S.
Then, I will appoint a more suitable Executive Secretary based on political considerations rather than my familial and friendship relations.

I will do the search, interview and selection from among the candidates myself.

Search committees are bullshit.

We only end up with more CESO’s than even my Ateneo classmates (CESOs are Classmates of Executive Secretary Ochoa).

“Mas masahol ang kapatas kaysa sa haciendero.”

My own selection process has come up with a short list of possible successors.

As soon as I talk to Jojo, I will float their names and get feedback.

Learning from Past Mistakes
I will learn from my mistakes of the past.

I can go back to the original plan: I will keep on playing while Mar Roxas does 80 % of the work.

After all, in his two and a half months as DOTC Secretary, he has recruited Liberals more sparingly than Jojo recruited CESO’s.

If I want the Islands of Batanes to become bigger than Luzon, then I will appoint Secretary Butch Abad as the new Executive Secretary.

He is very good at saving money.

When there were crises in the Middle East and North Africa, he was still able to save money from the DFA’s “Aid to Nationals” fund.

When there was a crisis in ferreting out waste and corruption, Butch Abad slashed the COA’s budget.

Bachelor’s Quarters
Even when the DSWD’s capacity to absorb a massive injection of Conditional Cash Transfer funds was limited, he managed to double, triple, quadruple its budget.

He had the same blind faith in the CCT program and in the DSWD as he has in Dinky.

He believes that Dinky can grow and become a giant. He believes that CCT and Dinky will save us from an EDSA IV just as they saved GMA.

Then, I will review the performance of all the line Cabinet Secretaries.

I will look for round pegs in square holes and vice versa.

So, the first thing is to do a rigodon. It is not at all expensive.

No one is fired. Those who are neither round nor square will cross the Pasig River.

Ochoa will take care of them.

The savings we derive out of their transfers can go to expanding my bachelor quarters.

A decade of agnotology

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
9/12/2011



"You can fool all the people all the time if the advertising is right and the budget is big enough.” — Joseph E. Levine

That may well be the guiding tenet of those at the helm of the Philippines’ energy sector today. But after 10 years of running circles around millions of power consumers and taxpayers, many now seem to be wising up to their grand scam.

A chorus of indignation against RP’s privatized power industry is now echoing from almost all sectors, including major business groups like PhilExport (Philippine Exporters Confederation) and Ecop (Employers Confederation of the Philippines), as well as others who have joined anti-power oligarchy crusaders in condemning the “highest power cost in Asia.”

Provincial power consumers are also up in arms. The Agricultural Sector Alliance of the Philippines (Agap) party-list, for one, recently concluded an hour-long “lights off” campaign at 9 p.m. last Friday to protest the illegal collection of millions of so-called MCCs (members’ contribution for capital expenditure) by the electric cooperatives.

The biggest electric power swindle abetted by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), however, is still here in Metro Manila, together with the adjacent towns and cities under the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) franchise area.

Under the cover of the post-Edsa II power privatization law, the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira), both the ERC and Meralco have created the highest power cost in Asia almost with impunity. It seems the duo has almost proven wrong the P.T. Barnum adage (“You cannot fool all of the people all of the time”) by a decade of near total “agnotological” management of media information. For those who still don’t know, “agnotology” is the science of creating ignorance.

Like the electric cooperatives, the ERC and Meralco have been charging consumers the power distributor’s capital requirements in advance each year amounting to some P8 billion to P9 billion, with claims of increasing electricity demand. Yet in last Friday’s edition of The Daily Tribune, Meralco was said to have disclosed that recent “power demand went down one percent year-on-year.” Now isn’t that damning evidence against them?

Soon, the ERC and Meralco will be caught in their own web of lies, as Frost warned in his poem, “When we first learn to deceive…” While other power crusaders’ groups prepare more “lights out” campaigns (the Freedom from Debt Coalition will have its own on Oct. 11, 2011, from 7:30 to 8 p.m.), the power advocates group with Sulo ng Pilipino (my mother organization) and individuals like former Mayor Jun Simon (Quezon City Electricity Consumers for Reforms), former Assemblyman Bono Adaza, Mang Naro Lualhati (our P39-billion Meralco refund champion), columnist Butch Junia, Jimmie Regalario (Kilusan para sa Makabansang Ekonomiya), and hundreds of others will be filing a series of court cases in late September against the power predators. In the end, truth will prevail over advertising and its budgets.

Meanwhile, another major lie the past 10 years (deemed the largest lie in all of human history) that we must train our eyes on is the 9/11 World Trade Center “terror demolitions.” As it was an event blamed on 19 terrorists, few actually know that 14 of them had Saudi passports arranged by the CIA.

Also, we must recall that in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy, George W. Bush said in a chance interview, “I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you.” And while brandishing a golf club, he continued, “Now, watch this drive.” Before long, the whole world was made to witness a progression of wars, from Afghanistan to Iraq. And now, with the Western powers’ push in Libya underway, can Syria, and then Iran or Venezuela, be that far away?

The 10 years of deception surrounding 9/11 could have been an unquestioned success if not for the architects and engineers for 9/11 Truth, with over 1,500 qualified members, and the families of 9/11 victims. You can learn more by watching on YouTube, “Architects and Engineers — Solving the Mystery of WTC 7” by AE911Truth.org.

A May 2011 poll by Siena Research Institute extended to 643 New Yorkers, including respondents in all of New York City’s five boroughs found that 48 percent were in favor of a new investigation into the collapse of WTC (World Trade Center) 7. The survey was commissioned by “Remember Building 7,” a transparency group led by 9/11 family members, NYC Coalition for Accountability Now (NYC Can), and Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911Truth).

Building 7 is a vital key to understanding the fraud that is the official US government investigation. As the third major, almost 50-story, building in the WTC complex, Building 7 collapsed hours after the North and South towers, despite it not being hit by any airplane. And although a minor fire did occur, it had already been put out before Larry Silverstein (the WTC’s new buyer), in his words, issued an order to “pull it” (in controlled demolition lingo).

Truly, we live with created ignorance everyday. We get it on TV, on radio, in print and on the Internet. Agnotology abounds on a host of subjects — from Libya, Syria and Iran; to our local issues on privatization and escalating rates, or the real reasons why the MRT/LRT, tollways, and government fees will be raised by the PeNoy government even when these are unjust and unnecessary. We are not being told, for instance, that such measures are all because of the dictates of the US Embassy and IMF-WB — the same way the US generics framework was maneuvered into our cheaper medicines law to apply patents where none should.

In response, we should turn this second decade of the 21st century into a decade of “sciometology” (a term I coined) to allow everyone to say, “I know.” This can only be achieved with the help of non-commercial, dedicated, truth-seeking journalists and media. And that’s why we’re here.

(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Saturday, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8 on “WTC 7: The Tell-tale Mystery”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)

Origin of the debt economy

BACKBENCHER
Rod Kapunan
9/10-11/2011



When the finance managers of the world conceived the idea of trading money for money, the first rule they did was reduce it to a commodity, and not as a medium of exchange. In that, this new generation of merchants called “money traders” was able to trade currencies with other currencies of whatever denomination at any given moment where they would command higher value. Maybe it was an unconscious effort to resonate the concept of money as a commodity to supersede the burdensome practice of barter, but nevertheless its consequence was far-reaching to man, to his society, and to the world.

The official conversion of money to commodity began when the international finance syndicates through their tightly-noosed World Bank and International Monetary Fund enunciated the policy of defying the biblical prohibition of usury. The abrogation of laws prohibiting usury and punishing those engaged in it resulted in the removal of the last safety valve of compassion for the less fortunate. The two finance institutions pushed whatever progress that was achieved by man back to the Dark Age.

The legalization of usury effectively deregulated the interest rates, and money supply generated through interest earnings tremendously ballooned without or with a negligible increase in production. Money then was automatically detached from production or what conservative economists would traditionally view as the primordial creator of wealth, viz, of mankind’s building block to progress and prosperity.

Like that of globalization or the universalization of free trade, the financial oligarchy of the world deemed it necessary to globalize the practice. To make it work, often by economic pressures and blackmail, countries, through their central banks, were prohibited from fixing the value of their currency.

As a result, less developed countries were pushed deeper into poverty. The World Bank and the IMF pretended to be generous by imposing lower rates of interest compared to other private commercial banks, but seldom did people know of the harsh conditionality of them having to devalue their currency.

For that, people, mostly from the Third World, suffered untold sufferings and hardships because the sudden and increased dependence by the financial oligarchy on that novel business resulted in the erosion in the value of real wages. Production and the trading of manufactured goods became less and less attractive as they generated less profit compared to the wizard-like wealth created by money trading.

The mad rush to save cost by legitimate manufacturers and traders invariably gave birth to a much harsher form of exploitation that contributed further to reduce the cost of wage. Most painfully, the advent of labor-only contracting or contractualization cut short their security of tenure, a milestone in the workers’ movement won through decades by their blood and tears. Concepts as labor-flexibility, outsourcing, and even making a mockery of organizing their already slave-like condition into some kind of labor cooperatives became fashionable. As usual, those quisling labor leaders were the ones that made money out of their deplorable condition.

The workers had no choice because everything was reduced to a struggle for survival. The workers’ international solidarity was lost with the demise of the Soviet Union and the subsequent metamorphosing of the economies of the former socialist states led by Russia and China to free enterprise economies.

The profit generated by money trading emboldened the financial oligarchy to do away with production and manufacturing. Effectively, the workers already receiving a much reduced income ended up in a much worse situation than the slaves US President Lincoln emancipated.

Should the workers starve and die, their capitalist employers would have no reason to be sorry. After all, wages for whatever is its value under the new era of monetary trading was the cash equivalent for their “freedom.” Like an unsold commodity in the market, the slave-like conditions of the contracted-out workers was effectively treated as outside of their employer’s moral responsibility.

The devaluation of the currency resulted in the gradual but continued depreciation in the value of exports that by the same axiomatic principle would cost them more to purchase equipment badly needed to serve as their lynchpin to achieve self-sufficiency through industrialization. Domestically, the practice became more vicious as local banks exacted higher interest rates that made them no different from the international financial vultures.

Of course, the abrogation of usury or the removal of the ceiling on interest rates necessarily would require the abolition of all price regulations, including rental. Everything has to be deregulated if only to allow production cost to cope with the business of usury.

It was an excruciating dilemma lackey states like the Philippines had to take. Should they refuse, instantly all businesses in the country would close, and instead all would just resort to the most convenient business of usury. Besides, there is risk in hiring workers who, at any time might demand a wage increase that if not granted, would resort to strike or engaging in manufacturing that would require them to pour in huge capital investment to build plants. Worse, everything could even end up in waste due to the possible flooding of cheap goods coming from other countries because of free trade.

Through this principle, the world saw the rapid rise of a new breed of financial oligarchy. One could not be wrong in judging that the rise of the local financial oligarchy was made possible because of their collaboration with their international counterpart; that as quislings they in fact acted as the local enforcers of the abominable practice that would routinely exact a pound of flesh from their countrymen.

Indeed, the saying that “money begets money” came to full realization. From the elementary practice of lending it soon evolved into a revolutionary concept of trading money for money. Invariably, the value of money became volatile like the price of commodities affected by the indubitable economic law of supply and demand. As that cycle of currency trading went on, the value of the local currency continues to depreciate much faster, making it more difficult for governments to meet their basic obligations to the people.

(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)