BACOLOD CITY — Headline: “Gov’t shortchanged by P500M yearly: BIR.”
The idea is wrong. The proper way to say it is, “Government is squeezing the beleaguered, cash-strapped sugar industry with some P500 million a year.”
One has only to be a student of Economics 101 to know the role of government is not to squeeze dry the industries but to help it create wealth. Yes, the industries are the creators of wealth. Not the government.
PAVIA, Iloilo Mayor Arcadio Gorriceta sounded like a broken record the other day when he barked at the Syjucos anew on Aksyon Radyo because of a column item in this corner that credited Congresswoman Judy, not the mayor, for the DPWH program of work to upgrade with concrete one of Pavia’s many bad roads.
I am sorry to hear that, Mr. Mayor. Why blame the Syjucos for what I wrote? This columnist is not a spokesman but an independent opinion maker. The Syjucos have nothing to do with what breaks into print here.
Sus, Ginoo, these followers of Gloria “Hello Garci” Arroyo are like small kids scrambling for a lollipop.
THE Big Story in Negros now is not the filing of the case against BIR’s Rodita Galanto or her lecture yesterday to all, including the provincial board that was holding the inquiry.
The biggest story is the restiveness of the planters, the small ones especially and the laborers because for the last two weeks there has not been any sugar-buying following Galanto’s repressive measures against sugar cooperatives.
Rallies may be held as laborers are not paid. This never happened before in the sugar industry. If President Arroyo comes on Oct. 1 she better brings in solutions to the problems as a gesture of returning the love for her of Negrenses.
“My knife is my wife,” Dr. Jose “Ting” Tiongco told me 12 years ago. “My fascination with surgery has been total I have forgotten to get married.”
Ting is a brilliant surgeon, one of the passionate doctors who blazed a trail in healthcare cooperatives in Davao and later in the rest of the Philippines. Twelve years ago, I did a feature-review (“Ting Tiongco and the dream”) of his book “Child of the Sun Returning.” On his book he had scribbled, “You once asked me if I was writing a book. I did. In my heart. ‘Ani-a na.’” “Ani-a na” is Visayan for “here it is.” A more dramatic translation would be “It’s here.”
Earlier, I did a long cover story on him for the Sunday Inquirer Magazine. I went to Mindanao just for that. I got to watch him perform a Caesarian operation and interview his fellow doctor-visionaries. These doctors were once called “doctors who refuse to say die.”
IT TOOK decades for previous crooks to amass the same amount of loot the present clique of thieves in the kingdom by the river have plundered in just less than nine years. But look, even the shameless react violently after getting the spanking they deserved for their stupidity.
If we look closely at what is happening at the kingdom by the river, the indomitable corruption could bring an honest auditor to the brink of insanity. Lowly employees are more sorely tempted to steal but don’t, what a shame!
Consider this, Mr. Manuel “Boy” Mejorada was sacked as provincial administrator and even the Civil Service Commission (CSC) declared his position vacant. On why he is still at the Capitol, he has yet to say.
EVER wary of the slightest report which may offer critics a heyday to spread their usual pack of lies and misleading information about her, President Arroyo ordered the cancellation of the planned purchase of two helicopters for her official use.
To me, there is nothing wrong or illegal with the planned purchase of these two helicopters considering that the President frequently travels to remote areas in the country in order to see for herself the actual conditions in these hinterlands. In fact, I am sure these critics do not even realize how warmly the President is being received in every place she visits because the people have realized that the President is actually taking time to go to their communities and talk to them and their leaders because of her genuine concern for their welfare. It would be redundant to say that the people’s concerns are her concerns because her actions, as a result of these visits, speak well of her true intentions.
WITH the latest economic meltdown, crisis, or crunch that hit the U.S. that reverberates in the world’s economic capitals, there is a raging debate in the academe and in the world’s business board rooms on the question, has capitalism failed?
This is not an economic treatise or dissertation, to be usually accompanied by researches. This is only a simple commentary by a layman on the latest economic happening.
For simple understanding of the issue, let me first give you this simplistic definition.
Capitalism is an economic system where private capital is the engine that powers the economy, fed by the desire for private profit.
NEXT year or before the 2010 elections, the law dividing the lone congressional district of Iloilo City to two might have been passed. With that, each district will have a representative to the Lower House and eight regular members to the city legislature, on top of the liga ng sangguniang kabataan and liga ng barangay presidents who represent their respective sectors at the city council.
If the proponents for re-districting were to have their way, the incumbent lone district Rep. Raul Gonzdalez, Jr. and outgoing Mayor Jerry Treñas will not be clashing to the benefit of city residents because two congressmen means two pork barrels, and two pork barrels means more money to be plowed to Iloilo City to make its people happier and more prosperous.
Cute dream. The redistricting has a single aim: accommodate Trenas who stands to be routed in a collision with the yonger Gonzalez. Jerry Mandering is happening in other parts of the country, too.
OUR hero Kuyabog still pursues his dream of instilling discipline, professionalism, industry, diligence and what have you on the 2,000 subjects of the Kingdom by the River.
And in so doing, turns that land into an elementary school because Kuyabog, capo di tutti capi of the trio los bobos, cannot, and does not care to, understand what the words above mean.
He does not see the substance of those values. All he sees are only forms, which is the trait he shares with the trio, este, mucho los bobos, pretending like him to be leaders but actually groveling nitwits that they are.
WRITING for the Financial Times (Sept. 20-21), Chrystia Freeland said that on Sept. 15, 2008, “the era of Ronald Reagan officially came to an end.”
The sunny confidence in the superiority of the American way, she said, “has been undermined now not only by Guantanomo and Abu Ghraib but also by the fact that this financial crisis has its epicenter on Wall Street, not Mexico City or Mumbai.”
She added: “Even more importantly, after nearly three decades when the prevailing promise was to make government smaller’ … the focus now will be on making government better, and probably bigger.” She marked Sept. 19 as “the first day of a new era of re-regulation.” That day revealed how terrified America had become, she said, “when Hank Paulson, secretary of treasury, proposed the creation of a monster agency to buy up potentially hundreds of billions of dollars of bad debt… [His plan] which would have sounded terrifyingly radical a week earlier seemed so obviously necessary it won instant, bipartisan support.”
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