Cure this societal disease

The best way to get rid of corrupt officials is not as easy as the best way to get rid of blackheads. Blackheads can be cured and its damages corrected but corrupt officials can multiply faster than the worst cancer and the can be very difficult to determine. In this country, I hope half of public officials will see the error of their ways and stop corruption. However, I think that it will not happen within the next several months.

To Lead is Difficult

My newgy ping pong table reminds me of the way government in this country works – back and forth. Mud is thrown in several directions and at the end of the day, nothing gets done. It is not only in politics where this happens. Radio commentators have long been castigating the government for its failure to curve over speeding and daily vehicular deaths in the country’s “Death Highway” but when the traffic cops started strictly implementing the speeding limit; they get bullied and mocked, short of calling them stupid, for arresting drivers who go a few miles over the speed limit. And those commentators are talking as if they are experts in speed radar calibration and leadership in government. Wow!

Radio Gaga

It’s really bad to listen to my stereo speakers in the morning. It is because my stereo unit is tuned to the AM band where mostly bad news blares out to make me feel bad that I ever got up to prepare for work. It is my desire to tune in to the FM band all the time but gee, I am forced to listen to the news everyday because I live in a storm prone area.

Let Them Starve?

There’s this congressman (Rafael Mariano) who, instead of thanking the Aquino administration for giving an immediate 4 billion direct subsidy to the poor and hungry farmers, is even calling it an insult.

He says; “The Aquino government is exploiting the farmers’ situation in order to utilize billions of taxpayers’ money in a corruption-prone rice subsidy program similar to the fertilizer fund scam and conditional cash transfer scheme,” Mariano said.

“It is the height of irony that farmers, the rice producers themselves, are now being targeted by the government’s so-called rice subsidy. Instead of addressing demands for genuine agrarian reform and direct agricultural support to farmers, Aquino further insults the people behind the plow by giving them crumbs,” he said.

Mariano said that such a scheme only exposes the government’s failure to address hunger and poverty and inability to implement genuine reforms.

He said that the free distribution of land to farmers through genuine agrarian reform will directly helpfarmers feed themselves and their family.

It will also unleash the capital in the land that will serve as a strong foundation for the development of the national economy and support national industrialization, he added. (PDI)

OK, let’s call off the subsidy for it is insulting, as the very intelligent congressman calls it. Let us go for the land distribution and continue facing the landlords in court. Let’s see if the president  will be able to do it within his term.  In my estimate, a very determined government can do it in about six years.

For the meantime, let the farmers starve to death. Brilliant, Congressman Rafael Mariano

Too Low?

While I agree that employers should make sure that they pay equitable wages, I understand that they must also price themselves within competitive levels. Professional managers and business owners are therefore mandated to find a good balance between good wages and proper returns on every peso invested in the business. 

In this country and elsewhere, a lot of business people are heavily infected by intense greed. However, a lot has been written about that topic and I will just write about it at a later time, if I still feel like doing so.  What I would like to write this time is something that is very unpopular. It is about the greed and tyranny of my fellow poor.

Just this afternoon, I listened to radio interviews of union members who cry out against a low wage increase that is being proposed by employers. While I agree that a lot of greedy employers have very high margins, I also know for a fact that for every company making a lot of money, a lot more are bleeding from low margins and high debts.

In the interview, there was a lady who lamented that the P13.50/day wage increase cannot buy sufficient bread for 10 children. In the first place, the P13.50/day is just an increase. It's not their their daily wage. Secondly, I'd like to ask why does she have 10 children? She’s poor, isn’t she?

I am not anywhere near as poor as her but I cannot imagine being able to afford even half that number. My friends, if you cannot afford it, why do it?

S#i+!!!

Men's Store

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Poor?

Despite the fuel price hikes that triggered food price increases, uneasiness in the labor force and the expected increase in the incidence of poverty, there remains a huge demand for Lipofuze and other weight loss formulas. Economic crisis affects only the poor and the not so rich. It may bother the big fishes but certainly, it will not make them poor. Broke maybe, but never poor.