Boobs & Assholes: Anatomy of the Arroyo Administration

There is a rumor going around that Gloria Arroyo has breast implants. It should not come as a surprise if that were the case. She has always surrounded herself with big boobs so making her own bigger is but a logical extension of the concept.

Consider the Secretary of the Department of Justice Raul Gonzalez. When journalists were able to get an interview with MILF renegade Commander Bravo, he had the pinheaded notion to suggest that the journalists should have informed the authorities the location of the interview. The very idea itself is wrong on many levels and so many ways that it would take forever to enumerate them all. The basic ones need to be mentioned. First, journalists do not take sides. They are supposed to report on matters in an objective and fair manner. Raul Gonzalez must have been watching too much Fox TV that he now believes that being fair and objective means rooting for one side unabashedly. Second, even suggesting that journalists act as informants for the government places journalists in harm's way. The next time that some outlaw grants an interview, he might think that his interviewer is setting him up. He must really want our country to have the dubious distinction of topping Iraq as the country where most journalists are killed. Aside from being a big boob Raul Gonzalez earns for himself the honor of being an asshole. And if a rumor that Gloria Arroyo had another anus surgically implanted or her own surgically enlarged, that too, should not come as a surprise.

As Raul Gonzalez has increased the occupational risk of journalists, they should return the favor by attending all his press conferences even if, or especially when they are sick. His immune system is compromised because of a recent kidney transplant he underwent and a strategically directed spittle might just do the job that a total renal failure failed to do.

Then there's the confederation of idiots in the Palace. Where to begin? Let's start with the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain. Until now, those dolts could not make up their mind whether Gloria Arroyo authorized or knew of the terms of the so called agreement. To be fair, it is not much of a choice—either Gloria Arroyo was knowingly selling out our country to a handful of bandits or she was unknowingly selling out our country to a handful of bandits.

Recently there was the flap about the $10B emergency fund for ASEAN. First, Gloria Arroyo tried to take credit for nudging the World Bank to set up a contingency fund. The very next day, the World Bank denied it. All the president's men then scurried about and came up with the lame explanation that it was the International Monetary Fund. As lame as it was, it too, was wrong. There is a fund to help any country suffering from the global financial crisis. In essence, Gloria Arroyo was hogging the limelight for nothing at all. It's not really out of character. Remember when she tried to take credit for supposedly lowering the cost of text messages? It turned out that there was already an ongoing promotional program which was only for a limited time and subject to different conditions.

Former Department of Agriculture Undersecretary Jocjoc Bolante is in the news again. He is scheduled to be deported back here next week. His lawyer said that he chose not to appeal the denial of his application for refugee status in the United States. He has exhausted all his appeals, actually. He is accused of diverting money which was supposed to fund a fertilizer program, into Gloria Arroyo's presidential campaign. It's not as if he could not find enough conduits for the diversion scheme so it baffles the imagination why he had to make it appear that congressmen who were not close, but even hostile to Gloria Arroyo purportedly received funds from the fertilizer scam. Not content with such a blunder, he even went to the United States where he had the audacity to petition for asylum because of “persecution” here in the Philippines. On principle alone, he should be thrown out of the plane head first onto the tarmac once it arrives here to give a little bit of credence to his claim of persecution.

Bayani Fernando ranks up there with Raul Gonzalez in the anatomy category. His idea of beautifying EDSA is to have his picture plastered all throughout the entire length of the city's main thoroughfare. His face is not one that only a mother could love. It's one that could convince a mother to consider post-term abortion. Traffic along EDSA slows to a crawl because drivers do not know how to properly make a left turn at the intersections. Drivers usually occupy and block thru-lanes when making left turns. Bayani Fernando's solution is to eliminate intersections and have drivers do u-turns. Consider for a moment that a u-turn is essentially two consecutive left turns. Now, we don't have through-traffic being choked by drivers improperly making left turns, but by the same idiots improperly making u-turns.

Tito Sotto, currently head of PDEA, when he was a senator during the Oakwood Mutiny inquiry and upon being told that the supposed destabilization plan was a fake, asked for the original. Then Armed Forces chief General Angelo Reyes had to point out that “fake” meant “spurious” or just made-up and not “fake” in the manner of an illicit copy of a copyrighted DVD where an original existed. This is the same Angelo Reyes who is now secretary of the Department of Energy who, when lauding the benefits of using compressed natural gas as fuel for internal combustion engines claimed that one of such benefits is the reduction if not the elimination of carbon dioxide emissions. He probably meant carbon monoxide.

Gloria Arroyo's band of idiots even made it to the legislature. There's Lito Lapid. Res Ipsa Loquitur. There too, are the Cayetano siblings whom Gloria and Mike Arroyo helped in their election campaign. Senate President Manny Villar is currently out of the country and he appointed Pia Cayetano as officer-in-charge. Now, Senator Santiago wants a warrant of arrest issued against Eliseo dela Paz but Pia Cayetano would not sign one until she has received guidance from the absent senate president. If she has to await instructions from Manny Villar on such a simple matter, she's not really in charge, is she?

Finding people in the current administration who is neither an asshole or a boob is getting to be like finding good people in Sodom (by definition, there would be relatively bigger assholes here, but I digress) and Gomorrah. So, when people in the Arroyo administration resign their positions, ask not why. They probably just have had enough of being big boobs or assholes.

Of Idiots and Liars

After hearing the first few minutes of Alan Peter Cayetano's privilege speech before the Philippine Senate on September 16, 2008, I can't understand why the other senators (or senate-tors, as Benjamin Abalos would say) tried so hard to prevent him from doing so. Peter Cayetano rose on a matter of personal privilege... and proved that he is either an idiot or a liar.

Senator Lacson, in a previous privilege speech regarding the alleged insertion of an additional item amounting to some two hundred million pesos in the 2008 national budget, made an issue of Peter Cayetano's seemingly cavalier comment that the additional 200 million pesos tacked onto the bill was just loose change. Peter Cayetano took offense.

In his privilege speech, Peter Cayetano said that his off-the-record comment to the news media was taken out of context and given a sinister meaning. And so, he set forth to lay the proper context to his comment.

He claimed that Senator Manny Villar earned 20 billion pesos in the latter's company's went public via an initial public offering (IPO) some years ago. He further claimed that 200 million pesos, although a big amount in itself, is relatively very small to the twenty billion pesos that Senator Villar earned in a clean and honest manner. Therefore, according to Peter Cayetano, Senator Villar would not be interested in benefitting from a mere 200 million pesos in the national budget. In that way, 200 million pesos is just loose change.

Logicians call what Peter Cayetano laid out a syllogism. Syllogism is a method of proof in logic where two premises are established to reach a conclusion. In this case, the premises are: 1) Senator Villar earned a huge amount of money when his company went public—in other words, he is very rich; 2) Two hundred million pesos is not a lot of money—mere loose change—compared to the 20 billion pesos he earned when his company went public so he would not be interested at all in padding the national budget by that amount. The conclusion then, is that Senator Villar has nothing to do with the insertion of an additional line in the 2008 national budget

The thing is, both the premises are wrong. Consequently, the conclusion is a fallacy.

First, Senator Villar did not earn 20 billion pesos when his company went public. Apparently, Senator Villar's company raised that amount in the IPO. Generally, the proceeds of an IPO is additional capital for the corporation and not income for the owner of the company. In fact, doing an IPO is one of the popular ways by which a company raises additional capital that it can use to expand its business. Capital is not the same as income. Of course, some investors may cash out their investments in a company when it goes public via an IPO. Senator Villar may have cashed out some of his investment in his company during the IPO but surely, not the entire proceeds. Doing so could have violated several provisions of the Corporation Code as well as SEC rules, at the very least.

Peter Cayetano might have confused capital and income because his father, the late Rene Cayetano, admittedly earned millions from trading BW Resources stocks. That was income. Most if not all of the money raised in the Camella & Palmera Homes IPO was capital. A lawyer should know the difference.

Second, there is no such thing as being too rich. Martha Stewart who was worth at least a billion dollars at the time she traded on inside information regarding the biotech company ImClone served time in federal prison for what experts calculated as only about $70,000 difference in the sale price of ImClone stocks.

The conclusion is also wrong because one does not have to actually receive the 200 million pesos to gain unfair, and ultimately, financial advantage or benefit from it. A politician can take credit for the program where the additional funding was used, as they often do.

Now, Peter Cayetano should find himself in what logicians call the “horns of a dilemma.” That is just a fancy way of saying that one is between a rock and a hard place. One is left with only two options, both of which are bad. On one hand, he can admit that he did not know the difference between capital and income and come out a fool. On the other hand, he can say that he knew the difference between capital and income and admit that he lied about Senator Villar earning 20 billion pesos from the Camella & Palmera Homes IPO.

Maybe Peter Cayetano was thinking about an American politician when he made that flippant comment about 200 million pesos being just loose change—the politician whose comment went something like this: “A billion here, a billion there. Pretty soon we're talking about real money.”

Peter Cayetano should probably emulate his fellow senator Lito Lapid who seems to have taken Mark Twain's words to heart. It is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and prove it.

The Rational Consumer

I had finally bought a new tube of toothpaste today. I had been using toothpaste from a tube that has been “empty” for the past five days. A tube of toothpaste is not really empty until you have split is open with a pair of scissors and wiped the last traces of toothpaste for one last brushing session.

These past five days, the trace amount of toothpaste that I was able to squeeze out of an empty tube had been sufficient to clean my teeth. That means that during the times when there was a lot of toothpaste still left in the tube, I had been using more than what I needed to clean my teeth. That was actually quite evident because most of the toothpaste just ended on the basin, still in unused clumps, when I rinse my mouth afterwards.

If it were just toothpaste, this is would be a waste of time on the mundane but we also behave in this manner in other things with far greater consequences. This thing with the toothpaste is just an illustration of how we do not behave as rational consumers.

In business school, we were tested on how rational we were as consumers. Assume that you are in a mall and right next to you is a convenience store where you can buy a can of soda for $11 while you can also get the same soda for $1 at the end of the mall which is about 500 meters away. Where would you buy the can of soda?

Now assume that you are in the same mall and next to you is an electronics store where you want to buy a digital camera which would cost you $5,010. The same camera is available at an electronics store at the other end of the mall which is about 500 meters away and would cost you $5000. Where would you buy a digital camera?

The rational consumer would buy both the can of soda and the digital camera at the far end of the mall. Ten dollars for a 500 meter walk is still $10 dollars whether you are buying a can of soda or a digital camera. Of course, the really savvy consumer would have parked at the other end of the mall if he knew stuff there were $10 cheaper. But I digress.

The irrational consumer, on the other hand would trudge 500 meter to save $10 on a can of soda but would not do so for the same amount of savings when buying a high ticket item.

There are more common forms of irrational consumer behavior such as putting money on a savings account which earns 2% interest per annum while maintaining a credit card balance which charges about 4.5% interest per month.

Going back to the toothpaste issue, I just realized that I had been irrational in my use of toothpaste. I had been using more than what is needed when there is still plenty of toothpaste left when I should always be using only what I need.

This business school flashback is courtesy of the recent drop in oil, and consequently in fuel, prices. The rapid increase in gas prices have forced use to use what is only necessary. When gas prices go down, we might be tempted to backslide and once again use what is available, much more than what we only need.

The Politics of Obfuscation

Once upon a time there was a poor young man scavenging along the beach for shellfish to eat and whatever cast away things that he could use when he came upon a rusted clump. It didn't look promising but he thought that if it was just all rust, he could toss it away later. If there was still some usable metal within the rust, he could sell it at the recycling center for a few centavos.

When he reached the hovel he called home, he worked to get the rusty crust off whatever was inside the clump he found. Lo and behold, there was what appeared to be an oil lamp....

To make a long story short, out came a genie who granted him three wishes. He asked for wealth, good looks, and to really impress the women, he asked that he should be able to drag his penis along the ground when he walked. The genie then transformed his legs to mere stumps.

There are many variations to this anecdote. There's one where an American, seeing the success of foreign cars on American soil asked for a foreign car dealership. In the blink of an eye, he found himself the owner of a Cadillac dealership in the middle of Tokyo.

And then there's the story of the man who bought shoes at a shoe store because it was a “half off sale.” He only got one shoe, instead of a pair.

The point here is that ambiguity leads to confusion and sometimes, tragedy. Furthermore, if we are not vigilant in the manner by which other people use ambiguous language to mislead us.

We have always played fast and loose with our ambiguous and misleading language. News coverage of the recent dismissal of former Court of Appeals justice Vicente Roxas mentioned that he was a bar exams topnotcher. Being a bar topnotcher means topping the bar, that it, getting a grade higher than everyone else.

The term “barrister” refers lawyers in England and members of the Commonwealth State who have qualified to, and are allowed to appear before magistrates. Here we use that term to refer to law school graduates who are preparing or taking the bar exams. The proper term for those is “under bar” or bar examinees if they are currently taking the exams.

The problem with not being very exacting in our use of language is that we allow those who are more creative in their use of words to mislead and hoodwink us.

During the height of the rice crisis earlier this year, rumors were swirling around that Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap's father-in-law was unduly and unlawfully taking advantage of the situation. Secretary Yap issued a statement stating that his father-in-law was not in any way involved in the wholesale trading of grain. Of course, that did not really answer the issue of whether or not his father-in-law was taking undue and illegal advantage of the rice crisis. His father-in-law could have been involved in the grains retail trade, or numerous other activities related to the grain trade. Somehow, people just left the issue at that.

Just yesterday, the Armed Forces released a video of what appeared to be child soldiers undergoing training in arms and warfare under the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). The MILF immediately issued a statement categorically stating that none of their regular soldiers were children and that they do not recruit children to join their ranks. The MILF used a lot of words to say nothing at all.

The accusation based on the video is that the MILF is training children in the use of arms and in warfare. When the MILF stated that there are no children in the ranks of their regular troops or among their combatants, it only means that the alleged child soldiers do not join the ranks of regular troops and combatants until they are of age. And when the MILF avers that they do not recruit children, it does not say anything about whether or not they refuse children who volunteer to join their ranks.

Our Long Descent Into Barbarism Begins

The Philippine Military recently released a video of an alleged MILF training camp where what appeared to be children were being trained in the use of arms and in warfare. And the MILF has promptly denied this. Well, not exactly. The MILF did not deny providing military training to children who have volunteered to join their ranks. What the MILF denied was having children in the ranks of their regular troops and actively recruiting children to join their ranks.

Given the atrocities committed by members of the MILF in recent months, and now the allegations of violating the rights of children, one would expect that the present administration would move to declare the MILF as a terrorist organization.

But the Philippines is Wonderland and Gloria Arroyo is the Queen of Hearts. Nothing makes sense. What, you ask, would one have to do to be declared as a terrorist organization here? Atrocities and wanton human rights violations aside, one only need to be of no use to Gloria Arroyo. The MILF is fortunate enough that the current administration can use them to make and end run on charter change in order to perpetuate Gloria Arroyo's hold on power. The New People's Army, which is arguably less vicious, but probably less willing to be manipulated by the current administration has found itself on that terror list. That may be giving the NPA more credit that is due them. It may only be that the NPA has no claim on ancestral domain to dangle in front of Gloria Arroyo.

This is just great. (Sarcastic.) Not only do we have the dubious distinction of ranking second only to Iraq in terms of number of journalists killed, or for being up there in the corruption index, now we have joined the ranks of Somalia, Sierra Leone, and other African countries that have child soldiers.

Of course Gloria Arroyo's overly generous accommodations are not limited to the MILF. One only need to look at the incompetent, corrupt, and abusive people entrenched in government positions to comprehend the extent of her “generosity.”

The Glorietta 2 Blast In Retrospect

I was in Glorietta Mall last Thursday (September 4, 2008) when smoke emanated from Glorietta 2, the scene of an explosion almost a year ago and sealed off soon afterwards, alarming shoppers.

The Philippine National Police along with the National Bureau of Investigation and several foreign consultants have long concluded that the blast was a result of a gas explosion. Some parties were charged while others were exonerated. However doubts still persist on what actually happened simply because the authorities have not sufficiently accounted for the actual events that led to the explosion. In a nutshell, the authorities said that the septic tank backed up so sludge accumulated in the basement. The sludge produced methane within the confined spaces of the basement and an initial explosion was triggered byt a spark from a circuit breaker box which was also located in the basement. The initial explosion ignited the diesel in the tank of the back-up generator which was also located in the basement, which then resulted in the bigger, secondary explosion which did most of the damage in and around Glorietta 2.

The reason why doubts still persist regarding the blast is because the authorities used flawed reasoning in drawing their conclusions.

Immediately after the blast, there were rumors that it was a terrorist bombing. There were also speculations that the blast was a result of a gas explosion. It is evident that from the very beginning, the authorities were only looking at two possibilities: either a bomb or a gas explosion. And so, when a bomb was ruled out as the cause, it had to be a gas explosion. And that was very much the way the authorities supported their findings.

The trouble with the finding that a gas explosion was the source of the blast is that so many things are still left unaccounted for. The most glaring gap in the findings is an explanation for the absence of any burn patterns resulting from a gas explosion. Another issue left unexplained is how, assuming that there was a primary methane gas explosion, the primary explosion was able to ignite diesel, which is not volatile, in a closed tank.

It seems that the main assumption that there are only two possible causes of the explosion is flawed. There is also such a thing called chemical explosion where two or more chemicals react violently when mixed that they cause an explosion without necessarily causing fire. I vividly remember that Glorietta 2 housed barbershops and styling salons. These establishments regularly use hydrogen peroxide and ammonia in diluted form. It is not unlikely for these establishments to pour excess chemicals down the drain on a regular basis. In concentrated for, hydrogen peroxide and ammonia can be very volatile and explosive. It may be unlikely that these chemicals mixed and accumulated to a critical level and exploded but such scenario is within the realm of possibility that should have been explored. A chemical explosion would certainly explain the absence of any burn pattern in the scene.

A Growing, Festering Cancer

The Supreme Court resolution regarding the investigation by the special panel on the briber scandal in the Court of Appeals case regarding the controversy involving MERALCO and the GSIS came out on yesterday, September 9, 2008. The Supreme Court removed Vicente Roxas from the Court of Appeals, suspended Jose Sabio for two months, severely reprimanded Presiding Justice Conrado Vasquez, reprimanded and admonished three other justices who were part of the controversy, recommended the institution of disbarment proceedings against PCGG chairman Camilo Sabio and for the Justice Department to study the criminal charges that may be filed against businessman Francis De Borja.

In a way, it may be said that a cancerous growth has been removed from the judiciary but continuing on this analogy, more needs to be done. As anyone who had cancer or knows someone who did, removing a cancerous growth is only the first step. First, one must make sure that all the cancerous growth have been removed. Then there is also a need to determine if there are other cancerous growths elsewhere. If so, those have to be treated as well.

On the issue of whether or not the all the cancerous cells have been removed, most people are of the belief that that is not the case. Only one of the justices of the five who have been found to have varying degrees of culpability have been removed from his position. We are talking here of the Court of Appeals, the second highest court in the land. While negligence or ignorance of the rules and procedures may me excusable in lower courts, we require a higher standard of behavior, if not ethics, of the higher courts. All this talk about members of the judiciary being like Caesar's wife is not idle talk. At least it should not be. Not only must judges be pure, they must also appear to be pure, just like Caesar's wife.

Jose Sabio entertained, or at least did not shun attempts to influence his decision, a clear violation of the Code of Judicial Conduct. Worse, he thought there was nothing wrong with his brother calling him and trying to convince him to rule one way as he did not allow himself to be influenced. I do not believe it is ignorance that led him to believe this. Even a first year law student would know that such behavior is unacceptable. Hell, any person with some sense of decency and fair play would find such actuations contrary to everyday, run-of-the-mill rules of fair play. It was possibly hubris, thinking that the standards set out in the Code of Judicial Conduct were open to one's interpretation.

The other justices who were found wanting also got off easy, to the detriment of the judiciary. It bears reiterating that the Court of Appeals is second only to the Supreme Court as the highest judicial authority in the land. It is already unconscionable that justices with malice in their hearts or mush in their heads have reached this high in the judiciary, it would be much worse that after finding out who these are, they are merely given slaps on the wrists. Any case that would later on come before these erring justices would be tainted with suspicion. And suspicion has a funny way of rubbing off on those around it. Second chances are good but with the integrity of our judicial system at stake, let these justices get their second chances somewhere else.

The Supreme Court should take this opportunity to do a major housecleaning in the Court of Appeals and elsewhere in the judicial branch. How likely is it that all the bad eggs in the Court of Appeals found their way to just one division? Not very likely. Rumors of impropriety reek around labor cases so the the Supreme Court may start with the Court of Appeals division handling labor case, down to the National Labor Relations Commission and the labor arbiters. The Supreme Court might as well extend the housecleaning down to the rank and file like clerks of court and sheriffs who seem to be much well off financially than the officers of the court that they serve.

Unfortunately, if history is any indication, the Supreme Court would just rule that the matter of corruption has been resolved as in two previous occasions when members of the Court of Appeals have been dismissed. We'd then be clamoring again for a clean-up of the judiciary once another scandal erupts in the judiciary.