RH Bill one of top 12 priority bills – malacanang

all this talk on the RH Bill being important to the aquino administration is a good thing, i hope.   let’s see if this congress is able to pass the RH Bill.

RH one of Aquino’s 12 priority bills for Congress’ approval

By Christine O. Avendaño, TJ Burgonio
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:41:00 01/20/2011
MANILA, Philippines—The reproductive health bill is one of 12 priority bills that President Benigno Aquino III will be presenting to Congress for approval this year.

Mr. Aquino Wednesday said that the reproductive health bill, which he prefers to call the “responsible parenthood” bill, was one of the measures that he discussed with the Cabinet at a seven-hour meeting on Tuesday to firm up the administration’s legislative agenda for presentation to congressional leaders at the end of the month.

He said he wanted the features of the reproductive health bill to include the provisions agreed earlier between the Palace and the Catholic Church, such as one that says that information on family planning methods will not be forced on people and that “there will be sanctions if this was done.”

“And maybe we might also set up natural family planning centers, apart from the other methods to be done by the Department of Health,” Mr. Aquino told reporters.

read in full here: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20110120-315485/RH-one-of-Aquinos-12-priority-bills-for-Congress-approval

aquino admin – hunger on the rise again

poverty is an endemic problem in the country and one that many previous administrations tried to fix but failed. that apparently includes the current aquino administration.

the aquino admin likes to say they are pro-poor and are dead serious in alleviating poverty. this survey results tell us the aquino admin better get their programs in place and running and hopefully effective.

but that will be asking too much. unfortunately the next quarterly survey of SWS on hunger will probably be even worst than this for the following reasons:

• toll fees are on the rise
• public transport fares (bus, jeepney, train, taxi) on the rise
• NFA rice has been increased
• bread prices on the rise
• gas prices are rising (always)
• power costs increasing
• jobs still hard to find
• US$ depreciating – remittances will get hit

the above will surely boost inflation and with not enough new jobs around, incomes will continue to be scarce and hunger will rise even more.

 

 

Hunger again rising

Yearend SWS survey estimates 3.4M families affected

HUNGER HAS GONE UP among Filipino families after declining for most of last year even as the number of households that consider themselves mahirap or poor basically stayed the same, a new Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey found.

A Nov. 27-30 SWS poll, the results of which were made exclusive to BusinessWorld, had 18.1% of the respondents — or an estimated 3.4 million families — claiming to have gone hungry in the last three months because they lacked anything to eat.

This was up from the 2010 low of 15.9% (3.0 million families) recorded last September and — given the 21.2% in March and 21.1% in June — was slightly below the 19.1% average for the year.

It was also four points over the 12-year average of 13.7%, the SWS noted, but still far from the record high of 24% hit in December 2009. The record low is 7.4%, hit in March 2004.

Some 9.2 million families or 49% of the respondents, meanwhile, considered themselves poor, barely changed from September’s 48%. Over a third — 36% or an estimated 6.7 million households — considered themselves food-poor, down from 38% previously.

Government officials blamed higher food prices in the last quarter of 2010 and noted the need to deliver on promises to reduce poverty.

The rise in overall hunger, the SWS said, was due to a two-point increase in moderate hunger — experiencing it “only once” or “a few times” in the last three months — to 15% or an estimated 2.8 million families. Those not stating their frequency of hunger are included in this category.

Severe hunger — experiencing it “often” or “always” — remained at 3.1% or 588,000 families.

Overall hunger rose in all areas except in the Visayas where it stayed at 15.3%. It increased by nearly four points in the Balance of Luzon to 18.3%, almost two points in Mindanao to 18% and a point in Metro Manila to 21.7%.

Moderate hunger was up in all geographical areas: to 16% from 13.3% in Mindanao, 14.7% from 12.3% in the Balance of Luzon, to 17.7% from 15.7% in Metro Manila and to 12.7% from 11.7% in the Visayas.

Severe hunger rose by over a point to 3.7% in the rest of Luzon but fell by an identical amount in Mindanao (2.0%) and the Visayas (2.7%). It fell by nearly a point in Metro Manila to 4.0%.

read in full here: http://www.bworld.com.ph/main/content.php?id=24243

noynoy aquino needs to learn to shut the fuck up

president noynoy aquino intends to tap the services of senator mar roxas and will probably give him the title of Secretary Of  Troubles whose primary role according to aquino is to be the “chief troubleshooter”.

we have nothing against mar roxas but we have something against president noynoy aquino on this latest development.

bottom line for us is that noynoy aquino needs to learn to shut up. not for good but for some time until everything is sorted out first, packaged properly and words chosen carefully.

this is our main beef –  in this statement of aquino, the president admits there is “trouble” in his cabinet. aquino’s words, not mine. not only that, there seem to be perpetual trouble in his cabinet that he needs to appoint someone to be   “chief troubleshooter” on a going basis.

of course no cabinet, no presidency or even any group is perfect. there will always be differences and yes, troubles.  troubles are  part of the psychology of groups but did aquino have to blurt it out to the public and did he have to say it in this way.

frankly, reading the article, we are having trouble understanding what aquino means.  it could just be an unfortunate choice of words, the word “trouble” in particular, not “chief”.  aquino gave the title “chief troubleshooter”  but in the explanation, aquino said “if something needs more intense attention,  I might task him to do that“.

while “something that needs intense attention” is not necessarily the same as “trouble”  or something troublesome, a “trouble” is always something  that needs “intense attention”. when trouble occurs in a group, intense specially, it needs immediate attention. a group or a cabinet that is troublesome  is never a good thing.

on the other hand, there can be things that need “intense attention” that are not necessarily troublesome. these things could just be of  high importance, not always high trouble.

so, what we are left here is that aquino just might have had trouble accessing a thesaurus and he made an unfortunate troublesome choice of words, the word “troubleshooter” and all he meant was “intense” or “important” projects. or it was a freudian slip unconsciously telegraphing to us that there is intense trouble in his administration?

the solution here is noynoy needs to learn to shut the fuck up.  not only does aquino talk too much, he talks too soon and he has trouble choosing the right words. aquino needs to understand the world of  country presidency is not the world of show business that his sister is involved in. in the presidency, bad press is not necessarily good press.  bad press means bad presidency.

in show business,  bad press or troublesome events in the life of the celebrity gets the celebrity press time and space. and in their world, that is a good thing.  you can dip your foot on mud but you can still remove it and clean it up over time.  your fans forget, and life goes on.

in the presidency, not only does something bad gets etched into your record of accomplishments  or record of troubles, it affects 94 million people and the next 2 million of filipinos added every year.

the other thing that bothers us is this – doesn’t aqiono have enough cabinet members  to perform the function of “troubleshooter of troubles” and “chief trouble shooter of intense sttention”?

a more telling thing – if it is trouble that needs to be fixed, shouldn’t he as president and  biggest dude in the country supposed to be the one to fix them? fixing troubles among cabinet members is one of the key components of  leadership, specially in this thing called president of a country.

if it is not him as president, isn’t that the job of his chief of staff or the executive secretary?

bottom line for us is this – there seem to be no good news on this one  no matter how you look at it. it’s all trouble from all angles. and it is intense.

mr. president. shut the fuck up!

2M/year added to philippine population, will reach 100M by 2014 – can the country afford it?

with a growth rate of 2.04%, the country adds 2M to the population every year. ithe population is expected to reach 96M this year and at the current rate, it will reach 100M as soon as 2014.

100M in the philippines is very hard to imagine but it will happen sooner than what we want it to be.

source: http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=644561&publicationSubCategoryId=63

by rank, the philippines has the 12th largest population in the world. bur the story should not end there. size of population per se is not a bad thing. we need to look at other things to see whether the size makes sense or not.

for sure, population growth rate matters.  growth rates show the number of people we add to the population given a specific cycle. it makes sense to conclude that from a population growth standpoint, the slower, the better. after all, we live in a finite world and that includes the philippines. the country has very defined boundaries, it is a finite space. we just can’t pile each person on top of the other when horizontal space runs out.

we should look at other things – one is nominal GDP.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population

This article includes a list of countries of the world sorted by their gross domestic product (GDP), the market value of all final goods and services from a nation in a given year. The GDP dollar estimates presented here are calculated at market or government official exchange rates.

Several economies which are not considered to be countries (world, the EU, Eurozone, and somedependent territories) are included in the list because they appear in the sources. These economies are not ranked in the charts here, but are listed.

The first list includes 2010 data¹ for members of the International Monetary Fund.

The second list shows the World Bank‘s 2009 estimates, and the third list includes mostly 2009 estimates from the CIA World Factbook.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)

a country is like a family – a family has a size, a specific number of people and it also has income. the family uses this income to support the family’s needs like food to feed it’s members, clothing,  medicine, rent, education, transportation and leisure plus other needs of the household.

the more income you have with the same family members the better. when the number of people in the family increase, then the amount of income needs to increase as well for the family to be able to maintain the same lifestyle and needs. that can be difficult for many families as it is not easy to increase income – one cannot  easily get a promotion or other members of the family take on new jobs or source of income.

“living  within your means” comes to mind as the smart thing to do.

family income is GDP to a country and population of a country is to family size to families. both have expenses.

common sense tells you and it is the smart thing, that since the philippines has the 12th largest population in the world, the country needs to have GDP or income that ranks also 12th in the world. the 12th most populous should have the 12th largest GDP in the world.

that is not the case.  here is the top 20 GDP ranking in the world.

source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)

okay, the philippines is not among the top 20 in the world in GDP, so maybe it is slighly lower, say to 40.  it is not ideal but at least it is close.

well, not true. the philippines GDP size is not even among the top 40.

the fact is in terms of GDP, the philippines ranks among the top 50 in the world, 47th largest to be specific.

the country has the 12th largest population in the world and yet it only has the 47th largest GDP in the world.

your conclusions and thoughts?