USA: The Day of the Jackals

The downgrade of US debt should give hope to Filipinos in a roundabout way. When the most successful economic power of the past two centuries bites the economic dust because it bites itself in the ass, then Filipinos can look at their own political arena and say, quite accurately, our economy may be looking up from near the bottom, but "at least our leadership is not that dysfunctional."

Bankers and other lenders learn from the outset of the four "C's" that determine whether or not a loan should be made:

• Capital: is the base of wealth sound for the size of loan being considered?
• Collateral: are there hard assets to back up the loan?
• Character: is management capable of running the business and assuring payback?
• Capacity: is the company generating enough cash to pay down the debt?

S&P knocked the US down one rating for two reasons: 1) questionable capacity to pay a debt that is relentlessly increasing as a share of GDP, and 2) questionable character, in the form of acrimonious leadership that pushed the nation to the financial brink.

These are legitimate reasons for knocking down the debt. The first is analytic, factual, numerical. The second is right there in plain sight, on the television.

So how dense are American leaders? Only one has evidently gotten the point and remained publicly silent, President Obama. The day after, the rest of the bozos are out being acrimonious and proving S&P's point.  (From: Associated Press)

GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney: "America's creditworthiness just became the latest casualty in President Obama's failed record of leadership."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:  it "reaffirms the need for a balanced approach to deficit reduction" including not just spending cuts but higher revenues from ending tax breaks for big corporations and the rich.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio:  the downgrade "is the latest consequence of the out-of-control spending that has taken place in Washington for decades."

 California Democratic Rep. George Miller: "reckless extortionist legislative strategy" by the GOP.

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and presidential aspirant: "What we should be talking about is downgrading Barack Obama from president of the United States."

Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn, presidential aspirant: called for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's ouster.

Associated Press: By contrast, Obama was conspicuously silent. And administration officials who were scathing in private about the S&P move declined to be quoted on the record.

Now it may be simple luck, or it may be electoral wisdom, but the Philippine legislature and the President are pretty much in sync as to what needs to be worked on. A constitutional convention is not a priority. Passing laws that bring the nation into the modern world is: ending corruption, women's rights (HR, divorce), child abuse. Managing fiscal matters is within the hands of the President, not a bickering set of political warlords and presidential aspirants.

Oh, yes, Former President Arroyo's greedy self-dealing cronies are complaining that their pork has been delayed, so there is enough acrimony to keep the country balanced and safe from complete dominance. But at least the government is reputable, above board, earnestly working on behalf of the people.

US politicians are working for themselves.

The jackals are running wild. Baying into the wind and now caught by S&P, on camera, rolling in their own dung.

The American Dumb Bell

Did your formal education ever lead you into the dark realm of statistics? It is a horrid place to venture, full of monsters and T-tests, probabilities and snakes.

My undergrad statistics teacher was a skinny buck-toothed Japanese man who could barely speak English. He would write rapidly with his right hand whilst talking gibberish at the blackboard and using his left hand to erase what he had just written. My head was either swimming or sleeping.  I eked out a "C" in that class, mediocre in American grading lexicon.  I should have known at that point to switch my major from mathematics to  business. Or ROTC . . .

My post-graduate statistics teacher was a handsome young married professor who was busy bonging coeds on the side. He was always happy and gave out good grades whether they were deserved or not.

Normal Curve

One of the fundamental concepts in statistics is that of the bell curve, which describes a statistical mountain where the foothills on either side tend toward the extremes and the big hill in the middle holds something like 68% of the population. They are declared pretty much normal.

Now if you have witnessed the horrors of the debate about debt in the US, you recognize that the extremes have asserted themselves. The left and the right scream bloody murder about the issues, their views entrenched in concrete, totally disrespectful of any other view. The middle gets smaller. And compromise gets impossible. Intolerance rises.

The US bell curve has assumed the shape of a dumb bell.

Contributing to the polarization is the internet where every private citizen is a reporter, analyst and an activist under one hat, plastering 141 characters of personal perspective across the internet for lots of people to read. For sake of popularity and personal esteem, people have a tendency to either agree or disagree, black and white, the barrage of unbending opinion pushing people farther and farther apart. It is a grim political place, this USA. A place devoid of the kindness of diplomacy and pride in concession for the greater good.

Dumb Bell Curve

It would be appropriate to remove the Latin slogan "e pluribus unum" from US currency and replace it with "to each his own".

Now the Philippine bell curve is rather shaped like a pear, on its side. It is weighted to the end that has self-interest as its driving force. Not some nationalistic idea of republican (state's rights) or democratic (strong central government). Not a  "left" or "right" distinction, big government versus small government. Philippine political animals are pretty much all the same. They are all rich and connected or in bed with the rich and connected.  The poles of this abnormal curve are how much people work for self advantage, versus how much they work for others  - - - for the community and the nation and the public good.  

Under President Arroyo, the pear definitely got bigger at the big end.

President Aquino may actually be flattening the pear. His anti-corruption drive is producing offshoot values that bring public service back to the forefront of government jobs. He ripped one of his overseas ambassadors for not knowing how many Filipinos were in-country. He said:

“You will take the responsibility, you like the perks but when you have to be depended on, why is it like that? You don’t care,”

His appointments are appointed to do a job. They are not appointed as rewards for favors granted or received. I think people who thrive on the star power of bus massacres or fist-shaking at China miss the fundamental shift taking place in the values that anchor the nation.

Public service is back at the forefront.

The jobs are getting done.  Fiscally upside down projects are being cancelled. Laws promoting social good are being passed. Anti-corruption cases are being pursued in every venue. Dialogue is taking place with other Asian countries. A line has been drawn in the sand on the Spratleys. Investors are piling money into the Philippines.

It's a new ball game.

And it is refreshing.

And God said, "it is just a joke, man!"

One of the huge challenges facing the Philippines is infrastructure. No, not the kind you invest in to build. The kind God laid out in the form of so many islands that no one will ever visit them all. Okay, some are occupied mainly by sea birds and turtles, but many are peopled.

Mindanao is a big one, but so poor and chopped up by mountains that it is irrelevant as a union. It is relevant as a disunion, with Muslims and Catholics at each others' throats, the mountain forests infested with protection-racket gangsters who paste over their essential criminal acts with the whitewash of political indignation, and tourists who skulk from place to place wondering when the next kidnapping or beheading will occur. Terrorists are backed by foreign interests, which no one cares about, but the army is backed by a big foreign interest, and people are outraged at the meddling. The island does not have enough electricity and can't figure out how to get what there is from the north to the south. It's chief city, Davao, is run by a mayor who presumes the righteousness of Matt Dillon and Wyatt Earp, but runs his posse like Black Bart, shooting first and never getting around to asking questions. The US warns its citizens to keep away from Mindanao. Fo sure.

Luzon is also big. It is rather shaped like Benigno's brain, but has only half his intellect. I mean, the largest megalopolis in the land, one of the most famous in the world, is run as 10 different cities, each with a czar and a different idea of how to prioritize things. It is government by apoplexy. The roads are a mass of sheet metal from 6:30 in the morning to 6:30 at night, with so much diesel exhaust laying over the city that the main color of most buildings is black. At least Cairo can claim that it's tint is a gift from God, sand, that gives that city its pastel tan shade from this side of the Nile to that. And that is about the only shade in town.

No one worries too much about earthquakes in Manila because the buildings are all tied together by meter-wide tangles of electric and phone lines that act much like the huge cables holding up the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Manilaites  gripe about the floods, but are actually quite relieved to have them sweep through now and then to wash all the trash, piss and doo doo out to sea. The place is clean for a week or two, and people march off to church to give thanks for the fresh air.

There is no island of Visaya that I am aware of, but a whole group of middle-sized and small islands make up a region called the Visayas where most people speak a different dialect than in Manila. So God also must have a sense of humor, figuring he could install a few towers of Babble in this place where people originally had to paddle to pay a visit. The towers he called volcanoes, and he put Pinatubo right where it could be the final nail in the coffin of US imperialist tendencies. To wit, it sent Clark AFB back to the ash age whilst giving Pampanga a huge revenue stream selling that sand to cement plants.

But I digress. Cebu is a part of the Visayas and has a bunch of US $250 a night resorts strung across the south beaches of Lapu Lapu island, sucking in that fine foreign revenue. The rest of the island is mountainous and congested and you have to go south to get north. I don't have $250 so I am unclear why in the world I would want to visit there, even though my small island is just a quick sail through the Straits of Leyte. The problem is that the sail is on one of those top-heavy ferries that tip over and sink now and then. Death is just the cost of getting around, I suppose. I refuse adamantly to pay that cost.

Smaller islands are a delight. They have their own economies that mysteriously import electricity and gasoline and construction stuff and food. Living is simpler and in my area there are no roving thugs or murderous religious types. There are religious types, for sure, but they are friendly, although I could do without the loud church bells at 4:30 in the morning and the tonal wailing that chimes in from a different sect(ion) of the town.

There are precious few desk jobs on small islands. There are a lot of sweat jobs. Rice workers, tricycle peddlers, weed whackers along the highways, construction laborers. Not many women work for a salary but struggle mightily to manage the 8 to 10 kids that seems mandatory for each family. They are raising little laborers, I suppose, although I have no idea where the work will come from. Or the rice that has to go into the screaming, hungry pie-holes. I'm sure the Catholic Church will come up with a solution, though . . . so what me worry?

I've been eyeing the boats hereabouts. The motored fishing boats are pretty much what you will find throughout the Philippines. Bamboo outrigger stabilizers, lawn-motor engine. The captain is maybe age 14 and he is helped by his kid sister or brother. Adults go out when there is dynamite to throw. That is a nighttime recreation. But there are also fleets of larger outriggers. They have a real diesel motor, and those toting passengers have a tent-like seating area toward the bow that holds maybe 20 people.

I figure I can rig one of those babies up for inter-island pleasure cruises and the wife and kid and I can start to explore some of the tiny islands that dot the West Philippine Sea. We'll hire a captain and crewman and cook, bring along the kid's nana, stow several cases of San Mig below for ballast, and have a really rich time.  I'll see if a fish-finding radar works for the evening meal.

Not during June through September, though.

God also made typhoons and placed the Philippines smack in the middle of the main thoroughfare.

I tell you, da Great Man has a sense of humor. Volcanic islands in the middle of Typhoon Alley. With snakes, too, ala Adam and Eve. The apples have to be imported from Japan, though.

But hey . . . there has to be a great punch line in there somewhere.

Crap d'etat

I spend a period of time in the morning and a period of time in the evening attending to blog comments, generally on three sites:

Get Real Post

The Pro Pinoy Project

The Society of Honor by Joe America

I visit the Anti-Pinoy site from time to time to see if BongV is still there. He is, and so I don't comment. There are agendas on the table and agendas under the table and I don't like skating on a lake of ice I don't trust.

Get Real Post and the Pro Pinoy Project are polarized spin-offs of the former contributors to Filipino Voices.  FV was a reasonably apolitical forum welcoming commentary from all perspectives. Three FV writers, BongV, Benigno and BenK, departed FV mainly  because FV moderated their comments. They set up the Anti Pinoy site and went on the attack, against vacuuous Filipinos, against FV, against presidential candidate Aquino, and against "censorship", which is how they characterized FV's editorial policy.

FV floundered some months later due to lack of a steady sponsor and editor. At about that time, the Pro Pinoy Project was started by FV blogger and short-term FV editor Cocoy as an apolitical news and blogging site. However it retains a pro-Aquino, or, maybe more precisely, a pro-Philippines perspective, and therefore is opposite in view and tenor from Get Real . A regular contributor, Manuelbuencamino (MB), avidly defends the President. But the Cusp (Doy Santos)provides commentary that is not shy of being critical of President Aquino's economic policies.  So there is some argumentative balance . . . and not a lot of name-calling. Although MB can get a tad snippy.

AP appears to have had a falling out, too, for reasons I don't know or care about, so Benigno left that site and simultaneously originated Get Real Post. He was joined by Ilda, and now BenK seems to be getting involved. Interestingly, AP now moderates, as does Get Real Post. So I guess the founders of AP have abandoned their once holier-than-thou view on "censorship"; one wonders how much other superficial bluster resides on Get Real Post. Get Real Post does not include any blog-writers who present an alternative view to the anti-Aquino chants found there.

Here is my take on some specific bloggers. Please understand that they are just my impressions alone and may not reflect the whole of the man or woman.

Benigno: A master wordsmith and brilliant thinker. I know of no other writer who can cut through the meaningless chaff so precisely to get to the principles that are at the root of the act or behavior being examined. One must think to grasp what he is saying, and, accordingly, I learn more from him than any other blogger. I fail to understand how he can be so one-way against President Aquino, for I see layers of cultural and governmental complexity surrounding and underpinning the President that make simple dismissal rather too easy.

BenK: I appreciate his perspectives because he is my brother import and faces many of the cultural rubs that aggravate me. He is much more knowledgeable about activities in the Philippines than I am, as I mostly float around the edges offering up wordful slants on things. Even making up words to do it. BenK also teaches me a lot because we differ on some points of view and he keeps me humble. Yet we each never need to insult the other.

Ilda: She and I are oil and water. She drives me nuts, accusing me of this and that whilst engaging precisely in those same activities.  She is smart and writes well, but does not push me to much new knowledge.  She thinks I am biased against women.  She is certain there has to be a reason other than her views and style that would cause someone to criticize what she says.

Cocoy: A really good guy. Sound writer. Overly sensitive. Well informed. Productive. I like him.

Manuelbuencamino: I like "MB" because he is, I think, Irish at heart. He loves a good argument and can fire up defense of President Aquino like a pro. Well, he is a professional writer, so he has skills. He also has a sense of humor and can whip up a fine satire. He keeps me balanced against the onslaught I receive at the Get Real site when I support (not defend) President Aquino. There is a difference. I can rely on MB to have an intelligent perspective that is unwaveringly pro-Aquino.  

The Cusp (Doy Santos):  It is educational to read of Philippine economics from someone who actually understands it. Doy shoots straight and stays on the point. His blogs are impeccably meaningful because he both writes well and  picks good subjects. Also, he does not descend into personal insults. President Aquino is not his favorite, one can conclude, so it is a good read to observe Doy and MB spar.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Joe America: I write to learn, to play with words and to keep my balance in a very different culture. Like most people, I make my mistakes.

Bencard, Primer, Dean, UPn, JCC, PDQ and all the other missing former contributors to Filipino Voices.  I fear these remnant sites miss your perspectives. It is a problem finding a balance of views in the modern era of the easy distortion, the sound bite or blog deceit. Quick hit writing pushes opposing views into increasingly defensive, unreachable positions. Like we see in the US political arena. Neither Get Real Post nor the Pro-Pinoy Project have yet achieved the richness of dialogue, or balance of opposite thinking, that was available on FV.

Ye Olde Conclusion: Get Real Post preaches well to itself. It is AP Junior, and my original view that this was a cerebral site have been shaken. The tenor of the site reminds me of how the US has gotten so polarized. Views that are aligned with the authors are praised and the rest are bludgeoned. This tends to produce a site of like thinkers with well-cemented views.

Pro Pinoy does not wield such a heavy hand. Discussions are more varied and more civil, but the site has not yet achieved the variety of articles or richness of debate that was once found on FV. It is heavily into "tweet" posts, so the articles often miss the depth of discussion that I personally prefer. Still, one can find meaningful debate there, and there aren't as many juveniles hanging about trying to prove their manhood by diminishing others.

Of interest, each site - including AP - is a clan unto itself, reflecting the Filipino style of antagonism toward any who would be critical.  Pro-Pinoy has a shot at becoming a balanced site if it does not drown its readers in information, forestalling deep debate.

"Put a sock in it!"

My young son, age two years 9 months, has a way with words. I got exasperated with him the other day as he yammered at the top of his lungs while I was trying to watch the news about that messy US congressional argument about  the debt.

"JoeJr, put a sock in it!" I exclaimed. "You're too noisy."

Yes, you guessed it. Later that evening the little lady and I were going round and round about this or that, as we are inclined to do when trying to figure out what color to paint the master bedroom. Firing forth from a living room strewn with blocks and books and toy trucks was the impeccably clear instruction:

"Daddy, put a sock in it!"

I don't know how he does that, sucking words into his brain without even studying them. And spitting them out again in perfect context. He knows more Visayan than I do. He is chasing my wife for knowledge and better pronunciation of English. I blame my wife for the kid's total recall because my own brain can't remember anything unless I write it down and try to trap it within the old cranial bucket. Perhaps the bucket is overflowing from its abundance of use this past half-century, and assumes a warped iteration of that old LIFO inventory accounting method: Last in, first out.

Well, actually, I blame myself for the contextual prowess of the Kid. As an old colleague of mine at the Bank slurred in one of our drunken senior management conferences, "Ghjoe, you will go a long way. You . . . (hic) . . . haveth 'bility to see 'round cornerth."

Yes, that is true. I cut my cloth at a different angle, which worked fine until the Japanese bought the Bank. They cut their cloth straight and true, and eventually shoved me into an office with a view from which I ambled down to the Athletic Club at lunch to play basketball for two hours. Before and after I would practice my straight thinking and continued to make millions for the Bank, stirring up as little conceptual trouble as I could.

I have the same problem in the Philippines. Everyone here, from my wife to the President to the voluble  Senator Santiago to that wit of nits, Ilda, think transactionally. Context is not a creature they grasp. That is why my wife will not allow purple streaks across our green bedroom wall, there is no clear articulation by the President of a vision and path to wealth, Senator Santiago cries "the humiliation, the humiliation" regarding the VFA but shuts up when China rattles its dragon-hilted sabers, and Get Real's Ilda does not understand that a Rorschach test is something other than a smear of ink on paper.

The US is not peachy keen in the cranial realm, either. A giant dumbing down of the population is taking place as well-schooled people succumb to the manipulations of deceitful sound bites, twits and news shows built to titillate, provoke and amuse rather than inform.

For the sake of ratings, a nation was lost.

But that is not the point of this article. The point of this article is child neglect in the Philippines. Nay, it is abuse, not neglect. It occurs on a scale so massive as to shock the (bent) (western) mind.

The Philippines populates its unwealthy economy with so many babies that the kids end up being nothing more than mouths on a teat. Empty heads of little opportunity, of little promise. I told my wife, as her mother kept her young half-brothers out of school two days running because of the rain, "better get them limbered up to climb coconut trees, because that is their future."

How many books do you figure litter the floors of the houses in squatter's villages?

Even in normal public schools attended by the working class, how much exercise for the brain do you think a child gets when crammed into a classroom of 50 kids taught by a woman of mediocre skill who associates learning with rote parroting back of what she has said? How does any kid grow a conceptual mind if he is rewarded for spitting back the simplistic and unimaginative answers he is given?

How do you get to vision and deductive reach and  innovation when the mind is trained to obey and act the parrot?

It is a shame. My kid has advantages that huge numbers of Filipino kids simply do not have. He has a book in his hand every day. He's had the alphabet and numbers charts above his bed since he was six months old. His first word after "milk" and "mama" was "Pleaky", the cartoon character representing "P".

The differences in opportunity can easily be enumerated. 1) He is an only child so he gets a lot of attention from his parents. 2) He was not brought aboard to be one of a dozen young laborers expected to work on behalf of the family, but to go forth and exceed his parents in brainpower and accomplishment and, yes, wealth. 3) He already grasps the joy of learning; his mind is a vacuum cleaner of knowledge. 4) He has resources . . . books and soon a computer . . . and his parents feel no shame if he looks a lot like a "Librarian" strutting about with a book under his arm.

People talk about the resources of the Philippines, its physical beauty and its minerals and its rich seas. But the Nation's most abundant resource goes tragically wasted. The minds of the kids, left to hold nothing where brilliance and opportunity could reside.

Talk about a nation not skilled at caring . . .

Catholic, baby. Really, really Catholic.

If you want solutions instead of JoeAm's griping, try this on for size: (1) Make education completely free (no exam fees or mandatory uniforms), (2) Pay teachers a lot more and add some well-stocked libraries, and (3) fund this with marked-up property taxes that end the joke assessments and the cheating that now exist. Make kids a higher priority than those rich landed folk  who claim preferential status down at city hall.