Filipino free marketer blogs

First, let me define what "free marketer" means. It refers to those who believe in the values of individual freedom, market competition and limited government.

Free market = free individuals. Markets are composed of individuals -- rich and poor, young and old, men and women, buyers and sellers, producers and consumers, traders and manufacturers, and so on. Thus, to free the market from unnecessary restriction, prohibitions and regulations, is to free the individuals.

I noticed recently the existence of some free marketer blogs by fellow Filipinos. Many of them are young, smart guys, in their 20s to 30s, much younger than me. I will enumerate them here.

(1) Prudent Investor Newsletter http://prudentinvestornewsletters.blogspot.com/

It is owned by a new friend, Benson Te. Benson writers on various topics, especially on finance. The blog's world ranking of blogs and websites based on alexa.com stats is 3.04+ million as of this writing. This is rather high and a good rank.

I have met Benson only about 3 weeks ago, during a meeting by a facebook group called "Filipinos for Ron Paul" with Atlas' Tom Palmer and Jude Blanchette.


(2) Colorful Rag: Philippine Society and Politics http://colorfulrag.blogspot.com//.

It is owned by another friend, Paul How, also from facebook group, "Filipinos for Ron Paul." Paul used to work at the Senate of the Philippines and is now on freelance writing and consulting. Paul did not provide a picture in his blog. His most recent postings are "Public franchises as slavery", "Fighting the greedy telcos", and "SONA writing tips from Noynoy's left and right idiot boxes."

Paul writes kilometric, a testament to his eloquent writing power. Check the blog to see for yourself.


(3) The Vincenton Post http://fvdb.wordpress.com/

Probably the hottest, most visited free marketer blog in the Philippines today, . As of this writing, its world ranking in alexa.com is 1.798+ million, a big jump from its last week's ranking of 2.25+ million.

It is owned by Froilan Vincent Bersamina, a young writer who is an avid reader of Ayn Rand and her Objectivism philosophy. His most controversial article is "To all UP students: education is NOT a right!" referring to students and alumni of the University of the Philippines (UP), a premier state university and also my alma mater. Posted last July 24, it has attracted 701 comments as of this writing -- this should be among the biggest number of comments for a single blog posting that I have seen.

His second most commented article, posted a day after, is "A challenge to my critics!" that attracted 88 comments and counter-comments.

I have not met Froilan personally yet, but he is one of my nearly 900 friends in facebook. In one of his fb status updates, he talked about the huge number of counter-comments and critics that he got from that posting and subsequent postings on the subject of education, rights and privileges. He should be the most hated free marketer thinker in this country from the statists and left-leaning individuals now.

His writing style of being direct and even combative is working well for him. Some left-leaning guys concede that while they disagree with his ideas and philosophy, they recognize that his arguments are solid.


(4) The New Resistance http://newresistance.blog.friendster.com/
and the New Commonwealth Herald http://www.newcommonwealth.org/

The owner of these two blogs is a friend but would not want his name to be mentioned. The first blog is not updated, the last posting there was November 2006, about Philippine education, from the Spanish colonial period to this century.


(5) Elevic Pernis -- The Road to Weirdom http://elevicpernis.com/

It's a new blog owned by Elevic Pernis, a new friend in facebook whom I have not met personally yet. Elevic started blogging only last June this year, and has posted a few articles yet, mostly on opposing greater subsidy to UP.

Elevic describes himself as "a Misesian, i.e. a student of Ludwig von Mises. I heed his injunction to participate in an intellectual battle against all forms of oppression that seek to destroy the individual."


(6) Professional Kibitzer: A Second Look at Everything http://professionalkibitzer.wordpress.com/

This is another new blog, new as in created only this month!

The owner of this blog is a good buddy in MG Thinkers, Robin Lucas. He's my VP there. Robin is probably 2 decades younger than me, he also came from UP, Manila campus. He was a former debater, being an official of the UP Debate Circle.

Robin's first article here is "The Tragedy of Land Reform." It's not exactly a new article, but that paper was posted in several other sites and blogs. Robin says he will upload more materials within the month.

Watch for it guys.


(7) Joven's Corner http://filipinogodlesscapitalist.blogspot.com/

Another newly-created blog this month. The owner, Joven Morales, describes himself as "A stuent of Objectivism."


(8) Perpetual Cycle of Life http://carlostapang.spaces.live.com/

It is owned by a new friend, Carlos Tapang. Carlos is an IT professional, worked and lived for 25 years in the US, went back to the Philippines, Cebu City, only last year, with his family. While in the US, he was one of the tens of thousands of individual donors and supporters of Cato institute (www.cato.org).

When Tom Palmer and Jude Blanchette of Atlas came to Manila last month, Carlos flew to Manila to join us and attend all of Tom's 4 talks in 1 1/2 days.

Carlos is setting up an IT company in Cebu to sell certain softwares for physicians in the country. He is fuming at the amount of bureaucracy and regulations that both local and national government agencies are giving to start-up entrepreneurs like him. Such experience was partly mentioned in his blog.
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I'm sure there are other Filipino free marketer bloggers out there, whether they are based in the country or based abroad. I will feature them here later once I find them.

I wish to see more free market groups, associations, think tanks and research institutes, publications, and blogs in this country. Competition among capitalist enterprises is healthy for all of them both in the short-term and long-term. The same way, competition among free marketer groups should be healthy for all of them. So long as differences in perspectives or approaches will be treated with respect. Ad hominem and related attacks when they criticize each other should be avoided.

Rising climate meetings vs falling global temperature

The Cancun (Mexico) Conference of Parties (COP) meeting is fast approaching this coming November. Like the failed COP meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009, the goal of the Cancun meeting is for governments to map out plans to "fight man-made global warming and climate change."

While those climate bureaucrats are talking about "unequivocal warming" and "soon vanishing polar ice and rising ocean", nature is showing how wrong they are.

As of July 29, the other day, global sea surface temperature (SST) as measured on NASA's aqua satellite, is falling deep and steep, much steeper than the 2008 global cooling and La Nina, especially for Nino 3.4 region of eastern Pacific.


source: http://www.drroyspencer.com/

Another way of looking at the changes in global climateis to see the SST anomaly or "deviation from the average".

Here, the blue color signifying SST anomaly (or colder than normal) of -1 to -2.5 C, even colder, is very clear in the southern hemisphere and south America. Date as of July 29, 2010 too.


source: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/30/frozen-tropics-as-la-nina-takes-hold/#more-22764

The climate negotiators or bureaucrats are meeting every two months, it seems. Last 2 meetings in April and June this year. Another meeting in August in Bonn, Germany. These are all preparatory meetings for the big global climate conference in Cancun. This is how big they are in Copenhagen last December.


source: http://unfccc.int/meetings/items/2654.php

Wildfires are scorching a portion of California and other parts of the US at this time. Lots of houses got burned, but dead and burned people is low, if any. In South America though, the cold snap has already killed 400+ people this month in Peru and Argentina alone.
(source: http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/07/26/cold-weather-proves-killer-in-parts-of-south-america/)

When bitter cold and severe winter or prolonged global cooling strikes, people would wish and pray that "man-made warming" is correct and real. For now, it remains a fiction that thousands of climate bureaucrats and carbon traders rake in multi-billion dollars racket every year.

Pol. Ideology 16: Liberalism and Social Opportunity

A friend asked me if there is anyone in the new administration of President Aquino who can include some of MG advocacies, while the situation is still "fluid".

I said that if politicians in the Liberal Party -- the ruling political party now -- really understand and appreciate the liberal philosophy, as in classic liberal, not US "liberal" or Pinoy liberal or the left's favorite sloganeering, "neo-liberal", then there is no need to "put" someone in the administration to remind the President to stick to the party's principles and ideology.

In brief:

A liberal is not and will never be a socialist nor ultra-nationalist. A liberal is a lover of economic and political liberalization, of diversity. A socialist and nationalist, on the other hand, is a lover of monopoly, of monotony.

I was actually disappointed how some Filipino liberal politicians would mouth socialist advocacies, like price control. Remember former Sen. Mar Roxas' drug price control moves last year. Or some moves by their partymates to support oil re-regulation legislation.

Now the President seems to be more liberal than most LP politicians and party-leaders. It's good. I don't remember the party advocating to drastically slash and reduce the endless business regulations that kill entrepreneurship for some, that discourage free market capitalism in the country. But the President explicitly and loudy advocated for it. That is why I wrote "The President's SONA 2010" about bureaucracies in business.

But more than "influencing" the administration, the bigger challenge for free marketers and believers of classic liberal philosophy, is influencing the public, in slugging out in public debates, the many socialists, millions of them in this country.

Who are these socialists, by the way? Most would not admit that they are socialist and communist, but their advocacies are 99 percent similar to the explicit socialists.

These are the people who think that "education is a right", "healthcare is a right", "housing is a right", "pension is a right", "agri credit is a right", "water is a right", "high paying job is a right", "unemployment allowance is a right".

For them, everything is a right, an entitlement from the state. For them, there is little or no room for personal and parental responsibility. Most or everything should be government responsibility.

My longer argument about this is posted below, "More statist than the state".

Another friend, Lardy, commented:

Only the government can create or promote an even-playing field for all citizens (including legal entities). It is not just my belief, but it is THE government's obligation to do so.

However, this obligation should not be misconstrued as 'enforcement of equality', which has tinge of socialism in it. Rather, I would expect that government ensures that everyone has an equal opportunity to do good in life, to pursue his happiness, etc.

Truth be told, the private sector, left to its devices, cannot create this equality of opportunity.

Lardy is right. There is one important function of government that I believe, and I would say that there should be BIG government in implementing it: to protect the citizens right to life, right to private property, and right to liberty and self expression.

The promulgation of the rule of law -- the law against killing and shooting, law against stealing and plunder, law against kidnapping and carnapping, law against censorship and harassment, etc. -- is a very important function of the government.

And for me, this is the single biggest function of government to ensure the equality of opportunity for all people.

Juan is a hard-working and ambitious person, even if he did not reach college. He is a mechanic by day time, and sells balut/chicharon/ peanuts in the evening, comes home late at night. It won't be long and Juan will become a start up formal entrepreneur, on his way to wealth and being rich. Government's job is to protect Juan and his family from street muggers, thieves, snatchers, "akyat-bahay" gangs, and protect his wife and daughter/s from rapists. Juan has great peace of mind, he works hard, his savings and investment is respected and protected by the state.

Pedro who is less hard-working but very articulate speaker and writer on "rights of citizens", also works to convince the state to confiscate more and more income and savings of Juan so that the state will have plenty of money to "fight poverty", along with the MDG soldiers of the UN.

If the state will stick to its primary function of protecting the citizens' right to life and right to private property, the state should not become an instrument for income confiscation and wealth redistribution.

All people should be encouraged to be hard-working and ambitious. For those less ambitious people, they should be encouraged to respect the wealth of other people, to be non-envious of the fruits of hard work of other people.

How about taking care of the really poor, those who became poor because of natural circumstances -- their community was wiped out by a strong flash flood or volcanic eruption or earthquake or tsunami. Or impoverished by a bitter and prolonged clan war or civil war.

Personally, I haven't heard of any very rich man/woman in this country or in the world, who is not involved in any charity organization or foundation. One reason is that there is deep happiness that those people feel and derive when they give away a part of their wealth voluntarily, without coercion by anybody. Another reason is that very rich people would be approached by their friends, acquaintances, former or current staff, to be involved in some charitable causes.

There is one "politically incorrect" outcome of free market capitalism though: high inequality among people. But such inequality and its growing gap is a prduct of endless potentials, endless ambition and high work efficiency, of some people. The super-efficient will soon become very very rich, and this widens their gap with the middle class and the poor.

Then there are certain groups of people who really have no ambition in life except to party and be happy everyday. They may work hard but they also party hard everyday, with little or negative savings. When emergencies emerge, they have no savings, so they borrow. Such initial indebtedness will soon become monster debt if they will not mend their ways.
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See also:

Pol. Ideology 10: Joe Stiglitz and the Market, December 16, 2008

Pol. Ideology 11: Liberalism, Democratism & Authoritarianism, January 04, 2009

Pol. Ideology 12: Lao Tzu, Cooperative Individualism, February 07, 2009

Pol. Ideology 13: Liberty and Liberty Forum, the LP, March 19, 2009
Pol. Ideology 14: Liberalism and Democratism, January 18, 2010
Pol. Ideology 15: Socialism, Conservatism and Liberalism, March 08, 2010

They're all socialists in India

A good friend from Delhi, Barun Mitra (leftmost in this picture, taken last May 2010 in Chicago during the Heartland 4th ICCC) founder and Director of a free market think tank in Delhi, Liberty Institute (www.indefenceofliberty.org), wrote a new article in the WSJ, "We're All (Still) Socialists in India."

Barun writes well, and this article speaks of that talent. Barun says that:

"all Indian politicians are—officially—socialists. That's not a typo. During the height of Indira Gandhi's Emergency Rule in 1976, policy makers passed the 42nd Amendment to the Constitution, which added the words "socialist" and "secular" to the preamble. Then in 1989, the Representation of People Act, the law which governs elections and political parties, was amended to make it mandatory for all political parties seeking registration with the Election Commission to affirm not only the general constitution but also socialism. Since then all political parties have sworn to socialism without any hesitation, without bothering to define what it means."

The full article can be found here.
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We're All (Still) Socialists in India
An attempt to strip the word from the constitution is far more important than semantics.

By BARUN S. MITRA

The Wall Street Journal
JULY 27, 2010
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703977004575392521877896304.html
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I commented to him through our email discussion list, that perhaps the long-term action needed is an amendment to the Indian Constitution that will remove the word "socialist" and related connotations. But that itself will be a big political battle.

It's like the Philippine Constitution, revised in 1987. So many professions -- physicians, nurses, dentists, accountants, lawyers, advertising, engineering, architecture, etc. -- are reserved only for Filipinos. But the Philippines has thousands of physicians, nurses, accountants, managers, engineers, moving abroad to practice their profession. And there is no Constitutional or legal ban in the many countries that they are working now. Clear double standard and hypocrisy in that provision of the Philippine constitution.

While free market-oriented guys and institutes like Barun do their work, it is time and development in other parts of the world, especially in East Asia (China, Japan, HK, etc.) that will be their greatest ally. There should be growing realization that liberalizing the economy and politics is the long-term solution to poverty and underdevelopment.

Back to the Philippines, there is high optimism in the country now with the election and pronunciation of the new Liberral President. He promise to significantly reduce the number of procedures, the number of requirements and pages, for business registration. Some huge ticket infrastructure projects (naval development, another expressway) are being pronposed with 100 percent private funding, via the built-operate-transfer (BOT) and related schemes.

If there will be significant entry of foreign investors into the PHilippines again, the rest of Asia like India, will notice that. And they will be encouraged to follow suit. Legal and constitutional restrictions like reference to socialism will be slowly checked and reviewed.

There are lots of US, European and Japanese investors that are on the look-out where they can jump ship, as the volume of taxes and new regulations in those countries keep rising, not declining. Asia should be the top destination.

Another friend from Beijing added that in China, they write "under the leadership of the CCP Party", in compliance with four principles "Socialism, Party Leadership, Marxism and dictatorship of the proletariat" provided by the Constitution of China.

So note there: the two biggest countries in the world with a combined population of about 2.5 billion people, are explicitly "socialist" based on their constitutions. It is important, therefore, that such coercion in the constitution will not be strictly followed as it is entrepreneurship and capitalism that provides the economic dynamism that allows the two countries to grow economically and provide jobs to their more than a billion workers, managers and entrepreneurs.

State ownership of the rains

In some US states like Utah and Colorado, they have laws saying that rainwater falling on your roof is not yours to collect for your household needs. It belongs to the state. This is not fiction, it is true. See here,
http://www.naturalnews.com/029286_rainwater_collection_water.html

I was supposed to laugh at this rather weird law, but then a member of one of my discussion groups pointed out that the Philippines also has a law on state ownership of all waters, including atmospheric water. According to him, this is Presidential Decree (PD) No. 1065 or the Water Code of the Philippines. It provides that "rainwater falling on private lands belong to the state but any person who captures or collects water by means of cisterns, tanks, or pools shall have exclusive control over such water and the right to dispose of the same."

So the State has taken over ownership and control of what nature gives to people. But at least in the Philippines, the government has not taxed people yet if they collect rainwater for their personal and household purposes.

It is the concept of "dominium" from the Roman civilization, that State dominion over natural resources -- the rain, the ocean, the land, and minerals under the surface, under seabed -- is assured.

The Regalian doctrine states that all lands belong to the State. This applies to all public forest land, government land, land below rivers, lakes and seas. There are lands that have been declared alienable and disposable (A&D land) by the state, and these have been titled under private individuals, private corporations and associations and other private entities. But owners of such land have to pay "rent" to the government, the local governments, in the form of real property tax (RPT). Failure to pay the tax plus penalties for several years will prompt a local government (city, municipality or province) to take possession and ownership of the land, and resell to other private entities or keep it as government property.

The State also owns all minerals under the surface. Thus, if there are precious minerals under one's house, say just six feet below, the State can force him out of his lot, after paying a token of compensation that he may not agree to, then the State can demolish his house so that it and its mining concessionaires can quarry and get the minerals.

On "water harvesting"

In my earlier paper, "Water deficit and alarmism surplus", I argued that the recent "water crisis" was more of an engineering problem and not a climate problem. El nino occurs every 3-5 years, it is not a surprising or unforseeable event, it occurs in cycle. Also, I mentioned that there were reports that the water regulatory agencies released water last December 2009 equivalent to 3 months water consumption of metro manila, leaving little water for the first half of 2010.

Magat Dam, picture taken from vistapinas.com.

I also mentioned in the article my observation of Japan, where one river system will have up to 7 dams to impound and store water. Lots of water to draw upon even during the driest season. Compare that with only 1 or 2 dam/s, if any, for the various river systems in the Philippines.

Someone made a highly impractical of encouraging, or mandating, every household in Metro Manila, to store rainwater in drums. He even computed the total cost:

(yy pesos cost of drum) x (no. of drums per household) x (no. of households in the metropolis) and assumed that the cost should be lower than building another dam.

If you have a big house, then you can put as many drums of water in your backyard or spacious kitchen, etc. But if you live in a 30 sqm (or smaller) condo unit or apartment, each sq.m of space is precious for household needs, not to put drums for water storage.

Also, when you store water in your backyard or kitchen, make sure it is 100% sealed at all times, otherwise you are hosting thousands of new mosquitoes right in your own house. Your house or your neighbor's houses will be a ground zero for dengue/malaria/ other mosquito-borne diseases.

It is really dangerous. If 99 percent of all households that practice water storage through drums will make sure that their drums are 100% sealed at all times, but there is 1% or 0.5% of households who are irresponsible enough to leave their drums unsealed even for just 5 minutes/day, those households will be the biggest ally of mosquitoes in spreading dengue, etc.

A cistern. Picture taken from wikipedia.

Rainwater harvesting at the community level, say several huge tanks to collect rainwater to serve a village is fine. There should be some professionals who will do that work and apply appropriate technologies to kill mosquitoes inside those tanks. They key is involvement or supervision by some professionals, and not just anybody should store water in drums.

Picture from http://www.oasisdesign.net/water/storage/

I speak with experience. One of our neighbors before, an old man, store water in 4 drums in front of his house, "sakali may sunog, di na tayo maghintay pa ng bombero." Sounds logical, but not too logical. We were wondering why the mosquitoes would never go away. When that old man left the apartment, we threw the water in his drums, and saw thousands of kiti-kiti, those tiny little submarines that will graduate to become mosquitoes in a matter of days.

Binga dam, picture taken from http://www.cityofpines.com/binga.html

My bet is still for the water companies to construct plenty of dams, small dams, in some rivers. Impound water at 700 meters elevation, another dam at 600 meters, another dam at 500 meters, another dam at 300 meters, another dam at 200 meters, and so on. Just one river and you have several dams to impound and store water.

Metro manila's population is growing by about 200-300,000 people/year. Plus 1 to 2 million who live in nearby provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, Rizal, Tarlac, Batangas, etc. who go to the metropolis daily or occasionally to work, study, do business, etc. The water companies can project the increase in demand and build the appropriate dams for long-term water storage, long-term solution.

Besides, if we stop believing the man-made warming religion and read on our own other scientific blogs and websites, we will realize that the appropriate term is climate cycle, natural climate cycle. Not climate change, much less man-made climate change. Global warming-cooling- warming-cooling. Medieval warm period (warming), little ice age (cooling), past century's warming (peaked in 1998), cooling this decade and the next few decades.

What to expect? more rains, more severe La Nina, more severe winter, with occasional drought and El Nino from time to time.

The President's SONA, 2010

The new President of the Republic of the Philippines, Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino, delivered this afternoon his first State of the Nation Address (SONA). He has been in power for only 4 weeks now.

The Address is long, I will only make a few comments on some of the points he discussed.

I really expected him to say something on reducing government bureaucracies for the entrepreneurs, the job creators, the capitalists, big and small. And I was not disappointed.

Towards the middle of his address, he said, referring to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and other government agencies like the BIR and SEC.

"Ang walang-katapusang pabalik-balik sa proseso ng pagrehistro ng pangalan ng kumpanya, na kada dalaw ay umaabot ng apat hanggang walong oras, ibababa na natin sa labinlimang minuto. Ang dating listahan ng tatlumpu't anim na dokumento, ibababa natin sa anim. Ang dating walong pahinang application form, ibababa natin sa isang pahina."

Translation: "The endless procedures in registering a business, which takes between four to eight hours per visit, we will reduce to 15 minutes. The old requirement of 36 documents, we will bring it down to six. The eight pages application form, we will reduce it to one page."

Bingo! Reduce the bureaucracies, reduce the number of signatures by government officials and bureaucrats, that alone will bring down corruption in the country.

Some guys though, considered the President's SONA as "elitist". They blasted it as pro-big business, and hence, worsening the inequality in Philippine society.

Consider this example. A group of OFWs with some savings wants to put up a micro-business, say a parlor or barber shop, or bake shop or internet shop or food shop. Various national and local government bureaucracies require them 3 to 4 dozens of different taxes and regulatory fees to pay every year, excluding the taxes and fees just to start a business. The President said this is wrong. The number of business regulations, the procedures in getting a business name, the number of pages of application forms, etc., should be drastically cut. Is this elitist?

I don’t think so. It is pro-small busines, it is pro-big business too. When there are lots of bakeshops, lots of internet shops, lots of parlor/barber shops, lots of food shops, lots of jobs will be created. When people have jobs, they tend to become independent of government. They do not easily run to politicians and government welfare offices, they have the resources to take care of themselves, their families, friends and relatives.

On health, the President devoted only two paragraphs in his address, and that is on expanding the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) coverage for the pooorest five million Filipino households. He said,

"Una, tutukuyin natin ang tunay na bilang ng mga nangangailangan nito. Sa ngayon, hindi magkakatugma ang datos. Sabi ng PhilHealth sa isang bibig, walumpu’t pitong porsyento na raw ang merong coverage. Sa kabilang bibig naman, singkuwenta’y tres porsyento naman. Ayon naman sa National Statistics Office, tatlumpu’t walong porsyento ang may coverage.

"Ngayon pa lang, kumikilos na si Secretary Dinky Soliman at ang DSWD upang ipatupad ang National Household Targetting System, na magtutukoy sa mga pamilyang higit na nagangailangan ng tulong. Tinatayang siyam na bilyon ang kailangan para mabigyan ng PhilHealth ang limang milyong pinakamaralitang pamilyang Pilipino."

Translation:

"First, we will identify the correct number of Filipinos who sorely need PhilHealth coverage, as current data is conflicting on this matter. On one hand, PhilHealth says that eighty-seven percent (87%) of Filipinos are covered, then lowers the number to only fifty-three percent (53%). On the other hand, the National Statistics Office says that only thirty-eight percent (38%) of Filipinos are covered by Philhealth.

"Even as we speak, Secretary Dinky Soliman and the Department of Social Welfare and Development are moving to implement the National Household Targeting System that will identify the families that most urgently need assistance. An estimated 9 billion pesos is needed in order to provide coverage for five million poor Filipinos."

There are three significant things to note here.

One, correct PhilHealth's exagerration of its actual coverage. I have written two papers in the past pointing out that PhilHealth was exagerrating the actual number of its beneficiaries. What PhilHealth does is to multiply each member (private employed, government employed, indigents, individually-paying, OFWs) by five. Thus, even a single, new college graduate with no dependent (no spouse, no kid, parents are either working and PhilHealth members too or parents are deceased or not working but below 60 yrs old, not qualified to be declared as dependent, etc.) is assumed by PhilHealth to have four dependents. This is lousy and simplistic math.

So what happened is that for the 1st quarter of 2009 for instance, total number of members excluding the "lifetime members" or the registered senior citizens who are not pensioners somewhere, was 16.35 million. But PhilHealth's count of the number of beneficiaires was 76.69 million, or about 85 percent of the total population of the country. Lazy and simplistic math, really.

To see further discussion about this number-magic by PhilHealth, check my paper,
"Health insurance and government failure" (presented in a health forum last August 17, 2009, 7 pages), http://www.minimalgovernment.net/media/mg_20090817.pdf

I sent this and another paper to some PhilHealth officials and I was wondering why they did not correct me when I said that their office is exagerrating its number of beneficiaries. Now it is the new President of the country who expresses disbelief in their numbers.

Two, no mention of the Department of Health (DOH) and drug price control policy, something that was among the highlights of the past President's last SONA a year ago. I hope that this is a signal that the President will soon abrogate Executive Order (E0) 821 by the past President imposing price control on certain medicines, starting mid-August 2009.

I have also written a number of papers why the drug price control policy is a failure in improving access of the poor to more life-saving and disease-killer drugs, all posted in the MG website, www.minimalgovernment.net.

And three, there is bigger role for the national government in providing healthcare for the poor. Before, the local government units (LGUs) need to put up a counterpart fund in financing the healthcare coverage of the really poor. Lots of problems encountered in that scheme as some poor LGUs cannot put up the counterpart fund. So the next tack of the national government is to solely shoulder the cost of healthcare of the really poor. Now they are targetting some five million households, roughly about 25 million individuals, to be covered by PhilHealth.

Further nationalization of the service is not a wise move. There is a new development in UK's healthcare where the UK government will decentralize its socialized and nationalized healthcare system, as reported in this story.
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Britain Plans to Decentralize Health Care
By SARAH LYALL
Published: July 24, 2010

LONDON — Perhaps the only consistent thing about Britain’s socialized health care system is that it is in a perpetual state of flux, its structure constantly changing as governments search for the elusive formula that will deliver the best care for the cheapest price while costs and demand escalate....

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/world/europe/25britain.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=global-home
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Of course decentralization does not mean privatization. It only means to transfer the function of healthcare delivery from the national government to the local governments. There is realization that too much bureaucracy at the national level impedes health delivery to the public.

Finally, my position on healthcare is that it is first and foremost, a personal and parental responsibility, not government responsibility. Government role is most needed in limited cases like the spread of infectious diseases.

People should not drink and drink, smoke and smoke, eat and eat, and when their internal organs are dilapidated by such vices or their blood vessels are choked by fat, they just run to the government to demand that "health is a right." Parents and guardians should also teach their kids to wash their hands well before they eat, or to keep their house and surrounding clean so that the rats and cockroaches will not hold daily and nightly general assembly in their place.

"Water crisis" was never a crisis

A friend posted in one of my discussion yahoogroups,

"From the New York Times (David Leonhardt, 20 July 2010):

'According to NASA, 2010 is on course to be the planet’s hottest year since records started in 1880. The current top 10, in descending order, are: 2005, 2007, 2009, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2004, 2001 and 2008.'

That's a whole decade of hotness in there."

I commented that NASA's GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies), the department under NASA that generates this kind of study, along with the IPCC, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Al Gore, other groups (Greenpeace, WWF, etc.) would love to (a) use 1880 or 1850 as starting period, (b) use surface station temperature data.

They do not or hardly use: (i) past 1,000 or past 10,000 years temperature record, (ii) sea surface temperature (SST) and tropospheric temperature data.

Why?

Because using the past 2,000 years temp. data would show that:

(a) there was period in the past, the medieval warm period (MWP) especially, which was much warmer than the past century's warming.
(b) there was a "little ice age" (LIA) that occured in the past 400 yrs (maundeer minimum) and the past 200 yrs (dalton minimum) where global temperatures plunged.
(c) using 1850 as starting year of temp. comparison is taking the period were the world was emerging from global cooling, the LIA, and starting a new round of global warming.
(d) it's a global warming-cooling-warming-cooling natural cycle, none of it was man-made, never.

The past century's warming has precedent, it was never ever "unprecedented". The peak of past century's warming was 1998. Since then, global temperatures have either fallen or plateaud. "Global temp." here, as measured by tropospheric temperature from satellite data, is the average of the temperatures for the northern hemisphere, southern hemisphere, and the tropics.

The El nino-La nina-El nino-La nina cycles is getting faster too. 2007-08 was la nina period, 2009 was el nino, and 2010-11 will be la nina years. Australia's bureau of meteorology (BOM) has officially declared that this month already saw an early stage of la nina in the pacific ocean, check here,
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/

Here's a good presentaion about climate cycles, from a British solar physicist, Piers Corbyn,
http://www.weatheraction.com/docs/WANews10No27.pdf

The term "climate change", like "man-made warming", is junk.
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Today, I read from the Inquirer,

"Rainwater equivalent to more than a fourth of the volume brought in six hours by last year’s killer Tropical Storm “Ondoy” (international codename: Ketsana) was dumped on Metro Manila in just two hours Sunday afternoon."
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20100726-283186/Rain-brings-instant-flood-to-Metro

Meaning if those 2 hours of rains yesterday extended for another 4 hours to equal typhoon Ondoy's 6 hours of rains last September, that should have been equivalent to 3/4 of the rainwater dumped by Ondoy.
and there was no typhoon yesterday, only an ITCZ.

Notice how quick some media outlets suddenly become silent of their daily "water crisis" headlines.
All they need is 2 hours of rains to shut them up with their "crisis" alarmism.

Meanwhile, I posted a 20-pages compilation of articles on climate alarmism last month here,
http://www.minimalgovernment.net/media/mg_20100630.pdf