BSP, MONETARY BOARD RUSHING THE PRINTING OF NEW CURRENCY

 What many of us -- in the media and the private sector -- have been warning about is furtively coming to pass.

Despite the many calls for full disclosure and transparency in their “New Generation Currency Program”, the BSP and the Monetary board are proceeding and rushing the Implementation of the program, with grave consequences with respect to costs and to national sovereignty and secufrity in the printing of the the nation’s money.

Stinky

Why is Senator Chiz Escudero spending so much time and money – ours to be specific – going after ghost issues in election automation when, as head of the senate’s oversight committee he should be doing everything to help it along?

Simple: it keeps him in the limelight and – more importantly – keeps him RELEVANT. And, as the Senate starts moving into the elections canvassing mode, he wants to be relevant enough to become a leading voice in the electoral tribunal. After the Comelec does its job, that is the next seat of power. Who knows, if failure of elections as he has been preaching does come true, he may then be in a very “credible” position to take over the country via being in highest slot in the order of succession should there be a power vacuum.

Dumb, dumber

In an effort to redeem herself of her stupidity, Karen Davila has made Election Automation as her subject in her “Correspondents” edition on ABS-CBN last night (16 February 2010). Here she deftly interviewed various personalities on their experience on voting, inspecting, heckling and anything and everything to do with the coming automated polls.

And again she showed that she just another pretty face.

She just laps up the script, obviously put together or her. It shows so many flaws of her understanding of the voting, counting and canvassing system and processes.

Ganito kami sa Makati

Jojo Binay struts around the country declaring his Makati City leadership has led to fantastic services for his constituents and would like to replicate it for the rest of the country should the people vote for him as Vice President in the elections this May.

If Jojo is given the office to do what he claims he will do, then Filipinos will also give him the personal money making rackets he has run in his city the past 20 years, this time on a national scale. WOW!

Check this out: just one of the benefits Jojo’s Makati gives to its residents is birthday cakes for senior citizens. The city’s Lolos and Lolas just love it, and so does the Binay household which actually supplies the cakes. So the city government supplies the cakes – simple cakes, the price of which is set by the cake-giving program to the tune of P60 million per year!

Giba

Mark Salanga of ABS-CBN News Bacolod today reports: “The wife of business tycoon Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco Jr. said they are dismayed with their nephew, Lakas-Kampi-CMD standard bearer Gilberto ‘Gibo’ Teodoro Jr..

“Gretchen Cojuangco said that her husband Danding, who is chairman emeritus of the Nationalist People's Coalition (NPC), would support a candidate, but not Teodoro.
“Teodoro was formerly a member of the NPC, but switched to the administration party where he became its standard bearer.
“Mrs. Cojuangco made the statement in an interview during a visit to the University of St. La Salle in Bacolod City on Saturday.
“ ‘Anybody but Gibo. Anybody,’ she told reporters, after being asked who her husband would support between Teodoro and their other nephew, Liberal Party standard bearer Benigno ‘Noynoy’ Aquino III.

Bridging The Gap

Manny Villar projects himself as a poor boy who, with hard work and industriousness, became one of the richest men in the country. What he has not touched is how he filled the capital gap between his poor start and his dreams. That’s where his missus, Las Pinas congresswoman Cynthia Villar comes in.

It’s known all over that she is the moneyed one (her side of the family, anyway). And this is what provided the much needed moolah to make those dreams come true. (But I wouldn’t go to the extent that others suggest – that marrying her took a lot of Sipag at Tiyaga)

And at a certain point in the building up of wealth, it becomes important that you have a measure of political power. The formula: money begets power and power begets money.

Pedigree

It’s a good thing Noynoy Aquino’s handlers have rewritten his biography in his official website. The original one claimed that the Philippine presidency was in his bloodline, being the son of Ninoy and Cory Aquino. It made him like a horse or a dog, carrying a presidential pedigree, a thoroughbred for the highest office. Ugh!

Not even Bongbong Marcos would dare make such a claim. Yet Nonynoy’s handlers stood pat and even defended this claim, until someone had enough sense to see through the stupidity.

This time they’ve spun it as his commitment to live up to the legacy of his parents. Pwede na rin. But as hard as they try they haven’t been able to convincingly address issues against him, like his lack of performance in his political career and the continued existence of Hacienda Luisita.

How do you solve a problem like Karen Davila?

Years ago President Cory’s spokesman Rene Saguisag said that the media was plural for mediocre. Of course, media practitioners just pounced on him. But he responded that it was actually a sympathetic quip – that he sympathized with the daily demands of looking for stories, angles and deadlines reporters, columnists and editors are subjected to that they are often forced to manufacture mediocre reports or columns just to submit something.

But as the years of the wayward media pressed on, the media that now descends upon us is not just mediocre. Today, in the 21^st century, from the ranks of the men and women who hold the sacred public trust comes one that is just plain stupid.

Take, for example, Karen Davila. Today she represents everything that is bad in media. Sure she has the pretty face, the heart of gold and perhaps even has an adequate amount of gray matter between her ears. But she is so engrossed with her celebrity that she has forgotten why she has her microphone by her lips and cameras trained at her to start with.