blitzing the binays

on august 20, just 45 days from now, it will be a whole year that the senate blue ribbon subcommittee has been investigating, pounding on, the binays, father and son, for alleged corruption and other sins.  the hearing on july 8 will be the 22nd.  in numerology 22 is the most powerful of numbers, for good or ill.

“We will come out with something very interesting. It will show the character of the (Binay) family.” Trillanes said it is important for the public to know how the Vice President and his family really are so they would be able to make a better judgment in the 2016 elections.

well, at least di na nagpapanggap ang trying-hard triumvirate that this is all in aid of legislation.  trillanes practically admits that this is all in aid of changing the minds of voters who support vp binays bid for the presidency, obviously in aid of improving the prospects of other wanna-bids.  basta the mantra seems to be: anyone but binay.  hmm.  i wonder if that applies to bongbong as well.

i get it naman, this picking on the binays to knock the vp out of the race, and decisively.  but why is it taking forever?  it took them just six months to impeach and pronounce chief justice corona guilty.  maybe impeachment was the way to go?  or talaga namang walang ebidensiya that would stand up in an impeachment court?  or marami palang binay supporters sa lower house so speaker belmonte did not even want to try?

but what truly grates is that natabunan na lang ang PDAF, DAP, mamasapano, MRT, at kung anoano pa, no thanks to media.  worse, cayetano, pimentel, and trillanes don’t really inspire confidence in the rightness of their cause, being themselves not beyond reproach, correct me if i’m wrong.

good news! “Supreme Court stops EOs on coco levy funds”

The Supreme Court stopped the implementation of two orders of President Benigno Aquino III aiming to manage billions of coco levy funds. 

EO 179 provides for the inventory, privatization and transfer coco levy assets in favor of government. EO 180, meanwhile, mandates the transfer of the funds to government for an “Integrated Coconut Industry Roadmap Program.”

In issuing the TRO, the tribunal acted on a petition filed by the Confederation of Coconut Farmers Organization of the Philippines, which argued that the executive orders were “rushed” and would expose the fund to plunder.

Charlie Avila, head of the farmers’ group, said in May that Aquino’s orders violate a Supreme Court decision prescribing the funds “only for the benefit of all coconut farmers and for the development of the coconut industry.”

kudos to the farmers groups.  and charlie avila has a blog pala.  maybe i’ll send him my coco levy posts, get some answers to questions i’ve long been asking.

Joseph Stiglitz: how I would vote in the Greek referendum

The rising crescendo of bickering and acrimony within Europe might seem to outsiders to be the inevitable result of the bitter endgame playing out between Greece and its creditors. In fact, European leaders are finally beginning to reveal the true nature of the ongoing debt dispute, and the answer is not pleasant: it is about power and democracy much more than money and economics.

Read on…

amazing obama

It may seem odd, decades after the civil-rights movement, to note that for a sitting President to say that the Confederacy fought for the institution of slavery—and that doing so was a moral wrong—is a radical statement. Yet it is, and shortly after making it the President fell silent. It appeared that perhaps he had lost his way, but then, in a remarkable moment, he began to sing “Amazing Grace,” a hymn that is at once a lament, a prayer, and a hope—written by John Newton, a onetime slave trader who became an abolitionist. Immediately after the speech, people began debating whether the song had been part of the prepared text or whether the President sang it out of an impromptu spiritual imperative. In either case, he was likely hoping to see in the national culture precisely the transformation that Newton had experienced in himself, one that facilitated his first truthful accounting of the evil of slavery. 

— JELANI COBB