too much ado over phnoy photo

yes it’s an awful photo, but all the crap about the tacky wallpaper, the huge ashtray and pack of cigarettes, susmaryosep, are neither here nor there in the context of the larger picture, the larger question, of where his daang matuwidis headed.

if anything, it’s the blank look of phnoy* a la george bush post 9/11, that i mind having seen at all.  talaga naman, nakakapagpatanong, what was the three-headed hydra thinking, approving for release such a photo in the first place.  ano yon, in the spirit of transparency?  LOL!  such rookies!

*phnoy: di ko ma-take ever ang “pnoy” just because napaka-contrived to seem maka-pinoy.  but phnoy, as in jologspeak/spell (and phinoy/z for pinoy/s) which my cousin karen b.c. started on fb, i love it!  ph as in philippines too, why not.

abusing the webbs

justice secretary leila de lima’s latest statements unequivocally declaring the webbs guilty of lying re the whereabouts of hubert on the night of the vizconde massacre — new evidence daw shows that hubert was in manila and not in the u.s. — smacks of gross injustice to the webb family.  and that she’s not here to answer questions and face the webbs — nasa berlin daw for some conference — makes me wonder: was it deliberate, making her statements on the eve of her departure, so as to avoid the firestorm she set off?

and what about, making her statements on the eve of the lapsing of the 20-year statute of limitations on murder cases.  all the time i thought that the nbi/doj were looking at other suspects.  ang hirap ba masyado?  easier to just go back to hubert, lalo na’t lauro vizconde insists he’s guilty?  really, what makes de lima’s new witnesses so credible, after 20 years of silence?  and again, what about u.s. immigration records that prove hubert arrived in the u.s. when he said he did?  nabayaran din lang?  LOL

all the talk about how former senator fredddie webb was so influential, he was able to have records doctored to reflect hubert’s departure before the murders, is i think misplaced — if he were so influential, hubert wouldn’t have gone to jail at all.

the one who is really influential, it seems to me now, is lauro vizconde himself who i hear is a board director of ibc 13 and a consultant in pagcor, thanks to gma.  ano yon?  reward?  pampalubag loob?  preferential treatment?   if he hadn’t gone overseas as ocw baka buhay pa ang asawa niya’t dalawang anak?

and what about the aquino administration?  masaya ba sila sa ginawang ito ni leila de lima, refusing to respect the supreme court ruling?  or is this part lang of a continuing campaign vs the supreme court?  sana hindi.  there must be other ways to skin that cat without using the webbs who have suffered enough.

revisiting hubert webb
from fritz webb
surreal justice

the dacer whodunit 2

kadarating pa lang ni michael ray aquino, pinawalang-sala na niya sina erap at ping in the dacer-corbito murders.  at wala daw siyang alam tungkol sa kaso.  of course no one believes him, least of all the dacer sisters.

read too:
Dacer-Corbito case will not be closed without Tan Testimony
and for timeless links and a host of unanswered questions:
the dacer whodunit and why ping

Rent seeking

By Calixto V. Chikiamco

What’s wrong with Philippine society is that its economic system is primarily characterized by rent seeking. So, what’s rent seeking? It’s the non-market extraction of surplus or profit. It means the profit is generated from licenses, quotas, monopolies, protection, and other government granted privileges.

It differs from true capitalism where the profit or surplus is extracted from the market, usually through innovations in product or marketing and distribution. True capitalism is dynamic because it results in innovations and increases in consumer welfare. Society benefits as a result. In rent seeking, there’s no innovation, nor additional value to the consumer. Instead, there’s unearned extraction from the consumer. Welfare is diminished.

Rent seeking in the Philippines hasn’t stopped. It just takes new forms.

A vivid example of this is the Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) rate to be given to Renewable Energy Developers under the Renewable Energy Act. Under the proposal of the National Renewable Energy Board, all electricity consumers must pay an additional 12 centavos per kilowatt hour, amounting to 8 billion pesos per year, to subsidize Renewable Energy developers.

Why the need for a subsidy? Because the cost to produce energy by RE developers is much higher than conventional sources. The price for conventional sources (coal, natural gas, geothermal, big hydro) averages about P5 per kilowatt hour while the price to be paid for run of the river hydro is P6.15, biomass at P7.0, wind at P10.37 and solar at P17.95.

The difference between the price of conventional sources and the price to be paid for Renewable Energy must be made up by the FIT Rate, which is really a surcharge on consumers.

Some may ask: shouldn’t the Philippines do its share to halt carbon-induced global warming?

No, because the country’s contribution to carbon emissions is only less than 1% (.48%s). Hence, unlike the rich, developed countries, it has no moral or legal obligation to slow down global warming. Furthermore, the share of renewables in its energy mix is already 32%, much more than the 10% in the US and other countries.

But here’s the cake: Not only are we poor consumers being coerced to pay three times as much for solar energy and two times as much for wind, but in addition the developers are guaranteed a generous rate of return for the next 20 years! No risk on their part, even of technological obsolescence, because that risk has been passed on to us poor consumers who must pay the same FIT Rate for the next 20 years even if the cost to produce solar energy drops by 50%.

The guaranteed rate of return is not the only form of rent seeking. Under the proposal of the NREB, there will be no auction, whether among the different technologies (run-of-the-river hydro, biomass, wind, and solar) or among suppliers within a specific technology. Everything will be negotiated (wink, wink). No competition either on price or on time period (i.e., for a time frame less than 20 years) will be allowed.

Aside from that guaranteed rate of return and the no-sweat, no-competition policy, the developers will be enjoying a seven-year income tax holiday, duty-free importation, special realty tax rate, zero VAT on sales and purchases, cash incentives, 10% tax rate after income tax holiday, and so on.

The high-costing wind and solar energy producers are resisting a dispatch policy of cheapest first because they say that the country must have a “portfolio strategy.” It’s a conceit to think that the government can ever place bets on a particular technology. Should the government have subsidized the pager industry? Or the typewriter industry? The only valid criterion is value for money or efficiency. The market, not NREB, must determine the winners.

Besides, solar and wind are unstable and unreliable sources of energy, dependent as they are on weather and other climatic conditions. They would be poor choices for a diversification strategy. They can never be energy sources for industrialization.

Also, why the rush? A policy of waiting when solar prices are expected to come down to grid parity in five years would better serve the power consumers, but the NERB wants to hand out contracts and lock in the profits of developers for the next 20 years now. We can only speculate why.

Rent seekers usually cloak themselves with noble aspirations to mask their predation. Since the 1950s, rent seekers have raised the lofty banner of nationalism in order to keep out competition and to mask their government granted monopolistic privileges.

Today, the new cloak is not nationalism but “environmentalism.” But it’s the same old predation. Different color perhaps (green), but the same old predation.

What’s disturbing is that the manufacturing sector, already suffering from the highest power cost in Asia, will have to bear this burden in addition to the lifeline rate and other impositions. This is the road to perdition because societies collapse when the productive sectors of society are “taxed” to subsidize the inefficient, non-productive sectors.

The scourge of Philippine society is not corruption per se, but rent seeking. What the NREB proposal shows is that the scourge has not been eliminated. It’s just taking new forms. Pity us poor consumers. We can only say, “Please, moderate the greed.”