We beg to differ.
In John Landis’s 1983 hit movie Trading Places, Billy Ray Valentine, a bum and hustler played by Eddie Murphy is picked up from the streets, cleaned up and dressed in an expensive business suit as part of an experiment instigated by wealthy brothers Randolph Duke and Mortimer Duke. The made-over Valentine is then set up…
If there is one thing that has been thoroughly regrettable about the apparent economic progress of the Philippines in the Aquino 2.0 era, it is that it has led the Administration to believe that what it is doing is actually working. Perhaps we should not judge them too harshly for that – after all, far…
Read More “Non Sequiturs are poor policy, and even worse credit references” »
Looks like one of the last big frontiers of the Filipino migrant has pretty much shut its doors to a big chunk of Filipino humankind. Reportedly ruling that Filipino domestic workers are not “ordinarily residents” in the territory and that they temporarily reside there under contracts that tie them to “finite stints of temporary employment,”…
Read More “End of the road for Filipino Hong Kong residency hopefuls” »
Photo courtesy of Time.com I couldn’t help but smirk when I found out that Team P-Noy’s election rally was a dud here in Baguio last Sunday (17 March 2013). Melvin Jones field, with a capacity of 5,000 people, managed to gather less than 1,500 attendees, even under fair weather. Though their pet media outlets would…
In a press briefing last week, Philippine Airlines (PAL) President and CEO Ramon S. Ang announced that the airline’s plans to construct a $6 billion airport as an alternative to the outdated and overcrowded Ninoy Aquino International Airport were being put on hold. According to the Philippine Star (which still insists on calling the privately-owned…
Read More “Annoyed by Anti-Monopoly Policy, PAL Puts Airport Plans on Hold” »
At the very end of 2012, the US media and public was gripped with near-panic over what was then called the “fiscal cliff,†a combination of tax increases and a programmed series of government spending cuts that was to automatically take effect on January 1 of this year. Just as the deadline passed, the US…
Although the record of the current administration of the Philippines with respect to regulating labor has been unimpressive so far, Republic Act 10361, also known as the Batas Kasambahay or “Domestic Workers’ Act,” which took effective on February 10, is a notable exception. The law, which was signed by President Aquino on January 18, provides…
In past years, the dates of the EDSA People Power revolution were declared national holidays. This means even workers had the day off. This year, though, it seems only students had the day-off. People with jobs had to go to work. For those who normally going through EDSA, it would mean slugging it out in…
Read More “Making sense of EDSA I, 27 years down the yellow brick road” »
