The Philippine Daily Inquirer quotes Executive Secretary Ermita:

“It is disturbing,” Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said. “We have to go hard on these people.”

WTF? The quickest way to make people click, download or get a copy of the sex tape is to say, it is banned or it has caught the attention of authorities. I’m sure the women involved are consulting their lawyers and will take appropriate action against Kho. My point being: if you don’t want to, you won’t click or download or see it.

I wonder when will We, the people, go hard on our leaders for the crappy job they’ve been doing? Over 20 years our per capita income has not changed whereas in the same timeframe, inflation has continued to raise the prices of goods and services. The government is so tax hungry that it is even considering taxing text messaging. Not simple text messaging, the only reason to raise taxes on it is because government wants a piece of the pie that companies make, by allowing cross sending of text messages between networks. Hell, this country has come to the point of taxing books.

We dodged a bullet when the NTC has apparently dropped their thinking on trying to tax electronic commerce.

Economics 101 tells us that one shouldn’t raise taxes when industries aren’t performing or during bad economic climate. This government in its quest for revenue will find itself without revenue because people will not be able to pay taxes for lack of jobs and business.

Mr. Secretary, with all due respect: don’t worry about Kho or the “moral compass” of Filipinos. The same goes for every fraking official of this government. That’s not your job.

Then again, as @mlq3 points out in reply to my tweet:

“@cocoy that is the rhythm method of public discourse”

Such is the state of discourse in the Philippines.

My profuse thanks to @Solstitial. She was kind enough to permit me to use her tweet. The title of this blog post was taken from her tweet.

First: Mike Abundo wrote:

I’m attending a hearing tomorrow on a proposal by the Philippines’ National Telecommunications Commission that will require licenses for online content developers.
Yes, you read that right. The Philippine government wants to require licenses for people to create and post content online. Under the proposal’s extremely broad definition of a content developer, you would need a license just to comment on this post.

Also, momblogger raised the question of “Blogger’s Rights“.

Go read his whole post and momblogger’s and judge for yourselves. I’ll just be right here, twiddling my thumbs. Done? Great! My thoughts on the subject:

ONLINE is about being OPEN. It is a wild, free frontier that no one should contain or govern by themselves. That said, we should have Blogger’s Rights.

The proposed measure says:

WHEREAS, the 1987 Constitution fully recognizes the vital role of communications in nation building and provides for the emergence of communications structures suitable to the needs and aspirations of the nation;

WHEREAS, the promotion of competition in the telecommunications market is a key objective of Republic Act No. 7925 (RA7925, for brevity), otherwise known as The Public Telecommunications Policy Act of the Philippines, which mandates that “a healthy competitive environment shall be fostered, one in which telecommunications carriers are free to make business decisions and interact with one another in providing telecommunications services, with the end in view of encouraging their financial viability while maintaining affordable rates.”

WHEREAS, RA7925 further defines the role of the government to “promote a fair, efficient and responsive market to stimulate growth and development of the telecommunications facilities and services”;

WHEREAS, the provision of contents, information, applications, and electronic games to the consumers creates demand for telecommunication networks and services – the development of contents, information, applications, and electronic games should therefore be encouraged and facilitated;

WHEREAS, the entry of more contents, information, applications and/or electronic games providers in the market will result to lower prices benefiting the consumers;

WHEREAS, to further encourage the development of contents, information applications and electronic games, the prevailing access charge regime between the contents, information, applications and electronic games providers and the networks providers which is revenue sharing should be replaced by fixed access charge;

NO more added layer of REGULATION. Government should know the Importance of Private Enterprise in Economic and Social Development.

Seriously.

It just fraks the market up. The market is doing just fine without government poking its nose into something, it clearly has no understanding or interest in learning the culture and norms.

How do you stimulate growth?

Reduce taxes on computers and books and Internet access, and bring the cost of electricity down, to start off. Hell, encourage private enterprises to put up very fast, and reliable Internet access. Look at Japan, and South Korea and take a page from them.

Get better power sources. Heck, if you can encourage the use of Solar, wind or hydro, why the heck not?

Raise incentives for people to do business here and generally lower the cost of doing business in the country.

Encourage literature and creativity because, hello— Online requires creativity as much as intelligence. It requires you to be multi-disciplinary. And this requires being exposed to just about everything.

That is by FAR the best way you can encourage content developers in the Philippines.

Second:

“First of all, our President is ahead of Obama and probably, I would think that if there’s anything to be learned, it should be President Obama learning from President Arroyo. And wouldn’t we be proud to say that the Philippines continues to be an ‘island of calm’ because of the present crunches?” he said, when asked by media what lesson Arroyo could learn from Obama.

So full of ourselves, aren’t we? Bring yourselves back to the ground, would you? We have our own problems to worry about than Barack Obama who is doing just fine, I’m quite certain. And who doesn’t need “Leadership” advice.

Oh, one more thing: this particular Press Release from the Palace on Obama being POTUS.44 (thanks to gareon for the heads up),

We are two nations blessed with two leaders bound by the same vision and ideology.

I think someone forgot to change the prepared statement. This is more apt for Bush and McCain regime. Obama is about HOPE and CHANGE, not ARROGANCE and FEAR.

Garcia says its not the board they’re after–its management, dummy. Winston, we’re not kids and that stupid, okey? A management filled with government appointees is worst than the Lopezes. Replacing management is a de facto takeover.

Whatever the palace says, one thing is perfectly clear–these palace men are not creating noise out of nothing. They all say the same thing though–they’ll be doing this to force a lowering of electricity rates. All of them though, including Gloria, knows that a takeover will not immediately result to a lowering of electricity costs. Why? Because Meralco will lose considerable profitability.

Besides, government is the worst administrator of all time. Look at how government diluted the profitabilities of government-controlled corporations? Can you site just one company which the government took over after EDSA that remained profitable? All of them, RPN9 and IBC 13 to cite some examples, were made as milking cows by government appointees. What will happen to Meralco should government take over?

Some of us would probably agree on one thing though–Meralco is really ripe for the picking. I mean, the Lopezes has been a pariah since day one. However, I shudder at the thought of Gloria’s appointees taking over Meralco. We all know their agenda. We all know what they want. And we all know that they’ll just use Meralco’s billions to fund their cha-cha and 2010 campaigns.