Mr. President Make Me a Proud Taxpayer

In the world of the employed, meaning withholding tax taxpayers, payday is both a day of thanksgiving and a day of curse. Thank God the worry of whether there will be food on the table the next meal time will vanish in the meantime (short meantime, that is). Curse hell and all when you see that up to over-a- third of what you sweat and literally give up sleep for is lopped off your pay purse without the courtesy of asking.

A worker is forced to give up as much as 32% of hard-earned pay for the so-called civilized society. I would have been a happy taxpayer if I got my money’s worth. But it’s no civilized when your own home gets burglarized, when you get attempted for robbery or robbed, when people lose lives and limbs simply because they attempt to protect what is rightfully theirs. We have to understand that attempts for and robberies or burglaries are always a circumstance away from homicide.

Our laws are just as good as their enforcement.

Our Congress is just as good as the congressmen comprising it.

Let me break it down, we have in congress… Manny Pacqiao, Tito Sottto, Ramon Revilla… Now you know what kind of laws will come out of it. Think RA9344, the law that pampers cold-blooded fifteen-year-old criminals with complete irresponsibility, meaning they cannot be imprisoned even if they kill you.

And a general’s son is attempted for extortion by police officers themselves… It could not have hit him closer than home. Now he’s told “in your face” what he has long already known: The police is riddled with misfits it’s tempting to think it’s more accurate to generalize than make exceptions. That’s the kind of enforcement we’re treated to.

I am talking about personal experience when I talk about the house being broken into, and being attempted for robbery. These are hardly any justification for giving up so much in taxes. I feel like being robbed twice every time; every payday.

 

Justices Boycott CJ Sereno’s First En Banc Session as SC’s Presiding Officer: Big Boys Behaving Like the Court is their Playground.

Justices Boycott CJ Sereno’s First En Banc as SC’s Presiding Officer: Big Boys Behaving Like the Court is their Playground.

CJ Sereno is not my personal choice for CJ, not because I discount her capability, but because the appointment had never ventured into this kind of excursion before: we have always predicted the most senior nominated associate justice to get appointed. That Pnoy’s appointment of her went against the long-running tradition should not be seen as politicking.

The constitution reserves to the president the power to appoint, from the shortlist of at least three nominees dutifully vetted by the multi-sectoral Judicial & Bar Council, who will lead the 15-man Supreme Court; the president did just that.

There should be no occasion to cry foul over the appointment, regardless of her (Sereno’s) record of voting on any case.

That the senior justices themselves had absented from Sereno’s maiden session as CJ portends of an ever factious Supreme Court. I can bet that people picture a grumbling bunch of justices protesting Sereno’s appointment like kids snatched of candies in their hands. The whole thing reeks of immaturity on the one hand, and belligerence against the appointing president, on the other.

Sadly, neither way augurs well for the Court that needs to restore its credibility, coming off a beating from the impeachment and eventual ouster of erstwhile CJ Renato Corona.

If the justices would be true to their professed allegiance to constitutional supremacy, they have to learn to respect the mechanism (president’s power to appoint) laid down therein regardless of their personal preferences.