The Sin Tax Reform Act of 2012: Will It Really Curb Sin Products Consumption, Or Was It Just Another Mirage To Solons Waltzing Their Way To Heftier Pork Barrels?

If you have not been having better things to do recently, you might have had the reluctance to while away time watching or reading the debates among pro and anti congressmen and senators on the Sin Tax Bill. Finally, it was passed with Pnoy signing the same into law, hence, RA 10351 or The Sin Tax Reform Act of 2012 takes effect on January 1, 2013.

Sin tax, though, is not new. We had the original sin tax bill enacted (RA9334) sometime in January 2005, which mandated varying increases in excise tax rates every two years until 2011.

I am a smoker and a drinker, but I am not addicted to either cig or booze. Even a while back when I was consuming two to three packs a day and quite an amount of beer/liquor every day, I would dare say I was never addicted. I had complete control of my consumption: When I wanted to stop for a period, I did the moment I made the decision. No withdrawal syndrome whatsoever.

Now I consume a lot less: less than a pack a day, except when I drink. It makes sense to think smoke is more enjoyable with alcohol, but I can’t make out any logical explanation to it.

Pardon the digression. Anyway, the law says it is aimed at fixing the inequities in tax structure, removing the price classification that allowed tobacco companies to pay taxes based on 1996 prices, simplifying its administration by shifting from multi-tiered to unitary tax system by 2017.

Whatever the reason, most people support it for one obvious reason. Frankly, I don’t need sophisticated scientific studies to tell me smoking and drinking harm health. Equally, I don’t need anyone to tell me against what fun I derive or even feign deriving from drinking and smoking. To me, drinking and smoking are social activities. The conversation that flows along them makes them addictive (desirable of repetition) not the vice itself.

But then again, I don’t need to lift a finger to convince anyone.

The bigger issue is whether the funds that this new sin tax law is expected to generate will go to the law’s intended purposes. That’s where the government’s reputation has, time and again, proved wanting.

Whatever happened to the study that revealed we were losing some 20-30% (as a percentage to national budget), or as Manny Villar said in 2010, some 250B a year, in taxes to corruption? If the government had concentrated its efforts on plugging the loophole, we may still need the new sin tax law, but it would not have met the fiery opposition it did from the public, since the latter would know where the taxes go.

That the government seemed to have looked the other way still evokes the sentiment on government’s aversion to, nay inability in, finding intelligent solutions to tax collection problems, and reinforces the public’s impression on its propensity to imposing new taxes as a way of coping.

However, this sin tax law could prove to be a double-edged sword. While our tax minds at the BIR and DOF have made all sorts of projection on collections, they fail to acknowledge that as taxes are raised significantly high, the temptation for evasion rises with it. In a high-tax regime, the incentive to evade taxes becomes more compelling to justify taking the risk.

What is in it for Congress?

For sure, this means heftier pork barrel funds (now already at 70m and 200m per congressman and senator, respectively), euphemistically or innocently called Priority Development Assistance Funds (PDAF), to congress occupants. Now, how does one reconcile the corrupt reality of the past to the promise this new law makes under this new administration?

I would say I have faith in the current administration. No doubt it enjoys the confidence of a large majority of Philippine society, and the international community as well. But it’s not to say that stories that allegedly belie the “Matuwid Na Daan” philosophy of the president are nuisance and don’t deserve scrutiny. Some seriously project credibility that, if not looked into, will eventually erode confidence in the president or its administration, and imperil his lofty programs, including the present sin tax law.

I feel for the president, but with over 300 politicians in Congress benefitting from the enactment in the convenient guise of “projects for the people,” it is very difficult to paint a rosy picture against a gloomy backdrop of same old faces wearing business as usual grins.

I have prepared myself for paying more for every stick I light come New Year. The president, too, will pay more when he lights a stick. I wish him not only good health, but steady conviction in making all in government walk his path of “Matuwid na Daan.”

 

What Drives Americans Into Shooting Rampage?

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve had the privilege of watching over my children in quite a time now, or just observe them since they’re a young adult and a teen too anxious to grow up who impress on me they don’t need me to watch over them: kids these days. Pearl and I have been battling over whether there’s value in living together when we do almost surely well separately. Accustomed, we don’t treat the issue as pressing now as we did in the beginning.

Kashmere being the 19-year old that she is preoccupies herself with studies, but mostly adoring her boyfriend, to be blunt. Anne, on the other hand, even as I see her dodging my suggestions against grownup girl stuff (you know what I’m saying: make up; lipstick, etc.), is childishly glued to koreanovelas. Both seem oblivious to what’s going on around them.

The news of Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre where 20 children no older than 5, and 6 adults senselessly lost their lives to a heavily armed Lunatic named Adam Lanza, somehow makes me thankful my children aren’t as news buff as many of their age. I can’t really tell the value of them knowing or not knowing the incident, although I am sure they’d be hard put to avoid it as it’s in almost every nook and cranny of news channel and space.

The horror of it directly and strikingly challenges a father’s idea of protecting his children.

I feel strongly for our America-based colleagues at work, who lost their loved ones in this menacing tragedy: Dean Pinto who lost his son, Jack; William Sherlach who lost his wife, Mary; Paul Minella who lost his niece, Grace; and I breathe hope and solace in R.J. Fressola’s wife, Liesl, who teaches at the school and is among those who survived.

The bigger problem is this is becoming terrifyingly routine to America: Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, and now Connecticut. Schools drawing shooters of innocent adults and kids alike who, sadly, have to die because they are at the wrong place when something wrong ticked in one’s mind.

I know whatever is causing this blood thirst could be as validly mysterious as any science prior to breakthrough. But we know that males are mostly involved in these, and we also know that guns are instrumental in the mass deaths. Sadly, America is obstinately attached to their constitutional right to bear arms, and to the elation of the gun industry and lobbyists, who continue to make billions of dollars off the illusion that it’s inherently American to have the right to bear arms.

Unfortunately, it’s way past the issue of gun possession as it is now. An individual hoarding 7 firearms, including an assault weapon or a semi-automatic rifle designed to kill a large number of people in few squeezes of a trigger, isn’t constitutional entitlement to protection. It is militarized thinking, influenced by how America has been arming to the teeth its military and civilian forces.

Streets and communities of this great nation have become battlefields awash with household artilleries that convert instantly into massacre instruments in the hands of a deranged individual whose detection have increasingly become difficult.

In that sense, I enjoin everyone to be watchful on the direction of our own gun laws, lest we take the path our all-time benefactor had trodden and we find ourselves in the same murderous rage that beset an otherwise soberly proud America.

 

RA 9344, The Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006; A Product of Congressional Overreaching Advocacy and Executive Hypocrisy

RA 9344 or Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006; A Product of Congressional Hypocrisy and the Executive Department’s Faked Advocacy

A reading of this law, which its proponents claim to be hailed around the world as progressive and a landmark piece of legislation, gives you a sense of the author’s (Sen. Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan) misplaced and fancied idealism. It fails to consider the government’s track record in implementing infrastructure aspects of legislation that are executive in nature. And the excuse is often fashioned as, and perennially attributed to, lack of funds.

In the case of this particular law, they go as shameless far as to claim lack of funds, lack of proper training and education of prosecutors and law enforcers on the intricacies of the law, etc. It is like reading a template with some tweaks here and there made to suit the peculiarities of a subject law.

Susmariosep, if this is so, then what’s the incentive or compulsion in making sure that laws succeed, when their failure has, by time, developed a “rubber stamp” justification.

No amount of excuses should exonerate any agency or department of government for its failure to implement the infrastructure of a law (which I will explain below), especially so that a law’s passage is, to a large extent, rationalized and persuaded by the safety nets these infrastructures provide.

Infrastructure of law is the aspect of legislation that makes the whole desirable and workable. Omit it and the entire complexion of the law changes substantially, so that legislators may not have been swayed in favor of its enactment had it not been in place.

Metaphorically, it is the pairing leg to a two-legged law, the other leg being the substance of the law. The latter is what the law is trying to achieve: in this case, to restore a child-offender to his former state or reform him, to becoming a productive member of society. The former, the mechanism to make sure that children are rescued and given the needed care, attention, and affection, to keep the human material in them, and prevent them from graduating into hardened and calloused criminals, which in turn, should take them out of the application or protection of RA 9344.

In other words, there is a staging period between one point where a street child is innocent and another where he would have become “hardened” by difficult experiences to a point of incorrigibility. It is in that stage that the government, through the JJWC, should act in carrying out the design of the law if it is to apply the leniency and protection thereof. Otherwise, a child offender (incorrigibly hardened) should be treated, under the law, just like any other offender.

We should not risk the safety of our children and the society, in general, by allowing these kids criminals back to the open in hope that they reform and forget the pleasures, sense of being, nay power, they inordinately savored during their criminal reign.

Anent RA 9344, it pertains to provisions, anchored on its declared state policy, to wit:

“(c) The State likewise recognizes the right of children to assistance, including proper care and nutrition, and special protection from all forms of neglect, abuse, cruelty and exploitation, and other conditions prejudicial to their development.”

They are particularly enumerated under Chapter I Title III of the law: the roles of Family, The Educational System, The media, The establishment and strengthening of Local Councils for the Protection of Children, and further scattered over the four corners of the document embodying this legislation.

In effect, the persuasion power of this law is in the character of prevention of the Infrastructure provision, as gleaned from the cited policy of the state. If the state truly recognizes, as a policy, what the law had written in it, then this law can have its shot at success. If the state truly recognizes the right of children to assistance, care and nutrition, protection from all forms of neglect, abuse, cruelty, and exploitation, then we should see much less of this eventuality-turned juvenile offenders, such that delinquency rates would have sensibly and realistically gone down to earn it the label of success.

Sadly, the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Council (JJWC), has failed and continues to fail to execute its mandate.

This ineptitude, inaction, and irresponsibility have augured well for criminals who prey on the youth, exploiting their extentual criminal immunity, and making them foot soldiers in carrying out their nefarious activities.

I agree that these kids are were innocent, or at least that’s how they started. However, consider them erstwhile innocent to be more precise. Before they were rounded up by hooligans as recruits, they have been longtime occupants of the streets. Unwanted, uncared for, abused, and hungry, they are exactly the subject of the infrastructure provision of this law.

Had the government, through the JJWC, a fourteen-member council, representing seven prime departments of government, with extra 2 representative from NGOs, done its mandate under the law, these kids should have been taken out of the streets into state-sponsored caring institutions, as designed in the law, before they had been steeled and hardened by their ensuing difficult experiences.

Now, these once pitiful and harmless kids, by painful neglect of their plights, have become calloused and have turned into monsters that no longer fit the description of the intended subject of the law, as contemplated by legislators.

The bad guys all along are out there watching and waiting for the right time to do their easy pickings. Syndicates know that the best way to a hungry child’s heart is through the stomach. Feed them, and promise them more of things, which theretofore they could only dream of, and they’ll jostle mightily to get counted. Then they start stealing, stabbing, and shooting. WITH DISCERNMENT.

Now, the government in its attempt to defend this law, wants us to believe that, while admitting that this has not succeeded yet, they are ready to get their acts together to put all in place for this law to work.

What baloney! It’s like saying “sorry, we might have to endure more senseless deaths and varied crimes (authored by these menace called by euphemism ‘children in conflict with law,’ which is insulting to their victims) while we try to catch up. Yes you might have to continue dying, losing properties, dealing with threats, in the meantime. You are advised to take the necessary precautions.”

That’s how this sounds to those who lost loved ones’, limbs, property to, and/or traumatized by, these monsters.

Hell I’m not going to put up with this. They come to me or my kids, I’ll shoot them, and I will bill the government for allowing these criminals, hardened as they are, to prowl the streets and victimize us, hapless law-abiding citizens.

The world is upside down: the lawful constituents of society are now at the mercy of the lawless and anarchists.

Congress had better wake up and institute corrective legislative measures by ending this stupid law, and not falling, again, for empty promises that make people’s safety contingent to the government’s supposed efficiency, something it’s hardly known for.

Restorative justice, diversion and diversion programs, interventions, etc.: words that lace this law are nothing but lofty rhetoric. No wonder we’re tagged as a country of slogans and acronyms, and that’s all.

We say to the government: Until you’re ready, don’t put us before a barrel of a gun.

Don’t trial-and-error with people’s lives, lest you end up dealing with vigilante groups forced to take matters in their own hands to protect themselves, when they see the state leaves itself helpless to protect its own people.

Pnoy should rally his liberal congress occupants to arrest this before more lives are wasted if he wants to give meaning to his the battle cry of “Matuwid na Daan?”

 

Pambansang Kamao; Pambansang KAMOTE?

Many were disillusioned with Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao in the run up to what has been touted as the biggest boxing event in years –which in fact, lived up to its billing. Believe it or not, many thought it was good lesson if he lost, so that he would reassess his direction viz-a-viz what path the Filipino people had always laid down for him. Sure, he is entitled, just as anyone else, to live his life his way: Pursue whatever dreams he has for himself and outside of himself; Gun for whatever he aspires to.

But people sense when one erstwhile humble and lowly hero had drowned in the intoxicating sea of egotistical fame.

Whatever he says or does, he sounds and looks like saying or asking MORE, MORE, MORE!!!

The reason why Pacman alienated so much of the affection of his Filipino fans is the same reason that alienated people, in general, from the Arroyos (Gloria et al.) when the latter tried to fill every nook and cranny of the political and government landscape with one of their own. In other words, no matter what the real intention is, it smacks of, reeks of, and betrays, GREED.

Whoever buys this RELIGION “overdo” thing? To that extent, people want to see the Manny they used to know: straightforward, unembellished, and genuine.

Well, he is well way into it. He is in Congress, although arguably, the wrong place for him –It’s all self-aggrandizement. He is better off in the local government, where direct action makes the difference. How the hell can he contribute in legislation? Hire consultants for every bit of his work? Now he wants his wife as governor, who’s just as clueless in local government as he is in congress. One had better know when to say “no thanks, I don’t have the aptitude for it.”

Obviously, Pacman obstinately and defiantly sees himself more than most people do, to say no. Why he even intimated in a CBS interview, “60 minutes,” his interest in occupying Malacanang, by saying, when asked, “it’s still distant into the future, we’ll talk about it when the right time comes” or words of that idea.

This is when celebrities abuse their popularity. Oh it’s very familiar in Congress, would you agree?

My golly, it gives me beehives. It gets me queasy. Again, we had all better know our limits.

I love the guy for the hero that he was, he is, and he ought to be. Just get out of cunning maneuvers, duplicity, and just be Manny.

Remember, he had the world in his palm, when he was simply Manny.

Even when buffer twists his tongue to say “peykyeow!”

We are happy that he is safe, now he ought to come down a little. Touch base with his faith and real values. Not the values he admired for others and so he also wants for himself.

People know the score: He sees his life as a fairy tale; rags to riches. He wants to continue to leave us in awe by proving he could do and be more; congressman…. President…

Manny, you don’t have to. You already have us in permanent awe. To do more, much more, as you’ve been seen or perceived doing for a time now, is to DISILLUSION the fan in many of your compatriots and friends around the world.