Category: personal AnGoL

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rePost :: It’s really bad and frightening | Filipino Voices

Whilst the whole media is happily covering the election fever, the suffering that our countrymen in the north is experiencing is heart wrenching. This is why countries like the US and Japan have extensive agricultural insurance. The practice of agriculture is especially dependent on many factors that are beyon the control of the farmers. This is a humanitarian problem in the making. This may not end well. I pray my fear are just that fears.
READ THE WHOLE THING.

The current ENSO and its agricultural effects has environmental scientists worried. On the human health side, many Filipinos have no experience of prolonged hot and dry weather. This is revealed that for many of us, the experience of extremely hot weather is limited to “Holy Week” and that really only lasts for 4 days! Extended periods of having 38 C or more temps in Metro Manila may result in a higher death rate among the elderly and those with cardiovascular health problems similar to what was experienced in the European summer heat wave of 2005, when an estimated 10,000 people or more died. The Europeans were not used to having prolonged spells of temperatures above 33 C. While PAGASA may forecast Manila to have 34-35 C temps, our heat island research points out that the real temps due to the effects of a built -up environment can be 3-4 C more than the forecast temperature. So we can have extended periods of having 39-40 C temperature. People living in desert climates are used to this and have behavioral adaptations to cope with this, but I doubt if we Filipinos have these adaptations.
But as a wag told me, we Filipinos are particularly adapted to talking about politics. (FV posts are a supreme example!)
But seriously, the food security situation is beginning to look dire and it is just the end of February. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo may turn over the presidential palace to her successor on June 30 with a famine on her train. Ask any of your grandparents who lived through World War II. They would tell you that the Filipino people experienced famine within the last century only during the Japanese occupation and that was not due to climate change but to colonial master change!
The next President of the Philippines should now be aware that even as a candidate poverty or corruption are not the immediate problems but food security. Surely these are problems but their solutions will take more than one presidential term. Food security can be immediately addressed at the start of the term.
via It’s really bad and frightening | Filipino Voices.

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rePost :: Ezra Klein – Obama doubles down on health-care reform

Ezra Klein on the Health Care Summit.

And Obama believes that his arguments are right. The basic structure of his plan is sound. The Republicans’ alternatives are inadequate. The problem is too serious to entertain thoughts of inaction. Comprehensive works better than incremental. Compromise only makes sense if the other side is willing to give something up in turn. Good policy will be electorally defensible even if it’s not obviously popular.
The big story out of the summit is not that Republicans and Democrats extended their hands in friendship, but that the White House has dug its heels into the dirt. The Democrats are not taking reconciliation off the table, they are not paring back the bill, and they are not extricating themselves from the issue. They think they’re right on this one, and they’re going to try and pass this bill.
via Ezra Klein – Obama doubles down on health-care reform.

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Elink Video :: "You are entitled to your opinion, but not your own facts"


In response to Republican Senator Lamar Alexander’s contention that premiums will go up under reform, the President cites the Congressional Budget Offices report that his proposal will lower costs for individuals by between 14 and 20%. President Obama cites some of the Republican ideas he’s included in his proposal and makes it clear that he welcomes additional Republican ideas to contain costs.
angol here :: People are entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts. Saying you don’t believe something will not change the fact that it is true! Hope is back!

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Elink Video ::"It's a good talking point, but it doesn't actually answer the underlying question"


In a discussion of insurance market reforms, President Obama asks Republican Senator John Kyl to move away from talking points and focus on finding common areas of agreement. The President responds to Kyl: “Any time the question is phrased as ‘Does Washington know better?’ I think we’re kind of tipping the scales a little bit there, since we all know that everybody is angry at Washington right now it’s a good talking point, but it doesn’t actually answer the underlying question, which is do we want to make sure that people have a baseline of protection?'”
angol here: I believe that what’s mostly said in Presidential forums can be classified as ”

“It’s a good talking point, but it doesn’t actually answer the underlying question”

“

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Musings On Philippine Healthcare 2010 20 26

I can guess that we probably have a high coverage rate in the Philippines. This is because unlike the US in the Philippines if you have work you have PhilHealth,SSS and GSIS. This leaves two groups of people out. The rich people who don’t “work” (own business , etc), and the very poor who can’t but it. Of the rich, they obviously have cash to burn but I suspect if in the USA one of the major causes of bankruptcy is medical emergency/conditions then the rich of the Philippines may not have it any much better. The poorest of the poor have healthcare if they live in Makati and Muntinlupa and during elections government officials such as the soon to be former president distribute PhilHealth Cards.
What I’m trying to say is that during the happy moments that my mind wanders towards the Philippine Government I see PhilHealth, SSS and GSIS, without the same kind of fight that the US encountered in trying to enact them. What I see is a Davao where I saw less people smoking because of too many restrictions (that I agree with). What I see is a Makati where Jejomar Binay is showing the Philippines what can be done by the local government for it’s constituents. What I see is a President (GMA) who has shown just how powerful the presidency can be with the right incentives.  We have a people whose trying to learn about the candidates.  We have the BIR harrassing Shell which shows we aren’t as controlled by corporations as the US (Although I don’t agree with what they are doing, this is almost extortion).
There is hope. The Philippines is not that far away from where it could be!!!

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Elink Video :: "American families will drown if we try an incremental approach"


Senator Tom Harkin reminded those at the meeting that while it’s easy to get caught up in the debate over numbers and policy details, it’s ultimately about making progress to help ordinary folks across the country struggling under today’s broken system. Senator Harkin said, “I keep thinking we have got to bring it back home to what this is all about. We all have our stories. I got a letter yesterday from a farmer in Iowa that really encapsulates it. [He said] ‘I’m a 57-year-old Iowa farmer. I’m writing to voice my concern regarding my family’s rapidly escalating health care costs. On Saturday, February 20th, I received a noticeinforming me that our health insurance premium will be increasing $193.90 per month to a monthly total of $1,516.20. This is a 14.6% increase.'”

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rePost :: National Juries :: Overcoming Bias

Read the whole thing by clicking through the overcoming bias blog!!!
Would something like this work for the Philippines? No as long as the Education System is in shambles we cannot do anything as radical as this.

National Juries

By Robin Hanson · February 25, 2010 12:00 pm · Discuss · « Prev ·

The reason so many bad policies are good politics is that so many people vote. … Ignorant voters … are biased towards particular errors. …

The best way to improve modern politics? … The number of voters should be drastically reduced so that each voter realizes that his vote will matter. Something like 12 voters per district … selected at random from the electorate. With 535 districts in Congress … there would be 6,420 voters nationally. A random selection would deliver a proportional representation of sexes, ages, races and income groups. This would improve on the current system, in which the voting population is skewed … the old vote more than the young, the rich vote more than the poor, and so on.

To safeguard against the possibility of abuse, these 6,420 voters would not know that they had been selected at random until the moment when the polling officers arrived at their house. They would then be spirited away to a place where they will spend a week locked away with the candidates, attending a series of speeches, debates and question-and-answer sessions before voting on the final day.  All of these events should be filmed and broadcast, so that everyone could make sure that nothing dodgy was going on.

More here.  This logic is simple and strong enough for most folks to both understand and accept.  Yet most would still prefer our current system – why?
via Overcoming Bias : National Juries.

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Musing on Philippine Politics and Healthcare 2010 02 26

People who follow the politics in the USA knows host stupid the people in the system can be.
I’m watching Citizen Tube here http://www.youtube.com/citizentube?feature=ticker on the Healthcare summit. I’m seriously envious of them right now. When we have senators who are hitting each other with personal snide remarks. When most of the questions that are being asked in Presidential forums are not up to snuff, Simply put I have no Idea who has the policy-fu down pat. Who knows basic economics, basic public policy etc. Damn. and you have self styled pundit who really know nothing.

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Elink Video :: Tim Wise: On White Privilege (Clip)

Watch this video.

http://www.MediaEd.org From the DVD: The Pathology of Privilege Racism, White Denial & the Costs of Inequality For years, acclaimed author and speaker Tim Wise has been electrifying audiences on…
http://www.MediaEd.org
From the DVD:
The Pathology of Privilege
Racism, White Denial & the Costs of Inequality

from Experimental Theology

For years, acclaimed author and speaker Tim Wise has been electrifying audiences on the college lecture circuit with his deeply personal take on whiteness and white privilege. In this spellbinding lecture, the author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son offers a unique, inside-out view of race and racism in America. Expertly overcoming the defensiveness that often surrounds these issues, Wise provides a non-confrontational explanation of white privilege and the damage it does not only to people of color, but to white people as well. This is an invaluable classroom resource: an ideal introduction to the social construction of racial identities, and a critical new tool for exploring the often invoked – but seldom explained – concept of white privilege.