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The Austerity of Hope

On May 27, 2011 By

Has PNoy’s righteous path unintentionally led to more misery?

In 1973, a book co-authored by public policy guru Aaron Wildavsky was published. It had a very verbose title that read: Implementation: How Great Expectations in Washington are Dashed in Oakland; Or Why It’s Amazing that [...]

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The Surplus Fetish

On May 24, 2011 By

Both the economics and the politics of current fiscal policy seem flawed.

Yesterday the Department of Finance trumpeted the news that the government in April posted the largest fiscal surplus in 25 years. The PDI reports today that

The Aquino administration posted a [...]

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The Plan: Update

On May 20, 2011 By

 

The plot thickens; or does it?

On Wednesday, I wrote a piece on the cabinet re-organization, called The Plan, hailing it is a significant positive development in the administration of the benevolent one.

In today’s Inquirer, [...]

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The Plan

On May 18, 2011 By

It took them awhile but more than a year on after the 2010 elections, the president’s men have finally come up with an embryo of a plan to translate his slogans into a meaningful and measurable set of actions.

The Executive Order #43 entitled, “Pursuing [...]

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Why is the RH Bill taking so long?

On May 13, 2011 By

Philippine adherence to the Catholic Church remains strong.

It is an institution that has withstood half a millenium on home soil. The only time in its history that Roman Catholicism was under threat was during the Philippine revolution for independence against Spain at the turn of the last [...]

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Governing the Womb: A Note to (Neo)Liberals

On May 12, 2011 By

The Filipino woman’s womb has become a site where protagonists battle out competing narratives and meanings. It is a battle for ownership and control. Feminists advocate for women’s autonomy over their bodies. The Catholic clergy sees the womb as the sacred source of God-given life and must not [...]

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Predicting the coming labour shortage

On May 9, 2011 By

When will the Philippines reach its tipping point?

Suck! That was the sound of jobs and investments being plucked out of the West and sunk into China. That was then.

As the world economy gradually recovered from the global financial crisis in 2010, there was talk of [...]

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That Vision thing part 3: Credible commitment

On May 5, 2011 By

The last thing the president needs to secure is credible commitment in support of his social compact.

There are several commitment problems in the strategy and vision of the benevolent one’s regime. For one, there is no way of knowing whether its budgets will be worth the [...]

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Youth Manifesto to Address Planetary Malpractice

On May 5, 2011 By

Beginning yesterday, the youth of America, led by the brilliant 16-year-old Alec Loorz and Our Children’s Trust, began filing a series of legal actions in every state and the District of Columbia to compel the government to address climate change. The goal is to have the atmosphere [...]

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That Vision Thing part 2: Curing dysfunctionalism

On May 4, 2011 By

Apart from discarding outdated mental models, the president needs to address personality-based factionalism that has led to organizational dysfunction within his team.

In part one of this series, we uncovered the problem of an inadequate framing of the strategic role of government. In this second [...]

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