How much do we need?

"Waste your money and you're only out of money but waste your time and you've lost a part of your life." 

—Michael Leboeuf

 

By Alex P. Vidal  

 

IT is foolish to despise money. We all work for money. We all want all we honestly earn.

Money means advantages for ourselves and those we love.

Of course, there are higher aims in life than money, but to attain those aims we need first to settle the money question intelligently. We ought to earn our money honestly, to save it carefully, to spend it prudently, and to invest the surplus wisely so as to insure ourselves against sickness and loss.

If we get the money question straight in our minds it will do much toward realizing our happiness and success.

Money is not everything, but money is something very important, according to thehindu in an article “Money is important, but how much do you need?”

Beyond the basic needs, money helps us achieve our life's goals and supports—the things we care about most deeply—family, education, health care, charity, adventure and fun.

It helps us get some of life's intangibles—freedom or independence, the opportunity to make the most of our skills and talents, the ability to choose our own course in life, financial security. With money, much good can be done and much unnecessary suffering avoided or eliminated.

 

A dislike for politicians

“I don't like politicians, and I don't like politics. I definitely don't want to be associated with any of them.”

—Steven Wright

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

WE beg to disagree with those who were quick to exhort President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. to appoint an educator over a politician to be the next secretary of the Department of Education (DepEd).

But we empathize with the fact that they have overriding angst and misgivings about politicians. The education department, for them, is a serious learning institution, not a parlor game.

Those pushing for non-politician prospects definitely do not want another Sara Duterte-Carpio, who is being groomed by her allies to be their standard bearer in the 2028 presidential election in the Philippines.

Because of her tag and reputation, Vice President Duterte-Carpio has been zeroed in as a politician through and through.

They want an educator who rose from the ranks and who will never tackle and indulge in political issues and activities except purely about education? Fine.

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Politicians are also good except that society has been largely biased against them owing to their inferior public approval ratings. The problem is politicians are deemed to be corrupt and self-centered.

They are always suspected of using the cabinet portfolios to deodorize their image for future ambitions in higher elective posts first, and to promote the interest of the agency or department they represent second.

As cabinet honchos, politicians always almost attract negative vibrations.

But, in fact, it’s okay if another politician will take over the reigns of the DepEd as long as he or she is qualified and won’t digress from the policies and programs that geared toward the real issues and needs of the country’s educational system.

A politician as DepEd chief is fine as long as he or she will not bilk the national treasury with funds in the guise of “improving the quality of learning and educational infrastructure in the country.”

 

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A politician in the helm of DepEd is acceptable as long as he or she will not demand and insist on obtaining dubious and irregular allocations like the scandalous and much-hated “intelligence fund.”

A politician could be an ideal DepEd boss if his or her family does not agitate to foment insurrection and undertake pesky rallies and annoying activities that humiliate and slander the president of the republic if they didn’t get what they wanted.

A cabinet position, after all, is not a permanent job. Cabinet officials serve at the pleasure of the president as the sole appointing authority. Thus, the appointment of an educator or career official isn’t mandatory in the cabinet; it depends, of course, on the discretion of the sitting president.

It’s okay for educators to be relegated to the deputy titles as long as they can buttress the office of the secretary with their expertise and knowledge and help make him or her as effective member of the president’s cabinet.

 

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We can understand where the Teachers’ Dignity Coalition (TDC) stand on the subject matter.

As educators, their basic principles and inherent values practically ranged opposite the direction of politicians like Mrs. Duterte-Carpio.

Let’s review TDC’s statement issued on June 20 where the group insisted DepEd must be led by a non-politician, or an individual not actively involved in partisan politics so the department can be “spared from political bickering” and “divisive political fighting.”

Benjo Basas, TDC chairperson, said he hoped the next DepEd secretary would have actual classroom experience and “whose heart is truly a teacher's.”

He said: “Aside from this, the next secretary should be an excellent manager since that person will be managing the largest bureaucracy in the country, with the most personnel, the most geographically dispersed, and the greatest resources.”

Loud and clear.

 

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A DANGEROUS HUSBAND IS A DANGEROUS FATHER. A husband who does not punch and kick his wife when he is extremely angry (especially when he is under the influence of liquor or drugs), can be the best and model father because he will never lay a hand on his children. A wife beater can also be a child abuser. Physical abuse in family must stop. Even animals don't deserve brutality.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two daily newspapers in Iloilo.—Ed)

Breakups

“If you truly want to be respected by people you love, you must prove to them that you can survive without them.”

―Michael Bassey Johnson, The Infinity Sign

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

WHAT happened to Rep. Julienne “Jamjam” Baronda and Mayor Geronimo “Jerry” Treñas, Iloilo City’s top two highest elected officials, has happened ominously to President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. and Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio, the country’s top two highest elected officials.

With the midterm election coming in 2025, the political jinx is expected to also wallop other “united” alliances and “solid” tandems in the region and all over the country.

It is called politics because kisses of Judas are rampant and prevalent; dances of Salome are pervasive and ubiquitous; embraces of Karamazov are rife and stupendous; praises of Brutus and Cassius are metastasizing.

Politics is too shallow to be considered as the barometer for a long-lasting friendship, union, mutuality and collaboration. Somewhere along the way, political betrothals fall apart.

In the long run, irrational thinking, pride, egomania and vainglory will prevail over faithfulness, permanence, persistence and longevity.

Self interest is the only permanent aspiration in politics, not friendship. Only the fools will insist divorce isn’t possible in hitherto robust political alignments.

Watch out for more brutal political breakups leading to the midterm and presidential elections in 2028. The show has just begun.

 

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MY interest in world history was rekindled after finding several hard-bound books dumped in a sidewalk garbage recently in Harlem, a neighborhood in the boundary of Manhattan and Bronx.

In one of the treasures I picked up, The Story of Civilization was prominently featured. Back in the Philippines, I was obsessed with this 10-volume cultural history of civilization (although I managed to secure only our volumes in a book sale in Surrey, Canada in 2010).

The work on The Story of Civilization originated in 1914 when Dr. Will Durant first began to collect material. With “The Story of Philosophy” fame lays a dozen years ahead.

More than 20 years later, in 1935, Part I, “Our Oriental Heritage,” was offered to the public. This was followed in 1939 by the second part, “The Life of Greece.” In 1944 came “Caesar and Christ,” the result of 25 years’ preparation and five years’ writing. Like the earlier parts, this volume, part III of Durant’s monumental survey of world history, is an independent self-contained segment of a 10-volume cultural history of civilization.

In this massive book, whose scope and wit recall the golden days of historical writing, Durant recounts the flaming pageant of the rise of Rome from a crossroads town to world mastery.

 

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He tells of its achievements through two centuries of security and peace, from the Crimea to Gibraltar and from the Euphrates to Hadrian’s Wall, of its spread of classic civilization over the Mediterranean and western European world.

Durant tells of Rome’s struggle to preserve its ordered realm from a surrounding sea of barbarism and of its long, slow crumbling and final catastrophic collapse into darkness and chaos.

Primarily a cultural history, Caesar and Christ lavishly discusses government, industry, manners, morals, the status of women, law , philosophy, science, literature, religion, and art.

Besides the varied pageant of the Catos, the Scipios, and the Gracchi, of Hannibal, Marius, Sulla, Catiline, Pompey, Caesar, Antony, Cleopatra, and the Emperors, good, bad, and indifferent, we view Cicero (busy in all departments of life), Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Tacitus, Juvenal, and such cultivators of latter day Hellenism as Plutarch, Lucian, and Marcus Aurelius.

Durants accompanies us to watch the rise of temples, basilicas, and forums pass a day of games and spectacles at the Flavian amphitheater (correctly nicknamed the Colosseum). Turning to the eastern Mediterrarian, Durant’s book will make us accompany Christ on his ministry, witness the tragic scenes of the Passion, and sail and walk with Paul on his missionary labors.

The colors darken, Palmyra rises and falls. The Empire attains a new–and spurious–invincibility under Aurelian, declines, and finally stiffens into a bureaucratic mold.

 

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Caesar and Christ contains many parallels to modern history, and Dr. Durant presents them with lucid authority. He believes that a reading of past events should illuminate the present. In the class struggles and jockeying for power that typify Roman history from the Gracchi to Caesar, he finds an analogue to the development of Europe and America from the French Revolution to the present time.

He reminds us that dictators have ever used the same methods. He tells us that the dole was restored to more than a century before Christ and that the first Roman labor union was established about 600 B.C.

We hear of bank failures, pork barrels, depressions, governmental projects and regulations, State Socialism, war-time priority plans, electoral corruption, pressure groups, trade associations, and other phenomena of ancient Rome that might easily fit into front-pages headlines of our own era.

 

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No man should claim that “l may be a bad husband, but I am a good father.”

It should be, “I am doing my best to be both a good husband and a good father because I love my family unconditionally.”

Relationship with our family isn’t a 5-6 deal; it’s not an eat-all-you-can meal; not a study-now-pay-later plan; not a chicken and egg debate; not a choice between wholesale and retail.

Family is a home, the altar of concrete union and a fountain of unconditional love, not a plate of pizza that can be sliced only according to our choice and appetite. Belated Happy Father’s Day.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two daily newspapers in Iloilo.—Ed)

Pinoy community in the spotlight after arrest of suspected jihadist

“Don’t carry a gun. It's nice to have them close by, but don't carry them. You might get arrested.”

—John Gotti

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

RESIDENTS living in neighborhoods with large Filipino population in Queens, New York City have noticed unusual presence of New York Police Department (NYPD) cars in the streets since the arrest of a 29-year-old suspected Pinoy jihadist in a traffic stop near the La Guardia International Airport last week.

NYPD cars would be spotted moving slowly every now and then as if going the arounds in the neighborhood day and night, observed Resty, a freight delivery attendant who resides in the Woodside area, a residential and commercial neighborhood in Queens borough’s western portion.

“Para bang may hinahanap sila (It seems they were looking for someone),” remarked Resty, a habitue of Elmhurst’s Moore Homestead Playground.

The communities bordering on the south by Maspeth, on the north by Astoria, on the west by Sunnyside, and on the east by Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, and East Elmhurst, are largely dominated by mixed Filipino, Middle Eastern, Latino, and Chinese residents.

“Little Manila” is located in the intersection of Roosevelt Avenue and 70th Street.

Created in 2021, the area has long been known as “Little Manila” for its many Filipino restaurants and stores such as Kabayan, Renee’s Kitchen, Phil Am Foodmart, Ihawan, a branch of the Philippine National Bank and many more.

 

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“Police (patrol) cars usually don’t use sirens if there are no emergencies or activities related to crimes or police operations, but we have seen many of them passing by and sometimes parking nearby incognito,” observed Balsy, a cashier in a Woodside restaurant who lives in the 69th Street.

“Since the news (of the suspected jihadist’s arrest) broke out, sometimes NYPD cops entered the Filipino restaurants, but they didn’t buy anything. Maybe, they’re just observing,” Myrna, a caregiver who lives near the 61st Woodside Station, said.

It was the first time that a member of the Filipino community was implicated in extremism related to terrorism.   

Possessing an arsenal of weapons in his black Ford Explorer near LaGuardia International Airport, NYPD busted Judd Sanson, the Filipino suspect considered as a “quiet kid” who often spoke about staying positive—until something “snapped in his head,” according to a friend quoted by New York newspapers.

The court sent Sanson to Rikers Island, where he was reportedly being held without bail.

 

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Sporting a long hair, Sanson was pulled over by cops near LaGuardia at about 1:30 a.m. June 12. He “nervously reached under the driver’s seat as the officers approached,” according to prosecutors as reported in New York newspapers.

The New York Post, which first reported the story on June 16, quoted Sanson as telling the cops, “Sorry, there is a lot of drunk people nowadays.”

The cops, who stopped the Filipino driver for having obscured license plates on the vehicle, found a loaded Glock under the seat. He nervously blurted, “I live in Jamaica. I was visiting my uncle.”

Authorities also found a knife strapped to his leg, along with an MTA reflective vest and “a makeshift axe hanging from the ceiling” and a “makeshift sword” inside the vehicle, Queens Assistant District Attorney Dylan Nesturrick said last week in Queens Criminal Court, as reported by New York Post.

 

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Sanson has addresses in Tennessee and Maryland, but lives with his dad in the Hollis section of Queens. Prior to his arrest, he had  reportedly posted a “disturbing photo” on his Facebook page.

“This car stop averted what could have been a disaster for the citizens of Queens, New York City and potentially even the country,” Nesturrick said.

Cops may have suspected Sanson’s other friends with valuable information about the suspect and his activities, could be staying in the neighborhood where he lives. The NYPD did not announce they were looking for more suspected jihadists with Filipino features.

The majority or 54 percent of some 73,000 Filipino New Yorkers live in Queens. The remainder live mostly in the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Sixty percent of New York State’s Filipino residents live in New York City

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two daily newspapers in Iloilo.—Ed)