Blame the Catholic Church too for our Poverty

By MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA

During the visit of Pope Francis at the Quirino Grandstand, a child and a beggar Glyzelle Palomar posed a dramatic query to the Pope for the whole nation to hear: “Many children get involved in drugs and prostitution. Why does God allows these things to happen to us? The children are not guilty of anything.”

Pope Francis embraces girl after she asks: 'Why does God allow children to become prostitutes?'

She sobbed, cried, and then embraced the Pope.

Filipinos, who loved to watch soap operas on TV shed tears!

Francis, who was treated like God by the overwhelmed Filipinos, could not answer the question that was probably coach to the child by the Filipino priests who spice the “stunt” with posterity and dramas.

My answer to the posed of Palomar: “Because the narrow minded Catholic Church's high priests hinder any government programs on birth control thus the runaway rabbit liked population explosion that breeds more social problems like poverty, drugs, and prostitution!"

Pope Francis and the ignorant priests who are partly to blame in our penury should have seen this one. We have the same population with contraceptives conscious Thailand in the 1970s, now progressive Thailand got 60 million people; we got more than a hundred million starving Filipinos where many are willing to sell their bodies to the moneyed just to meet both ends.

To further appreciate how a smaller populated country enjoys the economic spoils we can compare how Thailand and the Philippines fare in year 2013 on their Per Capita Income (PCI) /Gross Domestic of Product (GDP/PCI). To the jeepney drivers and carpenters who now read this article, GDP/PCI means total income of a country divided by its present population. 

Thailand’s GDP/PCI was U.S $5,779 or its Philippine peso equivalent of P260, 055 a year. Philippines’ GDP/PCI was U.S $2,765 or Philippine peso equivalent of P124,425 a year.

 Oh, I just learned that GDP if implemented in the Pope crazy Philippines is no  longer Gross Domestic Product, naughty economists called it Gutom Diyan ang Pilipino (GDP)  te-heh my broadside on the Catholic Church’s policy on birth control.

The Catholic fanatics and faithful in the Philippines are also to be blamed to our hardship. Many of them unabashedly and ignorantly swallowed hook, line and sinker the sermons, threats, and bogeyman of the Catholic’s "Ayatollahs" that using contraceptives would them facing in judgment day a penalty of a huge stone strapped on their body before God throws them to the boiling acid fire of hell. The clerics do not know that we are living already in hell, just like what child Palomar experienced, because of their out- of- reality teachings on how to control birth.

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 I was browsing the other day the book “Take it Back: Our Party, Our Country, Our Future” authored by James Carville and Paul Begala two marquee political strategists of the Democrat Party in the United States.  The authors distinguished two kinds of exploiting the strengths and weaknesses of their PR clients and their clients' opponents.

Carville, who has managed more political campaigns than anyone in history , and  Begala, who was chief strategist for the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign which carried 33 States and made Bill Clinton the first Democrat to win the White House in 16 years, said that candidates should know how to  attack.

They said that advisers of presidential candidate George H.W Bush personally hit the opponent while operators of presidential candidate Bill Clinton and John Kerry debate on issues and avoid personal attacks.

Here’s Carville and Begala on the Republicans or the GOP (Grand Old Party): “Some of the attacks were about small things, meant to paint Kerry as an out-of-touch elitist. The Bush campaign or its allies attacked Kerry’s suits, his homes, and his wealth – all intended to make Kerry look effete and elite, which is to say, both weak and weird. Never mind the facts that Bush himself wears exclusive and expensive Oxford suits (which can run up $14,000 apiece), that he owns fifteen-hundred-acre, multi-million-dollar ranch, complete with a private lake stocked with his own private bass; or that he is filthy rich. Kerry was attacked for windsurfing even though a windsurfing board was a hell of a lot less expensive than the $250,000 cigarette boat (which one critic called “a penis extender”) that Bush liked to zoom around in”.

According to the book by May 2004 – months before Kerry had even his party’s nomination – the Bush –Dick Cheney campaign had aired an astonishing 49,050 negative ads (a part of the provision of the Omnibus Election Code that I was espousing since time immemorial in this column that Philippines politicians should emulate – MCO) in the top hundred media markets. The incumbent’s campaign was devoting 75 percent of its advertising budget for slamming Kerry.

Here’s Carville and Begala on the Democrats: “While the Republicans had coordinated strategy of attacking, the Democrats carefully scrutinized speeches to ensure they were not too negative (against the opponent- MCO). One aide even tried to tell Clinton that his speech was too negative. Can you imagine the chutzpah (as we say down south) that took? If you recall Clinton’s speech, it was not negative at all. It certainly offered a contrast because the competing visions of the two parties, but nothing even approaching the foam-at-the-mouth attacks of Dick Cheney’s speech”.

Salamabit, I could cite the practices of the PR men of two electoral aspirants located in the North of the country.

While media men working for Aspirant A talks on their radio programs and news papers on issues, Aspirant B supporters not only discuss issues but hit hard A and notwithstanding their high heaven’s praises on B’s deeds.

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Before the start of an election period for the positions in the local government unit (LGU) in the country, chief executives like mayors apply for loan at government and private banks in behalf of the LGU.

The agenda for contracting loans is not really for the betterment of the LGU but more on the betterment of their campaign chest as they wage war with their electoral rival. But borrowing money from bank prejudices the general welfare.
Those members asked the mayor in a quid pro quo for their share before they vote the resolution empowering the mayor to contract the loan. They know that the mayor chalked up a huge portion of the tens of millions of peso of loans, SOP (euphemism for cut) and through his dummy contractor who constructs the government edifice the loan bankrolls.
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There is a 3rd class town in Central Pangasinan where its town hall stands tall among even those first class municipalities - thanks to the chutzpah and taste of its mayor.

But was it really a chutzpah and good taste?

Ignorant people think the former mayor there is a good manager since he transformed its pathetic looking municipio to a modern one despite its town’s sluggish economy. The mayor and the councilors are either stupid or schemer by colluding among themselves where big chunks of the town’s revenue would go for the yearly amortization that would be paid by the taxpayers for decades.

The mayor’s constituents don’t know that the millions of pesos the municipio pays for that debt denied them the numbers of school buildings, medicines for the town and village clinics, farm-to market roads, and others.

 I pitied these constituents' misconception on the new town hall that stands tall. They thought its progress, for me, it’s retrogress.

(You can read my selected columns at http://mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at totomortz@yahoo.com)