Wednesday, January 22, 2020

The Greed of this Member of Congress?



By Mortz C. Ortigoza

SANDERS ECLIPSES TRUMP. Despite the majority grips of the Republicans in the U.S Senate (that’s 53. 45, 2 Senators for the GOP, Democrats, Independent, respectively), public opinions on Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress of President Donald Trump in the impeachment bid by the Democrats in the House and now in the Senate have afflicted voters as seen on this latest poll.

Here’s the January 22,2020 Newsweek written by Shane Croucher:
"Senator Bernie Sanders leads President Donald Trump by the widest margin of all the candidates in the Democratic Party's 2020 race when Americans are asked to choose in a face-off against the Republican incumbent, according to a poll”.
"SurveyUSA asked 4,069 registered voters nationwide how they would vote in an election today if Trump was pitted against each of the 2020 candidates in the Democratic race. The progressive Vermont independent came out on top”.
The poll found that 52 percent of voters would choose Sanders and 43 percent Trump, giving the veteran senator a nine-point lead. Next was former vice president Joe Biden at 50 percent to Trump's 43 percent, a seven-point lead"
The online survey was conducted between January 14-16 straight after the Democratic debate in Iowa and on the eve of Trump's Senate impeachment trial. It has a credibility interval of 1.7 percentage points.

Image result for greed***
Majority of the congressmen in my burgeoning province want to have additional congressional districts.
The plan is to apportion two to four more congressional districts from its original six making it ten at the maximum.
Pangasinan has a population of almost three million or to be specific 2,956, 726 according to the 2015 Census.
The demography of the province is bigger now after the 2018 census will be published by the Philippines Statistics Authority.
 Pangasinan, I guess, will hit 3.5 million in demography if the new survey goes public.

With 250, 000 inhabitants needed to create a new congressional district as mandated by the Constitution, Pangasinan can have 14 congressmen who will add to the excitement and fire of the public hearings and the acrimony of the grandstanding at the House of Representatives in Quezon City.
Of course there will be spiked too of the numbers of solons who will become members of the infamous Committee on Silence where most of our jaded or boring congressmen belong ha ha ha!

Just to show the population of the province's swelled significantly, she has 1,946,682 or almost two million voters as based on the records of the Commission on Election compared to the 1, 705,260 in 2016.
I argued before with commentators on my blog the advantages to the people of more districts.
Here’s one of them: 
“With additional districts can they solve poverty? Corruption? Crime rate? High prices of commodities? High prices of petroleum? Taxation? Free education? Hospitalization, malnutrition and health programs, land reforms for farmers and agricultural problems? If the answer is "yes" then I am in favor for it. But if it will only benefit corrupt public officials and their families, what for?”
My retort: He he he. Iyong P1 to P2 billion doc na infras a year given by the national government. It could help perk up the multiplier effects in Pangasinan for more jobs. Of course may effect din iyan sa bulsa ng 20% S.O.P sa mga bagong tongressmen, este, congressmen.
***

A solon, who asked for anonymity, told me that he had talks with some lawmakers and friends of his former opponent to legislate for more congressional districts so they don’t clash every election time.
Congressional and governorship derbies entail tens if not hundreds of millions of pesos of campaign chest just to win a post that gives more or less a hundred thousand pesos monthly for a three years term.
Crazy but it’s a reality in Philippine politics. “Aken ey (Why on earth)?” a Pangasinense will blurt on his thick accented vernacular on the incredibility of the wherewithal needed.
 My answer: Prestige man prestige!
What price glory for the effing prestige.

  The congressman told me one of the six solons (make it seven to include the province’s based Abono Party List) doesn’t want to co-author the passing of law on congressional apportionment in the Land of Warrior Princess Urduja.

Why the solon did not like it?” I asked.
“Alam mo na iyan Mortz”.
“Ah, kasi gusto niyang solohin ang more or less One Billion Pesos na pork barrel kada taon para may S.O.P siya na Two Hundred Million Pesos kada taon din?”
The member of the House of Representatives just smile.
Son of a gun, another selfish member of the House of Thieves because of avarice or greed at the expense of the general welfare?

***

ANTI TANK MISSILE AND TRUMP’S IMPEACHMENT. I was glued at my cable TV since the wee hours of January 22 for the opening of the impeachment trial at the Senate of U.S President Donald Trump. There I saw presentations and rebuttals of evidences and witnesses between the Democrats led House Managers and Trump’s counsels.
These hullabaloos, presided by the U.S Supreme Court’s Chief Justice John Roberts, started from the withholding of Trump of the congressional mandated $400 million military aid package like the state-of-art lethal anti-tank missiles to Ukraine.
The approval of the Article of Impeachment against Trump by the dominant Democrat congressmen at the House of Representatives ensued because of the  aid package and the Javelin FGM 140, sus more than a billion of pesos apiece in our currency, Trump withheld to the Ukrainian government unless President Volodymyr Zelensky succumbed to his blackmail, we called quid pro quo, to incriminate the son of his presidential rival that could benefit him politically on the November 2020 election.

He wanted that former vice president Joe Biden's son Robert Hunter be incriminated by the Ukrainian government to have enmeshed himself in a corruption issue at the Ukrainian gas producer’s Burisma Holdings where the latter served on its board.
Democrats called that as Abuse of Power as provided by the Constitution since he goaded the president of a foreign country to interfere in the U.S election.
According to House Manager and Democrat Representative Adam Bennet Schiff, a former fiscal or federal prosecutor, with the Javelin in the military inventory of Ukraine, the Russian government and their tank operators will have cold chills on their back whenever they intrude and carve again on the territory of the besiege weak country.


Gezz, dรฉjร  vu for me on that heat seeking U.S made man-portable missile’s Stingers the Yanks supplied the Talibans that became nightmares for Soviet’s pilots in the 1980s war in Afghanistan.
“The Ukrainian president can negotiate with (Russian President) Vladmir Putin from the position of strength if we send those Javelins,
” Schiff told the members of the Senate dominated by the Republicans.
Javelin, according to Wikipidea, is a fire-and-forget missile with lock-on before launch and automatic self-guidance. The system takes a top-attack flight profile against armored vehicles (attacking the top armor, which is generally thinner), but can also take a direct-attack mode for use against buildings, targets inside the minimum top-attack engagement range, and targets under obstructions. The missile also has the ability to engage helicopters in the direct attack mode. It can reach a peak altitude of 150 m (500 ft) in top-attack mode and 60 m (190 ft) in direct-fire mode. It is equipped with an imaging infrared seeker. The tandem warhead is fitted with two shaped charges: a precursor warhead to detonate any explosive reactive armor and a primary warhead to penetrate base armor.
The missile is ejected from the launcher so that it reaches a safe distance from the operator before the main rocket motors ignite – a "soft launch arrangement". This makes it harder to identify the launcher; however, back-blast from the launch tube still poses a hazard to nearby personnel. Thanks to this "fire-and-forget" system, the firing team may change their position as soon as the missile has been launched, or prepare to fire on their next target while the first missile is still in the air.
The missile system is most often carried by a two-person team consisting of a gunner and an ammunition bearer, although it can be fired with just one person if necessary. While the gunner aims and fires the missile, the ammo bearer scans for prospective targets, watches for threats, such as enemy vehicles and troops, and ensures that personnel and obstacles are clear of the missile's back blast.

READ MY OTHER ARTICLE/BLOG:

How your congressman steals gov’t funds



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

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