WE DO NOT HAVE party politics. Ideologies or political platforms seldom define parties and the members they attract. After the proliferation of our multi-party system, the party acronyms have become a blizzard of alphabets in various dialects, which also include party list agglomerations and citizen action groups. Remember the August 21 Movement (ATOM)? Always, the party is defined by who organized it and the candidates it is promoting, including common ones from yet other parties.

THE DIFFERENCE between globalization and globalism might seem obscure and unimportant, but it matters. Globalization is a word used by economists to describe international flows of trade, investment and people. Globalism is a word used by demagogues to suggest that globalization is not a process but an ideology -- an evil plan, pushed by a shadowy crowd of people called “globalists.”

The Comprehensive Tax Reform Program seeks to implement a fairer, simpler, and more efficient tax system. Toward this end, it has implemented relatively lower tax rates under Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) Law and also targeting to lower tax on corporate income under Tax Reform for Attracting Better And High-quality Opportunities (TRABAHO). Unfortunately, this comes at the cost of increasing other tax rates.

The Duterte government is known for political environmentalism and recycling -- it recycles its heavily tainted officials, sacking them from one post only to be given another post in another government agency. The Bureau of Customs in particular is becoming more known as a “blinded” facilitator of multibillion pesos worth of imported shabu smuggled into the country.

On Oct. 17, 2018, House of Representatives Speaker Gloria Arroyo spoke before the delegates to the 139^th International Parliamentary Union (IPU) General Assembly at the Centre for International Conference Geneve in Geneva, Switzerland. Mrs. Arroyo was head of the Philippine delegation to the IPU assembly.

THE government’s accelerated move to impose rice tariffs and lift quantitative restrictions on rice imports is touted to ease inflation. It comes with a heavy price in the long term, however, as it puts in peril the livelihood of millions of Filipino rice farmers. Amid runaway inflation triggered by its regressive tax reform program, the Duterte administration, in an unprecedented and probably Constitutionally questionable move, issued Administrative Order (AO) 13 ahead of the passage of a Rice Tariffication Bill. The President himself even declared that the country can now import as much rice as it wants.

In our primary and secondary school, some boys had surnames like Aquino, Araneta, Arroyo, Cojuangco, Laurel, Lopez, Roxas, Tañada, Tuazon, and the like. These...

Secretary Ramon Lopez of the Department of Trade and Industry is among the hardest working Cabinet members we have today. Under his purview is the unenviable task of attracting foreign investments, shepherding local industries to global competitiveness, creating international trade opportunities and protecting local consumers from unfair trade practices, among many others.

There was already a third telecommunications company “telco” to the Globe Telecom and Smart Telecom “duopoly.” In August 2010, San Miguel Corp. (SMC) bought Bell Telecommunications Philippines, Inc. (BellTel) and set up Vega Telecoms, to challenge the emerging duopoly of Globe and Smart (philstar.com, Aug. 17, 2010).

ROUTINE is defined as “a usual fixed way of doing things,” which is often how life is lived. T.S. Eliot describes routine too -- “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” The felt absence of routine may rank next only to the loss of regular income for a retiring executive. So used is he to checking his schedule of the day that a completely blank calendar is sure to throw him off.

Unbeknownst to many Filipinos, two quite significant developments in the academic world happened this month. One was the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings before the US Senate in relation to his appointment as Supreme Court justice, which revealed the deep leftist bias that many law schools have (including Kavanaugh’s own alma mater, Yale).

A “nuisance candidate,” to summarize what Section 69 of the Omnibus Election Code says, is someone who files a certificate of candidacy (CoC) with the intention of mocking the electoral process or putting it in disrepute; whose name is similar to that of other registered candidates and whom the electorate can therefore mistake for him or her; or who has no real intention to run for the office for which he or she filed a CoC.