Rising from the mud and muck - Part 2

The response was instantaneous. As if on cue, the global Filipino community responded with determination and zeal, with the mantra of self-sacrifice and the truly magical Filipino tradition of the bayanihan. If only Filipinos would have the same passion to change their world, nothing would be impossible for this Pearl of the Orient Sea.

Unfortunately, unless there is a calamity the magnitude of Ondoy and the resultant flooding of the heart of their country, Filipinos do not react well to the stresses of their everyday lives. They in fact do not react at all. They pretty much leave everything in the hands of God. They pray that their God would have pity on them, but if He doesn't, Filipinos would understand and simply submit to the "will of the Lord."

That is why when everything is said and done, you can bet your last nickel that Filipinos will go back to their lives - what's left of it - and become willing actors in a stage play that is being billed by their neighbors as "The Sick Man of Asia."

I hope I'm wrong. Besides, it would be a cop-out to terminate this analysis at this point. Let us dig deeper. Why do Filipinos prefer the annual ritual of making donations not only in cash and necessities, such as clothes and foodstuffs, but also of their time and their heroism? Why not spend a year, two years, ten years, to making sacrifices so that the infrastructure would function properly?

Let me explain this. Everyone knows that the esteros and rivers must be dredged. Everyone knows that the sewage systems must not be clogged up with garbage because when the rains come, deadly floods are sure to follow. Everyone also knows that whatever needs to be done will not be done.

Why are such life-saving infrastructure maintenance tasks not done? Why doesn't the government do a better job at it?

First on the government: Filipinos do not think that their government has the competence or the resources to do the right things. And it's OK with them. They know instinctively that they are electing incompetents (some are not only incompetent -shades of "Heckuva job, Brownie" - some are allegedly hopelessly corrupt) so Filipinos do not expect much from their government when it comes to building and maintaining infrastructure.

They know of the unwritten rule that if government is seen and used as a dispenser of political favors, an institution that creates make-work projects, a milking cow for powerful politicians and bosses, an enabler of tax cheats and jueteng lords, a see-no-evil-hear-no-evil-say-no-evil security guard, who in their right mind would expect that government would be there to take care of people's needs?

Second on the people: Filipinos know that they will be called on time and again to conduct food, cash and clothing drives every time a typhoon hits, or the earth shakes, or mud flows and covers whole villages. And it's OK by them: it gives them a chance to display their heroism and their charity. For politicians, it is an opportunity to stamp foodstuffs with their names - even foodstuffs that they did not personally donate - so that the people would remember them in the next election cycle.

Fine. We have an understanding of the roles of government and people in the Philippines. Or do we?

Having lived in the U.S. for many years, I also happen to know that there is a great divide here between liberals and conservatives, which divide probably explains further why Filipinos prefer private charity and heroism to government competence and relevance.

We Filipinos, because of our deep religiousness, are genetically conservative. Like conservatives in America, we believe that helping the poor, the dispossessed, those displaced by floods, earthquakes and typhoons is a great and noble private virtue. We do not believe that helping people in need is the job of government. Conservatives believe that the proper role of government is as a night watchman and enforcer of law and order, and only those. But only in theory, because in practice they know that even on that score, government is sadly lacking.

The conservatives' modern hero, Ronald Reagan, after all said that government is not the solution. Government is the problem.

Liberals, on the other hand, believe that government is an instrument of social change and social justice. Or should be. Because most of the jobs are too big in our modern world, only the government is in a position to undertake projects that would minimize the need on the public's part to do charity work, so the liberals believe.

That is why the anguished cries you are hearing about the government's unpreparedness and total lack of competence during and in the aftermath of Ondoy have generally come from the liberal media and those who want to reform the government. The conservatives are too busy packing foodstuffs, clothes and shoes.

FLOOD-PREVENTION INFRASTRUCTURE IN METRO MANILA

Because of Ondoy and predictions that there are many more Ondoys that will form in southeastern Pacific Ocean that will make a bee-line for Luzon, there is a headwind that is carrying the notion that once and for all, the infrastructure in Metro Manila must be updated to give Metro Manilans a better chance at survival should the typhoons that are sure to hit Manila and environs intensify and become more numerous in the future. Increasingly, even some conservatives have joined in the chorus.

The headwind is making Filipinos more liberal, if only in the sense that they are becoming more appreciative and more demanding of their government.

FINANCING

How the devil do we finance the massive projects that must be undertaken? In 2005, I wrote in my blog, lanzones.com, that the Philippines must consider a ten-year moratorium on interest payments on all sovereign debt. At the time, only the leftists shared that idea but now such an idea or variations have become more mainstream.

No less than one of the leading presidential candidates, Senate President Manny Villar, has recommended that the country look seriously at the Argentine blueprint for defaulting on the Philippines' sovereign debts.

One of the most respected thinkers in the Philippines, Walden Bello, makes a brilliant case for national debt default in his article published by Focus on the Global South, an NGO. Mr. Bello and others, such as Senators Manny Villar and Panfilo Lacson (I can't believe I would be citing Lacson), estimate that the total national debt is 3.8 trillion pesos and on its way to close to 7 trillion pesos within the forseeable future. At 3.8 trillion, national debt is more than 125% of GDP. AT 7 trillion, it will be in excess of 200% of GDP.

Clearly, the Philippines is in a silent fiscal crisis that puts the country in bankruptcy territory. "Debt servicing rose from 48% of national government expenditure in 2002 to 81% in 2004 and is expected to hit 89% in 2005," according to Mr. Bello.

A lot of countries, including Brazil, have had to restructure their debts and gotten discounts of 70-75% on their national debts as settlement.

Why the Philippines continues to insist on being an ideal debtor nation is beyond comprehension.

A ten-year moratorium on debt service payments on the Philippines' national debt will free up more than 300 billion pesos a year, or 3 trillion pesos in total that the country can use to dredge esteros, streams and rivers, cover the esteros with concrete, build levees and floodgates, relocate squatters, provide lifeboats and other rescue vehicles to low-lying communities.

There's the added bonus that the Philippines will have enough left-over money to build new schools, hire new teachers and improve educational standards in the public schools.

There is much that the Philippines can do with the money that will no longer be devoted to the mistaken notion that a good credit standing for the Philippines is of paramount importance, more important than the security of its people.

The Philippines is deathly afraid of being shut out of the world's credit markets should it default on its sovereign debts. Yet the experience of Argentina, Brazil and other countries suggests that the world cannot successfully take reprisal measures that will stick, especially when the debtor nations eventually end up righting their ships of state as the direct result of their loan defaults.

Besides, the winds of change are blowing across our ever-shrinking world. Many third world countries holding odious debts have been forgiven those debts by the advanced countries. At least $25 billion of the country's $70 billion in debt are odious debts, taken out during the Marcos years without the consent of the people. The classic definition of odious debts is debts taken out by a government without the consent of the people.

One may argue that because of government corruption, a good percentage of the loans taken out by the government ended up in the pockets of corrupt politicians. The $45 billion balance of the debts taken out by administrations succeeding the Marcos era, one may argue, is made up of odious debts and legitimate debts.

If the country defaults on its sovereign debts through a ten-year moratorium on interest payments, we may in fact generate more respect from the world's financial community. It will be a signal to the world that the Philippines can chart its own course, be the captain of its ship, and be perfectly willing to live without foreign loans in the future. Subject only to the caveat that the government shall work for the welfare of the Filipino people and the politicians who run the government shall not continue to line their pockets at the expense of the people's safety.

Besides, without foreign loans, the Filipino politicians will lose what has been alleged as a source of "commission" payments for securing such loans.

The way to go in the future, in that scenario of a brave new Philippine world is BOT - build operate and transfer. Foreign countries and organizations shall be invited to build infrastructure, operate the same, and transfer the infrastructure to the Philippine government after the foreign operators shall have made sufficient profits from its ownership and operation.

No monies are disbursed to the Philippine government which corrupt politicians could allegedly proceed to shave to pay themselves and their cronies "commissions."

Rising from the muck and mud: a New Metro Manila

(The pictures are from a torrent of photos posted on the Internet by unknown sources. If I knew who the sources were, I would gladly attribute the photos to them.)

NATURE'S WARNING

I can't believe a second destructive typhoon, Pepeng, hit northeastern Philippines and caused a lot of devastation there. This time, thank God, the Manila metropolitan area and the nearby provinces were spared.





At least Manila can dry out and the low-lying areas can watch the waters slowly recede and people who were rendered homeless and others who lost the contents of their homes can start rebuilding their lives.

As bad as the devastation and loss of lives were that Ondoy has wrought, it was merely a warning to all Filipinos that there may be worse times ahead.

My greatest fear is that people will go back to their daily routines, shrug off Ondoy as an act of God, pray hard that a similar calamity does not befall the Philippines in the future and do same-old, same-old. That would be a huge, unforgivable mistake.



Are there lessons to be learned from Ondoy? The obvious answer is yes. But what if there are lessons, are we as a people ever guided by lessons learned from calamities?



There is a picture that best embodies the fate of metro Manila in the foreseeable future. It is one of those pictures that have gone around the world on the Internet. It shows Manilans on top of a bridge with nothing but water ahead of them. To me, it is a metaphor for Manila's long-term destiny. Having left the great flood behind, Manilans look to a future of flooded streets, cars and houses. Manila's destiny has already been written, and it is written with an ocean of ink the color of mud and muck.


You may argue as many responsible and respected commentators have that global warming is a natural, long-term trend that is not caused by the actions of mankind. But if your sanity is intact, it will be hard to argue against the near-unanimous scientific community judgment that, caused by man or not, there is indeed global warming. The likelihood that there will be more violent, severe and record-setting storms hitting the Philippines and the Pacific rim countries has been predicted by many leading scientists in the world. We can ignore the scientific Cassandras only at our peril. Not us, perhaps, for many of us are not going to be around, but our children and their children and future generations of Filipinos not yet born.

The Philippines is in the bulls eye of every scenario created by global warming scientists. According to these scenarios, the rising oceans will sink large areas of metro Manila and many streets in the capital will look like Venetian canals. If it's any consolation to Filipinos, that will happen to some sections of lower Manhattan also.


And, if the rising ocean waters do not devastate Manila, the monster storms that are being predicted for the future will complete the job.


If the myriad of pictures posted on the Internet over the past week are enough to discourage and dishearten most Filipinos in the global community, imagine the effect of not one Ondoy a year but three or four such storms hitting Manila each year.


Filipinos cannot afford to brush off Ondoy and eventually go back to the usual hustle and bustle of their everyday lives. Ondoy must change their mindset and challenge them to confront a future that promises to be more frightening than they have ever experienced or imagined.


There is another picture that is going around cyberspace which is a microcosm of the dangers faced by Manilans from future floods, fierce winds and rampaging currents. It is the picture of a boy being hoisted by rescue volunteers and workers to the top of a roof. It is a metaphor for an existence where the only protection against the elements is on top of a roof. Perhaps like me, most are wondering how people were able to clamber up on the roofs of their or their neighbors' houses. Rescue volunteers hoisting people up to rooftops is one way. Another is by letting the rising waters take them up to the roofs of their homes.

WE MUST LEARN FROM THE DUTCH AND, YES, NEW ORLEANS

Filipinos must re-do the infrastructure of metro Manila in ways that as recently as September 25, people in the Philippines did not consider possible. They must do this, if today's children want to continuously live in Metro Manila and celebrate their 60th birthdays.



Something drastic must be done. Whatever the government and private industry do, if it's not drastic, it will not be enough.



A lot of recommendations have been made on how to assure proper drainage in low-lying areas of metro Manila, some dating as early as the 1970s, but Filipinos have not had the will and the funds to entertain such ideas.

The government may have the will now, but will there be funds for these most logical of all logical projects? There are some obvious "found money" lying around, but more on this later.



The obvious projects that are waiting to be matched by strong-willed Filipinos are:



1. Dredging of esteros, streams and rivers in and around Manila and topping off the esteros with concrete. This will increase the capacity of the esteros to accommodate rain water and sewage. It will also assure that people who live along such natural and man-made sewer systems are prevented from using them as garbage dumps.



2. Erection of levees along Pasig and Marikina rivers. Not the whole stretch of the rivers, but in spots where the rivers are likely to overflow their banks. We must learn from New Orleans, the Dutch and Europe's other Low Countries. It will be very expensive, but it is an expense that shall be worth the cost because such a massive undertaking will employ tens of thousands of people and the effect on local economies will be huge.



3. Creation of floodgates that will release water from Laguna de Bay to Manila Bay during heavy storms. This is another labor-intensive project that can have a huge impact on the economies of Cavite and Laguna.



4. Relocation of residents of squatter areas in low-lying communities to higher ground and dumping of dredged mud and muck to raise ground levels in those areas.



5. Pass a law requiring municipalities in low-lying areas and near rivers and streams to equip themselves with a sufficient number of lifeboats for search and rescue missions. If the municipalities are unwilling to do this, the law shall mandate that those areas must be permanently evacuated.



6. Clean up the BIR and Customs to increase tax revenues. Pass additional tax laws. Businesses and residents who operate and live in communities that stand to benefit from the new infrastructure will be assessed special taxes for as long as the new infrastructure is under construction.

7. Create government-sponsored flood insurance policies. Residences and commercial properties in municipalities that are located in the most flood-prone areas will command the steepest insurance premiums.



Now for the obvious question: Since the additional taxes and more efficient tax collections will not be enough to finance the new and renovated infrastructure, how will the Philippines finance all these ambitious projects? I will devote my next post to a discussion of how the money can be raised.

Meanwhile, we must all get used to thinking as one nation. If all Filipinos help Manila as one nation, one country, it may yet be the spark that finally starts us on the road to thinking as a country and not as families, clans, provinces and regions.



The rebuild-Manila project, if done by all Filipinos, can be the start of that change in mindset that every Filipino knows in their heart we all need but that we have assumed all along is an impossible dream. If we can only think as one nation as the Americans, the British, the French, the Germans, the Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Sngaporeans and now the Indians do, we can start rebuilding Manila. Then we can rebuild Subic, Cebu, Zamboanga, Davao and other urban centers all around the archipelago.



We shall be able to do it because we will have the will and the mindset.

(Continued next week)

Size Matters

"What does Size Matters mean?" my 10-year-old son Paul asked me and my wife one day as I drove past a billboard on Sahara Avenue in Las Vegas. The billboard ad proclaimed the advantages of checking in hotel rooms with that extra space for relaxation, for moving about and for breathing.

Neither my wife nor I wanted to touch that one, but after wife and I looked at each other and burst out laughing, wife managed to explain to our son that there's more to hug and love in bigger things. Paul obviously just saw the Size Matters in huge, bold print and did not realize he was looking at a billboard ad for a hotel business.

Recently, I started to dwell on the obvious point of the proponents of the Size Matters philosophy of life.

I watched a couple of shows at the Las Vegas Hilton and really looked forward to using the men's restroom across the hall from the Shimmer Showroom. When you go to the john, you are greeted by pictures of gorgeous ladies with their tape measures, their smiles and WOW expressions.

Whenever I could, I chose the urinal with a picture of a lady with the You the Man! expression on her face. If life was not particularly kind to me, at least that lady surely would be.

Las Vegas is preoccupied with size. I don't know if there is a statistic for the most re-engineered boobs in the country, but if there is, Las Vegas should be number one. It must intuitively be the case. Las Vegas has showgirls aplenty, and there are thousands of scantily-clad waitresses in the casinos, all of them convinced that extra pounds or ounces in just the right places do generate better tips.

There is a show that attracts decent-sized crowds to the Night Club in Las Vegas Hilton which showcases some of the more gorgeous re-engineered boobs in the valley. The leader of the pack, who happens to be a talented singer with a huge voice, Lorena Peril aka Lorena Bobitt, is the main attraction. She doesn't take off her clothes, but she clearly is the main fare, a sexy woman with clothes on.

In New Jersey, I never saw a TV ad for a product that promises to make the male member not only stronger, but larger. In Las Vegas, you can't turn on your TV without running into this ad for ExtenZe, which promises to turn ordinary men into Big Nasty Papi. It's on every network station, and cable TV too.

Unfortunately, it's not for everyone. I did my homework, and found out that a lot of men who had tried the product reported palpitations and irregular heartbeats. Some even suspected that their hearts might have been permanently damaged.

There were of course the usual glowing and pulsating testimonials.

If in fact what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, those who live here must also believe that it will stay in Vegas only if the news is good. For if one happens to be embarrassed by boobs too tiny, or a member too puny, for sure such revelations will be heard around the world - even in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Or in Peoria, Illinois.

Size Matters in all of Vegas. Caesars Palace is not just a casino-hotel. It is also a huge upscale shopping mall. It is a sports arena and Broadway. If you want to go to the movies, or go bowling, you have to go to a casino. Most bowling lanes are at least 48 lanes across, while movies are shown in huge multiplexes.

The subdivision where I live, Rhodes Ranch, sits on a 3.77 square mile man-made oasis with a perpetually-green golf course. In contrast, the town where I used to live - South Orange, New Jersey - has a land area of only 2.8 square miles.

That's very much the story in all of Las Vegas. New Jersey and Southern California are made up of small municipalities that run into each other. Las Vegas is made up of huge master-planned communities that dwarf many of the small towns in high-density states like New Jersey and counties like Los Angeles County.

The master-planned communities do not have shopping malls inside their gated communities and this arrangement may have been a mistake. Many shopping centers have sprung up near or adjacent to the communities with the hope of servicing the needs of those communities' residents. And others from other communities who may be attracted by unique offerings of shops in those shopping centers.

The result is that few of the shopping centers or strip malls have the loyalties of residents who live close by. If those same malls had been located inside the master-planned communities, the residents there could walk to the mini shopping areas and customer loyalty would be easier to develop.

All over Las Vegas, North Vegas and Henderson, there are strip malls where there is less than 50% occupancy. As more and more businesses close, the carnage continues. Shopping and strip malls are being abandoned, perhaps at a rate nearly as fast as foreclosed houses.

It is clear that the preoccupation wth size has boomeranged on the Las Vegas valley. The huge, multiple storefront complexes must now compete for a pool of occupants that is ever shrinking as the worst economy since the Great Depression continues its Pyrrhic march across the continent.

One beneficial effect of this recession might be the thinning of the population. Literally. Las Vegas has always been known for bloated bellies and a sizable number of 300 to 400 pound men and women. Now that a lot of people have been shocked into the realization that they must go out there and pound the pavement looking for a job, the trend towards ever-bigger bellies, arms and thighs may finally be reversed.

If Vegasites come out of this recession thinner, meaner and, incidentally, healthier, it will be one good lining in the storm clouds that race past Las Vegas, not raining on the valley but holding on until they reach the Arizona mountains before dumping their precious and rare commodity.

Atlas Shrugged

The 1970s and early 80s were a fog to me. I'm sure I heard a lot of memorable songs in the 70s but I just can't remember them. If I hear a good song from my past, I'm sure I will have some precious recollection of it, but I wouldn't know it was from the 70s unless someone told me. Or any of the songs in the early 80s.

Those were my dark days.

It was also a time in my life when I refused to read any books other than my textbooks in my MBA courses at Seattle University and books I needed to be familiar with to advance my career.

That was in all likelihood the real explanation for my refusal to read both "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged," by Ayn Rand. I remember my first wife raving about both books, "Atlas Shrugged" in particular. In other words, I did not refuse to read the books just because my first wife had recommended them.

But I'm glad I did not read Ayn Rand and did not become one of her disciples.

The most famous disciple of Rand is Alan Greenspan, the former Fed Chairman, the one whom current Chairman Ben Bernanke succeeded.

Greenspan was the primary architect of the second golden age of America, he was also one of the major civil engineers of the economic collapse of the U.S.

You see, Ayn Rand taught that the best minds in society must be given absolute freedom in their pursuit of profit. Through her philosophy of Objectivism, Rand thought that such talented people would always spearhead society's march towards economic greatness through rational and superior thinking. Through objective and rational thinking, such people would always come up with the best solutions to social and economic problems.

Rand theorized that if the best minds in society went on strike and all retreated to a mountain retreat, the world would collapse. She felt that the best and most talented supported the world, just as the legendary Atlas carried the world on his shoulders and back. And if Atlas balked, or refused to carry the world any longer (shrugged), the world would simply collapse and even implode.

The world therefore owed its life, its existence to those best and brightest minds. Such people must be given absolute freedom to do their work, unfettered by government rules that tend to restrict their activities.

The unsuspecting Rand, then later Greenspan, never imagined the world they would help create.

Greed and excess eventually did the Randian philosophy in.

I read about Derek Jeter's history-making 2722nd hit as a Yankee, eclipsing the record set by Lou Gehrig seventy years ago and forever identifying him as the one who broke the great Gehrig's record. Someday, Jeter may be surpassed by someone else, but it will probably take decades, not years before such a feat happens. Jeter is one superstar who deserves all the accolades he has received in his baseball career.

There are some who like Jeter are deserving of all the hosannas and wealth that society has showered on them, such as Michael Jordan, Roger Federer, Tiger Woods, Michael Phelps, Lance Armstrong and others too many to list, but mainly the superstars of today have overblown accomplishments and certainly not deserving of society's long-term goo-goo eyes.

This, after all, is the age of the overcompensated, overweight "pillars" of society. The CEOs of today's major corporations now make 300 times what the average workers in their respective companies make. In the 1950s and 1960s, when America became far and away the major economic superpower in the world, the CEOs made 12 to 20 times what the average workers in their respective companies made.

How did the CEOs finagle such huge salaries, stock options and other forms of extra compensation for themselves? By closing American plants and relocating their manufacturing in third-world countries. The CEOs managed to increase profitability of their global operations by firing American workers and hiring workers in other countries.

Every thousand-block of American workers fired meant an uptick in the price of a company's shares in the New York Stock Exchange. For such upticks, the CEOs were rewarded with compensation previously reserved only for Eastern potentates.

The banks, investment and insurance companies made a compact. They would sell each other's products so that banks, insurance and investment companies would no longer be distinguishable. All of them would now be known as "financials."

The geniuses in the financial world created mortgage-backed securities and credit swaps that were responsible for the recent subprime mortgage crisis and the recent meltdown in the world economy.

"What?!" Greenspan exclaimed. "The meltdown occurred not as a result of the best and brightest minds going on strike (as in Atlas Shrugged) but because those best and brightest minds did a job on the world economy?" (Quotes from Greenspan were invented by me.)

The U.S. government seemingly was in on the whole farce and charade. From Reagan and Bush, Sr. looking the other way while Japanese manufacturers illegally dumped televisions and other electronic products in the U.S. market to kill American brands like RCA, Zenith, Magnavox and others, to Clinton hurriedly pushing through Nafta, which as Ross Perot had warned would create "a giant sucking sound" of American jobs being lost to Canada and Mexico, to George Bush, who did not see anything wrong with China taking over virtually all manufacturing functions in the U.S. in exchange for China buying up U.S. Treasuries which financed the Iraq War, the true war on terror, the tax cuts for the rich.

Because of the work of the best and brightest minds - not because those minds had gone on strike, as "Atlas Shrugged" had envisioned - the U.S. is now a basket case, whose problems are more gargantuan and worse than the problems faced by third-world countries like the Philippines.

Most people in the Philippines are used to having nothing. Americans are drifting because their assets have shrunk in value and even their most sacred possession, the embodiment of the American dream - now has a negative value. Many unemployed Americans have exhausted their savings as they wait for the employment picture to show some improvement. As though their lost jobs would ever come back.

There is a looming crisis in commercial real estate in this country, expected to peak as the meltdown in residential real estate is arrested and abated. The showcase for this topsy-turvy world of commercial real estate is the $11 billion City Center project in Las Vegas, the biggest privately-funded real estate development in the U.S. The geniuses who dreamed up this project never imagined that the decade-long boom in Vegas real estate would ever end. This, despite the fact that real estate booms don't last very long and are always followed by busts.

The new U.S. jobs that President Obama promised would be created in the alternative energy industry - what are the chances that such jobs will materialize? China and Europe are so far ahead of the U.S. in alternative energy they see us now as the poachers and not the other way around, which it should be since the alternative energy technology was an American invention.

The best and brightest minds are locked in the struggle between good and evil, between the haves and have-nots, between pure capitalists and the so-called socialists. Very little is being done in partnership. One side opposes what the other side proposes, as if by gut reaction.

The overarching debate on who should bail out the country, however, has recently been settled. It is the American middle class. Once again, the middle class is called upon to rescue the group of prodigal sons and daughters who might be exactly the people that Ayn Rand thought were the pillars of society, the Atlas that carried the world on his shoulders and back.

The middle class has already rescued the banks, the insurance companies, GM and Chrysler. They suspect that they are being asked to rescue the American health care system from eventual bankruptcy. They feel that they and their children are eventually going to be hit hard when the tax man comes a-calling to pay for the trillions in deficits that government has been incurring in record pace.

No, Ayn Rand, was wrong. The real Atlas in American society is not the best and brightest minds. It is the middle class. And recently that real Atlas has shrugged.

It has shrugged on the airwaves, in street demonstrations, in so-called town hall meetings across the country. They're mad as hell, they can't take it anymore.

If they would just drop the racist attacks on Obama, and if they would buck those who have seized on their angst to promote the crazy-quilt of right-wing causes, the rest of the country would take them more seriously.

Have Gun, Will Travel

I knew that I eventually would be curious enough to attend a gun show at some point. I have all my life been anti-gun, the kind that the NRA (National Rifle Association) despises, and if I were a politician, the NRA would be able to raise millions in a heart beat to defeat my candidacy.

It started as a curiosity, a willingness to look at things from the perspective of the other side, and an evolution in my own perspective as I drove many times over interstate highway 15 on that stretch of highway in California's Death Valley.

Death Valley gives me the creeps. I saw the movie "The Hills Have Eyes." The movie tells of grotesque, disease-ridden inhabitants of hills overlooking a desert highway who prey on people who had car breakdowns. Instead of helping such people in their hour of need, the hill mutants and monsters harrass, torture and kill and/or rape the hapless motorists and their families.

Once in a while I would catch myself thinking of and fearing the possibility of a car breakdown and being stranded and helpless in the darkness and eerie isolation of highway 15's shoulders. The traffic that alternates between heavy and nearly non-existent on I-15 - the artery that links Los Angeles and Las Vegas - is the only deterrent against ill-intentioned motorists who might stop to seemingly help us, but whose true agenda is to rob us and perhaps even harm us, especially my wife and son, who would be the most vulnerable.

This is my biggest fear each time I hop on my car and drive my family to LA to see to our daughter's needs in downtown LA. Natasha is on the last leg of her course in Fashion and Merchandising Design at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in LA. So hopefully, our trips to LA will be much less frequent in the future.

But the thought that the creepy dangers of Death Valley will soon be in my rear-view mirror has not dissuaded me from becoming, for a first time in my life, a gun lover. This immediate past summer, I have been subjected to images of monsters of a different kind: right-wing lunatic fringe gun-toters who pack their sidearms and menacingly picket the health care reform rallies of Democrats and even those of President Obama's. I could see myself attending one of those health care rallies and being confronted by a wacko shoving a gun at my face.

It has become perfectly clear to me that U.S. politics have become risky business; the grim reality is that such events represent a clear and present danger to one's health, one's life.

It happened over a long period of time, but now, finally, I can see why the NRA is right in saying that if guns are outlawed, only the outlaws and the creeps will have guns. By all means, if conservatives feel the need to own and carry guns, liberals must feel that need more - because nearly all conservatives have guns.

And so, I have decided to own a gun, finally, and to attend training sessions that will teach me how to use a gun and how to keep it out of reach of my ten-year-old son. I wish I could buy a smart gun, one that can be fired only by me. This would assure that no one in my household will be able to use it and accidentally shoot someone, or maybe even harm themselves.

At the recent gun show in Las Vegas - Sept. 5-6 in Cashman Center - there spread out on rows upon rows of tables were a vast collection of firearms, enough to supply a small army. Las Vegas has the distinction of putting on the biggest gun shows in the U.S., and that show was huge.

What do hunting knives and military apparel have to do with guns? It is obvious that there is a segment of the population that believes, deep in their hearts, that there are enemies in the U.S. who must be repelled. Are these your neighbors? Are they the Mob? Are they the rogue elements in the local police? Or are they the ruthless conspirators in the U.S. government?

It really doesn't matter who those bogeymen (and women) are; as far as the gun-toting crowd is concerned, they're all out there, ready to create mayhem, and who are probably being prevented from moving in on the squeaky-clean NRA members only by those members' arsenals.

In the paranoid logic of the ultra-conservative mind, the main convincing argument against the adventurism of society's bad elements - allegedly including but not limited to the Federal government - is the ready availability of lethal weapons in the U.S., especially the still-wild west. I saw the Barrett-99 50 caliber sniper rifle that has a range of 1 mile. This is reputedly one of the favorite rifles of rooftop and hotel room snipers who presumably are being contracted to eliminate high value targets. Just like in the movies.

It is also presumably used by the military to decommission vehicles that may contain explosives and are heading for a military outpost in Iraq, Afghanistan or some hot spot around the world.

All sorts of rifles and handguns - new and used - were on display. In the middle of this vortex of potential violence sat Wyatt Earp III, the grandson of the famed lawman Wyatt Earp. He showed me his favorite six-shooter, a gleaming nickel-plated 38 caliber that he uses in competitions. He claims to be the fastest draw in the world.

Since I've never owned a gun, my friends and the salesmen at the Gun Show have recommended that I buy a starter gun. The gun that most enthusiasts consider as a "starter" is the 9 mm. There are good 9 mm Luger, Millennium and Smith and Wesson, all in the price range of $300 to $400 brand new. Used ones can be had for $150. I wouldn't recommend the used ones because one never knows if they will always fire properly, get jammed, or worse, explode in the user's face.

I like the Smith and Wesson best, because of the feel of that gun, and because it closely resembles the Glock 9 mm, whose design S & W reportedly copied, under license from Glock.

Did I actually buy a gun at the Gun Show? What do you think?

Lotsa Vegas

My wife just got back from a trip to Budapest, Vienna and finally Venice. Budapest was where she and her sister attended a trade show, Vienna was where they imbibed the European culture and Venice was where they fell in love with a city. I hope to write a blog about this trip and the t-shirts I got out of it in the future.

Meanwhile, I was stuck in Vegas. What does a guy do in Vegas when the wife is away for two weeks? I know what you're thinking. Perish the thought, my ten-year-0ld son Paul was with me. Plus, my grown-up daughter and her boyfriend were staying with us and from time to time I had to cook and clean the swimming pool for them. Mainly I cooked stuff that can be deep-fried, but I also managed to cook the world-famous Philippine adobo and bulalo.

I got my daughter and her beau tickets to the Andrew Dice Clay show and the Bobby Slayton show and Sin City Comedy. My Chinese-looking daughter had a swell time at the ADC show as she was pummeled, skewered, ridiculed by the comedian, who targets minorities and is especially fond of the Chinese. He is the contemporary Don Rickles. For the younger ones, the mainly retired Don Rickles has been ridiculing his audience for decades and gets paid handsomely for doing so. It is a badge of honor to be insulted by Don Rickles.

They wanted to see more shows but my wife was coming back and it was my turn to watch a few shows. I got tickets to the Blue Man Group, the Barry Manilow "Ultimate Manilow" show and Defending the Caveman.

The wife had seen the Blue Man Group, so I took ten-year-old Paul with me and the two of us were treated to a unique form of entertainment. The three-man group converted everything they touched to drums, threw food at each other and caught the food with their mouths, played pantomimic comedy skits with two people from the audience, played drummers to a rock band that appeared to be Guitar Hero figures. It was all Vegas, baby.

Barry Manilow sang his hits from the 70s to the 90s and sitting there in the audience, one couldn't help being amazed at how many hits Manilow has treated the world to over the years. It was one Manilow hit after another, literally a walk down the boulevard of memories. People I'm sure disagree with me, but I think he sings better now than he did when he was much younger. His voice is fuller (though his lungs are noticeably weaker) and he sings with more emotion.

He sang "Mandy" with a video of his Mandy performance in 1975 showing in the background. The 1975 Manilow was a kid singing with technical precision, a higher pitched voice and award-winning composure, but the Manilow on the Las Vegas Hilton stage displayed all the emotions of one who had known Mandy for many, many years. He sang with nostalgia - the Greeks define nostalgia literally as tweaking strings in one's heart - and with conviction that if he had to do it all over again, he would do it exactly as he had.

He ended with a Broadway-style production of Copa Cabana.

The biggest surprise was Defending the Caveman in the Excalibur Casino. I all along had thought that the actors were those who regularly appear in the Geico commercials. So I was somewhat disappointed when I saw that the main dude - the only dude - was a regular white guy with a shaved head. Not at all looking like the cool Cavemen who appear on those Geico commercials.

Also, the guy talked and talked and it became clear that this was going to be one of those long monologues.

As the guy - Chris Mayse - warmed up to the audience and the audience warmed up to him, he hit his stride and we the audience started eating out of his hands.

With devastating accuracy, he explained why men are different from women. I always wondered, for example, why I tire so easily whenever I'm in Macy's, Wal-Mart or any department store, or any shopping mall. Chris explained that because we men are hunters, we go to stores only to hunt for the things that we actually need. We can't spend any more time in a department store or a mall than we actually need to find what we are hunting for. Once we find it, then the hunt is over and we have to go on to the next hunt.

Women are gatherers, so they enjoy gathering things, just in case they might need them. This is why women love to go shopping.

Chris Mayse explains the many cultural differences between the sexes in a hilarious, hysterical way. It's laugh a minute with him.

Defending the Caveman is showing in the Excalibur Hotel and Casino, a huge cavernous gambling mecca where you could get lost if you did not ask an employee for directions. Excalibur was teeming with the usual Labor Day weekend crowd, though it was not as full as the Venetian, which was like Grand Central Terminal in rush hour.

I just have to mention the Gordie Brown show at the Golden Nugget, which is in the old downtown section of the city. This is truly a must-see. It's laugh-a-second with this guy. An impressionist first and a singer second, Brown constantly pivots from one character to another with surprising accuracy. His Sammy Davis, Jr. impression, laced with George W.Bush one-liners, got a lot of giggles and guffaws. No one was spared, least of all Bill Clinton.

Gordie Brown and his irreverent iconoclastic rampage is Vegas at its best.

After two years in Vegas, I'm finally appreciating why Vegas has become the number one tourist destination in the world. No one here is saddled with inhibitions. Everybody is wearing a costume. If you go to Wynn, or the Palms, people walk around like they are all going to a prom or an important business meeting.

I walk around in my cowboy hat, cowboy belt, cowboy boots and shades all the time. Nobody pays attention to me. Those who come to Vegas and wear walking shorts and t-shirts and drink beer and margaritas while herding the kids past craps and poker tables are so used to the plastic costumed people in Vegas so me and my cowboy costume do not get a second look.

The current trend, though, appears to be no costume at all - in the swimming pools at the Palms, Mandalay Bay and all over the Las Vegas strip where the beautiful people and the crowds they attract frolic and eye each other under the Las Vegas sun.

"Fabulous" Las Vegas

I'm glad Jay Leno is not just fading into the sunset the way Johnny Carson did years ago, when he stepped aside to make way for Leno in the Tonight Show. I caught the TV ad for the new Leno prime time show that will debut next month. It was classic Leno.

Jay Leno is pretending to be a TV moderator asking contestants softball questions.

Jay asks: "Who lives in the Vatican?"

One of the contestants hits the buzzer first and answers: "Vatican-ites!"

"Wrong," Jay says, "I'll give you a hint. He wears a big hat"

Another contestant hits the buzzer first. "Abraham Lincoln," she shouts.

Jay is noted for his walkabouts, when he stands on a street corner in Los Angeles and interviews willing passersby. Some of the answers he gets are hilarious. He once asked a college student in LA when in world history was the ancient times. The reply he got from the college student was, "the 18th century."

Jay Leno's walkabouts are nearly as hysterical as the Philippine reality TV shows where the hosts ask simple, everyday questions of contestants in "Let's Make a Deal" copycat shows.

The host of one such Philippine show asked a woman contestant what she puts on her husband's eggs in the morning. She answered: "baby powder."

We all know what the educational standards are in the Philippines, but not everyone is aware how the educational standards in the U. S. have taken a straight-down nosedive over the last few decades. And nothing could have prepared us for the cover story of a recent Time Magazine issue. The cover is a shot of Las Vegas' iconic welcome sign, "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas," but the city's name is spelled "Less Vegas." The article in the inside pages is called, "Less Vegas."

The story was written by no less than the crackerjack Time writer Joel Stein, which automatically ranks the story in the pantheon of the Unbelievables. "What was Joel thinking?" I heard myself ask myself.

And that real estate agent, Ms. Boemio, why would she own up to doing unethical and illegal acts on the pages of any publication, let alone Time Magazine? For those who have not read "Less Vegas," Joel Stein writes that he and Ms. Boemio both broke into a bank-foreclosed house to see for themselves the extent of the damage to the house that previous squatting "occupants" had wrought.

There's a law against breaking and entering in this country, including in Las Vegas. It's considered a crime. So what was Joel Stein thinking writing about he and Ms. Boemio doing just that? How dumb could they both be?

And then there's Ms.Boemio's admission that she advises her customers to stop paying their mortgages on their underwater homes - properties that have mortgage balances that are more than the properties are worth. She further advices that her customers buy a foreclosed house on the cheap, move to the new house and let the old house go into foreclosure.

The customer's credit record is ruined, but at least the homeowner owns a house with a positive equity and a significant upside.

There may not be a law against Ms. Boemio - a real estate agent - advising her customers to stop making payments on those customers' upside-down properties, but it is clearly unethical. At least according to other real estate professionals in Las Vegas.

Ms. Boemio has been fired by her employer, is under investigation for alleged unethical practices and the Clark County prosecutor's office is looking into possible breaking and entering charges.

Because of Joel Stein's story, Ms. Boemio's career in real estate is over and she may soon be a defendant in a criminal case. Joel Stein may be subpoenaed as a witness and may in fact face charges himself.

What was Joel Stein thinking? Did he not know that he had a responsibility to protect sources of his stories? Even in cases where his source is not asking deep cover, he should have provided that cover.

In the old days, when Americans were still the smartest people on earth, no American journalist would have fumbled the ball the way Joel Stein clearly did. This is clearly a blunder bigger than chess masters commit when they are under intense pressure.

As a Vegan, I did not like the Time Magazine story, which seemingly predicts an impending monumental collapse of the city of Las Vegas and the danger that it will take decades before the city recovers - if it does recover.

I am half-amused, half-irritated by the cover of that Time issue - Welcome to Fabulous Less Vegas - which reminds me of one of the yuks that the old radio show Imus in the Morning got when a guest pointed out that army recruiters are worried about their male recruits whose favorite expression is "fabulous."

The Imus guest was talking about the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy of the military towards gay men who were entering the Army. The Imus guest asked rhetorically, "If you are a recruiter for the Army and you ask the young man who is enlisting how his day has been and he answers, 'Fabulous' what would you do?"

Imus and his staff burst out laughing.

A great man has passed. I watched the Kennedy wake and Catholic Mass ceremonies last night and this morning and was amazed at how highly Americans think of the late Ted Kennedy. I knew that Ted was a great man, what I did not figure on hearing was that he may have been the greatest U.S. senator ever. His name is on more than 500 bills passed by the U.S. Senate and more than 1000 bills that became law had his imprint on them. He is being compared to the great Senator Daniel Webster, and when told of the comparison, Ted was said to have quipped, "Why, what did Daniel Webster accomplish?"

Most Filipinos owe an eternal debt of gratitude to Ted, as he was the author of the Immigration Department's policy of giving preference to "family reunification" cases for granting immigrant visas. It was the "family reunification" Kennedy mandate that allowed parents and unmarried siblings to follow those Filipinos who had managed to become immigrants in the U.S. In my case, I was able to bring my parents, three unmarried siblings and one married brother and his family to the U.S. after I became a citizen in 1974.