Slavery in the Philippines

Many decades after my journey through Philippine elementary and high school education, I now realize how inadequate my education has been about Philippine history. We who grew up in the Philippines learned world history and American history rather early in our lives, but we learned very little about our own history. The historian I grew up with was Gregorio Zaide, who in retrospect was a historian who wrote Philippine history with a decidedly western world view. Either that, or my history teachers were mere parrots owned by the West.

We were taught - in the 50s - that the Spaniards had burned books about the Philippines because those books allegedly were pagan books and were works of the devil. This was why there was very little historical information about the Philippines prior to the arrival of the Spanish cross and Eskrima.

Turns out there was a wealth of information about Philippine life, social and political structures. The scholar-historians had to do some digging, but this they did and all the juicy information about the Philippines in pre-Spanish colonial era burst into the surface. I was already in college - a full-time working student - when new research about pre-Spanish Philippines found their way into Philippine history textbooks.

The result is that there are gaping holes in my knowledge of Philippine history. I suspect that there are many in my generation who have this problem.

I was therefore very happy, in fact deliriously happy to discover the blog http://mananalaysay.blogspot.com where the excerpt below can be found.

CHANGES IN SOCIAL STRUCTURE IN 17TH CENTURY IN THE PHILIPPINES

by
Roel Cantada

"Take a look at the figure above and compare the 16th century social structure of the Philippines with that of the 17th century. What changed? What happened to the Datu? Timawa? Alipin? Who occupied the highest and lowest social statuses?

"These questions are what we will try to answer in this lesson. Notice that the highest social status is now occupied by the Spaniards and all the natives are below them. This means that wealth is not the only basis of the social classes but race as well. The implication is that no matter how wealthy a native gets he will never be equal or higher than a Spaniard in the colonial society. The racial barrier is something that will never be overcome unless the Spaniards are removed from the country.

"What if a native marry a Spaniard will their children be considered Spaniards? The answer is no, the Spaniards consider only pure blooded Spaniards, and half-breeds whom will be called mestizos later on (creoles in Latin America) will not be accepted equal to Spaniards. But in the 17th century there is not enough half-breeds to constitute a separate class.

"During this time the Spaniards coined three terms to refer to the natives of the Philippines. They called the natives who had converted to Catholicism indios, the muslim moros, and the pagans of the Cordilleras in Luzon, igorots. All three terms had bad connotations and should be avoided today. Both the datu’s family and the timawa are now called indios which when translated in the native languages would be equivalent to Tagalog, Visaya, Bikolano etc. The word indio is a word used by the Spaniards to refer to the natives of Latin America, wherein Columbus I think made a mistake when he thought that he was in India when in fact he was in another continent. In English it is the same as calling the natives of North America Indians. It is also related to the terms Indonesia, East Indies (Philippines and Indonesia) , and West Indies (Cuba, Haiti etc.).

"Returning to our figure, you would have noticed that the lowest class is now occupied by the timawas. What happened to the alipins? They were freed or natimawa by the Spaniards. The King of Spain issued a proclamation banning slavery (esclavitud in Spanish), and the Pope also issued a bull stating the same and even threatening excommunication for anyone keeping a native slave. But these proclamations where not automatically enforced because there was one curious thing about the implementation of Spanish laws in the Philippines: the governor general can decide which laws to implement and when given the current conditions and because of the distance from Spain. It takes months before communication with Spain arrives and consultation would have been impossible for emergencies. It probably took a hundred years before slavery disappeared. Until the 17th century some Pampangan datus were reported to have filed cases in Manila against their slaves who had escaped. The Spaniards being weak and under threat from Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch and muslims tribes from the south did not want to alienate their datu allies. Rather it was the next generation who had converted to Catholicism and integrated the values of Christianity taught by the church that had resulted in the freeing of slaves.

"Of course for the Timawa the implication was not good, they had become the lowest class and lost prestige. In fact by the 17th century the word timawa is no longer associated with being free or freedom, something positive, but with being destitute, poor, and always hungry. Today no one wants to be called timawa, because it has been equated with being a slave rather than being free. But as late as 1896 during the Philippine revolution Andres Bonifacio used it in his poem to mean free. Later on they would coin the new word malaya (free) to avoid the negative connotations of the word timawa.

"The datus did not go unscathed by the freeing of the slaves. The power of the datus in the 16th century was based on slavery. The slaves did the extra farm work that provided more crops and they served as rowers in the balangay boat for warfare. Without the slaves the datus lost prestige, wealth and military power. Later on we will talk about how the Spaniards substituted other institutions for datus to remain higher than the timawas."

Who were the datus and what were their perks and privileges? In much of the Philippines, the datus were the political leaders and the owners of vast farms, called the bukid or kabukiran. They owned many slaves, which were differentiated according to whether they lived in their own houses (namamahay) or lived in makeshift shelters on the grounds of the datus' houses (sagigilids).

Because the Catholic Church forbade slavery in the 17th century, the slaves were technically freed from bondage and ascended to the status of timawas, free men who were mostly poor but who counted among them some rich families who excelled in commerce. The datus technically no longer had slaves (alipins) but in practice still had them because the people who owed them money had to repay them through involuntary servitude.

The Spaniards were not willing to cross the datus because they needed those datus as allies against foreign invaders such as the notorious Chinese bandit, Limahong. This was the reason slavery persisted even after the Catholic Church mandated the abolition of slavery in the Philippines and other Spanish colonies.

The alipins, as an institution in the Philippines' social structure, have been formally absent since the 17th century, but in reality many Filipinos functioned as alipins until the the Land Reform Act in the 1960s was passed. Prior to Land Reform, many tenants of the biggest landlords were virtual slaves, working off debts to the landlords - for medicines, for rice seeds (palay), for operating capital for their small farms.

Until political correctness became fashionable, the treatment of housemaids and houseboys in the Philippines hearkened back to that earlier period in the country's history, when whole generations of pre-Spanish "Filipinos" were functioning as slaves.

The Spaniards as a ruling class have of course disappeared. They have been absorbed into the great mass of educated elites. Economically, the rich Chinese have replaced the Spaniards. Unlike the Spaniards, the Chinese tend to be as pliant and adaptable as the bamboo and have blended seamlessly into Philippine society. The Chinese are rich and powerful, but they are decidedly Filipino. They have never once hinted that they are superior to the local population the way the Spaniards saw themselves as being.

Going back to Philippine slaves. Slavery in the Philippines still exists today in the Filipino people's psyche. Many of the dirt poor people in the provinces behave as though their rich, landed patrons owned them.

The quality of Philippine democracy rests on the backs of people who have never known true independence and freedom. The masses who vote in Philippine elections - most Filpinos who are of voting age vote - are not voting their consciences but are voting choices dictated by their patrons and virtual masters.

This is how the powerful in the country retain power. The rich and influential people align themselves with their chosen candidates and generally deliver the votes in their spheres of influence.

The leftists in the 60s referred to Philippine democracy as de-mock-cracy. It was and still is a mockery, since most people in the provinces who cast their votes are not casting votes for their choices. They are mere clones of their patrons at the voting booths.

People talk about the utang na loob institution. Add to that the slave complex as a social institution.

The few who rule over the local economies and the local corridors of power are allowed to choose their candidates, while the great mass of the people echo those choices. This is why there are so many political dynasties in the Philippines. It is an important reason why the same people keep running and winning political offices in the Philippines, regardless of their abysmal records of service. Known jueteng and drug lords continue to be re-elected. It's always the same families, the same political groups, the same corrupt politicians that keep winning political offices there.

The rich and powerful decide who should retain or ascend to political power, while the great mass of political slaves make sure that the will of the rich and powerful is enforced in the ballot box.

The obvious question from all this discussion is this: if the great mass of voters in the Philippines act as ideological slaves of their padrinos (patrons) and not as independent agents who vote their consciences and according to their own ideologies and convictions, is true democracy possible in the Philippines?

Would the Philippines not be better off under the rule of a benevolent dictator? True, we tried this with Marcos and were greatly disappointed. Marcos was, in the language of today's youth, a bad, mean dude, but not every man or woman in the Philippines is a potential Marcos. Absolute power need not corrupt absolutely.

If Noynoy does what he promised to do in the campaign and the Philippines becomes a much better place and country, Filipinos should start thinking of keeping Noynoy as president for the long-term. He cannot be a Lee Kwan Yew if his term is limited to six years. The constitution would have to be amended to allow Noynoy to succeed himself for another term and after that for still another term, so don't hold your breath.

So far, Noynoy despite his glaring mistakes in judgment and execution is following through on his promises. The country is becoming stronger economically and slowly gaining admirers as a modern state. The world, especially the U.S., is eating out of Noynoy's hands. If he keeps this up, the country may find itself in its first golden age.

It is beginning to look like the masters and the slaves found someone who would lead the Philippines for the benefit of all, not just the masters. We will watch the developments in the Philippines in the coming months and years while keeping our fingers crossed.

The Estrada-fication of American politics

We all remember former President Joseph "Erap" Estrada, the ninth President of the Republic of the Philippines. He of the famous one-liner, "Bill Clinton gets all the scandals, I get all the girls." Or something to that effect.

He uttered another famous line, this one during his wildly successful campaign for the Philippine presidency in 1998. He said, I'm paraphrasing: "We Filipinos have tried all the brilliant politicians already. All we got out of them were brilliant ways of stealing from the government." Filipinos loved this and elected him in a landslide, with Filipinos largely ignoring the fact that the movie actor Estrada was a high-school dropout whose heroism and love for the common man was on display only in the movies.

What the Philippines got during the three years Estrada sat in power were dumb ways of stealing from the government. His idiotic ways eventually resulted in his resignation from office while the people literally were storming his Palace and he had to flee for his life. Prior to his resignation from office, he had been impeached by the Philippine Congress and he was later convicted of plunder of the Philippine treasury.

He is the only Philippine President who was ever impeached by Congress and charged with the crime of plunder. Even though in comparison to the late Ferdinand Marcos, Estrada's plunder accomplishments were puny. When the dumb steal from the government, they take very little, hoping that their crime will be considered a misdemeanor. Marcos, of course, is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the number one plunderer of government funds of all time, even though Marcos' stolen billions (in dollars) have not been recovered. The late Marcos was brilliant.

But this piece is not about corruption in government, though that is always topic number one whenever people all over the world talk about the Philippines.

I am reminded of Estrada every time I turn on the TV these days. America has made a decisive turn towards philistinism and it's reflected in our politics. The Tea Party is an illustration of this surly and visceral disaffection with cerebral governance and an unabashed embrace of the uneducated leaders of the angry mob.

The mood had been building up over the years. First, we noticed that the brilliant minds in business were using their above average intelligence and Ivy League diplomas to figure out ways to starve the labor movement in America by shipping jobs to foreign countries. Americans were being laid off by the thousands, then by the millions and factories were being opened up in India, China and other foreign countries. It was brilliant, and the multinational companies that shipped jobs overseas were richly rewarded with fantastic stock market successes.

Second, the brilliant and creative Ivy Leaguers in Wall Street securitized worthless mortgages and sold them to the public, to institutions, to banks and other financials, and this led to near-bankruptcy of the the country's financial system.

Third, the brilliant among us figured out ways of spending money that the country did not have, issuing IOUs to China, Saudi Arabia and other countries, effectively mortgaging the future of Americans yet to be born to the tune of $121,000 each. Each future American now owes that amount on the day they are born. They each will be coming into this world $121,000 in the hole.

The collective brains of the best and brightest individuals of this country, it appears to a lot of Americans these days, have been used not to reach for an even higher standard of living for Americans but to squander away the legacy of all our forebears who have built this country into the greatest democratic experiment in the history of man, the most successful social contract ever devised by human beings.

We have tried the brilliant minds among us, they have only led us to the brink. It is time, it seems to try those who are short on intellect but long on passion.

Enter Sarah Palin. This woman, when asked by CBS anchorwoman Katie Couric two years ago what books and magazines she had read, couldn't name one book, or one magazine. She went to four different colleges before earning her four-year college degree. She "wrote" a book that became a best-seller, despite the fact no one in America believes that she was remotely capable of writing a book.

Sarah Palin is America's version of Joseph Estrada. She is the ultimate anti-intellectual. She once claimed that she was qualified to talk about foreign affairs because she could see Russia from her front steps. She therefore was qualified to be a heartbeat away from the U.S. Presidency.

Her political soul-mates, such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck of Fox News are all anti-intellectual clowns and buffoons, reminiscent of Joseph Estrada, the clown and buffoon of Philippine politics.

There is a viscerally anti-intellectual movement in this country - "The Harvard guys and gals have sold this country to the Chinese" - and it is evident in the rip-roaring sucess of the Tea Party movement.

Tea Party activists have sucked out all the oxygen from all other movements in this country. Such as the labor movement which is infinitely much more justified in crying foul after most manufacturing and back office jobs in America have been shipped to other countries. Only the Tea Party activists are being heard from these days. The insurgent youth in America, who swept Barack Obama into the presidency in 2008, are beleaguered. They are leaderless, they are dispersed, they are busy sending out resumes because the only jobs they can find after graduating from the most expensive U.S. colleges are as car wash attendants. There is a long line of applicants for every waiter and waitressing job in America's hotels, casinos and restaurants.

Only the Tea Party activists and radicals can find the time and do have the resources to march in the streets. These activists are mainly seniors and older Americans who have already built their nest eggs. That is why the only placards you see on TV these days are those comparing Obama to Hitler, those that declare Obama is a secret Muslim, those that claim Obama was born in Kenya and not Hawaii.

They are all angry at Obama, ignoring the fact that Obama has been able to turn the country around after Bush and the Republicans had taken it to the edge of the ravine. Why hasn't Obama restored the country to its pre-eminent economic position in the world after 19 months in office, they scream. He's had 19 months, why hasn't he done anything, they cry. They ignore the fact that the economic decline of America was years - decades - in the making and that the irresponsible deficit spending in the Bush years finally brought the country to virtual bankruptcy.

The leaders who are coming out of the Tea Party movement and who are being installed as the hot new leaders of the Republican Party are all anti-intellectual anti-heroes. Christine O'Donnell, who won the Republican primary for senator in Delaware, just recently graduated from college, despite the fact that she had been claiming for years that she was a college graduate. She apparently has dabbled in witchcraft and may have committed criminal offenses in the past, using campaign contributions to pay her rent and her many personal bills.

None of this matters to Tea Party activists who are fed up with the squeaky-clean, academically qualified and golden-resumed politicians. The Tea Party activists will embrace the passion of charismatic leaders like Christine O'Donnell and Sarah Palin, as long as they share the American people's revulsion for the bright boys and bright girls who have brought America to the brink.

Many American voters have become like the Philippine voters in 1998, when Joseph Estrada ran for president. Americans are fed up with the Ivy Leaguers and the so-called intelligentsia and are now on the verge of handing over the reins of government to the great unwashed, the intellectual peasants, the angry, empty drums that make the loudest noise, even when the noise does not make any sense. Anyone, or anything, as long as it is something that America has not tried or may have long rejected.

Consider what the Tea Party activists who have managed to hijack the Republican Party are promising to do if and when they win control of the U.S. Congress and Senate:

1. They will privatize Social Security, meaning they will invest working people's Social Security contributions in private investment accounts, effectively killing the Social Security program, which takes working people's contributions and gives those contributions to retirees.

2. They will scrap Medicare and Medicaid, which they say the country can no longer afford.

3. They will repeal the Health Care Reform bill that Obama signed into law early this year, effectively returning the country to the old system, when 50 million Americans were uninsured and Americans could be canceled out of health insurance plans when they got sick, or others could be denied insurance for pre-existing conditions, including unhealthy babies.

4. They will scrap the Department of Education, letting each state decide on the quality of education that is offered by states to their citizens.

5. They will force the Federal government to balance its books, knowing that the only way to do this is to make drastic cuts in government services and entitlements.

6. They will shut down the Federal government to starve it of funds, if that is the only way to enforce budget cuts.

7. They will make discrimination against minorities legal in private establishments, while continuing to make it illegal in government offices. Restaurants will be allowed to refuse service to people they don't want to serve, even if the restaurant owners are making the decision on the basis of race, sex, age or national origin.

8. They will investigate Obama to find out where he was really born. They refuse to believe that he was born in Hawaii despite the fact that Obama has produced a birth certificate documenting his birth in Hawaii and a newspaper account of his birth 48 years ago.

9. They will pass a law mandating that all candidates for President prove that they are natural-born citizens and a mere birth certificate is not considered proof of this.

10. They will give more tax cuts to the rich - the people who need the least amount of help from the Federal government.

11. They will starve "the Beast," the government that they consider the problem and not the solution. By starving "the Beast" they will assure that the government will not be able to afford to pay for all the entitlements that go to undeserving Americans, especially the unemployed Americans who have been "spoiled" by the system and are not going out and looking for jobs, electing to live off the unemployment compensation that they are getting from the government. The government that continues to pay them for sleeping and goofing off, claim the Tea Party activists.

12. They will apologize to British Petroleum and Big Oil for the government's "excessive" regulations. They will apologize to Big Business for the government's meddling in private business decisions.

13. They will reduce the number of regulations governing business in this country, for they believe in the wisdom of the markets. They believe that the markets are the only reliable source of solutions for whatever ails America.

14. They will display the Ten Commandments in government offices and demand that the country be returned to its Christian roots. They claim that the country was founded on Christian principles and the separation of church and state should never have become a pillar of the social contract.

If you think all or most of these positions are extreme, you are not alone. Most Americans disagree with the Tea Party activists at the very fundamental level. Yet, most Americans seem to think that the situation in this country is so bad, how much worse could it be if the Tea Party activists ascend to power?

Well, they are wrong. The frog found out very quickly what happened when he jumped out from the frying pan into the fire. The Cubans found out quickly that Fidel Castro was not the savior that they had been waiting for. The Germans found out too late that they could not control the Nazis and Hitler by merely surrounding them with normal people.

I am not comparing the Tea Party leaders to Hitler and the Nazis. The metaphor is narrow, applies only to the mistaken notion that it is ok to choose extremist leaders, as long as there are people who can force them to moderate their positions. This, history tells us, is an intellectual chimera. Those who choose to ride the tiger often end up in the belly of the beast.

The Empire Strikes Back

I was sitting in the family room watching a broadcast of commemorations going on all over the U.S. and, the announcers emphasized - all over the world - of the most heinous act of terrorism successfully conducted on U.S. soil. It happened, as we all know, on September 11, 2001.

I immediately was transformed back to that fateful morning - approximately 8:45 a.m. - when I was hurriedly trying to down my coffee while reading the New York Times (or was it the Newark Star-Ledger?) and watching the TV in the kitchen all at the same time. I was multi-tasking.

Suddenly the TV showed the image of one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center with thick billowing smoke coming out of one of the mid-level floors. Shortly after, I saw a plane seemingly going into the other tower and not coming out.

It was the end of the world as I knew it, but I did not know it then.

Now, nine years later, I struggle to find meaning in the event itself and in all the subsequent events that followed as unintended consequences and which have had a profound effect on both the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds.

To many Muslims, it was as though an asteroid had struck their earth, a dark cloud hangs in the atmosphere, their homes have been shattered and their landscapes have been ruined and perhaps will never be the same.

It is remarkably unfortunate for Iraqis in general because they had nothing to do with 9/11. Darth Vader (Dick Cheney) and his student, George Bush, had decided that it was the Iraqis who must bear the brunt of America's wrath. An enraged Zeus with his thunderbolt must teach man his lessons, and Zeus could pick any man or men to be on the receiving end.

Close to a million Iraqi civilians are dead (the official number is 100,000), more than two million were displaced from their homes, many of them ending up in Syria and Jordan, destabilizing the populations in those countries and straining the infrastructures there to the point of breaking.

Iraqi infrastructure is a mess. There is not enough electricity, there is not enough water, the roads are still dangerous, occasionally patrolled by bombers and snipers.

The Iraqis have been punished hard. And for what? For having been cowered into submission by the tyrant, Saddam Hussein and his two sons. The era of the Husseins ended, and the era of the American bombers began.

Curiously, the Afghans who had cradled the blood-thirsty criminals who were the architects of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, have gotten lighter sentences. Sure, they've been toppled from power, but now the Taliban are in a resurgence and will probably be in charge of Afghanistan once again. At some point in the future, after the Americans leave.

The American invasion of Afghanistan destabilized western Pakistan. The Taliban escaped through the Afghan Alps and into northwestern Pakistan and turned the already-lawless region into a political powderkeg. The Pakistani government no longer controls that huge region and is helpless in the face of the Taliban and their sympathizers' challenge.

Muslim communities in America, in Europe and elsewhere have had the spotlight trained on them and their cultural practices and traditions. Muslims everywhere are being commanded by the host populations to either assimilate into the mainstream cultures or else. The "or else" is deeply disturbing and foreboding, since this usually means harassment, intimidation, hostility and Empire-striking-back terror.

The silver lining in all this is the acceleration of the Muslim march into the 21st century. The de-Muslimization of peoples who either originated from Islamic countries or descendants thereof is continuing and even accelerating, though greatly unnoticed.

To what extent this de-Muslimization will succeed is anybody's guess, of course, because the call of the Muslim prayer is strong, and it is obvious that Muslims are transported back in time through ages to their roots in Iraq and Saudi Arabia every time that call is heard.

It is equally obvious that though many Muslims are trying to assimilate, there is no way of telling which ones are and which ones aren't and which ones still have murder and mayhem in their hearts. The Muslim dress is no longer the tip-off. The 9/11 attackers all wore western clothes. They all mixed in with the general population, drank (which of course is forbidden by their religion) and whored the night before they boarded the ill-fated planes.

And this is the quandary for the side of the American people, the Europeans, Australians, Canadians and people all over the world who are suddenly confronted with the threat of terrorism emanating from the Muslim ghettoes, communities and mosques that are fast sprouting in their cities and countrysides.

With no way of telling which Muslims are becoming like us and which Muslims are rejecting us and are planning our itineraries that must include our reunion with our Maker, we have lumped all Muslims as dangerous, feared and treasonous. Not all of us, for there are many in America who have idealized the freedom of religion and pursuit of happiness clauses embedded in our constitution as their guiding principles and are full-throated defenders of the Muslims in our midst.

And this is the miracle of America and western society in general. Because of our love for our freedoms and our constitutional guarantees of adherence to justice and fairness, we know that there will always be Muslim defenders in our midst and nothing that approximates the Holocaust will ever be visited upon them in America.

Unfortunately, there is countervailing evidence that radical Islam has been bolstered by a bumper-crop of new recruits who live for the jihad that imams everywhere have declared upon the west. At one point, there was a fatwa (a call to assassinate) placed on the president of the United States, George H. W. Bush, Sr. That fatwa may or may not be in effect to this day.

It is this strain of radical Islam that the west has found itself at war with. The struggle may last as long as a hundred years, or it may build up and eventually explode into a conflagration before the end of this century, settling once and for all the question of which civilization shall be pre-eminent in our ever-shrinking world: the Crescent of Saladdin or the Cross of the Templars. Too dramatic? Perhaps. Yet, if you really think about it, the clash of Islam and western civilization was never really settled. Truce was declared, a truce that lasted over centuries. But the hatred, the hostility remains, and, like the coal in the bowels of the mountains of Pennsylvania, continues to burn underground.

Islam, after all, teaches that infidels who are occasions of sin may be killed. And we are, with our modern culture that exploits our women sexually, are occasions of sin. That is why the torturers in Abu Ghraib prison used naked women to insult the Muslim prisoners. Displaying the naked flesh and private parts of women before the prisoners was a form of torture since the Muslims deeply believe it is against their religion to find pleasure in the sight of naked women who are not their wives.

If the Muslims in Abu Ghraib held the guns and not the buards, the Americans there would have died.

This is the world we live in now, nine years after that fateful morning just as American children were starting a new school year. We adults did not know it then, but some radical Muslims were going to take us to school. And our world would never be the same.

The era of cheap imports is over

Frank Sinatra, in his comeback album in the early 1970s, sang "What is America to me?" a patriotic reading of everything that was great about America at a time when the U.S. was at the pinnacle of its military power and just before the Japanese became big enough to pose a credible challenge.

We don't have another Frank Sinatra to sing what must be an obvious sequel to that song: What is America to me on Labor Day 2010? Or, more specifically, "Quo vadis, American laborers?"

No doubt, the songwriter probably would extol the virtues of American labor, but while Sinatra clearly believed every single word he uttered in his 1970s song, the songwriter would be hard-pressed to craft together inspirational words that he himself could believe in.

What is American Labor to all of us? What are its strengths, if it has any left, and what are its weaknesses, decidedly many more than its strengths?

Until recently, why couldn't we build cars as well as the Japanese and Germans? Why do American-made cars break down after four, six or eight years while Japanese cars just keep on ticking, like the Eveready bunny?

Why have the leaders of industry abandoned American labor in favor of Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese and other Asian laborers?

No doubt, the biggest reason for the exodus of jobs from America is the cheap labor elsewhere. The Chinese will work ten-hour days for $5 to $7 per day. The Indians for just a little bit more. Every Chinese factory, though outwardly modern with all the modern equipment, bells and whistles, is on close analysis a sweatshop.

Chinese laborers are so depressed about their lot in life, even as they see Shanghai's skyline rise inexorably to the heavens many of them end up depressed, needing therapy, which of course is unaffordable to most of them. This has led to numerous suicides.

There was a time, in America's inglorious past, when it was the U.S. that had a clear advantage over its European rivals. We had slaves whom we did not have to pay a dime to work our farms and our mills, who worked twelve hour days in construction projects, such as the construction of the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. for peanuts, three square and a roof over their heads.

A book by Harriet Beecher Stowe, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," chronicled the lives of slaves in America and convulsed American society and was partly responsible for the Civil War.

Earlier, during the age of the Romantics in Europe, Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities put the magnifying glass on the misery of the poor, the oppressed, the exploited workers in France. The book was an indictment on the Industrial Revolution and the exploitation of workers by owners of capital and by the nobility in France. It was a reminder to all Europeans, particularly the British, that the Industrial Revolution was failing the working poor.

The Romantics, through their literature, changed Europe, granting workers and the oppressed more civil rights and employee benefits. The dignity of the individual was the focus of all reformist movements, which eventually led to European romantics railing against slavery in the U.S. The Europeans' opposition to slavery in the U.S. was of course partly based on their desire to even the playing field. How could they compete against American industries when the Americans held the distinct advantage of employing workers who were paid virtually nothing except a roof over their heads and three square meals?

Now it is American Labor that is railing against the sweatshops in China and elsewhere because American industry has discovered that goods could be manufactured in China and other Asian countries at a fraction of the cost to produce them in the U.S.

Yesterday, President Obama extolled the contribution of the U.S. labor movement to the creation of millions of middle-class Americans who have become the backbone of our democracy. We must not fail the middle-class, the President warned, for this would mean the end of the American experiment as we know it.

President Obama, clearly miffed at his critics and his perceived enemies - the business elites and other powerful defenders of the status quo - issued a challenge to anyone who would dare to confront him and further underestimate him.

"They talk about me like a dog," Obama challenged. The gloves are clearly off. From now until November, President Obama will be swinging.

I applaud this change. Obama must confront those who belittle him and who are spreading lies about him - that he is a secret Muslim, that he was not born in America, that he is a communist - and must beat his enemies to a pulp. Figuratively, of course. He is the President. No one in America is more powerful than him. He must learn to use that power.

In addition, however, President Obama must go before the American people with a Checkers speech. He must say something like this:

"My fellow Americans, During the past 19 months I have worked hard to improve the lives of Americans by creating jobs, by preventing many private and public sector jobs from disappearing. By all statistical measures, we have been successful. The economy did not get worse, in fact it is getting better and is clearly on the mend.

"My policies, however, have not resulted in the immediate creation of the eight million jobs that we need to put every American who is looking for work back in their jobs or new jobs being created by this great job-creating engine known as the American economy.

"Clearly, all of the blame must be laid at my desk. I am your President, and the buck stops at my desk.

"I apologize to all Americans who are long-term unemployed, who have taken jobs that are way beneath their training and experience, their families, especially the children who feel the pain of their parents whose prospects for finding jobs are either non-existent or very remote. I too feel your pain. I have tried very hard, but apparently I haven't tried hard enough.

"I need Republicans to cooperate with me in passing a job-creation bill in Congress. The stimulus bill has been successful but it has not been successful enough. I have grown impatient over the slow pace of the bill's job creation. The bill simply has not created as many jobs as we have hoped.

"I need the cooperation of Republicans and I want you to call your Republican congressmen and senators to implore them, even beg them to set partisanship aside and work with us Democrats to pass the $50 billion job creation bill. The bill will rebuild our roads, bridges and railroads.

"We have a crumbling infra-structure. Many countries have overtaken the U.S. in terms of modern infrastucture. We need some catching up to do. We also need to put Americans back to work. We need to prime the pump once more, to get our economy moving at a fast clip once again.

"I have bent backwards, I have coaxed them, cajoled them, humored them, but to no avail. The Republicans refuse to work with me, specifically, and with us Democrats in general. Nothing has worked. So now I must turn to you and ask you to call your Republican congressmen and senators."

This is the way his speech should have started yesterday in Wisconsin, but I understand why he did not start it that way. He had a score to settle, plus he was speaking to leaders of the labor movement. He needed to offer them a lot of red meat. Now that he has settled that score and presumably has stated his case before the labor movement's leaders, he needs to make the speech I have laid out for him above.

He should go before the American people once more and apologize for his anemic job-creation policies. And then he has to tell us what his $50 billion job-creation bill will accomplish.

American labor efficiency is unequaled in the world, but this has not given us an advantage in the world markets. American labor is expensive, but if Americans want to bring back some of the jobs that have been lost, the rest of America must be willing to pay more for the goods that they buy in the department stores.

There are no two ways about it: If Americans want their jobs back, they must be willing to buy products that are made in the U.S. which cost more than those made in China and other Asian countries.

We need this slogan on every car bumper: The era of cheap imports is over.

Stunningly beautiful but language-challenged

There are language experts who will argue that language confusion leads to a life of confusion. We cannot, for example, count as part of our culture that which we have no word for. Since we do not have distinct words for "brother" or "sister" - we only have the unisex word "kapatid" when referring to a sibling - we often get confused about the use of "he" and "she."

Which brings us to the speech pattern of the Philippines' Miss Universe contestant, Venus Raj in the recently-held Miss Universe contest in Las Vegas. Because Venus obviously thinks in Tagalog but translates her thinking into spoken English, she came up with "major, major" in the most important short speech she had given in her young life in front of a global television audience.

In Tagalog, we often double up on a word to emphasize its meaning. For example, we say "maraming marami" to denote the existence of a humongous crowd, or a humongous collection. We also say "mahal na mahal kita," meaning "I love you so much." We say "ang ganda-ganda ni Tess," when we mean "Tess is so beautiful," or "ang itim-itim ni Popoy," meaning "Popoy is so dark-skinned."

Repetition of a word for emphasis is a distinct Filipino or Tagalog speech pattern. That pattern is the origin of Miss Venus Raj's "major, major" before a global television audience.

We Filipinos are a self-conscious race and I strongly suspect that a lot of Filipinos in the global audience cringed and wished they were elsewhere, drinking a pina colada instead of watching the Miss Universe contest on TV. I strongly suspect this because from the comments I have read on the Internet, that's exactly how a lot of Filipinos felt.

Venus Raj's slip-ups are an indictment on our government's schizophrenic policies towards language development. The Marcos and Aquino administrations' cockamamie decision to mandate the use of Tagalog as the medium of instruction in our schools raised two generations of Filipinos who are barely conversant in the English language. There was a time when you could tell the graduates of U.P. and the old NCAA schools and the exclusive girls academies by their flawless use of the English language. Not anymore. A lot of Filipinos who grew up in Marcos-era and Aquino-era elementary and high schools cannot construct a grammatically-correct sentence in English.

Marcos and Aquino mandated the use of Tagalog in schools, yet they did not mandate the use of Tagalog in business and the professions. This resulted in two generations of Filipinos who think in Tagalog but who speak English in formal company. The result is Tag-lish (a helter-skelter mixture of Tagalog and English) when Filipinos are talking to each other and excruciatingly difficult speech when speaking to foreigners in English. This is evident even among television broadcasters. There are, to be sure, television reporters and anchors who speak flawless English and with ease. There are many more, however, who struggle with the English language every time they open their mouths in front of the cameras.

The nationalistic ones speak Tagalog exclusively, even when answering questions that are put to them in English.

I sometimes watch television hosts interview the famous talking heads in English even though I find it difficult to watch the broadcasts. I sit in my sofa watching the hosts struggle with their questions, carefully framing their questions in a language that is obviously not the language that they think in.

After Venus Raj's unraveling on global television, I became more convinced than ever that Philippine educators must decide once and for all: are we an English-speaking country, which Koreans and others consider us to be, or are we a Tagalog-speaking country? One or the other. We cannot be half Filipino and half-English. If we try to be half and half, we end up with generations of Filipinos like our television commentators and hosts - confused and language-challenged.

(Those of us who live in America and other English-speaking countries are the exceptions. We can think in Tagalog when speaking that language, and think in English when using the English language.)

I don't want to further comment on Venus Raj. Her difficulties with the English language are apparently not of her own making. She is a victim of the schizophrenic policies of the Philippine government on language. In a perfect world, she would be suing the Philippine government for educational malpractice.

Existentialist nightmare in the Desert

In Franz Kafka's novel, The Trial, the main character is arrested and scheduled for an arraignment and an eventual trial. He sits inside a building that serves as the courthouse for a remote unnamed location. The authorities that are bringing the case against him are unknown. He has never seen them, nor talked to them. He doesn't know what the charges are against him. All he knows is that he is being arraigned and eventually tried for something.

The Trial is one of the best-known books written by Franz Kafka, acknowledged as one of the greatest existentialist writers of all time.

I thought of Kafka last Friday as I waited in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles office on Flamingo Road in Las Vegas. When you go to the DMV anywhere in Las Vegas, prepare to spend more than an hour in line just to talk to someone. After talking to one of the many DMV employees who sit in open windows, you are given a number and you're supposed to wait two to three hours so you can be helped by other employees with their own open windows.

Pray that the second employee you talk to will be able to help you. If that employee can't, or won't, you will be asked to come back and go through the process of falling in line and sitting for hours, awaiting your turn.

I thought of The Trial because of the absurdity of the Nevada system for the enforcement of its clean-air laws.

My daughter's car, a 2001 Ford Windstar, failed the smog test in Nevada a month ago because of an engine light on its dashboard and an indication that an oxygen sensor was not working. Since my daughter had to hastily go back to Los Angeles to attend her college classes, I instructed her to have the repair for the oxygen sensor done in LA.

On my trip to LA two weeks ago, I decided to drive the Windstar back to Nevada to have it smog-tested once more. It failed again, this time because another oxygen sensor was not working.

My mechanic in Vegas fixed the problem and reset the car's computer to remove the engine light on the dashboard. He told me to drive the car 50 to 80 miles before going for another smog test. I did, but this time, the car was rejected because the computer in the car had not re-set. I called my mechanic, who told me I had to drive the car another 100 miles and just keep driving it, waiting for the computer to re-set.

I took the car for a smog test a fourth time. It was rejected again.

Another mechanic suggested to me that I needed to drive the car at least 50 miles at speeds under 60 miles per hour and then bring it back to him. I did that yesterday. You ready for this? It was rejected a third time and with the two failed tests, that was the fifth time the car could not get past the smog-test station.

The car's computer had not yet re-set.

While I was in line at the DMV last Friday, waiting to talk to an "Information" clerk, I thought of Franz Kafka and the Trial. Why was the full weight of the Nevada bureaucracy on my shoulders? Was I being accused of fouling up the air? I know this was not the case because the test results never mentioned toxic substance levels beyond the level of tolerance coming out of my car's tailpipe.

The car's computer actually works, it just did not work properly in one area - the monitoring of oxygen levels.

The car's registration expires today, August 22, which was the reason for my visit to the DMV. I needed to get a time extension for registering the car. And that I accomplished, easing the burden on my shoulders.

I stood there in line thinking of The Trial. No one is accusing my car of fouling up the air. The whole point of smog testing is to make sure that the car does not spew toxic substances into the atmosphere at levels beyond what are permissible.

The car is not being accused of that. What it is accused of is that the computer is taking too long to function in one area, and one area only - the monitoring of impurities. Because of that, the car cannot be registered. Everybody knows that it sometimes takes a long time before a car's computer starts to function properly again, yet I'm supposed to make the computer work by driving it around and around in the streets of Las Vegas to force its computer to kick in. How far I have to drive - and for how long - nobody knows.

I've already put in close to 500 miles, driving around, nowhere in particular to go. Meanwhile, I cannot register the car because it continues to be rejected for the smog test.

I thought the smog test measures the quality of the air that comes out of the car's tailpipe. In New Jersey, contractors for the Department of Motor Vehicles stick a metal rod into the car's tailpipe to measure the amount of toxic substances that are coming out. If those substances are within tolerable limits, the car passes inspection.

Of course, in New Jersey, they also look at the engine light. If the engine light is not on, the car passes. My car's engine light has been off since my Las Vegas mechanic fixed the oxygen sensor problem.

In New Jersey the Motor Vehicles people test for toxic substance levels, the whole point of keeping the environment clean.

In Nevada, it's an existentialist nightmare. You know that your car is not polluting the atmosphere. Yet your car cannot be registered. The whole weight of Nevada bureaucracy is on your shoulders. Your friends, neighbors, everybody tells you that at some point in their lives they too have found themselves face-to-face with Nevada' existentialist bureaucracy.

I am channeling Franz Kafka. Hey Franz, want to write another novel?

I was to meet with a Filipino mechanic this morning (Sunday, August 22) who would finally put a fix on the problem.

But before I meet with him, he said, I had to drive my car on the highway at 45 mph for ten miles, then drive it at 65 for another ten miles, then 45 again followed by another ten miles at 65.

I hopped on my car at 8:30 a.m., drove north on Highway 215 for ten miles at 45 mph, got off the highway, turned around and started driving at 65. I noticed that the car started to make funny noises as a I struggled to keep it running at 65 mph. The car kept decelerating. Luckily for me it was Sunday morning and there weren't many cars on the highway.

I kept pressing on the gas pedal as the car slowed down to a crawl. When I reached the off-ramp to Sahara Avenue, I took it and forced the car to climb up the ramp until I had to step on the brakes in front of the traffic light, which was red.

When the light turned green, I stepped on the gas and the car did not move.

I knew right away that I had blown the transmission. Maybe it was from driving the car at a constant speed of 45 mph on the highway, maybe it was a problem that was already brewing. Who knows? All I know is that I don't want to spend another $2000 to repair the car's transmission. The car is worth - perhaps - $750, why should I spend another $2000 on it, especially since I've been spending $2000 a year - easy - on the car since 2007.

Now I've got another set of problems. Would a car dealership accept the car as trade-in even though it is not running and the transmission has to be fixed? Will the charity organizations accept it as a tax-deductible donation? Failing all that, will the auto wreckers accept the car?

The nightmare has not ended. It, like in the movie "Inception" is a nightmare within a nightmare.

Hope for under-water houses and millions of unemployed Americans

My classmate in my dance class, Laura Emerson, who is on the staff of the Las Vegas Review Journal, recently wrote a piece on the historically low mortgage rates. The low mortgage rates are out there, beckoning homeowners in Las Vegas and elsewhere, she wrote. Nearly everyone who owns a house probably would refinance these days because of the bargain-basement interest rates. Except that most cannot take advantage of the low mortgage refinance rates.

Most homeowners in Las Vegas are not qualified for refinancing. Many have homes that are under water, i.e., with market values lower than their mortgage balances. No mortgage banker or broker would refinance such properties. Homeowners whose houses are not under water are also shut out of the refinance market because their houses are barely above water and their home equities are much less than the 20% that banks require. Banks would refinance houses that have less than 20% equity provided that the homeowner purchases mortgage insurance. The cost of the mortgage insurance effectively shuts most people out of the refinance market.

I was reflecting on Laura's front-page business section article the other day and may have stumbled on a solution to this conundrum.

Assume that a house owned by a Las Vegas couple - let's call them James and Eleanor Alfonso - has a mortgage balance of $300,000. Their house now has a market value of $270,000. That house is clearly under water, with a negative value of minus $30,000. The bank that holds the mortgage on the house is probably watching this loan with eagle eyes for any sign that the Alfonsos may be thinking of defaulting and skipping town, or buying a second house - a very cheap foreclosure - prior to defaulting on their $270,000 house.

It is the way of a lot of houses in Las Vegas. People are just walking away from their houses. The "responsible" debtors are the ones who buy a second home - a cheap foreclosure - move into that second house and then default on their first house.

It's a sad, sad tale of mortgage waywardness in Las Vegas and elsewhere in America.

But what if there is a way to make both the bank and the homeowner whole?

Obviously, the biggest housing crisis since the Great Depression calls for the most creative solutions.

What if the bank that holds the $300,000 mortgage is willing to set aside the $30,000 negative equity on the Alfonso house and freeze it? The $30,000 will not be forgiven, just set aside and frozen. What that would do is that the mortgage will suddenly be equal to the market value of the house. The equity on the house will be zero, but at least it will no longer be under water.

Not long ago, people could buy houses with no money down. There were loans to first-time home buyers, to military people and others that the government was trying its best to put into houses. The mortgage industry can revive such programs, except that now the only people who would qualify for such programs are those who already are living in their own homes and have zero equity in them. The goal will not be to qualify as many Americans as possible for home ownership. Instead the goal will be to keep Americans in their current homes after years of proving that they can afford the mortgage payments.

The government will back the refinancing of mortgages that mortgage companies now hold on under-water houses. There could be a requirement that the homeowners who qualify for these zero-down, zero-equity mortgages have lived in their houses for two or more years. There could be an additional requirement that the homeowners have had a good payment record, that is, no more than one month in arrears in their mortgage payments.

With today's mortgage interest rates at about 4.5%, the Alfonsos' house, refinanced at a net loan amount of $270,000, will mean a monthly payment of $1368.05. Assume that the original mortgage amount on the Alfonso house was $350,000, with a mortgage interest rate of 7.5%. This means that the Alfonsos' monthly mortgage payment is currently $2497.25.

This means that the Alfonsos will see their mortgage payment (principal plus interest, not including real property tax and insurance) reduced by $1129.20. What this does for the Alfonsos is that they will do everything in their power to stay in their home and to continue making mortgage payments. Most Americans in a similar plight as the Alfonsos will welcome the decrease in their mortgage payments because a lot of them are hurting due to the Great Recession. A lot of them used to be double-income families but are now struggling with only one of the spouses working while the other spouse is receiving unemployment insurance compensation or not receiving anything at all.

The special refinancing arrangement, of course, would not be available to those who bought houses in 2006 and 2007 in Las Vegas. By 2006, home values had nearly tripled in the Las Vegas valley from a base year of 2002. Houses bought in early 2007, 2006 and some in 2005 had appreciated so much that when home values plummeted to 2002 levels those houses had lost up to 60% of their market values. At some point, the banks and the Obama administration will have to figure out what to do with those houses. The great majority of houses in Las Vegas and across the U.S., however, would qualify for the special refinancing arrangement.

Because of the help that can be provided to the Alfonsos in Las Vegas and millions of American families, the number of foreclosures and abandoned houses will slow to a trickle and the housing market will stabilize. At some point, the value of houses will start to climb and people who once owned homes that were under water, will see increases in their home equities. (In some parts of the country, the housing market has indeed stabilized and home values are starting to rise - even without much government intervention.)

This may even result in a mini-boom in the real estate market, as more people are encouraged to buy houses because of the expectation of increasing home values. The resultant mini-boom will encourage contractors to build again, causing a mini-boom in the construction industry.

Remember the $30,000 that the mortgage company set aside when the Alfonso house was under water by exactly that amount? Because the market value of the Alfonso house at some point will have increased to more than $300,000, the Alfonsos can refinance their house a second time, adding the $30,000 to their mortgage debt. This refinancing will divert $30,000 to the Alfonsos' original mortgage company, wiping out the amount that was set aside and frozen by that mortgage company.

It is important for mortgage rates to remain low, or even go lower, for this plan to work. The Alfonsos, after adding back the $30,000 to their mortgage balance, must not see a substantial increase in their monthly mortgage bill for this to work. If the government keeps mortgage interest rates low, or drives rates even lower, the Alfonsos and millions of refinancing homeowners will not be discouraged or inconvenienced.

If the $30,000 is added back to the Alfonsos' loan and the Alfonsos refinance a second time, assuming that the mortgage rate stays at 4.5%, their monthly mortgage payment will rise to $1520.06, still considerably less than what they are paying now.

The Obama administration is wracking its brains trying to figure out how to end the mortgage crisis in America. We may have stumbled on the way out of the conundrum.

If nothing is done, the economy will continue to be dragged down by a real estate market that is not just under water but is in the midst of a great flood. Banks will continue to suffer as more Americans walk away from their homes after defaulting on their loans. Banks and mortgage companies have every reason to embrace my plan, which will stop the bleeding from the foreclosures.

A second government initiative that must be pursued and announced in dramatic fashion immediately is the creation of millions of jobs. This is priority one for this administration.

This is my recommendation to the Obama administration:

1. We will offer every recipient of unemployment insurance payments, starting with the 99-ers, those who have been unemployed for 99 weeks or more, a chance to work and at the same time keep receiving unemployment insurance checks for another six months. The mechanism for doing this is the private sector, as explained in 2) below.

2. We will start with small businesses and gradually add larger businesses to the program. Small businesses with five or less employees typically are unwilling to hire additional employees even when work volumes increase because of possible harm to the bottom line. The government program will make it possible for a small business to add an employee it needs but cannot afford to hire. Assume that a small business needs an additional employee at a position that typically pays $15 an hour, $120 a day or $600 a week. An unemployed person who gets $450 a week from the government would probably want to take that job, which would pay her an extra $150 a week and put her in the ranks of the employed, rescuing her from her desperate straits.

What is the incentive for a small business owner to hire this additional person? The small business owner will only have to pay his additional employee $150 a week because his new employee will still get her $450 from the government.

This arrangement will put money in the pockets of unemployed Americans, resulting in increases in business activity. The resultant increases in business activity will mean more revenues for small businesses and eventually large companies, as small businesses start to increase orders of office supplies, equipment, plant, raw materials, machinery, etc. Restaurants will have a mini recovery as more people decide to eat out instead of eating at home. The increased business activity will ripple and echo into the larger economy.

With more people being employed again, tax collections will increase and local, state and - to a much more limited extent - federal government coffers will begin to fill up.

The federal government cannot afford to finance this program indefinitely for obvious reasons. The program may, however, over a six-month period be enough to jump-start the economy and get all its pistons humming again.

Many of the unemployed Americans who are hired by small businesses will probably stay on after the crash federal make-work program ends. An even larger number will find work in other companies, as the economy expands, causing the creation of millions of jobs in the private sector.

The third leg in this three-legged dance to the gods and goddesses of employment is the single-minded focus on the manufacturing sector. Small businesses in manufacturing industries would have the priority over other kinds of businesses in the creation of jobs that are partly paid for with unemployment insurance. The start-up businesses in the alternative energy sector would have high priority.

The contractors engaged in the erection of solar panels on rooftops. The sub-contractors engaged in the building of plants that will manufacture solar panels. The sub-contractors engaged in the erection of wind turbines. The manufacturers of futuristic cars - cars that can be driven in water and sprout wings, electric sports cars.

Small businesses that supply GM, Ford, Chrysler and the foreign manufacturers with plants in America will automatically qualify for this program that puts unemployed Americans in jobs while still receiving unemployment insurance.

Sub-contractors that install electric recharging stations all across America to power the electric cars that are now entering the American market.

Apparel manufacturers, electronics manufacturers who wish to add employees because Americans are becoming conscious again of the need for patronizing American-produced consumer items. The Made in America campaign of the Obama administration, if pursued with imagination and presidential resolve, will drive home the point that if Americans want jobs they must be willing to buy goods manufactured in America even if the goods cost more than the cheap imports.

In the past, our financial wizards and Federal Monetary Board poobahs fought inflation in a knee-jerk fashion. Recent experience tells us that some inflation is good because manufacturers are not afraid that they are producing goods at today's prices but may be selling these goods at tomorrow's lower, bargain-basement prices, killing their profits. Increasing prices mean that goods produced at today's low prices will be sold at tomorrow's higher prices, thereby assuring bonus profitability.

In other words, we want more inflation, not less. But not too much. Too much inflation will erode the value of our money too fast and the result will be an inflation spiral that could go out of control.

If I were Obama I would go before the American people and announce a plan that will dramatically reduce monthly mortgage payments for many Americans through a boom in refinancing. I would also announce a plan to put unemployed people back to work in small businesses, financed partly by a continuation of unemployment insurance payments to such people who find employment through such a program. Thirdly, I would announce that the first small businesses that will be helped by the make-work program are those engaged in manufacturing.

I would do it the day after Labor Day.