Police state of paranoia

Our Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) Eye-spy reported that businessman Antonio Garcia of Chemphil was dumbfounded as US Customs authorities accosted him when he couldn’t find the gate to his Manila-bound plane. Airline and airport authorities paged Mr. Garcia until he was located. They then brought him to a secondary inspection room where they inspected everything he had because they suspected that he was bringing more than $10,000 out of the country. Luckily, he didn’t have that much cash at hand. As a result, the PAL flight was delayed for close to an hour. The Eye-spy further disclosed that all major US airports continue to be on a high-state of alert concerning visitors from the Philippines and the Middle East. He added that there is a new ruling now that all incoming passengers are not allowed to use their cellphones until they have cleared the Customs area. Those caught violating this rule may have their phones confiscated. Is the paranoia of US authorities going so far or is the US now a de facto police state?

Permanent P10-per-call promo

The unprecedented success of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co.’s (PLDT’s) P10-per-call promo is making company officials mull the possibility of making it permanent to allow its more than two million landline subscribers to call not only other landline subscribers nationwide but even Smart and Talk N’ Text mobile subscribers. Launched last Feb 14, the promo had been extended several times, According to PLDT Retail Business Group head Butch Jimenez, the company plans to extend the promo till June 11 and make it permanent thereafter. "With the market’s strong positive reaction to the offer, we are thinking of making this a permanent plan. The public likes the products’ simplicity and affordable price," Jimenez disclosed.

VAT-evading appliance company

Spybiz informants reported that an appliance company is allegedly remiss in paying its VAT obligations by requiring its logistics service providers (freight forwarders) to bill the appliance company for services rendered using letter billings only and not accountable forms such as official sales invoices. Using this procedure, VAT charges are eliminated, said the informants. This tax-evading process is also made easy by the fact that the freight forwarders being utilized by the appliance company are reportedly single proprietorship businesses operating without permits, and thus bill shippers only through letters. This practice is definitely not in union with the government’s efforts to improve tax collection.

Diploma mills and the sorry state of education

A reader reacted to the March 8 column titled "Senator Palengke to crack down on diploma mills" and revealed that the sorry state of education in the country is even more evident in the provinces, particularly in schools that offer engineering courses. To be expected, high school laboratories in Taiwan are even reportedly better equipped than many of the country’s universities offering engineering courses. The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) has a lot of memorandum orders (MOs) that should improve the quality of teaching, but unfortunately the lack of will in implementing these MOs is adding to the problem. The reader related that when he asked a school if they implement CHED memos, he was dismayed because the answer was a resounding and defiant "No!," arguing that there is no need to implement the memos because CHED is not strict anyway. Private college and university accreditation bodies also add to the degeneration of the country’s learning institutions because they accredit substandard schools, the reader lamented. That should change soon with the Senate investigation being conducted to weed out diploma mills. To its credit, CHED had also recently ordered some 191 colleges and universities to phase out certain programs where students have consistently shown dismal performances in government licensure examinations.

* * *

Join our ring of Eye-spies by sending your intelligence information, complaints, pictures, and comments to [email protected]

All information will be strictly confidential.