Gambling helps produce economic wealth? False!

NO OKAY FROM GMA: President Arroyo caught that one fast enough. We’re referring to her ordering yesterday the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) to stop putting up mini-gambling arcades outside its regular casinos.

The plan would have opened what looked like friendly neighborhood casinos where super-efficient jackpot machines waited to divest players of their cash. Pagcor has explained that the joints would cater only to moneyed patrons, particularly aliens, but based on its track record we doubt if it would strictly carry out that selective policy.

Our information was that the idea of neighborhood jackpot arcades was not cleared with the President but only with somebody very close to her. No wonder she reacted in that fashion, swiftly nipping in the bud the scandal threatening to explode into another issue.

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CONGRESS PRESSURE: There is already too much runaway gambling in this benighted country. Pagcor need not make it any worse and contribute to the decay of the moral fiber and the quality of life of Filipinos.

Money, or the urgent need for it, is the usual excuse for Pagcor expansion, such as its putting up of joints with arrays of one-armed bandits. Officials of the gaming company explain that they are under pressure to raise revenue because Congress has been approving projects that rely on Pagcor funding.

Congress leaders should explain this, if indeed they are a party to the arrangement. By appropriating Pagcor funds that do not enter the national treasury and therefore are not spent through the national budget, Congress becomes co-responsible for a scheme where selected officials handle huge amounts without the usual control requirements of budgeting and auditing.

Malacanang, for instance, has a war chest bulging with millions gathered from Pagcor and the Sweepstakes office and used outside of the regular budget. Projects and special operations are funded from this account solely at the discretion of the President.

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YIELD FUNDS TO TREASURY: Apologists of state gambling firms love to rattle off the projects being funded by them — including hospital wards and equipment, sports activities, street lighting, donations to charitable institutions, et cetera — and then asking where would these projects get funding if not from money generated through gambling?

If these projects and activities are that crucial to the community, by all means they should be included in the government budget and not turned over to Pagcor or the Sweepstakes office for adoption like orphans.

But the government is always short of revenue? Then let Pagcor and the Sweepstakes office turn over their fat earnings to the national treasury. This is better than having officials, some of them (and their demanding patrons) with sticky fingers, doing things by themselves without the usual controls built into our budget system.

But government is super-slow in responding to funding needs? Then let’s improve the system instead of operating outside of it.

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NO WEALTH IS CREATED: The way gambling houses explain their role in community building and the many donations and sponsorships they make here and there, it seems they want us to believe that they play a crucial creative part in the economy.

That is exactly the myth perpetrated through the years. State-sponsored gambling — as it is with such illegal gambling activities as jueteng and masiao – does not directly contribute to the creation of economic wealth. Gambling does not produce any tangible wealth the way business and industries do.

Gambling only shuffles around and redistributes the money in people’s hands – usually from the poor suckers to the gambling houses and their operators. No economic wealth is produced.

On the contrary, gambling contributes to poverty, to impoverishing the population aside from eroding their moral values.

The tragedy is that state gambling firms use their false aura of benevolence to cover up their being convenient milking cows of whoever is in power. They will deny this till they are blue in the face, but it’s true.

(The fall of the Estrada regime is traceable partly to its murky policies toward gambling. By this time, President Arroyo, who is trying hard to show that she is different from her predecessor, should have learned this fact of history.)

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TERRORIST OR TERRORISTIC?: We’re glad that President Arroyo did not hesitate to declare her stand that happened to hew to the American line that the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed component the New People’s Army are terrorist organizations.

Some sectors would disagree with her, mainly on the irrelevant reason that it is wrong to follow the footsteps of America. But her stand is not necessarily wrong just because it happens to coincide with that of her American counterpart. It would be crazy to adopt a position whose only merit is that it is opposite that of US policy.

The thing is that she did not waver but promptly came out with her position when the situation called for it. It so happens that the President is the sole spokesman of the country in foreign relations, so that’s it.

But we are bothered by the waffling among some officials. If seems that these confused gentlemen cannot decide if the CPP/NPA group is "terrorist" or just "terroristic" — the latter term they use ostensibly to leave room for maneuvering in case their position is assailed.

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COAL HAZARDS ASSSAILED: There is an awakening among many officials to the deleterious effects of coal as a fuel for power generation.

In the House, Rep. Juan Miguel Zubiri has filed Resolution No. 700 urging the National Power Corp. and the Department of Energy to order immediately the shutting down of all Napocor coal-fired plants posing danger to humans, animals, plants and the ecosystem in general.

He cited these Napocor-maintained plants being denounced by residents around them: Calaca I (300 megawatts), Calaca 2 (300 MW), Pagbilao (764 MW), Masinloc ((600 MW), Saul (1,294 MW), Quezon Power (443 MW) and Naga Coal (105 MW).

Zubiri pointed out that these coal plants are not crucial to the economy as "we have an excess power supply of about 6,000 MW and these Napocor coal-fired plants generate only 3,500 MW.

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SENATE INQUIRY SET: In the Senate, a similar call was made by Majority Leader Loren Legarda. She said that the Napocor coal plants mentioned emit some 750 pounds of poisonous mercury every year.

"Unless they comply with the safety requirement of the Clean Air Act, their operations should be stopped immediately to avert further damage to the health of our people," she said.

Mercury is a neurotoxin that is so deadly that it takes only 1/70th of a teaspoon to contaminate a 10.11-hectare lake to the point that fish caught in it are deemed unfit for human consumption.,

Sen. Robert Jaworski, chairman of the committee on environment, has set an investigation, in aid of legislation, into the hazards posed by the coal-fired plants.

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