Opposition senator Chiz Escudero today said, "there is no need to spy on the people to know what they feel during these hard times for their pain is palpable, and their discontent is evident”.

This after the palace has included the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP) in a super body that will monitor the food and energy situation in the country.

Advances from corporate taxpayers may have nudged up the revenue haul of the Bureau of Customs in 2006 – and thus allowed its personnel to claim a half-a-billion-peso bonus under the Lateral Attrition Law, but it was government’s own tax payments which amplified the Custom’s P198.1 billion tax take that year.

“The tipping point may have been provided by tax payments advanced by companies but the major push was given by the government, through the duties and taxes it paid for its own imports, mostly rice, therefore it is not covered by the lateral attrition law” Sen. Chiz Escudero today said.

Of the BoC’s P198.1 billion collection in 2006, P20.6 billion came from the Tax Expenditure Fund (TEF), a “non-cash transaction that simply records in the books that duties arising from government imports have been settled,” he said

While motorists continue to pay the inevitable VAT at the pump, the rise in oil taxes has yet to reflect on Bureau of Customs collections, prompting opposition senator Chiz Escudero to suspect the much-vaunted VAT oil dividends “a mirage.”

Escudero, who has long been espousing for the scrapping of the VAT on oil said there is a “disconnect” between a supposed windfall in oil VAT collection , on the one hand, and actual Customs collections , on the other.

“If the expected hike in fuel tax collection has not materialized then where will government “squeeze its ‘katas ng VAT’ from which is reportedly being used to lubricate its rice and power subsidy program?” Escudero asked.

Without us knowing it the Congressman and his son Senator Francis 'Chiz' Escudero were regular patrons of our Law Students especially during their bar examinations wherein both father and son were regularly visiting our examinees and their supporters and even hosting dinners as a sign of support and camaraderie. These generous acts from our legislators are known to the students and are big boosts to our school since this is the first ever College of Law in the history of the province. Not only that, Sen. Chiz Escudero himself served as one of our earliest batch of professors when we started the College of Law. That time he was a young congressman for Sorsogon, a former University of the Philippines professor and acquired his M.A. in Law from Georgetown University in the United States.

Romulo Neri and Tito Sotto got off to a bad start in their new jobs.

I still remember when a PATTS faculty came to our school to discuss and promote their institution as an alternative for the usual choices for college courses. I almost signed up.

This video is a clip of Senator Escudero's speech during this year's batch of graduates.

Founded as a joint enterprise of Filipino and American pioneers in aviation, the Philippine Air Transport and Training Services (PATTS) started operations in 1969.

Its primary aim was to establish a manufacturing and assembly plant for trainer aircrafts, which at the time of its founding was a new and pioneering objective as envisioned by its five founding directors. Its secondary aim was to put up an Aeronautical School to meet the domestic and international demands in the fields of aviation and air transportation industry.

If this government is courageous enough to remove the value added tax...

For chrissakes! Why did they have to remove good people from the government and replace them with wimps? The administration should remove GSIS President Winston Garcia and appoint Corazon Dela Paz in order to regain what is left of the public's favorable opinion of this government.

For workers to cope with inflation, opposition senator Chiz Escudero today said the government should see to it that wages which should have been remitted as taxes are retained in pay envelopes on account of the new law exempting minimum wage earners from income tax and increasing tax exemptions for other employees .