Pork, ‘not’ for dummies

Let’s do this by way of 21 Questions. By me. To myself. 

Question No. 1: So what’s your understanding of the so-called pork barrel?

Answer: If you Google it, Wikipedia will tell you that “Pork barrel is the appropriation of government spending for localized projects secured solely or primarily to bring money to a representative’s district. The usage originated in American English. In election campaigns, the term is used in derogatory fashion to attack opponents. Scholars, however, use it as a technical term regarding legislative control of local appropriations.”

Further, excerpted: “The Oxford English Dictionary dates the modern sense of the term from 1873. By the 1870s, references to ‘pork’ were common in Congress, and the term was further popularized by a 1919 article by Chester Collins Maxey in the National Municipal Review, which reported on certain legislative acts known to members of Congress as ‘pork barrel bills’. He claimed that the phrase originated in a pre-Civil War practice of giving slaves a barrel of salt pork as a reward and requiring them to compete among themselves to get their share of the handout.^. More generally, a barrel of salt pork was a common larder item in 19th century households, and could be used as a measure of the family’s financial well-being. For example, in his 1845 novel The Chainbearer, James Fenimore Cooper wrote, ‘I hold a family to be in a desperate way, when the mother can see the bottom of the pork barrel.”

Now, that last item I find particularly interesting, as it’s a literary source. But here’s more from Wiki:

“Typically, ‘pork’ involves funding for government programs whose economic or service benefits are concentrated in a particular area but whose costs are spread among all taxpayers. Public works projects, certain national defense spending projects, and agricultural subsidies are the most commonly cited examples.

“Pork-barrel projects, which differ from earmarks, are added to the federal budget by members of the appropriation committees of United States Congress.… To a certain extent, a member of Congress is judged by their ability to deliver funds to their constituents….”

Q#2: You’ve quoted enough. From Wiki. In your own words, do you abide by the definition and references you’ve cited?

A: Well, yes and no.

Q#3: What kind of reply is that? You’re waffling.

A: C’mon, between us girls, you and I know there are more than 50 shades of gray between the absolutes of white and black, yes and no, just as “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Per Old Will.

Q#4: Hmm. Let’s leave Shakespeare out of this. Given the derogatory sense of pork, would you then concede that it’s bad?

A: Uhh… Is abortion always bad?

Q#5: Why do you have to reply like the Presidential Spokesman, or the DILG Secretary? Why go rhetorical and somewhat defensive and argumentative? It was just a question.

A: Oh, sorry. Must be all the media absorption these past weeks. Besides, mob mentality turns me off, so that I do waffle between passion and reason myself.

Q#6: Let’s leave individual or collective psyche out of this. Very simply, are you one with the apparent majority of Filipinos, or at least the social media citizenry, in turning into total porkbusters? Were you even at the Million March last Monday?

A: Unfair. Those are two questions. But I’ll allow the cheat. It’s still a gracious country — one that allows air-con for incarcerated diabetes patients. Especially if they’re high-profile.

Q#7: So what’s your answer? Er, answers? Crafty, crafty, you managed to split the questions, averted the cheat.

A: Of course I was at the Labo-Labo sa Luneta sa Lunes. I was just as outraged as anyone over the pork barrel scam. I committed to attend upon first call, when my FB Friend Bernardo Bernardo passed on the initial invite from Peachy Rallonza-Bretaña for a pocket picnic at Rizal Park to manifest disgust over the l’affaire Napoles “scamdal” that involved so many of our legislators. But as I clarified in social media, heh heh, I stressed the distinction between pork barrel scam and pork barrel when I noticed that the rally memes and slogans had zeroed in on scrapping pork altogether. I said I was still studying that matter. I was angry over the humongous scam, the Grand Guignol scale of corruption. But I couldn’t join in any call for the abolition of something that still had to be defined correctly.

Q#8: So you weren’t, and still aren’t, one with the many, and maybe you didn’t even go to Luneta?

A: Speaking of crafty, those are three-in-one questions, much like an instant coffee packet. But I’ll let it pass. Oh yes, I was there. You wanna see a pic of my muddied mocs?

Q#9: You’re going rhetorical again, losing your cool like a government spokesman. Just answer the question/s. Please?

A: Okay. Kindly be patient, too. You know, I’ve never jerked my knee in rhythm with any mob, on any question, especially one of social justice. Call me slow, but I’m still in discernment phase as to the parameters of what we here call pork.

Q#10: Come again?

A: Let me quote from Wiki again: “In other countries, the practice is often called patronage, but this word does not always imply corrupt or undesirable conduct.” Curiously, Wiki has been updated on the following: “In the Philippines, the term is commonly used in politics. Filipino legislators are allocated large sums of the annual national budget (200 million pesos for each senator and 70 million for each representative) in a program called the Priority Development Assistance Fund. In August 2013, outrage over the Priority Development Assistance Fund scam involving Janet Lim-Napoles let (sic) to widespread calls for abolition of the PDAF system. The Million People March occurred on National Heroes’ Day in the Philippines to call for the end of ‘pork barrel’ and was joined by simultaneous protests nationwide and by the Filipino diaspora around the world.”

Q#11: That’s in Wiki now? You don’t say! How wonderful!

A: Yes, isn’t it? Oops. That wasn’t rhetorical. Anyway, as I said, I’m still trying to determine the nuances of porkbusting. I found myself in disagreement with what I thought were already ludicrous claims as to what is pork. Why, even national agencies’ budgets were being misperceived as pork. If so, and you call for its total abolition, how can government run?

Q#12: Could you please remember to avoid going rhetorical?

A: Heck, that’s part of argumentation. I must confess feeling totally out of trend and style when I have to sympathize with an exasperated Senate President Frank Drilon who says something like “Might as well abolish Congress.” He could’ve even said government, by my own faith in logic, that is, IF everything na lang that’s budgeted to run the three branches of government is billed as pork.

Q#13: Isn’t it?

A: Of course not. My understanding is that pork refers to the lump-sum amounts allocated for legislators to address their constituents’ needs. Well, when it comes to senators, it’s a national constituency kuno. In any case, when my President said he was abolishing PDAF, then he was abolishing the pork barrel system that made his daang matuwid get all so crooked.

Q#14: But aren’t the critics right in saying that it’ll just be a name change to be effected?

A: Okay, now here’s where it gets hairy, as a maze of Catch-22s. Strictly speaking, pork refers to disbursements among legislators beyond their salaries and office budgets and maintenance of the concrete facilities of both Congresses — for them to allocate for so-called identified projects. And that’s what a great number of them have been skimming off, scamming off, shamelessly enriching themselves and conduits like Napoles with.

Q#15: And that’s what will be given a new name, right?

A: The system — obviously to be renamed a rose — will be modified, no more lump sums, just specific line items, to minimize or try to avoid gargantuan corruption. More restrictions, more transparency. Wil it still be pork? Yes, if you define pork as layers of grease that could help win votes for elected public officials — IF their projects really benefit constituencies. Also if you accept that those “pork” allocations serve to ingratiate the Executive dispenser with Congress, as a horese-trading maneuver to gain legislative support.

Q#16: So it’s still pork, even if it’s given the name of a rose?

A: Yes na nga, eh. In a way, that’s the first line of defense for pro-porkers. To say that political reality behooves the continuation of a pork barrel system, just as it still also exists in the government ours is patterned after in some ways, as well as those of other countries beholden to realpolitik. 

Q#17: Since you seem to imply other lines of defense, what would those be?

A: One is to clarify that there’s no “presidential pork” as alleged, since P-Noy’s social funds, intel funds, emergency funds do NOT come from the appropriations agreed upon with Congress — but from other sources such as Pagcor and PCSO, as has been stated, albeit my knowledge is that it’s actually a mix.

Q#18: Partial pork, then?

A: You might say that. But it’s obviously defensible that disaster funds CANNOT be line-item-ed unless the President were Cassandra. So it goes with the territory. Just as it can be argued that there’s no Vice-Presidential pork, as what Veep Jojo Binay got, P200 million, is for running his office, the way there’s a budget for running the Judiciary, the MMDA, etc.

Q#19: Any other layers of defense versus the angry mob, er, citizenry, that one can circle the wagons with?

A: Now you’re being sarcastic. But never mind. There’s also the thinking that anything involving discretionary funds also qualifies as pork. In which case, then the Veep’s budget has partial pork, as the President’s, and every agency that utilizes discretionary funds.

Q#20: How do you split hairs then, regarding that conundrum?

A: I’d say pork is here to stay, and that we just have to continue to trust our President, since we know him to be an honest man. That he will continue to make inroads against traditional politics and corruption, especially if we’re behind him. Sadly, all the anti-PNoys have smelled blood, and so the attacks have increased. Exponentially, too, as the middlegrounders have joined the call for blood and more blood, from crooked public servants and everyone seen to be involved in the fray. All this is understandable, and in fact the bloodletting should help us along. But the anger has reached such fever pitch that so many unreasonable demands, speculations, wishlists keep getting screamed every day. To the point where whatever is being done, masasabi talagang “Sala sa pork, sala rin sa beef, o kahit chicken.” Oh my gulay naman.

Q#21: So what’s your final answer, I mean, to all the angry questions being raised?

A: Well, I say, other than that discretion is the better part of valor, what should be recognized is that there came a tipping point, and whether the outrage that peaked is over myriad levels of awareness of corruption, or, let’s face it and say it, the existence of pork as we variously know it, we should and will be grateful in the future that this tipping point was indeed reached, maybe even thanks to images of a daughter in a limousine, and the piggy face to corruption lent by her mother, and that now there may be no stepping back, all this should ensure better governance all around. But please naman let’s also not gloss over the matter of giving credit where credit’s due, and more importantly, learn to separate grain from chaff, split ends from split ends, spilt milk from the carton it came from. And that our country will move forward from this point on, and we only have to thank ourselves and everyone else, that we’re not dummies for much longer anymore, but that we shuld still respect proper definitions, etc. etc. etc. But I should stop there, as there’s another kind of grilling to be done, and I’ll have to stand the heat in the kitchen where all my beloved pork still has to be blessed, Okay? Rhetorical. Okay. Affirmative.