Apparently, yes, it still isn't over. Never mind that GMA alluded to it in her SONA and it accounted for one of the 126 times she was applauded. "Taxes should come from alcohol and tobacco and not from books. Tax hazards to lungs and livers, do not tax minds." But then whoever believed in that SONA probably doesn't have any brains to think for himself anyway.


Apparently, our brilliant government has still found a way to get around the spirit of the law without following it to the letter. The exemption of books from tax still exists, sure. But in order to claim it you must file for it at the Department of Finance. In person. Every single time you have a book coming in. You have to justify that you are entitled to the exception. Ain't red tape grand?

I have this wild urge to emulate my favorite columnist, Conrado de Quiros, and revert to the vernacular in lambasting these morons that make up what we still call a government because we can't call anything else one. But then you see it everywhere: Even though something, a store, a restaurant, anything that renders service, offers something that might be advantageous to its customers or clients, such as, say, reduced rates and special offers, much of the time its personnel do not offer or mention this service. It's up to you to ask for it, if you know about it. But much of the time, you end up paying for something that you might have gotten for less or for free. The question is, does the actual price you paid reflect on the receipts, or does it go somewhere else?

With election coming up fast, hell, do we even need to ask why all of a sudden the government is trying to make as much money as it can, in any way it can? Do we even need to ask where that money goes, when our public servants even refuse to justify where it went once they have received it?

This tax on books is a double whammy... they make more money out of it, money that doesn't even seem to benefit the real people in the country and not just the few well-fed ones who claim to represent it. And a tax on knowledge means that they keep more people ignorant and thus more susceptible to whatever lies they want to feed them. Why do you think education is so neglected? I'd postulate that the reason lies in keeping people focused on something else aside from letting them think for themselves. Less education, more ignorance, more poverty makes people concentrate instead on the immediate need: food, shelter, life. So much so that like Esau, they would barter away their birthrights for a sack of rice, because it will feed their hungry stomachs whereas protest and resistance would only get them killed.

And we call ourselves a democracy.