Probably our prayers were heard by God for He spared Metro Manila from the 200-kph winds of Supertyphoon ?Pepeng? (international name: Parma). Apparently, the prayers of the people of Cagayan and neighboring provinces were not heard so Pepeng headed their way and unleashed its fury on their defenseless people. Maybe God decided that the people of Metro Manila, Rizal and Bulacan suffered enough from ?Ondoy? (international name: Ketsana) and another typhoon punishing them again so soon would be too much. Thank you God.

But God helps only those who help themselves. And we are not helping ourselves, especially those who live near creeks, rivers and other waterways. The detritus that Ondoy?s flood left show the sins that we have been committing on nature: mud and garbage.

The mud came from the mountains, washed down by rainwater because there are no roots of trees to hold the soil together. If this were a movie, the loggers who got rich by cutting down the forests would have been the first to be buried alive by landslides. But it is not a movie so the loggers watched high and dry from their mansions and condos as their fellowmen were swamped by the flood. They assuaged their feelings of guilt by donating some of their ill-gotten wealth to the relief organizations helping the flood victims.

The garbage was the doing of the common people themselves. These were thrown into the waterways because that was the easiest and quickest way to get rid of them. But nature always fights back. Because the trash clogged the waterways, made them shallow and narrow, waterways overflowed their banks and entered the homes, yards, streets and exclusive villages of the people the garbage came from. The saying that the trash you throw into streams will come back to haunt you has been proven true.

Greedy land developers are also to blame. Because of greed, they stole the banks of many waterways from nature and converted them into residential lots. The law says that a creek or stream must have a 3-meter easement on each side. But real estate brokers and developers, in order to sell lots, tell prospective buyers that they can occupy the easement. And the greedy buyers take the bait. They fence the easement right up to the edge of the waterway, thus getting several square meters of additional land for free.

But here comes the payoff. Every time there is a heavy rain, the waterways cannot accommodate the excess water. The easements were intended for just this situation, to provide the waterways with extra room for excess water. With the easements fenced in by greedy homeowners, the waterways overflowed their banks and invaded the homes, yards and streets and drowned their cars, appliances, houses and sometimes the greedy residents themselves, along with innocent ones.

Local government units are supposed to prevent the occupation and fencing of the easements of waterways. If they have already been fenced, LGUs are empowered by law to tear down the fence, at the expense of the guilty resident, and reclaim the easement.

The recent big flood should make the LGUs reclaim waterway easements to prevent a repetition of the disaster. Not to do so would be a dereliction of duty.

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With the Calamity Fund depleted, the government will be looking around for more funds and the most convenient, quick and plentiful is the tax on text. Although it is supposed to have been killed, we can be sure that, like Dracula, it will rise from the dead and come back to haunt us.

Expecting that nightmare, Globe Telecom has sent us a position paper on the tax on text (Smart is playing it smart by keeping quiet). Globe said:

1. The tax will trigger an increase in SMS retail prices. The tax on text is an excise tax, an indirect tax imposed on the consumption of a specified list of products. The tax is collected from the producer but passed on to the consumer as part of the selling price of the product. Thus, it would be the consumer who would have to pay it.

2. An excise tax on text is not legally justified. The selective imposition of excise taxes is justified on the theory that it helps to curtail the consumption of commodities, excessive or indiscriminate use of which is harmful. Example: alcohol and tobacco. Excise taxes are also imposed to distribute the tax burden in proportion to benefits derived from them. Example: gasoline, lubricating oils and denatured alcohol.

Text messaging, however, is not harmful. On the contrary, it is a very useful means of communication.

3. The tax on text is unconstitutional and discriminatory. Among all forms of communication, it singles out text messaging to an excise tax. There is no reason for making such a distinction. It unjustly singles out the telco industry to contribute to the development of education, state universities and technical skills when there are other industries that benefit from these institutions.

4. A ?no tax pass-on? provision is class legislation. It violates the equality clause in the Constitution. Every industry subject to tax is allowed to carry the excise tax as part of the price of the goods taxed.

5. The proposed metering of text messages is impractical and imperils the privacy of consumers.

Good arguments. On the other hand, the profits of the telcos are obscenely huge and they should share more of their profits with the government and the people. The solution is not a tax on text but a tax on excess profits.

The telcos are given a franchise that allows them to use the limited airwaves. It is a privilege. So they are not like other industries. They are a privileged industry.

Franchised utilities are allowed by law a maximum profit of 12 percent on their investment. Therefore they should pay a tax on profits that exceed 12 percent. If their profits do not exceed 12 percent, then they pay no extra tax. And even if they pay a tax on excess profits, they still keep what remains of the excess profits. That is fair, isn?t it?