Sunday, Mar 14th 2010
The furore over Mahmoud Ahmajinedad’s apparent success in last months Iranian presidential elections tells us a few important things about how the dominant media feels democratic deficiencies, alleged or otherwise, should be reported.
According to the Irish Times Iran’s “suffocating theocracy”1 sustained a crisis of legitimacy “after it lost the trust of millions of Iranians”2 following [...]
Everybody altogether - let’s help Shane Coleman. In his opinion piece in the Sunday Tribune yesterday Shane took us all to task for being selfish, greedy and indifferent to the economic crisis upon us. So far, not very insightful. But it’s when he attempted to justify his opinion with ‘facts’ that he floundered completely. We [...]
Mission accomplished! Unfortunately, the euphoria is short-lived as we return to the dismal news coming out of our own economy: unemployment rising to over 260,000 with the increase in October nearly equaling the entire rise in 2007; service business activity contracting at an alarming rate; the EU Commission opening excessive debt procedure against the [...]
If I were a Fianna Fail Minister I would be embarrassed to go abroad to meet my peer group. I’d put a bag over my head. I’d put on an accent and pretend I was a county supervisor from Winnemucca, Nevada. I’d do anything to cover up the fact that I was [...]
The fiscal meltdown is the result of our economic decline, not the cause. It seems straight-forward enough, but let’s put it another way: our fiscal imbalance is a symptom of our economic malady, not the malady itself. The reason why it’s necessary to continually repeat this is because the general political and media consensus is that we [...]
If there’s one country where ‘tax’ is an even dirtier word than in Ireland, its the good ‘ol USA. To argue for higher taxes in Omaha is no more popular than in Artane. And, yet, America is about to elect a politician whose platform calls for higher taxes on wealthy individuals and businesses [...]
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I think that’s an underestimate.
The chart above is taken from an analysis by Dan O’Brien of the Economist Intelligence Unit which appeared in yesterday’s Sunday Business Post. He presented this chart to make a point:
‘The increase in public spending in Ireland over the past decade has [...]
I was pulling my hair out when a friend rang me pulling her hair out. A lot of hair being grabbed. Let’s start with my hair. Noel Whelan has given us the benefit of his deep and comprehensive research into the crisis in Exchequer financing: he has read the reply to a Parliamentary Question. And what he read shocked him: [...]
I admire people who have absolutely no shame about going public with their proposals, no matter how weird, strange and utterly nonsensical those proposals might be. Such people don’t care whether they appear foolish; they are in too much of a hurry to get their little pearls into print. They must feel enormous [...]
Good lord - is Master Batt O’Keefe in danger of turning into a modern-day Huey Long, a radical redistributionist who wants to confiscate wealth from the rich and give it to everyone else? He seems to have recently discovered the fact that there are lots of millionaires running about the place and he is using that [...]