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Christopher Caldwell has a cover essay in the current issue of the Weekly Standard about the economic havoc being wreaked in Europe thanks to the straitjacket that the euro has put them in. It’s an interesting read, though I don’t agree with everything he says. But I’m curious about this sentence, from a review of the piece by Kenneth Anderson:

Toward the end, the essay points out that although Greece is every bit as corrupt and profligate as the newspapers suggest, that was not the case with [] Ireland, certainly not in the sense of Greece.

This is a common attitude, but I’m not sure any of us should buy it. Granted, Greek corruption is depressingly crude, conspicuous, and grasping, sort of like being mugged in a dark alley or shaken down by a wise guy. By contrast, Irish corruption, much like its U.S. counterpart, is rather more genteel, discreet, and white collar than the Greek variety. For this reason, it’s usually treated as mere “cronyism” — regrettable, perhaps, but not truly corrupt “in the sense of Greece.”

On the other hand, the U.S./Irish version is actually far more efficient at separating the yokels from their money. In any meaningful sense, then, shouldn’t it be considered more corrupt? The fact that the theft is mostly legal and barely even noticeable may make it more respectable, but it hardly makes it more honorable.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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