Uptown Radio

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This week, President Barack Obama ordered his administration to stop arguing for the defense of marriage act. The defense of marriage act prevents the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages. The Obama administration said the law is unconstitutional.

Kermit Roosevelt is a constitutional law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Her says it is not unusual for a U.S. President to tell the Justice Department to stop defending a law.

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The change in Libya is different than what happened in Tunisia and Egypt. Those countries had leaders that portrayed themselves as elected – even if the elections were less than fair.
Uptown Radio host Juliana Schatz spoke with Rodney Collins, who studies North Africa as a visiting professor at Georgetown University. He says Qadhafi is an autocrat who has vowed to go down fighting in order to to defend “his” country.

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Empty shelves at Upper West Side Food Pantry, photo by Sandhya Dirks/ Columbia Radio News

One Upper West Side food pantry is definitely busy. Organizers say they are serving twice the number of people they served before the economic downturn. With cuts to public assistance programs part of the City’ s new budget, the food pantry is trying to close the gap between funding and need.

On a Friday morning, shoppers are standing in line while the clerk tallies up groceries.

But this isn’t the neighborhood Pathmark or the corner bodega… this is the basement of the Church Of St. Paul and St. Andrew on West 86th street between Broadway and West End Avenue. Carter Dyke is packing up his groceries… since he went on unemployment 2 years ago he says he depends on the pantry. “I got canned goods, I got fruit, I got eggs, I got meat, milk, potatoes, onions; this is a very good pantry. How does this help me? It helps keep me alive.”

“We are what we call a customer choice super market style food pantry.” That’s Doreen Wohl, the director of the West Side Campaign against hunger. She says part of what makes this pantry unique is that that it’s structured like a grocery store. “We try and provide as wide a selection of foods, like here we have green beans and red beans and black beans.”

But it is clear that stock is running low. There are only a few bags of beans left.
Doreen Wohl says that they are “seeing empty shelves, and there are empty shelves because there’s enormous increase in the number of people coming for emergency food.” Wohl says the pantry can’t keep up with the increasing demand. Since the economic downturn began, the number of families coming to the pantry has gone up by 46 percent. And despite the recovery, people continue to struggle to find work, unemployment is still around 8 percent in New York. And Wohl says, many people, have by now, used up any nest egg they might have had. “Were serving m ore people now then we ever have in our 31 years of existence… and I’ve never seen the shelves this empty.” Or, Wahl says, the aisles so full.

They are crowded with customers like Wanda Lowe; she comes here once a month, only when she is really desperate. “I’m here because my refrigerator is getting low, I comes here whenever I need it, and I’ve been coming here since 2007-2008.” Lowe’s groceries get packed ups, but she has to put some of her items back, she has taken more than the pantry allows per person. Even with this service, Lowe worries it won’t be enough food to keep her fed for the next week, let alone the next month.

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Barbara Rick is a documentary filmmaker based in New York City. Photo Courtesy of Stefan Falke

In 2010, Kathryn Bigelow made history as the first woman ever to win an Oscar for Best Director for the film ‘The Hurt Locker.’ This year no woman will win the directing prize— that’s because none have been nominated. Women directed only seven percent of the top grossing films in America and female filmmakers say they want that to change.

When Deborah Kampmeier set out to make her movie Hounddog, the financing fell through four times. It took her twelve years to get the film made. When she finally finished, it was nominated a top prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. But Kampmeier says success hasn’t made things any easier. “I thought “Here it goes! And now I can make my next film, I’m not an unknown filmmaker,” which was always part of the problem was I’d never made a film before. ‘No, now I’m an award winning film maker.’ Nah. Didn’t make a bit of difference. I still couldn’t get an agent.”

The director’s chair isn’t the only place where women are underrepresented. Women represent only about one in six producers, writers, cinematographers and editors on top grossing films. And those who do have jobs on big-budget features tend to work in very specific genres.

Melissa Silverstein says that “women have a harder time getting hired for a gig when it’s not a touchy feely chick flick or a romance. It’s like enough.” Silverstein is the founder and editor of the blog “Women and Hollywood.” She points to a report by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State. It confirms that women are in fact more likely to work on romantic comedies and dramas, rather than say, horror or action movies. Of course Kathryn Bigelow, who won the best director award last year, got the prize for a hard-hitting war film. Silverstein wants more women to be able to make the kinds of films that Bigelow does. “I don’t want to go see a mediocre movie, I want to see good movies and I think women and men make good movies. And I want women to get more opportunities.”

The San Diego State report found that women are also more likely to work in documentary films. Barbara Rick founded and directs Out of the Blue Films, an independent documentary company. On a recent evening she was setting up a shoot at a lower Manhattan bookstore.

Rick discussed camera placement with her husband, a cinematographer, as bookstore employees dragged chairs out and set up a stage. Rick likened her job as director to being a conductor of sorts, “All these people know their jobs and do their jobs well, so its just a way of kind of like having an influence in kind of a gentle way to make sure that you get what you want.”

Earlier that day in her office, Rick said that as much as she likes making documentaries, she dreams of trying out a new genre. “I love cinema, and I love feature films and I would really like to write and direct my own feature films. But that just, it’s a big big hurdle. Young white men don’t have it easy either, it’s just that they’re more likely to be banked upon when it comes to making films.”

Rick and other women in film say its essential that Hollywood change. Margaret Nagle is a writer and producer whose first screenplay turned into an HBO film that won five Emmy awards. Nagle says the way for women to advance in Hollywood, is for each individual woman to stay focused on doing the best work she can. Nagel says that “There’s the part of me that knows all this exists and its not good. And then there’s that part of my brain that’s like ‘I have to do my work, I have to do what I love, my success will change things for other people, I hope. And when I don’t need to make money anymore, I’ll be this really ranting old lady, who is like absolutely on a soapbox saying this has to change. 

Whatever the strategy, director Deborah Kampmeier says she hopes that women and men can reach parity in the film industry, because film is so important to our culture. Kampmeier says that “films are the place in society that we really sit around the campfire and tell our stories and make our myths, and really create our future as a society. And 93 percent of those stories are being told by men and this is a chronic, very unhealthy balance.”

Though no women directors got Oscar nominations this year, The Kids Are Alright and Winter’s Bone are up for best picture. Both those films were directed by women.

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New York’s state politicians used to have access to a pool of money that they could dole out to nonprofits and pet projects. But not anymore. Last year, then-Governor David Paterson vetoed the so-called member items from the budget. This year, Governor Andrew Cuomo is eliminating them again. Some good-government groups are cheering the elimination of discretionary funding. But not everyone is hailing the decision.

On a Thursday morning, volunteers at the Greenpoint Reformed Church in Brooklyn are setting up the weekly food pantry. They’ve filled hundreds of shopping bags with groceries and are handing them out from the church steps. The pantry distributes 500 to 600 bags of food each week, and demand has been growing. Elderly men and women wait on the sidewalk outside. Some of them grasp small carts for their groceries. Many of them are regulars at the pantry.

Ann Kansfield is the pastor who runs the food pantry. She says it’s getting harder to feed the needy. Two years ago, her local state senator, Martin Dilan gave the pantry a $5,000 grant. But since then, he’s had no money to give out. Kansfield says that “we really rely on grants like this one from our senator. … And without it, it’s really hurting us.”

Five thousand dollars isn’t even enough to run the food pantry for two weeks. But Kansfield says it’s hard to balance the budget as it is. “For our organization, $5,000 is a huge amount. … For the state, it’s a very small amount.”

Kansfield says she was hoping that member items would be reinstated this year. But now that Cuomo has decided to follow his predecessor’s lead, her food pantry is one of many nonprofit groups that are scrambling to make ends meet. Those groups include soup kitchens and volunteer ambulance corps, senior centers and environmental organizations. But some government watchdog groups think the governor is making the right decision.

“Member items ought to be eliminated,” says Neil Jaschik, president of a government reform group called Citizens for a Better New York. He says member items put too much power in the hands of the Senate and Assembly leadership. “This is just one manifestation of their ability to … penalize those that don’t tow the line and reward those that do.” Jaschik calls member items incumbency insurance. He says lawmakers who bring home enough bacon are essentially buying votes.

Experts aren’t so sure. They say it’s too soon to tell how the elimination of member items has been affecting politicians’ chances for re-election. And they say it’s unlikely that the effects will be noticeable. “Is this going to cost anybody an election? Probably not,” says Bruce Berg, a political scientist at Fordham University who studies city and state politics. He says incumbents already have an array of advantages when it comes to getting re-elected. Plus, he says, most state lawmakers in New York don’t need incumbency insurance. “They come from districts that are heavily Republican, heavily Democratic. So assuming they don’t do anything that ethically throws them off the map, they’re almost assured re-election.” While eliminating member items may not change election outcomes, Berg agrees that it will take a toll on community nonprofits.

Larry Norden of NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice says it’s unfortunate that those groups have to do without the money. But he says during a budget crisis, there are always painful cuts. “It’s not surprising to me that member items would be one of the first things to go when you’re talking about laying off teachers and cutting back on things like Medicaid and other services that the most vulnerable people in the state need.”

But back at the Greenpoint food pantry, volunteers are already having to turn away clients who ask for more than one bag of groceries. Kansfield says this a terrible time to cut discretionary funding. “I think we as a society assume that the government is going to take care of the most hungry people. And we take food pantries for granted.” Without contributions from politicians, she says, organizations like hers won’t be able to carry out their mission.

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Libyan Deputy ambassador to the UN Ibrahim Dabbashi calls on foreign leaders to stop bloodshed in Libya. Photo by Alex Alper/ Columbia Radio News

It looks like Libyan Colonel Muammar Gadhafi’s time may be running out.
Anti-government protesters clashed with pro-government forces in the Capitol Tripoli today. AL Jazeera reports there were several causalities. In the last 24 hours, anti-government forces have gained ground in the west of the country. They already control the east of the country, including Benghazi, Libya’s second city.

Meanwhile Gadhafi himself was defiant. He raised his fists before government supporters in Tripoli’s Green Square and declared he would fight on. “Life without dignity is worthless. Life with green banners hoisted is useless,” he said.

Earlier today, Gadhafi tried to break the protester’s momentum by offering families 400 dollars each. But as Alex Alper reports, even here in New York it seems clear Gadhafi has lost control of much of his government.

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On Tuesday Libya’s deputy ambassador to the UN made headlines when he announced he was breaking with Gadhafi. Today in the lobby at the Libya’s mission to the UN he announced that the entire mission had joined him.

Dabbashi stop in front of a blank spot on the wall where Gadhafi’s portrait had hung for years. He asked foreign leaders to help bring down the dictator, who he called a madman: “There are already 100s of people who have been killed. We expect thousands to be killed today in Tripoli so I call on all the international community to intervene now. And to send a clear message to colonel Gadhafi that he should stop the killing right now.”

France’s top human rights official estimates that Gadhafi’s defenders have killed 2000 Libyans. Mercenaries from sub Saharan Africa are reportedly responsible for much of the bloodshed.

But Gadhafi’s behavior is nothing new, according to Mona Eltahawy, a columnist and public speaker on Middle East affairs. “In the 1970’s Gadhafi hanged people live on television just to show Libyans what could happen if they dared to rise up against him,” Eltahawy says.

The entire political system that Gadhafi built when he seized power in 1969 seems designed to prevent any opposition. That’s according to John Entelis, a political science professor who heads the Middle East Institute at Fordham University. “There were no political parties; there was no legislature, no judiciary. “

Gadhafi called the political system jemharia, which roughly translated, means the People’s Republic, but in practice, Entelis says, it is an autocracy. “What has resulted is a totally disaggregated society whose tribalism has remained dominant.”

Entelis says that tribalism could tear the country apart. He is not the only one who is concerned. In a speech three days ago, one of Gadhafi’s sons, Saif Al Islam, warned it could plunge the country into civil war. Azzedine Layachi, a professor of politics at St. John’s University, agrees. The tribal groups tend to break down along regional lines and those boundaries go back to the Middle Ages. Layachi says that if there’s a power vacuum in Tripoli, the country could fragment. “When the chips are down and there is no central authority after Gadhafi leaves, no one to maintain a sense of common identity, its very possible the different regions will try to fend for themselves and therefore get hold of the oil wealth. And that is going to be a bitter fight.”

The international community is still trying to figure what it should do about the situation in Libya. The UN’s human rights body met today to discuss possible “Crimes against humanity.” The Security Council is expected to meet to discuss options: those could include travel bans, asset freezes, and a no-fly zone. President Obama has said that all options are on the table. Columnist Eltahawy wishes the administration in Washington would condemn the violence in stronger terms. “A couple of days ago John Kerry said Gadhafi is irredeemable. That is the language we should be hearing, precisely because Gadhafi is not a best friend to the United States.”

But Entelis of Fordham University says President Obama was too hasty when he supported protesters in Tunisia. In this case, he says the president’s caution is warranted. “As long as these are all popular revolutions that are being directed against the dictator then it is in our advantage to not appear to take one side or the other.”

At the press conference to day Dabbashi said he is sure Gadhafi either will be killed or commit suicide before the battle is over. The ambassador said he is certain the dictator will not surrender.

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Bre Pettis, C.E.O. of MakerBot Industries, Photo by Jonah Comstock/ Columbia Radio News

Imagine if your desktop printer could print not just photos and documents, but 3D objects, if you could print everything from a model of a brain tumor to help doctors prepare for surgery to a fully edible chocolate cake. All that is possible with 3D printers, a technology that, in the wake of its 25th anniversary, is becoming more and more accessible.
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It sounds like something out of science fiction. Type some commands to a computer and print out a 3D plastic model of anything you like. You can replace lost board game pieces or broken machine parts, create toys for your kids, or abstract sculpture.

“Let’s see, we’ve got a little puzzle box, we’ve got Space Invader ice cube trays, we’ve got bunnies,” says Bre Pettis, C.E.O. of MakerBot Industries. Pettis is giving me a tour of the MakerBot Bot Cave, a downtown Brooklyn warehouse. MakerBots, the company’s signature products, are small, do-it-yourself 3D printers. They look a bit like an easy bake oven, and they retail for just under thirteen hundred dollars. Pettis shows me a MakerBot at work, “What you’re hearing is the music of the MakerBot. As it moves, the motors make different sounds depending on how fast it’s moving.”

The frame of the MakerBot is a wooden box. Inside, in the glow of a colored LED light, you can watch it working: A nozzle, like the inkjet in your desktop printer, spits out an instantly-hardening plastic resin as a platform moves mechanically underneath it and, layer by layer, an object takes shape.

Shelves of bots line the walls, along with a vending machine stocked with the little plastic models they make. Printed in bright colors and intricate shapes, the only thing the objects have in common is the ridged texture that gives away their genesis.

The process is called additive manufacturing and it’s not just about plastic trinkets. Cathy Lewis is marketing director for 3D Systems, the California company that invented the technology. She says the inventor, Charles Hull, originally conceived of the process as a powerful tool for engineers. “He envisioned being able to create prototypes more rapidly and help engineers and designers actually deliver products faster to the market and make them better,” says Lewis.

3D systems makes large units which retail for more like $10,000 and can print in a wide range of materials including metal, wax, and chocolate. They sell products to high end manufacturers such as the aerospace and health markets. For instance, they sold a printer to a research hospital in Washington, where premature infants were too small to use even the smallest oxygen tubes. “So” Lewis says, “they did a CT scan of an infant, they printed the nasal morphology of that specific infant, and they were able to test devices, breathing devices, that are going to be accretive to saving those young babies.”

New uses for 3D Printers are being developed every day: recently scientists have printed a working flute, developed a food printer, and researchers are looking to see whether there’s a way to print human organs – and put an end to donor shortages.

But even as researchers push the boundaries of what this technology can do, companies like 3D Systems are concerned about making sure anyone can do it. Lewis says the biggest barrier right now is that to use a 3D Printer, you need a design, and the average person isn’t familiar with 3D design software.

Back at the MakerBot Bot Cave, Pettis and his team have a solution: An open source database called Thingaverse. “So we have a site called Thingaverse.com and it’s THE UNIVERSE OF THINGS. That’s a place where people share their digital designs, so you can go check them out, download them, and then print them out without having to do any designs,” Pettis says.

A browse through Thing-a-verse demonstrates a huge range of printables from toys to tools, all free. One user has even used the MakerBot to print components he used to build another MakerBot. Pettis equates the 3D printing market with the personal computer market – years down the line, he says, we’ll have one in every household. When that happens, things are going to change. “I’d like to think it’s the beginning of the end of consumerism as we know it. Because right now you buy something and it’s very likely made overseas, put on a boat, then it’s put on a train, then it’s put on a truck and it sits on a store shelf waiting for you to come and buy it, but with a 3D printer you either design it or download it from Thingaverse.com and print it out. You have it,” says Pettis.

3D Printers are as hot as the plastic resin in a MakerBot, and they’re just going to get cheaper and easier to use. It may not be long before online shopping is just a matter of point, click, and print.

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It has always been problematic for undocumented immigrants to report domestic abuse. But for years, domestic abuse agencies have confidently assured victims that they should feel comfortable reporting violence to the police — regardless of their immigration status. But a new program by U.S. Immigration and Law Enforcement called Secure Communities has advocates changing their message. Yesterday, the nation’s largest domestic violence group formally announced that undocumented victims should be cautious of the police and consider alternate safe havens.

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When Maryland resident Maria Bolanos called the police on Christmas Eve 2009, getting deported was the last thing she expected. Her husband had beaten her and she wanted protection. The police arrived and they were both arrested and booked. Her fingerprints, along with accused abuser, were scanned. Weeks later, Bolanos found herself back at the precinct. Police arrested Bolanos for selling calling $10 cards without a license. When she pressed her finger to be scanned, her prints from the night of her domestic dispute came up in the biometric system used by Secure Communities. The system calculated she was in the United States illegally from El Salvador. She has been in deportation proceedings since then.

In November, Bolanos attended a conference of immigration advocates at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC. “I thought they would help me. But through this the police turned me over to ICE and now I have a deportation order. And I don’t want to I am not a criminal. I am a hard worker. And I don’t want to be separated from my daughter of 21 months,” said Bolanos.

According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE, Secure Communities works because it shares arrest information ICE’s database. Secure Communities says the goal is to deport violent criminals from the US. But, immigration advocates say cases like Maria’s are not uncommon.

Currently Secure Communities exists in 39 states. Only two counties in New York, Rockland and Putnam counties have subscribed to the program. But ICE says in two years it wants secure communities to be the standard for local law enforcement – a fear for advocates who protect immigrants.

Safe Horizons is based in New York and is nation’s largest victims’ service agency. It announced yesterday that because of cases like Maria Bolanos, they no longer feel they can refer undocumented victims of domestic violence to the police.

Claribel Jolie Pichardo is a representative for Safe Horizons. She says that “with this new program, if it were to roll out in all the counties in NYC because now it’s just in Putnam, but if it were to roll out here, we can’t say that with the same confidence.”

Reporting domestic abuse is often a difficult emotional task. With the threat of deportation looming for many undocumented women Pichardo says Secure Communities forces victims who are undocumented to hide in the shadows of abuse. “There is already fear in the community. There is great fear. And there is already been a resistance to come forward and talk to the cops. Because they don’t understand that they’re not going to get in trouble for coming forward. Now this is sending out the message that , yes, there are consequences if you ask for help.”

But Pichardo says they are counseling victims to call hotlines and check into underground shelters.

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Food Advertisements at the Associated Supermarket in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Photo by Anna Maria Jakubek/ Columbia Radio News

The World Bank reports that commodities have jumped in price since last June. Wheat has doubled. Others, like corn and sugar, have gone up more than 70%. In response, food corporations including Kraft and Kellogg announced that they’d be raising prices on as many as half of their products. Grocery shoppers everywhere are already feeling the crunch.

At the Associated grocery store in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, shopper Ida Collazo had heard about the commodity increase. She came for fish sticks and cake.

“Like before I could buy with $10, I could come home with 2 bags 3 bags at most, now it’s one bag. So it went up a lot,” Collazo says.

To keep her grocery bills down, Collazo bargain-shops around the neighborhood.

“Even if you have to walk ten blocks, you know, if they’re selling something cheaper, you’re going over there,” she says. ” You know, just walk. You get exercise too.”

Collazo says she understands that when commodities go up, prices have to as well. Adam Laufer is a Vice President at Associated.

“That’s something that’s not you know under our control,” he says. “ You know, we have to make a living also. It’s not, you know, that you make a fortune just on a can of peas.”

That said, Laufer suggests that buying generics – Associated Cereal, just for example – instead of brand-name products is a way of getting around some of the price hikes.

“You’re just not paying for the packaging, you’re not paying for the tv or cable advertising, or you know big huge billboards over the Holland tunnel, you know, pushing their products,” Laufer says.

Most people don’t realize how little food itself costs, says James Dunn, an agricultural economist at Penn State University.

“If you buy cornflakes for example, the cost of the corn in cornflakes is a very small amount of the price,” he says.

Even so, Dunn says he expects to see a 5% increase in food prices thanks to this commodity hike. He says that means that for every hundred dollars you spend on groceries, you’ll now be spending an extra five.

“Donald Trump will hardly notice it,” he says. “But there are plenty of people who are unemployed right now or just getting by, and they’ll notice it.”

Dunn himself admits he doesn’t have first hand knowledge of this because his wife does the shopping. But even households like his might not be immune. Take someone who earns $50,000 a year and spends $30,000 on rent. In New York City, that’s a big chunk of the middle class, says Joel Berg, who heads the New York City Coalition Against Hunger. He says all New-Yorkers pay a lot for necessities.

“Fuel, your metro card, your clothing, that rare rare entertainment – god knows how much movies cost – you’re definitely going to feel it hard in your wallet that there’s a 5% increase,” berg says.

Berg runs the city’s 1200 soup kitchens and food pantries and says the increased traffic there has been lower-income people. But he says the 5% percent hike in food prices will bring more people in the doors.

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Ireland is holding special elections today. They’re the first since the government collapsed last month under the stress of economic recession. The likely winners have called for changes in economic policy that challenge the way the EU deals with debt.

Fine Gael is the party that presided over Ireland’s current debt crises. They dominated the country’s political scene for over thirty years preceding the crises. Enter government collapse and opposition leader Enda Kenny. On February 15th at a speech in Dublin introducing his party’s manifesto he called for an end to Fine Gael’s rule.

Kenny: Because what Fine Gael have done by abdicating its responsibility, by leaving Ireland at the mercy of the developers, the bankers, and our supposed watch-dogs, is not just immoral. It’s amoral. And with this manifesto, I say, no more.

Kenny is the leader of center-right party Fine Gael. They are the likely winners of today’s election. Fine Gael watched as their rival took Ireland’s economy from boom in 2000 to bust by 2008 in a crisis that largely resembled the U.S.’s housing bubble. Last year, The European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund agreed on a package of loans and austerity measures to bail Ireland out of its debt crises. Kenny has campaigned on the idea that the package should be revised.

Kenny: I told Chancellor Merkle in Berlin yesterday that the IMF and EU deal, in our view, needs to be renegotiated. It was a bad deal for Ireland, and indeed a bad deal for Europe.

Kenny says that the current repayment plan doesn’t leave enough cash to grow the economy out of recession. So he wants to share the responsibility for payment between Irish tax-payers and the bondholders that invested in the country’s future. Many of those bondholders are large banks and companies outside of Ireland. Kenny wants to make them pay by using a financial tool called a haircut. Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in D.C. explains.

Weisbrot: Its when creditors take a loss on existing debt whether through a restructuring or default or some kind of renegotiation.

So renegotiation. Imagine that an Irish bond cost five dollars. Giving it a haircut could lower the cost to say, four. So when Ireland made payments, the bondholders would be taking a loss of one dollar per bond. Ideally, it could prevent Ireland from defaulting on high payments. The European Central Bank disagrees. They fear bondholder losses would further weaken a European banking system also in need of cash. And as Jacob Kirkegaard, of the Peterson Center for Economic Research in D.C. points out, the banks can’t afford to scare away investment.

Kirkegaard: If investors all of the sudden fear that they risk having haircuts imposed upon them, raising capital for all European banks will be much more expensive.

But economists like Mark Weisbrot say that the European Central Bank is looking out for creditors at the expense of Ireland’s economy. Now in its 3rd year of recession, Ireland has lost 20% of its income per person. Weisbrot says that Ireland should consider any option available to end its suffering.

Weisbrot: The alternative is to do whatever is necessary to have an expansionary economic policy, if that means renegotiating some of the debt, then that as to be done. And if it means even getting out of the Euro, then that has to be considered as well.

Sinn Fein is a small party with a loud voice in Irish politics. They generally advocate isolationism and have strongly suggested leaving the euro. But Kirkegaard says the Irish economy is too deeply intertwined with the rest of the continent to leave the euro unscathed.

Kirkegaard: The costs of leaving the euro far exceed even the pain that Ireland is going through right now. The Euro is a prison, you really can’t get out.

Perhaps prison is not the right metaphor. Ireland, after all, chose to join the Euro and benefitted greatly from it in the boom years.

Kirkegaard: I mean I like to think of it as Hotel California, you can check in, but you can never leave.

The next meeting of the European Central Bank will be held on Thursday. There, it is likely that Enda Kenny and Fine Gael will find out if Ithe European Central Bank is ready to renegotiate Ireland’s debt. Linette Lopez, Columbia Radio News.