Author: Andrew Sullivan

Why Ag Subsidies Should Go

Dylan Matthews makes a pithy argument:

While subsidies have stabilized in the past few years around $100 billion a year — a huge number, given that agriculture (not including things like cotton and tobacco) only accounted for $136 billion of GDP in 2009 — the composition has changed, with general support and consumer subsidies gaining ground and producer subsidies falling. This level of spending, as many have pointed out, artificially lowers the price of U.S. agricultural goods, driving up U.S. exports while undermining (PDF) developing countries' attempts to export food products, which is one of the only industries many of them have.

And yet this is also one of those programs – like the war in Afghanistan or Medicare – that simply cannot and will not be ended, or even cut to within affordable levels.The US is a country crying out for an intervention. And one day, the global markets might finally deliver one.

Charter Schools: A Copper Bullet?

A new report on KIPP charter schools is encouraging. Drum calls KIPP is a "limited success":

KIPP schools demand a lot of their teachers, who work very long hours and are required to be on call at all times. They pay a bit more for this, but only a bit, and this isn't a model that scales well. You can always find a small cadre of dedicated young teachers willing to put up with this, but you're never going to find the hundreds of thousands you'd need to make this work on a large scale.

Yglesias demurs:

How big can this go at the end of the day? I have no idea. But there’s no reason to respond to this track record with pre-emptive pessimism. Instead the proper response is to encourage elected officials in a low-performing, high-poverty school district near you to welcome high-quality charter schools. What’s more, charitably inclined rich people should strongly consider closing their checkbooks to well-endowed universities and opening them to non-profit institutions that do an excellent job of educating poor kids. Institutions like KIPP.

Finally

The only right response:

Police raided the home and office of the recently retired archbishop of Belgium on Thursday, carrying off documents and a personal computer as part of an investigation into the sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests, officials said. Police and prosecutors would not say whether former Archbishop Godfried Danneels was suspected of abuse himself or simply had records pertaining to allegations against another person. The raids followed recent statements to police "that are related to the sexual abuse of children within the church," said Jean-Marc Meilleur, a spokesman for the Brussels prosecutor's office.

North Korea’s World Cup, Ctd

A reader writes:

The blogger you linked to missed the more noteworthy story, which is that all of North Korea actually watched the match you mentioned live on television.  This unprecedented event was likely inspired by the team's fairly good performance against Brazil in the previous game, which they only lost by one goal – a "victory" for them in the same way that a tie against the UK was a victory for the US team.

This is actually quite an amazing story. For a nation that is used to having all of its news censored, and only hearing good stories about the country and the dear leader, to be watching as its team gets wiped out by Portugal 7-0 is a rare dose of reality.

And maybe they miscalculated the risk: North Korea had a much better showing the last time they played Portugal.