Charles Crawford: Closet Anti-Idiotarian

Charles Crawford, British Ambassador to Poland, was exposed, through a leaked e-mail, as an intelligent man with a good sense of humor. He calls the Common Agricultural Policy:

...a programme which uses inefficient transfers of taxpayers money to bloat rich French landowners and so pump up food prices in Europe, thereby creating poverty in Africa, which we then fail to solve through inefficient but expensive aid programmes. The most stupid, immoral state-subsidised policy in human history, give or take Communism.

Ouch. (via The Corner)

Perry DeHavilland is outraged: "Yes, this guy should indeed be fired from his job as an ambassador... he belongs in 10 Downing Street doing Tony Blair's job!"

Nick Schultz to Jonah Goldberg: "There’s a lot of blame to go around in the trade game (and developing countries have their own harmful protectionist policies). But France is risking scuttling the entire poverty-alleviating global trade system to protect 1% of its total wealth. It is one of the most evil government policies known in the history of man. Your ambassador friend is right." More on that 1% figure here.