In today’s American Spectator, Acton’s Michael Matheson Miller focuses on Pope Francis’ “street smarts“: a man who knows poverty and economics at the most important and basic level.

It’s a counter-intuitive tale of one of Latin America’s most significant bishops living in modest lodgings, cooking his own meals, and riding the crowded public transportation system in Buenos Aires. Even the small but telling gesture of paying his own hotel bill after the Vatican conclave drew media attention.

Read more on Michael Miller: Pope Francis Says Human Person is at Center of Economy…

Rev. Robert A. Sirico, President of the Acton Institute, spoke from Rome with WJR’s Warren Pierce on Sunday morning about the new pontificate of Pope Francis. Sirico takes some time to discuss the character and style of Francis, and notes the following:

Read more on Audio: Rev. Robert A. Sirico on Pope Francis and Service to the Poor…

Billy Graham meets John Paul II in 1981.

Carl Trueman of Westminster Seminary makes some salient points about why Protestants should pay any attention at all to the doings in Vatican City (HT: Justin Taylor):

Read more on Protestants and the Roman Pontiff…

Eric Metaxas CPAC Speech on Religious Freedom
Eric Metaxas

You may know that Josef Stalin in a battle with the Catholic Church once asked: “How many divisions does the Pope have?” It’s an ugly moment in American history when the current Presidential administration is taking a page out of the book of Josef Stalin .

Read more on PowerLinks – 03.18.13…

Michael Matheson Miller, Acton’s Director of Media and PovertyCure, joined host Hugh Hewitt on the Hugh Hewitt Show this afternoon to discuss the election of Pope Francis, and how his experiences in Argentina may influence his actions as Pope in addressing issues of poverty. He notes that Pope Francis is not a proponent of Liberation Theology, and quotes the new Pope’s earlier writings:

Read more on Audio: Michael Matheson Miller on Pope Francis and PovertyCure…

Will Pope Francis promote a leftist view of economics? Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey asked that question of Kishore Jayalaban, Director of Acton’s Rome office. Jayalaban says the impression that Francis will push economic arguments to the left is a misunderstanding of both Catholic economic thought and the economic situation in Argentina—where capitalism is much more rife with cronyism and corporatism than in the US.

Read more on Will Pope Francis Go Left on Economics?…

photo courtesy of Foreign Policy

“We don’t just want the money to come to Haiti. Stop sending money. Let’s fix it. Let’s fix it,” declared Republic of Haiti President Michel Martelly three years after the 2010 earthquake. Martelly was referring to foreign aid, $9 billion of which has been pledged to the country since the disaster. But financial aid has of course not been the only item sent to Haiti; the country has experienced a vast influx of goods, including clothing, shoes, food, and in particular, rice. Haiti imports approximately 80% of its rice, making it the country’s most significant food import.

Considering Haiti was self-sufficient in rice production in the 1970s, this should come as an alarming statistic. Along with rice, production of goods in around 200 companies enabled Haiti, at one time, to be a recognized exporter and experience moderate levels of prosperity. In her Foreign Policy article, “Subsidizing Starvation,” Maura R. O’Connor cites U.S. Ambassador to Haiti from 1981 to 1983, Ernest Preeg:

“Haiti was just as far along as anyone else,” said Preeg. “People came to Port-au-Prince to get jobs because it was a burgeoning export economy.” Preeg wrote an article in 1984 in which he echoed the view of many others that Haiti could be the “Taiwan of the Caribbean.”

But starting in the early 90s, these industries crumbled, as international trade embargos — prompted by a military coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide — were implemented and foreign imports began to flood the Haitian market. Read more on Beyond Aid: The Flood of Rice in Haiti…

Sam Gregg writes of Argentina, whence the new Pope Francis hails, “Over and over again, Argentina has been brought to its knees by the populist politics of Peronism, which dominates Argentina’s Right and Left. ‘Kirchnerism,’ as peddled by Argentina’s present and immediate past president, is simply the latest version of that.” For a bit of the current economic context in Argentina, here’s the latest on Kirchnerian political economy as related by John Teevan:

Read more on The Kirchnerian Economy…

Over at the Hechingerreport.com, Sarah Garland wonders how we can move toward ending “racial inequality in gifted education” programs. Garland laments the following:

Gifted and talented programs have been the target of criticism ever since the concept took hold in the 1970s as huge demographic changes were transforming urban school districts. White, middle-class families were fleeing to the suburbs. Like magnet schools, accelerated programs for gifted students were attractive to many of these families and provided a way to counteract this flight and maintain diversity in city school systems. The problem was that gifted programs tended to foster racial separation inside schools, undermining the very goal they were supposed to support.

Today, gifted programs still tend to separate students by race. New York City is a case in point. There, the education department has been struggling for years to change the demographic makeup of its gifted program—which is disproportionately white and Asian—and spread access to a more representative group of students. There are a handful of open-enrollment gifted schools in the city, but the district’s efforts at increasing diversity in the bulk of gifted and talented classrooms have largely backfired.

Why is this surprising? Of course these programs backfired. Of course gifted programs in New York City are primarily comprised of Asian and white students. Of course attempts to socially engineer gifted programs have failed. What else would we expect in a world where the most important predictor of education success and achievement is the structure of the family?
Read more on Education Inequality is Family ‘Inequality’…

Acton Institute President Rev. Robert A. Sirico has been in Rome all week for the Papal Conclave, and joined host Hugh Hewitt on The Hugh Hewitt Show yesterday afternoon to discuss the new pontificate of Pope Francis. What kind of a man is Pope Francis? What will his priorities be for his pontificate? What is his view on markets? All these questions and more are explored in the conversation.

Read more on Audio: Rev. Robert A. Sirico Discusses Pope Francis with Hugh Hewitt…