This is an excerpt from Michael J. Petrilli’s opening comments at Tuesday’s Education for Upward Mobility conference. Read the whole speech here; video from the event is available here; the ten papers that were presented are available here.
I just learned from a friend on Facebook that Nathaniel Branden died this morning. He was 84. I learned a lot from his weekend "intensives" and the second one I went to gave me the courage to leave the University of Rochester B-School in 1979 to work at the Cato Institute in San Francisco. It was one of my best career moves ever.
Try this for a 2014 surprise: Florida, the state which gave American hanging chads and a nation paralyzed by a sketchy statewide vote back at the beginning of this century, has found a peaceful way to settle elections.
If you paid attention to the 2014 San Jose Mayoral election, one would have thought the city was a warzone. Santa Clara County Supervisor Dave Cortese - along with his police union allies - turned San Jose's shrinking police force into a central issue in the campaign, connecting the reduction to the voter passed Measure B pension reform championed by outgoing Mayor Chuck Reed.
Senior Fellow Richard Epstein discusses the recent decisions of the New York and Ferguson grand juries not to indict police officers on the John Batchelor Show.
ASHTON CARTER once urged the pre-emptive bombing of North Korea’s nuclear facilities. (It was in an article he wrote in 2006, while out of office.) He also wanted American troops to stay on in Iraq after 2011. Yet Barack Obama, who is hardly known for his hawkishness, appears poised to name him as defence secretary.
