Saturday, November 18, 2006

Ironic 

Within a couple of days of Milton Friedman passing away Colbert King of the Washington Post announces that he is stepping down as deputy editorial page director, although his weekly column will continue.

However, he will no longer write the editorials that appear under the Washington Post masthead.

7 1/2 years ago I visited Mr. King in the Washington Post editorial board conference room with Darcy Olsen, who was then an education policy analyst at the Cato Institute, in order to convince him that he should endorse Mr. Friedman's idea for school vouchers as a way to improve public education in the District. Mr. King said he was against them, mainly because he felt those kids who did not have the opportunity to use the voucher would feel left behind in inferior institutions.

But then something amazing happened. Washington Post editorials, one after the other, started appearing which strongly backed voucher programs wherever they were introduced. This fact was noticed by Clint Bolick, founder of the Institute for Justice, in his book "Voucher Wars," in which he says that the Washington Post became one of the strongest publications supporting vouchers in the country.

I learned from Mr. King that he was writing these editorials.

In honor of this stange timing I have one more tribute to Milton Friedman, this one by economist Thomas Sowell.

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