my mom and dad are doing well. my dad, as you know, is 90. mom is 89. they just celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary. [applause] i told my mom this is a true, by but i told her that they would be the longest lasting marriage first couple in american history. the problem is, the carters aare quite healthy, and at two years behind them. i m encouraging mom and dad to live well and healthy. you might ve seen my dad on his birthday jumped out of a helicopter. once again, proving that it age doesn t matter. for all due respect to people who have great dad, i m the greatest father in the world. a lot of people ask about my brother. he has been kind of out of the limelight. since you asked, marvin is doing spectacularly well. george and laura are doing well. he has become a painter. who would ve thought? he s actually really good at it because he s a person of incredible determination. like many of you in this room, when he set the goal, he worked hard to achieve it. i
here is mitt romney announcing his decision. good morning. this is mitt. let me let you know who was on the call. there s a large number people who signed on to be leaders of our 2016 finance effort. in addition, state political leaders here for several of the primary states on the line. here in new york city and on the phone are people who have been helping me think through how to build a new team, as well as supporters from the past who have all been kind enough to volunteer their time during the celebration stage. welcome, and thank you. your loyalty and friendship, and your desire to see the country with new conservative leadership does in fact warm my heart. after putting considerable thought into making another run for president, i ve decided it s best to give other leaders in the party the opportunity to be our next nominee. let me give you my thinking. first, i m convinced that with the health of the people on this call, we could win the nomination. we would have en
what happened is we rescued the school systems. that is not an exaggeration. we did it. what ended up happening? not totally because of that but now we have the highest graduation rate of over 80% for the first time ever and we have a dropout rate among blacks and hispanics that has dropped over 25% since you guys started running the show. nobody knows that. it is like a tree falling in the forest. anybody come up to you and say lately, thank you, you did a great job on the dropout rate? thank you, you rescued my school? we upgraded our infrastructure. the largest public works project contained within a recovery act in history. bigger than eisenhower s interstate highway program. 15,000 new projects, 42,000 miles of new roads, and 7700 bridges. 700 drinking water systems upgraded. i could go on and on. providing broadband across america and in the process, we created hundreds of thousands of jobs just doing the project and it created a virtuous cycle. when you re building the
effective public policy it s not enough. we re pleased today to open the lecture series and have present the man for whom it was named, we re delighted to have fred here. [applause] i m going to start about 30 minutes on explaining what the american action forum is. it s my pleasure to introduce scott. before i do that i would like to compliment doug. just a word on them. i founded this with the idea that we needed to bring together the policy ideas from the right to the moderate and is compelling to the american people. i must say, doug, it s far exceeded any expectations i had. it s been a phenomenal success thanks to you and thanks to your team. as i like to say, you fought which above your weight and had a powerful unflew powerful invitation powerful influence i think on policy formation in this country. now i m not going to talk too much about scott walker s accomplishments as governor or his biographical background because you all have that in your handouts or have it
explaining what the american action forum is. i would like to complement doug and the american action what the american action forum and say a word on them. i founded this with the idea that we need to bring together policy ideas from the right to the modern moderate in a way that is compelling to the american people. i must say, it has far exceeded expectations i have had. it has been a phenomenal success thanks to you, your team, you fought way above your weight. it has had a powerful influence on policy formulation in this country. i am not going to talk too much about scott walker s accomplishments as governor or his biographical background. because you all have that in your handouts or have it in your knowledge. accomplishments aslet me just tell you about who i think scott walker is. and why i m so pleased to have him here to open the series of talks today. about six years ago, i was at a form forum and scott walker was county executive. i think it was sun valley. h