Teddy’s Dream Is America’s Nightmare
Following the Christmas Eve passage of the Senate Democrats’ health care reform bill, Harry Reid said, “This vote brings us one step closer to making Ted Kennedy’s dream a reality.” Many Americans would contrastingly characterize the potential passage and implementation of this legislation as more of a nightmare. But one thing on which both critics and supporters of ObamaCare may be able to agree is that invoking the name of the late senator from Massachusetts in connection with the passage of a piece of legislation as incompatible with free-market principles and notions of individual liberty as ObamaCare is altogether fitting and proper.
While campaigning against Kennedy in the spring of 1980, then-President Jimmy Carter stated that “Senator Kennedy is well known as the largest spender perhaps in the history of the United States Senate.” Though Carter’s statement was made thirty years ago and nearly three decades prior to Kennedy’s death, it is hard to improve on it in describing Kennedy’s affinity for big government.
According to the National Taxpayers Union’s BillTally, which tracks the amount of spending proposed by members of Congress via the bills they sponsor or cosponsor, no one serving for more than two years in the Senate from 2001 to 2008 proposed more spending than Ted Kennedy. During those dreaded “last eight years,” no senator was more willing to part with the generous — though involuntary — donations of American taxpayers to the U.S. Treasury than Kennedy.
According to BillTally, at least 1.9 trillion dollars would have been added to the federal deficit had all of the legislation that Kennedy sponsored or cosponsored during the Bush years passed. Kennedy’s average proposed net spending totals per year were over four and a half times the average for senators who had served in at least three of these four Congresses, and Kennedy managed to propose 41 percent more spending than the second biggest spender in the Senate during this period, West Virginia’s Jay Rockefeller.
Though Republicans have taken a lot of heat for their spending habits over this period and deservedly so, it is important to note that no Republican senator came close to Kennedy’s proposed spending totals during this period. In the 107th Congress (2001 – 2002) Texas’ John Cornyn managed to propose more spending than Kennedy (ranking one spot higher than Kennedy for that Congress), but he was the only Republican senator in any of these four Congresses to do so. Though Olympia Snowe’s total proposed spending figure for this period of 392 billion dollars is anything but admirable, it pales in comparison to the liberal lion’s breathtaking total of nearly 2 trillion dollars.
The hypocrisy and/or ignorance of those that view Kennedy’s impact on America in positive terms is thus astounding given that these are the same people who have been so critical of the way things were done in Washington during the Bush years. I guess the spending is okay if the one doing the spending roars loud enough.
The admiration of the left for Kennedy’s legislative record is summed up well by two of his long-time Senate friends. Kennedy’s friend Senator Chris Dodd said of him:
I will always remember Teddy as the ultimate example for all of us who seek to serve, a hero for those Americans in the shadow of life who so desperately needed one.
Senator Robert Byrd shared similar sentiments regarding his long-time friend:
Throughout his career, Senator Kennedy believed in a simple premise: that our society’s greatness lies in our ability and willingness to provide for its less fortunate members. Whether striving to increase the minimum wage, insuring that all children have medical insurance, or securing better access to higher education, Senator Kennedy always showed that he cared deeply for those whose needs exceed their political clout.
But as is the case with ObamaCare, the substance falls well short of the rhetoric. The reality is that, at best, Ted Kennedy’s legislative approach was summed up by John Adams when he said:
[P]ower always thinks that it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all His laws.
Though the inaccuracies spouted by Democrats about their health care reform proposals have been many, the invoking of the name of Ted Kennedy in support of them has been completely on point. No one epitomized the mendacious approach to lawmaking that is the Democrats’ push for ObamaCare more than Ted Kennedy. Though liberal America saw Kennedy as a champion for the poor and the downtrodden, the truth is that he was a politician who was emblematic of much that is wrong with Washington, and as such the mention of his name in connection with a model piece of dreadful big government legislation like ObamaCare is indeed fitting.
Nixon offered him a better deal forty years ago, but Ted blew it.
New livers for everyone!
Obama = Systematic failure.
Here is the rub: Kennedy and Rockefeller both came from uber-wealthy families yet instead of donating their vast fortunes to help the poor, they used the money of average Americans to look magnimonious. Had Ted even done what his brother did and not accept a salary, I could have some respect for him.
According to the author and to my knowledge, every program they sought to enact was redistribuitionist. Yet none of the wealthy in Congress chose to part with their own money, i.e. a wealth tax (income tax has little effect on the super wealthy). Nor have any of their wealthy supporters like Buffett and Soros and the other super wealthy ever proposed a wealth tax. And why not? I thought the true progressive hated money and captialism-the same capitalism that gave them the opportunity to be wealthy. Had we been the socialist utopia that they now want, there would be no uber-wealthy.
How come the progressives in Congress profess to hate capitalism and the wealthy but yet vote themselves higher salaries even during a recession? How come Pelosi, Boxer, Hartman and the others in Congress have vast fortunes yet disparage others who worked hard to earn their wealth?
Had Kennedy and Rockefeller and the rest of Congress (and Soros, Peter Lewis, SKG, Hollywierd, and trial lawyers) propsed to use the same health care that they want us to use, then I could almost agree with its passage. But Congress will still be able to use their government health care and the wealthy progressives will be able to still afford their private health care.
So they are all hypocrits and bald-faced liars which seems to be the MO for progressives.
Teddy Kennedy’s name and reputation serves the debacle of a health care bill well: large, unwieldy, ignorant of the true nature of the problem, expensive, unresponsive to the will of the people, and odorous with liberal praise.
Remember:
The issue is never the issue.
The issue is control.
Drunken sot, womanizer, negligent homicide. He had some severe personal problems. In his place some other people would have sought to solve them. But not our boy Ted, not the Lion of the Senate. He chose the Librul path to feeling good about himself. He chose to solve others persons’ perceived problems with still other people’s money. Senator Ted “get those windmills away from my water view” Kennedy. RIP.
The Democrat traitors are going to learn there is Hell to pay when they run on ObamaCare in 2010. Ben Nelson, who is not up for re-election until 2012, lost 30 points with his vote for ObamaCare; likewise, Joe Lieberman also lost 30 points with Independents. ObamaCare is an albatross & will remain one until it is repealed. ObamaCare will destroy the Obama Administration from within as we the people destroy it from without with the outright rejection of the bill.
Teddy did one thing, he showed how easy it was to garner a reputation for statesmanship, keep a bastardized media happy by incessantly gathering power and money to a government that daily trips over it’s own feet.
Ted Kennedy was a philandering murderer, who didn’t even have to go to court for his crime because of his money and political connections. I am sure the family of Mary Kopeckne is not amused by all this drivel about Teddy, the champion of everyone’s health.
Ted Kennedy was the original DEATH PANEL…of one. He alone decided that getting emergency help for Mary Jo, would come at too much of a personal COST to HIM, so he sobered-up and, while she sufficated to death in an air pocket.
Listen to the interview with the diver, that recovered her body here – http://www.FATBOY.cc
The fact that this was once called the KENNEDY/DODD HEALTH CARE BILL is a SICK JOKE…on all of US!!
http://www.DumpChrisDodd.com
Blotto, you are 100% right. When I even try to convince myself that liberals really just don’t understand freedom, they really do want to do the best for people and just don’t understand their error, I just remember that. These people come from wealth, yet instead of doing anything to their own wealth, they’d rather direct all of US to donate ours. They are, to simplify it for the kids, the pigs from Animal Farm.
Ted Kennedy: His name’s done for healthcare what he did for safe driving.
All you need about “KennedyCare” is right here – http://www.inlibertyandfreedom.com/mjk.htm
“…a piece of legislation as incompatible with free-market principles and notions of individual liberty….”
‘Twas always thus with the scare-mongers:
“It is socialism. It moves the country in a direction which is not good for anyone, whether they be young or old. It charts a course from which there will be no turning back.”
—Senator Carl Curtis (R-NE), in 1965, opposing Medicare
“The doctor begins to lose freedoms; it’s like telling a lie, and one leads to another. First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then the doctors aren’t equally divided geographically, so a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him you can’t live in that town, they already have enough doctors. You have to go someplace else. And from here it is only a short step to dictating where he will go.”
—Ronald Reagan, in 1961, arguing against the creation of Medicare
Ted Kennedy was a worthless piece of sh*t, he was a drunk, & corrupt in so many other ways; therefore, let the other Democrats put the turd on a pedestal. It will make ObamaCare all the more hated & need to be repealed when all the taxes go up in the new year for next 4 years. ObamaCare will be as dead as Kennedy in the not too distant future…
16 Zeke: And they were both absolutely right. So your point is, what?
Andy Wickerman: you are a high school drop out just like the rest of this people here. 1.9 trillion to the defecit? against a free market!! what are you smoking simpleton?
Look here sonny so we should have free market economy so we should tell 50 million Ammericans to go f….themselves? is this free market economy? no it is lunacey whae the uninsured get sick who do you think pays for it? see if you had finished high scool and gotten some more education you would have found that it you who are paying for and myself and every other simpleton on this site.
I will gladly donate 10% of my income to care for widows, orphans and the disabled. I don’t want the government anywhere near that money, because I don’t trust them. Besides, it is not their job to take care of the poor; that is the Church’s job.
How long has Ted been sober now? He is doing good.
He should be an example to Dodd.
Maligning the dead. Surely you’re better than this.
But, in this case, the dead are rightly malignable. No one could say sh*t about St. Ted while he was alive because of his brothers, although Chappaquidick and his philandering sure took the shine of that shield.
#19 mr:
Either sober up or learn to spell before you try to discuss the simpletons on this site, eh?
#22 Five Buts and a colon,
It was Ted who maligned the dead. Ted also tried to take away my guns for most of his life. But my guns have killed fewer people than Ted’s malignant car.
#4 blotto: You make a very interesting point that I believe is not fully appreciated by a lot of people. The wealthy are not really affected by any of these tax and spend programs because there is no tax on wealth – only on income. In fact the government doesn’t (at least officially) even know anybody’s wealth. The wealthy can take advantage of hundreds of tax avoidance techniques that limit taxable income while allowing their assets to grow year after year. But if you are lucky enough to earn a good living by your own work/labor – there is no escaping the impact of all of these new entitlement programs. It’s almost as if the wealthy and the politicians (and especially wealthy politicians) collude to keep the middle class from ever exiting the middle class –except perhaps in the downward direction.
Likewise it is a widely held misconception that a lot of these programs are paid for with taxes on corporations. In reality, corporations pay no taxes. They simply adjust their prices upward to give themselves a reasonable return on their assets (or they become non-competitive against foreign suppliers and lay people off to compensate). So those of us who pay a significant portion of what we earn for the products of these corporations are in reality paying their taxes for them.
Higher prices and taxes are insignificant to the wealthy. On the other hand, the 50% or so of Americans who pay no taxes are by definition not impacted by tax policy. And unionized government workers can adjust their standard of living upward easily by trading political loyalty for salary and benefits increases and by built in COL adjustments. It’s the working middle class dupes that have borne the brunt of Kennedy’s largess over the years. It has worked perfectly for him. He keeps the serfs from storming his castle. He gets the adulation of the left-liberal crowd who don’t understand how our economic system really works. And he earns the admiration of his fellow partners in this crime like Chris Dodd and Robert Byrd.
Maligning the dead. Surely you’re better than this.
23. Anonymous:
the dead are rightly malignable
#22 Five Buts and a colon,
But my guns have killed fewer people than Ted’s malignant car.
I surrender. You’re right, you’re not better than this. My mistake. (No complaining about how horrible liberals are for joking about Limbaugh being el rushbo’ed to the hospital. That would be a double standard.)
Mr. Kennedy has joined Mr. Tiller in the afterlife, and he is moderating a debate between George Tiller and Josef Menegele as to which of them did more to advance medicine.
Andy’s final paragraph says it all. You have to wonder how much a neo-communist Kennedy would have been if he’d not been born into wealth, had accepted his draft choice in the NFL, had played and had to earn his own way? Then retired and found employment. I bet he’d still have been a gold-plated liar without conscience, but I doubt he’d have been a neo-communist.
Ted Kennedy. Murderer, (Chapaquiddic), Socialist, Un American as is the rest of the Kennedy clan.
The Kennedy Health Care Reform Bill of 2010 will leave us as dead too.
The neo-con bias is laughable. Had Republicans considered a competitive public-option in an already state healthcare-program, there might have been competitive pressure on price with a possible return of private healthcare. It just shows that both parties are the same. They jointly succeeded in inflating the cost of future healthcare. Paradoxically subsidy-recipients will now begin paying for their own healthcare. And it all started with Bush’s surrender to the radical Muslim world.
Lauraz #31, the Republicans were locked out of writing the bills in both the House & Senate; therefore, why would the Republicans sign on the Democrats political suicide? Any public option is wrong. The House & Senate bills are so bad that they must have been outright killed, yet they weren’t since the Leftists were in charge.
Ben Nelson is already on the defensive running ads in Nebraska since polls show a 30 point drop for the corrupt senator, yet he is not running until 2012. All Democrats will be on the defensive with ObamaCare & they will have nothing to defend for their corruption.
Ted Kennedy was a corrupt man & the corruption did not end with his death. He was a miserable evil man. I hope his time in Hell is worth the price.
i always thought teddy’s dream was that no one ever found out he was a coward and let a woman suffocate in his car thus denying him the presidency
Teddy was such a hypocrite. He made a lifelong avocation of pretending to care about those “lesser” than himself.
He was one of those wasteful users of resources (like Al Gore or this President who keeps dumping millions of pound of carbon into the atmosphere flying all over on Air Force One) who squawked like a plucked chicken at a proposal to erect a Wind Farm offshore anywhere within his Hyannisport view.
As for “healthcare”, Kennedy in his decline could scour the country for the best neurosurgeons & spare no expense. He, like his Congressional colleagues, would never have dreamed of being subjected to the limitations & restrictions they would impose onto the population at large with this new legislation, you know,in keeping with the thinking of people like Rahm’s brother, Dr. Zeke (“Mengele”) Emanuel as to who gets the best treatment & who doesn’t (too old? you’re sh!t outta luck) or Obama’s science advisor, eugenicist John Holdren, who’d like to limit the # of children you can have or, maybe even better, sterilize you.
News Release-
“(New York City, New York) – Confidential sources available only to The New York Times , officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to comment publicly, have revealed that the shade of former U.S. Senator Edward M. (“Teddy”) Kennedy (D-Mass) is creating a serious netherworld distraction.
Upon Kennedy’s death, his immortal soul flew directly to Hell to begin it’s eternal damnation and punishment. He was assigned a position with his ephemeral head submerged in molten sulphur and his ephemeral hind portion available for anal sex.
Sources confirm that by midnight, Hyannis Port time, Thursday, December 31, 2009, exactly one trillion demons assigned to the Ninth shift of the Third Circle of Hell had actually had their way with Kennedy, some, tormenting him multiple times. The careful tabulation and related support services were performed by other, numberless, eternally damned democrat politicians from Massachusetts.
While Kennedy’s visceral screams of soul-tortured anguish are no louder or more agonized than other abortionist democrats also spending eternity in Hell, he represents a popular attraction, much more so than his father or brothers. Teddy, our sources confirm, was for more deserving of endless suffering than even most other democrat politicians.
Early in his endless sentence (but much less so recently), Kennedy, between his deep sobs and soprano screams, was heard to say several times, “Do you know who I am?” and, “I demand to see the Pope.” His Massachusetts accented words, bubbling through the liquid sulphur, caused some demons and other tormented souls to smile and, according to confidential sources close to The New York Times, actually laugh.
The event was even noticed in the other realm, the never-ending paradise of truth, joy and light that no Kennedy (other than Mary Jo Kopenchi’s unborn child and Kennedys, down through the years, whose lives were terminated in utero) has ever known.
Netherworld authorities, while pleased that Kennedy’s anguish is so terrible and everlasting, are concerned that others also suffering eternal damnation may unfairly have had a positive moment. An investigation at the lowest levels is currently underway.”