'Kennedy' once meant 'tax-cutter'

by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
August 30, 2009

http://www.jeffjacoby.com/6...

HIS NAME WAS KENNEDY. He was the preeminent figure in the Democratic Party. And he was a resolute supply-side tax-cutter.

"It is a paradoxical truth," he once told the Economic Club of New York, "that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now." What he had in mind, he said, was not "a 'quickie' or a temporary tax cut." He wanted nothing less than "an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes."

Those were not the words of Senator Edward Kennedy. The speaker – in December 1962 -- was President John F. Kennedy, and his ringing call for tax cuts was no anomaly.

In a televised address from the Oval Office four months earlier, JFK had called high tax rates a danger to "the very essence of the progress of a free society: the incentive of additional return for additional effort." In his 1963 State of the Union message, he said his first priority was "the enactment this year of a substantial reduction and revision in federal income taxes." In the speech he was scheduled to deliver to the Texas Democratic State Committee on Nov. 22, 1963, Kennedy planned to report proudly: "We have proposed a massive tax reduction, with particular benefits for small business."

In recent days, Ted Kennedy has been justly acclaimed as a lion of the Democratic Party. But how different the party mourning Kennedy today is from the one that first nominated him in 1962!

The reversal on taxes is one vivid example. When Ted Kennedy entered the Senate in 1963, JFK was leading a campaign for sweeping tax relief that would eventually slash the top marginal rate by a huge 21 percentage points, from 91 to 70. But Democrats have long since become the party that resists lower taxes. In our era, it has been Republicans like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush who have championed JFK-style rate cuts -- cuts that Democrats now condemn as "tax breaks for the wealthy."

On civil rights, too, there has been a sea change.

Liberal Democrats in the 1960s upheld the colorblind ideal -- the conviction that Americans should be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. Far from supporting racial quotas and preferences, civil-rights Democrats of that generation flatly rejected them. Senator Hubert Humphrey famously vowed that if anyone could find anything in the 1964 Civil Rights Bill that would compel employers to hire on the basis of race or national origin, "I will start eating the pages one after another, because it is not in there." In a 1963 press conference, President Kennedy explicitly opposed racial preferences: "We are too mixed, this society of ours, to begin to divide ourselves on the basis of race or color."

But in the years that followed, as such preferences became entrenched in hiring and education, liberal Democrats became their doughtiest supporters. Senator Kennedy was "a leader in congressional efforts to preserve federal affirmative action," his Senate website notes. When the Supreme Court ruled against the racial classification of schoolchildren in a 2007 case -- "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race," the court frankly advised -- Kennedy blasted the decision as one that "turns back the clock on equality."

Especially dramatic has been the Democratic Party's metamorphosis on foreign affairs.

"There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future: Let them come to Berlin," declared President Kennedy, a staunch Cold Warrior, in his great Berlin Wall speech in 1963. "There are some who say, in Europe and elsewhere, we can work with the Communists: Let them come to Berlin." But by 1987, when another American president journeyed to Berlin to challenge Moscow to "tear down this wall," such muscular anti-Communism had all but vanished from Democratic Party thinking.

JFK likewise spoke for mainstream Democrats when he asserted that America would "pay any price, bear any burden" to spread freedom and democracy in the world. He was a hawk who pressed for higher defense spending and American military superiority. The Democratic Party of more recent years -- the party of "come home, America" and a nuclear freeze -- was one he wouldn't have recognized.

All political parties alter over time, of course. Today's Republican Party is not a carbon-copy of Eisenhower's: It is more internationalist, more religious, more Southern. But a resurrected Eisenhower would still recognize the GOP, and still command its esteem.

The Democrats' transformation has been much more profound. Over the course of Ted Kennedy's long Senate career, his party's ideological center shifted hard to the left. It goes without saying that a JFK today could never be the Democrats' candidate for president. The question is, would he still be a Democrat?

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe. To follow him on Twitter, click here.)

Related Topics:  Defense and National Security, Democratic Party, Edward M. Kennedy, National Politics, Race and Affirmative Action, Taxes

Today is the date of both my kids births one year apart. (Motopoet and Dreamifucan)

Happy birthday brats.   :-)

The true believer

by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
August 27, 2009

http://www.jeffjacoby.com/6...

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On the morning after Senator Edward Kennedy died, the Boston Globe's op-ed columnists were each asked to write a short piece reflecting on his life. My contribution appears below. To read the others, by Joan Vennochi, Derrick Z. Jackson, and Scot Lehigh, as well as guest columns by Alan Wolfe and Martin F. Nolan, please visit www.boston.com/opinion. 

 BY MY LIGHTS, Ted Kennedy was wrong about most of the great issues of our time.

Abroad, he failed to take seriously the stakes in the Cold War. "Today, with the exception of East Germany, Russia has no more satellites," he wrote in 1968, the year Soviet tanks invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring. He hailed Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet dictator, as "a warm individual . . . completely committed to peace." He fought to cut off aid to South Vietnam and Cambodia in 1975 -- aid that might have prevented a horrific communist bloodbath.

In recent years he was willing to consign millions to the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, opposing not only the 2003 liberation of Iraq but even the 1991 campaign to roll back the occupation of Kuwait.

In domestic policy, too, Kennedy supported much that I thought misguided, especially the burgeoning of the welfare state, the reckless expansion of entitlements, and the vast growth in federal power. Once I asked him if there was any legislation he regretted having supported. Yes, he said -- he no longer favored some of the deregulation he had voted for.

"The natural progress of things," said Thomas Jefferson, "is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." Over the course of -- and in great measure thanks to -- Kennedy's 46 years as a US senator, the yardage gained by the government was immense.

Yet I have always admired the power and sincerity with which Kennedy pressed his views. "Give him this: He knows what he believes in and doesn't hide it," I once wrote in a column. "Kennedy rarely frets about whether his stand on an issue is politically popular."

Born into riches and influence, Kennedy could have lived a life of ease, indulging his appetites and paying scant attention to those far less fortunate. He chose a different life, and became a prodigious advocate for the deprived, the disabled, and the dispossessed. I didn't always like his answers, but I honor him for caring so greatly about the questions.

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)

From the transcripts......"MAHER: But yeah, I mean, they are talking about 60 votes. Forget this stuff, 60. We can't get Americans to agree on anything 60%. 60% of people don't believe in evolution in this country. He just needs to drag them to it. Like I just said, they're stupid. Just drag them to this. Get healthcare done."

 

His clip is pretty interesting.

http://www.glennbeck.com/co...

As Ryan starts his Junior year at Fresno State amd his third season with the Bulldogs, here's the latest.

http://www.fresnobee.com/sp...

Interesting article.  Should make the libs happy as it takes the Republlicans apart too.

"President Obama is sick and tired of the way his health care initiative has been twisted and misrepresented. He is especially annoyed that anyone...anyone... would suggest that he wants to euthanize poor old Granny. The problem is there are a lot of people, including some of his supporters, who want to do just that. Consider this line from a recent op-ed in the New York Times: "shouldn't we instantly cut some of the money spent on exorbitant intensive-care medicine for dying, elderly people and redirect it to pediatricians and obstetricians offering preventive care for children and mothers?"

Talk about a slippery slope! Richard Dooling, author of the above comment, points out that we spend a huge amount on "yet another trip to the surgical suite on the slim-to-none chance that by-pass surgery, a thoracotomy, an endoscopy or kidney dialysis might get her off the ventilator and out of the hospital in time for her 88th birthday." I wonder how old Mr. Dooling is. I also wonder how his granny might feel about not getting end-of-life care."

More here...http://www.foxnews.com/opin...

It seems Canada is having a few problems with their health care.  People sometimes have short memories around the blogs since it hasn't been so long ago that the Canadian system was touted as a wonderful example of Universal Health Care.

Some of us argued that it was a disaster and the Canadians were coming to the US for tests and treatment they couldn't get at home.  We were pooh-poohed but now that it's coming a little more to the light, we're told "oh no, we didn't mean to use Canada as an example."  No?  Then just what did you mean?

Now France and Great Britain are the shining examples even when people from GB tell us it ain't so.  How long will it be before the cracks in their systems start to show as well?  In the meantime, here's a little article for you to read.  Just so you know that the Libs first choice of an example has much to be desired....even by their own medical profession.

http://www.google.com/hoste...

Amm I missing something here?

GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, Ariz. —  An 18-year-old who was among a group of eight hikers that had run out of water at the Grand Canyon has died.

The National Park Service says rafters on the Colorado River were flagged down by a hiking group Thursday morning about 30 miles downstream from Lees Ferry. The hikers told the rafters that they were out of water and needed help.

Park Service rangers then received a report that one of the eight hikers was dead.

A paramedic flown to the scene found the group about halfway down a trail known as the Shinumo Wash Route. The dead 18-year-old was located about a mile from the rest of the party and his body was flown out by a Park Service helicopter.

The service and Navajo Nation police will jointly investigate into the incident.

I was gone for three days and haven't been checking in on a regular basis so if this was already posted you'll just have to forgive me.

I know a lot of you can't stand Glenn Beck but take a minute and read what's on the screen.  Ignore that it's beck showing you and just read the material. 

Do you believe it?  Have you gone there yourselves?  Have you personally read the screen?  I don't know anything about this and am sure it's been debunked by the left...so..is it true or not and why do you feel that way?

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Sent to me by a fellow blogger so I gave it a listen.  I can hear the howls of protest now but here it is anyway. 

Not sure which link works best so you have both.

Interesting article about the cash for clunkers program.  Hindsight is always 20/20.  History may not treat this one as well as our present administration hoped.

http://www.foxnews.com/poli...

From the Wall Street Journal.  I guess this would be considered spreading more fear.

http://www.defendyourhealth...

Sounds like an interesting book.  I'd like to read it in full. 

http://www.newsmax.com/head...

I picked up two books at the library half price sale..one on the Kennedy's and one on Rose herself.  Fascinating lady.

[Note: On this date in 1923, Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as the 30th president of the United States.  In a 1998 column, I recalled the occasion and the often underappreciated president from Plymouth Notch, Vermont.]

75 years of underestimating Calvin Coolidge

by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
August 6, 1998

http://www.jeffjacoby.com/6...

That summer night, back in 1923, was one of high drama. As President Warren G. Harding lay dying in San Francisco, Vice President Coolidge was visiting his father and stepmother in the lonely Vermont village where he had grown up. There was no electricity in the house, no plumbing, no telephone. Light was provided by a kerosene lamp.

Word of Harding's death reached White River Junction, the nearest sizable town, by telegram. By the time someone got the news to Plymouth Notch, it was extremely late. John Coolidge, the vice president's father, answered the knock at the door. In a trembling voice he called upstairs to his son.

"Coolidge and his wife returned to the bedroom," Sobel writes. "They washed, dressed, and knelt by the bed to pray. Then they went downstairs, where Coolidge dictated a message of sympathy to Mrs. Harding. The house was now crowded with reporters and others."

The attorney general urged Coolidge to take the oath of office without delay. He "went across the street to the general store and telephoned Secretary of State [Charles Evans] Hughes, who informed him the oath could be administered by a notary. Coolidge told Hughes his father was a notary. Coolidge returned home, and in the downstairs sitting room John Coolidge, using the family Bible, swore his son in as president. The time was 2:47 a.m."

For the rest of the story.....

http://www.jeffjacoby.com/6...

Not the best photo op is it?

http://www.glennbeck.com/co...