The Lion of the Senate

Leave it to CounterPunch to rain on everyone's parade. (Although when i heard the MSM try to list Ted Kennedy's helping pass bush II's "No Child Left Behind" law as a great achievement I was a little appalled.)

Basically, the article says that (besides helping pass bush II's gift to private education and testing corporations) Ted Kennedy helped deregulate the trucking and aviation industries, worked to get NAFTA passed, and (interestingly) helped kill Obama's healthplan back when Nixon tried to pass it in the 1970s:

After reelection, Nixon did promote a health plan in his 1974 State of the Union speech, with a call for universal access to health insurance. He followed up with his Comprehensive Health Insurance Act on February 6, 1974. Nixon said his plan would build on existing employer-sponsored insurance plans and would provide government subsidies to the self-employed and small businesses to ensure universal access to health insurance. Kennedy went through the motions of cooperation, but in the end the AFL-CIO, with a covert nudge from Kennedy, killed the bill because Nixon was vanishing under the Watergate scandal and the Democrats did not want to hand the President and the Republicans one of their signature issues. Now the Republicans scream “socialism” at exactly what Nixon proposed and Kennedy killed off 38 years ago, in 1971.

So, anyway, that's my post.