Cockburn on Teddy Kennedy:
"""""The deadly attacks on the working class and on organized labor are Ted Kennedy’s true monument. But as much as his brothers Jack and Bobby he was adept at persuading the underdogs that he was on their side. If it hadn’t been for Kennedy, a lot more people would have health coverage . In 1971 Nixon, heading into his relection bid, put up the legislative ancestor of all recent Democratic proposals, but Kennedy shot it down, preferring to have this as his campaign plank sometime in the political future.
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.
To this day there are deluded souls who argue that Jack was going to pull US troops out of Vietnam and that is why he was killed; that Bobby, who worked for Roy Cohn and supervised a "Murder Inc" in the Caribbean, was really and truly on the side of the angels; that Ted was the mighty champion of the working people, even though he helped deliver them into the inferno of neoliberalism.""""""
Read it and weep, emo-crats (--and this isn't about blessing that POS Nixon, though some delusional KOS types have probably already said as much). Cockburn knows the score on the Kennedy crime family (like the documented fact that RFK worked for Roy Cohn, pal of J-Edgar and McCarthy), and has some faint memory of the real values of the 60s, which was not about blessing Tammany, Inc.
2 comments:
Hmmmm - is Cockburn a genuine iconoclast, or a raving lunatic. His article on Ted Kennedy is a raving hatchet job, for sure.
I don't know where the truth lies, but here are some different views of the Nixon Health care proposal.
http://arizona.typepad.com/blog/2009/07/nixon-and-ehrlichman-our-failed-health-care-system-and-how-it-all-began.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/27/AR2009082703919.html?hpid=topnews
Cheers!
JzB the skeptical trombonist
Cockburn's a fairly genuine raving iconoclast and has been around a while. He's no Nixonian or GOPer (was rumored to be a stalinist, back in the day). Check out some of his essays on Counterpunch (one of the west coast's favorite libertarian -anarchist -gangsta sites).
I think the point on Nixon's health care was along the lines of "Nixon may have sucked but he proposed a universal health care plan, more than Teddy Kennedy ever did"--
Admittedly it's a bit harsh, and TK may have become mo' liberal over the last few years, but AC brings up some important points in regards to the real history of the Kennedys, like their connection to Cohn (--not the sentimental Camelot BS). RFK actually supported McCarthy for some time as well--then Kennedy Sr had ties to Vichy, possibly the nazis.
After the shooting of JFK, RFK may have moved slightly towards the left and labor, but he had many connections to US snitch business (I'm pretty sure the shooter was Sirhan, but many a mobster wanted to off RFK--and the Kennedys. Omerta as they say).
(sry for delay--comp. and mafia issues)
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