Ted Kennedy dead at age 77

Senator Ted Kennedy from my home state passed away this morning from brain cancer. On a personal level, this saddens me as dying prematurely is a most awful thing. My condolences to his family. His political legacy, a most impressive legacy at that, will be primarily remembered for his never ending fight for "equality" and for defending the "rest of us". I am guessing that most people who do not follow politics closely will be emotionally affected by Kennedy's passing today and rightfully so. Teddy has been a fixture in politics for longer than most can even remember and even I will admit, a genius in his own right. Kennedy achieved a level of stature, importance and power that very few people ever experience. At the same time, I deeply disagreed with his fundamental political viewpoints and through the prism of libertarianism I cannot fondly reflect on his work as a senator. Some specific pieces of legislation and incidents are discussed on my Examiner article.

As of this moment, the most pressing issue will be his replacement and expect this discussion to dominate the screens and airwaves. Primarily, the issue is that Kennedy was instrumental in changing our laws back in 2004. When Mitt Romney acted as governor, Kennedy was concerned that hand picked successor would be a Republican in the event of a Kerry victory and pushed through a special election mandate. In the past several weeks however, Kennedy attempted to circumvent his own very law and urged for his successor to be hand picked. Hard to determine what will transpire here, but given the raging health care debate democrats in the senate truly need every vote they can get and waiting for at least 145 days may not be an option for them. Expect a battle over this issue.

RIP Teddy.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 2009 credit boom is coming to an end.

Image
The credit expansion boom of 2009 will eventually go down as yet another period of credit expansion promoted by the Fed that will have lead to another predictable bust.   Today, it will be interesting to examine how the various levels of production are behaving under years and years of artificial interest rate suppression.  It will also be helpful to look at charts and graphs examining the business cycle theory and the impact of time preference as taught by Mises. For starters, those new to the concept - a very brief paraphrasing of the general idea. Under a healthy functioning market people's consumer patterns impact their savings.  More consumption equals less saving and less consumption more saving.  In order to progress the society must save such that it can make investments in machinery, equipment, technology, etc if it hopes to increase the capacity of production.   Sure ,you can harvest 10 coconuts a day, consume them by night and repeat the process.  You can also defe
Read more

What is wrong with this country?

I was browsing the latest IBD poll and it finally struck me. I had this idea brewing for the past few weeks now and this particular poll hit a nerve. What jumped out was the age group and who they are likely voting for. Obama / McCain 18-24: 74% 21% The rest of the age groups are more or less even with ages 65+ leaning more for McCain. Those folks should probably avoid leaning - hazardous to their health. Now, if you are a member of this group and are part of the 74% you are probably feeling good about yourself. If you are in the 21% then you are probably used to feeling desperate and angry that your peers ostracize you as if you were the next coming of the bubonic plague. But this number is very telling. Showing to us that a large group of freshly minted liberals, on average still in college, is in a very good position to influence these elections. Enthralled by the concept of "what they want the world to be" and their utopian ideals they hammer their message to anyone willi
Read more

401k Takeover Proposal. IRAs in danger?

Just read a piece that made my blood boil. The story is from Carolina Journal, but I will paste the first paragraph below. Even if you currently do not have a 401k, this is the most dangerous proposal I have ever heard. The only similar example I can think of, would be the gold seizure under FDR. If this proposal becomes legitimate, you MUST write to your local representative, congressman, senator, etc. This will be absolutely crippling to our economy as investors will stage a mass exodus out of the market. If you want a demonstration of this in action, look at Argentina. They just did something very similar. I will keep my eyes on the story and will add further information to demonstrate just how dangerous this is. November 04, 2008 RALEIGH — Democrats in the U.S. House have been conducting hearings on proposals to confiscate workers’ personal retirement accounts — including 401(k)s and IRAs — and convert them to accounts managed by the Social Security Administration. Triggered by the
Read more