The Kennedy legacy, legislative and personal

Demography is destinyFrom Wikipedia, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Hart-Celler Act, INS, Act of 1965, Pub.L. 89-236) abolished the national-origin quotas that had been in place in the United States since the Immigration Act of 1924. It was proposed by Emanuel Celler, co-sponsored by Philip Hart and heavily supported by United States Senator Ted Kennedy.[1]
An annual limitation of 170,000 visas was established for immigrants from Eastern Hemisphere countries with no more than 20,000 per country. By 1968, the annual limitation from the Western Hemisphere was set at 120,000 immigrants, with visas available on a first-come, first-served basis. However, the number of family reunification visas was unlimited,...The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 became law on July 1, 1968... During debate on the Senate floor, Kennedy, speaking of the effects of the act, said, "First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same.... Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset.... Contrary to the charges in some quarters, [the bill] will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and deprived nations of Africa and Asia.... In the final analysis, the ethnic pattern of immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply as the critics seem to think.... The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants. It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs."[2] The act's supporters not only claimed the law would not change America's ethnic makeup, but that such a change was not desirable.[1] ****Almost every one of Kennedy's (completely unsubstantiated) claims turned out to be untrue.**** By equalizing immigration policies, the Act resulted in a flood of new immigration from non-European nations that changed the ethnic make-up of the United States.[3] Immigration doubled between 1965 and 1970 and doubled again between 1970 and 1990.[1]
Results
A Boston Globe article attributed Barack Obama’s win in the 2008 U.S. Presidential election to a marked reduction over the preceding decades in the percentage of whites in the American electorate, attributing this demographic change to the Act.[3] The article quoted Simon Rosenberg, president and founder of the New Democrat Network, as having said that the Act is "the most important piece of legislation that no one’s ever heard of," and that it "set America on a very different demographic course than the previous 300 years."//
****Kennedy opposed the FIRST Gulf War ( after Saddam had invaded and raped Kuwait.) He also supported nuclear disarmament without provisions for checking on the (then) Soviets.****
The Cost of Doing 'Justice' Ted Kennedy was sometimes willing to sacrifice procedural fairness--and even common decency. By JAMES TARANTO
Last week it emerged that Ted Kennedy had undertaken a bit of end-of-life planning. As The Wall Street Journal noted in an editorial, Massachusetts' terminally ill senior senator had written to state lawmakers in Boston urging them to change state law so that upon Kennedy's death Gov. Deval Patrick, a fellow Democrat, would be able to appoint a successor immediately. ...Kennedy's efforts to ensure a quick succession are emblematic of why liberals loved him and conservatives found him maddening. As the Journal editorial pointed out, the special-election law is only five years old and was "orchestrated" by none other than Ted Kennedy:... "Prodded by a personal appeal from Senator Edward M. Kennedy," reported the Boston Globe in 2004, "Democratic legislative leaders have agreed to take up a stalled bill creating a special election process to replace U.S. Senator John F. Kerry if he wins the presidency."... Kennedy's shamelessness in urging repeal of a law he himself pushed for was either appalling or admirable, depending on your point of view. To conservatives, it was a pure partisan power play: Kennedy favored whatever gave Democrats a tactical advantage, procedural fairness be damned. To liberals, however, it was an act of idealism: Kennedy had spent a career trying to advance "universal health care"--which to him and them is a matter of basic justice--and the Bay State vacancy could make the difference between ObamaCare's passing or failing. To our mind, the conservatives have the better of the argument, though... we must concede that Kennedy's motives likely did have an ideological component as well as a partisan one....democracy depends on procedural fairness and the appearance of procedural fairness, even if all political players have ulterior motives whenever they promote such fairness. By this standard, Kennedy's effort to change the Massachusetts law without even a pretense of concern for fairness was objectionable, and that is true even if we are objecting insincerely. Of all Kennedy's official acts, perhaps the one that most rankles conservatives and cheers liberals was his successful effort to prevent the confirmation of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987. Kennedy took to the Senate floor and declared: Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back alley abortions, blacks would sit in segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of million of citizens. This was a slanderous attack on a good man. But it was effective, both tactically and strategically. The Senate voted down Bork's nomination, and the justice confirmed in his stead, Anthony Kennedy (no relation), has tipped the balance in more than a few cases toward the side Sen. Kennedy favored.... But even those who accept that concept of justice ought to regret Kennedy's demagoguery. Common decency ought to count for something too.//
The personal Kennedy family legacy
In 1994, during Ted's Senate run against Mitt Romney, his mother Rose passed away. Despite the fact that Rose had never left the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis, MA in the 10 years prior to her death, the Kennedy family had her state residency moved from MA that had an estate tax to FL which did not. Despite building a career of demanding that the rich pay their fair share, Mr. Kennedy and his family, chose not to pay theirs when it was their turn.
The Kennedy family's wealth, investment decisions, and lifelong efforts to shelter their inheritances from the Internal Revenue Service are not as well known as their public pronouncements on behalf of the "downtrodden" and the average person.
The Kennedy clan has never paid the confiscatory federal tax rates often advocated by Senator Kennedy and his liberal allies. Indeed, Senator Kennedy's empathy for the "average citizen" is a faux pose intended for maximum public effect while he and his family's private investment decisions are about maximizing personal wealth and protecting that wealth. Peter Schweizer, author of Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy, devoted an entire chapter to the shenanigans of the Kennedy clan...it is difficult to choose the most galling case of Kennedy-esque arrogance. However, among the more egregious is the Kennedy clan's successful evasion of inheritance taxes, an evasion that contradicts the Senator's political posturing and rhetoric.
The Senior Senator from Massachusetts belongs to a family clan blessed with a net worth of nearly $500 million. Back in 1935, Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Sr., purchased Merchandise Mart, a Chicago real estate company, and according to Schweizer: "...in 1947, he divided its ownership among family members and put it in the form of a trust.... [it] was not set up in their home state of Massachusetts, New York, Florida, or even California. This trust wasn't even domiciled in the United States. Instead the Kennedy trust was set up in ... Fiji." Now why establish a trust on an island best known for headhunters? The Fiji-based trust allowed the Kennedy's to avoid "...the possibility of scrutiny by the IRS and federal authorities," according to Schweizer. Worse, the sanctimonious Kennedy clan that demands the rich pay their fair share has "an intricate web of trusts and private foundations" that helps the family avoid the IRS.
For example, the family paid only $134,330.90 in estate taxes despite a family fortune thought to be between $300 and $500 million at the time of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.'s death in 1969. That was a tax bill of .04 percent, and Schweizer informs us that the figure is based on the lower end of the estimated family fortune.
...Senator Kennedy and his family have adopted other means besides trusts to avoid paying higher taxes. In one particularly sordid case in 1980, Senator Kennedy benefited from a political connection to Cook County, Chicago's Democratic tax assessor, Thomas Tully. Mr. Tully had assessed the Kennedy-owned Merchandise Mart's property value at $22.8 million when in fact its true value was $35 million. The discrepancy meant the Kennedys saved an estimated $8 million over a two year period. It also meant that Cook County's public schools were short-changed a few million dollars in property tax revenues.///
What the best speech writers and drama coaches can buy (but still a story full of more holes than Swiss cheese.)
http://tinyurl.com/lrfd2t
Stimulus Money Used to Memorialize the Kennedy FamilyMarch 13, 2009
There was a time in America when wealthy families donated their own money for these sorts of things. Libraries, universities, hospitals and parks all over New England were often built by philanthropists. Not so the Kennedies...Why are the Kennedys so popular in Massachusetts? One reason is government-funded advertising for their family. More than one in five dollars directed toward Massachusetts from the just-passed federal spending package is in someway connected to promoting the Kennedys. After Patrick Kennedy's discombobulated car crash, the late Michael Kennedy's affair with a fourteen-year-old babysitter, and Caroline Kennedy's disastrous introduction to politics, the family could use some good publicity. The bill includes $6 million for an Edward M. Kennedy Institute, $22 million for the seashore eyesore JFK Library, and $5 million for the Rose Kennedy Greenway.