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Thank you Dennis P. I had completely forgotten Kennedy's 1980 campaign against Carter and his support for de-regulation of trucking,,, In a way both of these posts capture the sides to Ted Kennedy.
I want to post some background on The Kennedy who made major contributions to civil rights. (Caution, liberal suck-fest follows.)
``With his death Tuesday night at age 77, Sen. Ted Kennedy leaves a legal legacy that spans not just decades but touches nearly every major area of the law. The Kennedy imprint, either as original sponsor or a leading proponent, is on the nation's landmark voting rights laws, its workplace discrimination laws, immigration reform, judicial nominations and other major issues.''
http://www.expertlawyer.net/ted-kennedys-legal-legacy/
During the period after a sit-in 1977 at the federal building in SF to get Carter's secretary of HEW to sign and implement the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (languishing under Ford then Carter) which covered the civil rights for disabled access to federally funded programs and institutions, it became clear that this act was not enough.
Where I was working, a disability rights org, the lawyers and staff along with community activists decided what was needed was a much more broadly written bill that covered the private sector, especially employment. They formed a lobby group to do fishing rounds in the Senate and House. The DC office found a hit with Ted Kennedy. His staff would help write and sponsor such a bill. The Kennedy office knew which Senators they could convince to help. Basically the Kennedy office became the inside coordinating committee for disability rights legislation. My tech job ended with the legal org as the federal training program grant ran out. And then my next job disappeared thanks to Carter killing the Vista jobs act. After Kennedy lost to Carter, he returned to work in the Senate and that's where he would have to make his mark.
When Carter lost to Reagan, and the recession set in hard. I kept in contact with the lawyers and other activist friends as I fell down yet another cliff on the economic ladder to find work in the wretched small business shops. The legal beagles all needed their wheelchairs fixed so they would show up and I'd get the latest developments. (Their work included the gay-lesbian front as well as behind the scenes of the ERA, and the forever racism in public accomodation...)
I followed all the twists and turns for ten years as the local crew worked with Kennedy's, Harkin's staffs and a couple key Republicans like Dole to draft the ADA. Of course the Reagan administration had no intention of signing anything like it. Mister Smiley had a long and bitter war with civil rights advocates. Alzhiemer's, escape from the Day Room, to sit on a public park bench... Sometimes history delivers.
Through the 80s Ted Kennedy, Tom Harkin, and their staffs worked on ADA with local disability law people and of course other groups. When the first Bush administration got in, it turn out that Bush senior was not a sworn enemy. By chance he had a couple of moderate Republican disabled friends. Among them was a well connected tycoon named Justin Dart. If Kennedy and others could get the bill on the floor, and others could get the House to go along, then Bush would sign the bill. Bush appointed Dart to some commission to work on it. Dart had a long history of very moderate advocacy in various government positions. He represented the go-slow generation.
What the WH staff along with Dart did was make sure whatever disability rights legislation that came from Congress, would be gutted sufficiently to please big business. That was the trade off. You can get your rights, as long as you don't interfere with profits and start costing money. It was a Faustian bargain. This was also typical of Kennedy's approach and typical of the neoliberal dark side.
The first bargain with the Devil is never the last, so many followed. Dole got credit for co-authoring the bill with Tom Harkin. Tony Coelho was the House sponsor. A lot of this was steered through Kennedy's office and with some of the Berkeley crew. Another nice thing about Kennedy was I not sure he cared whose name was on the legislation, i.e. he didn't need the brownie points by then.
At the signing ceremony Bush had Dart at the table:
http://www.firstmediation.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/signing-of-the-ada.jpg
Dart is on the right, and on the left was Evan Kemp who made a stock market fortune and was good buddies with the CEO of Invacare (major DME manufacturer). Kemp was also Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (naturally). Kemp was very astute in the way he helped craft the concept of the ADA to meet the needs of business. I didn't see this overall design as I argued with him and fixed his chair at same time. It is a great existential irony that Kemp was happier in Berkeley among the disabled radicals than he was back home in Illnois or Ohio or wherever. How can you be so duplicitous---I could never figure that out. He was on the corporate board of Invacare at sometime back then. It took Marta Russell's excellent book to detail out how these black holes were part of the ADA design, a feature, not bug---that enlightened me.)
The directing attorney from my former job was invited to the ADA audience(not seen in the history photo). But she turned it down. She didn't want the press to go nosing around her background. (Also see Marta Russell, Beyond Ramps, Disability at the End of the Social Contract, 1998. for more background.)
All through the 90s, court case after court case was fought, often lost, and culminated in a series of Supreme Court decisions at the end of the Clinton administration. Clinton appointed one of the old Berkeley crowd to the Office of Education...then forgot her. The Supreme Court decisions succeeded in undermining the definition of disability enough to re-enable discrimination especially by business and in employment. It became necessary to re-word the act to re-establish the definition and other passages and explicitly countermand the SCOTUS decisions. That work went on all through the second Bush administration with Kennedy's office doing a lot of the coordinating role as well as others as on the first round.
The new ADA was passed and signed in Sept 25 2008 when Bush and his WH had bigger things to do than look into on what they thought was just meaningless liberal nonsense. A lot of his ideologue advisers were gone. I haven't gone through it with a fine tooth comb to know if it succeeds or efaces the old ADA.
I will always have more than a soft spot for Kennedy. He did the liberal work over the long hall, and it was a very long haul. Kennedy contributed another part to locals that was forgotten or never known. He taught how to do government. This is no minor addition.
Here's some wording of the original act:
``b) PURPOSE... ...to invoke the sweep of congressional authority, including the power to enforce the fourteenth amendment and to regulate commerce, in order to address the major areas of discrimination...'' That's some pretty damn magisterial language. It's the kind of language you find in the Bill of Rights.
Well, whatever the facts of struggle on the ground are, and the neoliberal black holes in ADA there is always the above to imagine what could and should be true. I don't know who actually wrote the above quote. The non-disillusioned in me wants to think it was Kennedy and or Harkin with a couple of the attorneys I knew at their best in the way back.
What am I saying? I want to argue that Kennedy was worth an argument from the left no matter how flattering as just did, or how unflattering as many others can attest. He was an honest liberal who believed that a society of social justice could be made compatible and co-exist with capitalism. It took me forever to realize that ideal was a vast mistake. Nevertheless Kennedy needs his thread in LBO court where sometimes great shit happens.
Then again, I am a sucker for liberals---well my liking and laughter of Louis Gates is another example. Must be age and soggy brains..,
Biden's speech got to me, because I knew the background I sketched above, and I can see that Biden knew Kennedy very damned well. If you can stand watching grown men sniff back tears:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cXe8IXj5bA
CG
