"Ted Kennedy's deregulatory legacy on airlines and trucking"

Nick Gillespie | August 26, 2009

Over at the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Open Market blog, Reason contributor John Berlau recaps Sen. Ted Kennedy's underappreciated deregulatory legacy:

For a brief, shining moment, in the mid to late 1970s, Kennedy viewed smaller government as the most compassionate answer in one area of economic life: transportation. Kennedy was the prime mover in Congress behind the airline and trucking deregulation bills that were signed by President Jimmy Carter. He saw the impact of regulation in these industries as protecting entrenched companies from competition, and decided  that the liberal, compassionate thing to do was to deregulate to give consumers lower prices and more choices.  As the news stories search for all the ways Kennedy's impact is felt by everyday Americans, one obvious impact is reflected in this headline today on AOL news, "Fall Airfares Starting at $59."

Whole thing here.

I made a similar observation in my obit for Kennedy earlier today. Reason's Matt Welch pondered the Duke of Chappaquidick as a political abstraction.

Comments

|8.26.09 @ 9:59PM|#

Rest in Peace, Mary Jo.

|8.26.09 @ 10:39PM|#

He saw the impact of regulation in these industries as protecting entrenched companies from competition, and decided that the liberal, compassionate thing to do was to deregulate to give consumers lower prices and more choices.

I know little about Kennedy's support for deregulation and am open to refute but I do not believe for a second that his primary motivation was giving consumers lower prices and more choices. As Berlau points out Kennedy's "egalitarian case" can be made against almost everything else that he supported; why would these bills be the only time he was on the right side of the issue? I believe that he had ulterior motives.

Bored|8.26.09 @ 10:43PM|#

me this morning:It'd sure be nice if Reason posted something about Ted Kennedy's passing

me this evening: 7 threads on Dead Teddy?

If only there had been this kind of coverage of Michael Jackson or on Professor Gates. Oh wait, there was.

Robert|8.26.09 @ 10:51PM|#

I'll never be able to think of him again without picturing Michael Rosenbaum as Luthor.

Lefty|8.26.09 @ 11:02PM|#

Jeff Jacoby says that Ted Kennedy recanted on the deregulation he supported.

In domestic policy, too, Kennedy supported much that I thought misguided, especially the burgeoning of the welfare state, the reckless expansion of entitlements, and the vast growth in federal power. Once I asked him if there was any legislation he regretted having supported. Yes, he said -- he no longer favored some of the deregulation he had voted for.

"The natural progress of things," said Thomas Jefferson, "is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." Over the course of -- and in great measure thanks to -- Kennedy's 46 years as a US senator, the yardage gained by the government was immense.

|8.26.09 @ 11:35PM|#

So maybe Ted Kennedy had one or two good years in the Senate. That means he had 44 or 45 bad ones.

Laudanum Milkshake|8.27.09 @ 12:00AM|#

From Lew Rockwell.com:

I am reading commentary about Ted Kennedy that he was a true believer, including this fawning piece from CNN. Yet, what was it that he believed? Ted Kennedy believed that the state should confiscate most of your income, and should give you second-rate "benefits" in return. He believed that you as an individual had no right to resist attacks from criminals or the state (Is there a difference?), and that everyone should be forced to pay taxes for things with which they disagree. In other words, Ted Kennedy believed that the state should be considered omniscient and omnipotent, and anyone who resisted should be crushed. And he is being lionized for those views. How sick. How evil.

|8.27.09 @ 1:36AM|#

Ted Kennedy was agent of Leviathan. Why should anyone be reverent? Whatever small amount of good he may have done, came at the cost of someone else - at the point of a gun. Remember, when the wrong man does the right thing, it's the right thing done the wrong way.

*|8.27.09 @ 2:14AM|#

the Duke of Chappaquidick

The Duke? More like the Dick.

|8.27.09 @ 5:06AM|#

My take on Kennedy's support for trucking deregulation is that he had some kind of issue with the teamsters. Probably some residue of the Mafia/Irish mob battle that Bobby Kennedy fought when he was the attorney general.

-jcr

|8.27.09 @ 8:53AM|#

Blind squirrel finds acorn....more at 11.

CrackertyAssCracker|8.27.09 @ 1:22PM|#

so he did something good once back in the 70's? Frikkin awesome.

|8.27.09 @ 1:42PM|#

Well, giving credit where it's due, I will say that on two of my pet issues, i.e. immigration reform and seperation of church and state, Teddy was more often than not on the side of the good guys...

|8.27.09 @ 1:59PM|#

I imagine Kennedy's desire to de-regulate trucking might have been motivated by personal issues as much as intellectual conclusions.

Deregulation of the transport biz effectively broke the back of the Teamsters as the tyrant of trucking. And the acrimony between the Teamsters and Kennedy crew go way, way back.

I've always wondered about how the lefties gloss that over in their minds when they dream of Camelot, the Kennedy crew - both in the corporate machinations of Joe Sr. and the maneuverings of the political kids - were union busters through and through.

anarch|8.27.09 @ 10:25PM|#

I believe that he had ulterior motives.

Like preserving his right privately to transport Ms. Kopechne in so many senses of the term?