Don't Like the AMT? Then Call Ted Kennedy!

Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Ma), pictured above with his ex-wife Joan, is shown wearing a collared head restraint during the summer of 1969 after driving his car off of a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, Ma. and leaving a young, single woman to drown in his wrecked car.

The Democrats who are currently blaming George Bush and the Republican Party (Hello Ellen?) for the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), that Flying Debris discussed here and here, should consult the Senior Democratic Senator from Massachusetts for some instruction as to how this jealousy-inspired tax monstrosity came to be. The problem with that approach is that Senator Kennedy may not remember much from the summer of '69, and he can't blame Woodstock.

More Democratic Wackiness From 1969

Yesterday I discussed Democrat Ellen Beth Gill of Ellen's Tenth... and the fact that she blamed Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) for the AMT tax law that was pushed by congressional Democrats in 1969, the year that Congressman Kirk was in the fifth grade. Also see this excellent rundown on the AMT from the Backyard Conservative. Well I was reading the Oct 15 issue of Autoweek when I ran across more Democratic wackiness from 1969. Autoweek has been doing a great series for their 50th anniversary, each week they have been dedicating two pages to one of those fifty years. Well on Oct. 15 they covered the year 1969 and what a year it was. Sure a Ford GT40 with 23,000 racing miles on it won the closest Le Mans 24 hour race in history over a Porsche 908 after numerous lead changes on the final lap but it was the year's politics that caught my eye. It turns out that Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson introduced a Senate bill to ban the internal combustion engine by 1978. Senator Nelson's wackiness had nothing on the Democrats from California, including Nicholas Petris who introduced a bill to ban diesel and gasoline engines in California by 1975. Not to be outdone prosecutors in Los Angeles attempted to prosecute the Big Three Auto makers for conspiring to defeat clean technology.

Gee, I wonder how that bit of childishness would have worked out?