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