Releasing our Elders; Health Care Reform and Prisoners.

From the list-serve/newsletter of www.curenational.org (Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants)

-------New Vera Report Shows Difference between Geriatric Release Policy and Practice-------

Harsh sentencing policies have made correctional facilities throughout the United States home to a growing number of older adults. Yet most states with provisions for releasing older prisoners rarely use them, despite the relatively low risk eligible inmates would pose to public safety and the opportunity for potential cost savings.

“It’s About Time: Aging Prisoners, Increasing Costs, and Geriatric Release” examines statutes related to geriatric release in 15 states and the District of Columbia, identifies factors that help explain the discrepancy, and offers recommendations for those who would address it.

“The upshot is that there’s a difference between what states would like to do—save money by releasing older prisoners—and what actually happens,” says the report’s author, Tina Chiu. “If states want the result of geriatric release policies to be consistent with that objective, they should review the release process to address potential and existing obstacles.”

The Vera Institute of Justice is an independent nonprofit organization that combines expertise in research, demonstration projects, and technical assistance to help leaders in government and civil society improve the systems people rely on for justice and safety.

------------------------------ Health Care Reform and Prisoners------------------------

Thirteen million people are incarcerated in jails annually.

Three and a half million of this 13 million are incarcerated more than once during the year.

 The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act (together referred to as "the health reform law" expands health insurance coverage by expanding Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for low income people, to cover everyone under 133 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL). For uninsured individuals above 133 FPL the bill sets up state-based "health insurance exchanges" or regulated insurance marketplaces where individuals and small businesses can compare and purchase private health insurance policies. (They will function something like websites like Travelocity or Orbitz, but for health insurance.) Lower income individuals will be eligible for tax subsidies to buy insurance on the exchanges.

The health reform law does not change the current inmate exclusion for Medicaid and other federal health programs. Convicted inmates are also ineligible for insurance from the exchanges. However, pre-conviction inmates remain eligible and they also remain subject to the individual mandate to carry health insurance.

Regardless of the insurance arrangements covering prisoners, jails will still have a legal obligation based on the /Gamble /decision by the Supreme Court to provide medical care for all prisoners regardless of conviction status. How this obligation will be satisfied or impacted by the health reform legislation has not been addressed.

 There are two additional references to the criminal justice system in the health care bill. First, "conviction for a relevant crime of patient or resident abuse" disqualifies a person from being hired
as a health care worker, and second, the Federal Bureau of Prisons is specifically included in the Interagency Working Group on Health Care quality.

The Legal Action Center reports that the final health care bill incorporates many key elements on addiction and mental health services, as follows:

Includes substance use disorder and mental health (SUD/MH) services as required benefits in the basic benefit package for individual and small business health plans;

Requires that all plans in the health insurance exchange comply with the Wellstone/Domenici Parity Act in providing SUD/MH benefits in the same way as all other covered medical and surgical benefits;

Expands Medicaid eligibility for all Americans up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level and require newly eligible parents and childless adults receive coverage that includes SUD/MH services provided at parity;

Includes SUD and MH prevention strategies and efforts in the bill's chronic disease initiatives;

Includes the capacity of the mental and behavioral health workforce as high-priority topics in the bill's National Workforce Strategy section; and

Includes insurance reforms and consumer protections critical for individuals seeking or in recovery, including prohibiting insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, charging higher premiums based on health status, and placing annual or lifetime caps on insurance coverage.

And they Pre-emptively lock up the Left as Terrorists?

Celebrate the International Observation of the Anniversary of
the Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade:

ABOLISH THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX!!

These Tea Partiers and legislators that take such pride in their "right" to be obstructing millions of poor, working, and middle class families from accessing health care are pitiful representations of what I grew up believing were the best qualities of "Americans" - perceptions passed on to me by my Republican elders, ironically. It is the myth that drives young men and women to their deaths or worse in war all around the world. It goes like this:

Americans are champions of the oppressed, always cheering on the underdog; the revolutionary and rebel dominate our folklore - Robin Hood is one of our most legendary European heroes. My great-grandfather, an Iowa farmer who endured the Depression, was named after the outlaw Jesse James. The vast majority of us aspire to build a more just and sustainable world together, beginning with how we resolve conflict or crisis in our homes, schools, and communities so that we aren't just feeding our most vulnerable, troubled kids and naive citizens through the pipeline to prisons. We just can’t see that far past our fear or what may be our family’s economic dependence on perpetuating the cycle of crime and punishment – which only churns out more victims, incapacitating more communities, and destroying more lives...

We need to take responsibility for each other before it gets that far. Most child abusers are never caught because they are, by and large, white men in power - usually a member or close friend of their victim's family. A child reporting a crime like that has about as good a chance of being protected and getting justice (forget mercy) in America as a prisoner does suing his incarcerators. The kids just end up in foster care or detention and get brutalized more. How are we going to improve their odds so they don’t end up enraged and “violent” as adults, or self-destructing rapidly with drugs and dying as a petty offender in jail of Hepatitis.

All our sentencing mandates didn't do a damn thing to protect the most vulnerable women in the state from violence, either: migrants and women in prison and detention. In fact, recent legislation has criminalized them further and made it all the more likely they will be victimized and murdered in silence by legal residents and non-citizens alike: Pearce declared open season on those women with his assault on Sanctuary Cities.

You will no doubt try to hide their bodies as "John and Jane Does" in county morgues until it is time to cremate and bury them. We'll have to dig to get the names, numbers, and causes of death, but we'll try to include everyone in our May 20 memorial for those who have died in the custody of the state.

The preceding day, May 19, we may have a vigil for the 4 hours Marcia Powell was left in the sun, asking for help - perhaps film a guerilla theater piece on it someplace appropriate. That day is also World Hepatitis Day, so we may do a special service for Hep C survivors and victims.

We may spend a good part of our lives striving for financial and material security, but most of us would sacrifice it in a minute if it meant we could really affect something we believed needed to change. The images of nationalism and patriotism and Christian faith that are so readily exploited to snap us all in line are things I take really very seriously. I'm descended directly from the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, founded by the Pilgrims, William Bradford. My direct ancestor who fought as a revolutionary war soldier was Brigham Young's dad. My father spent his life in Military Intelligence in service to his country - to save the world for democracy and freedom.

I can draw on that heritage. It comes from a well deep within me - images of my father, the gentlest man I knew, leaving for the war in uniform when all I could associate soldiers with were Dad, parades and candy. He came home grievously wounded, to a family that was there for him no more. I know what people have sacrificed for the defense of our liberties and privileges as Americans, and I know that it comes from a place of good intention.

I also know that sometimes the greater harm is done to the one who conducts torture than the subject of their violence, simply by virtue of being so consumed with self-righteousness, sadistic glee, or an entitled vindictiveness on behalf of a prisoner's imagined victims. That twists a person's soul, being so brutal and justified on a routine basis.

Anyway, these people (our republican legislators and the tea partiers) haven't been dying like flies the way our people are, and don't have a thing to bitch about - much less to threaten violence to others for. They're whiny, spoiled, selfish, privileged, mostly-white racists all coming out of the closet now because they think Obama's election is "proof" that people of color are no longer disadvantaged in this country - which naturally means that all the white and moneyed people are the real victims, here.

That's them. Poor Tea Partiers. Boo hoo.

I think they would be more comfortable in white hoods, burning crosses on Democrats' lawns.
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Hoyer decries talk of reprisals against lawmakers over health care vote

By The Associated Press

Published: March 25, 2010 at 7:55 am

WASHINGTON - House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer voiced concern today (March 25) over warnings of violent reprisals against members of Congress who voted for landmark health care legislation, saying the threats are being taken “very seriously.”

“The bottom line is, we need to be very careful in public life that our rhetoric doesn’t incite to violent acts,” the Maryland Democrat said on a network morning news show. He said dealing with difficult issues in a civil and peaceful manner is “at the core of our democracy.”

The FBI is working with lawmakers subjected to menacing obscenity-laced phone messages. In some instances, bricks were hurled through congressional offices, including Rep. Louise Slaughter’s district headquarters in Niagara Falls, N.Y.

At least four Democratic offices in New York, Arizona and Kansas were struck and at least 10 members of Congress have reported some sort of threats, congressional leaders have said. No arrests had been made as of late March 24, but the FBI is still investigating.

Hoyer had said March 24 that lawmakers who felt at risk were to get attention “from the proper authorities.” He declined to say whether any were receiving extra security. Normally only those in leadership positions have personal security guards.

Slaughter, a Democrat, is chairwoman of an influential House committee. She said someone had left her a voice mail that used the word “snipers.”

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., said “it’s an effort to kind of hijack the debate by coercive elements. I’m glad the Republican leadership colleagues denounce it. But they were very late to do that.”

Hoyer did not single out any member of Congress or political party as having made statements that could encourage such acts. But he did say he thought some of the rhetoric “has been far beyond legitimate debate.”

“In our democracy,” he said, “we resolve things, not through violence, not at the point of a gun. If we don’t do that, we will devolve into a society that we’re not going to like.” (a good case for abolishing the police state - peg)

“It is unacceptable in America,” said Sen. John McCain. The Arizona Republican said angry citizens should channel their rage into voter registration for the next election and efforts to repeal the health care law.

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said in a statement that while many Americans are angry over the bill’s passage, “violence and threats are unacceptable.”

Some of the anger spilled over in a flood of threat-filled phone and fax messages to the office of Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich. Stupak vowed to oppose the health care package unless given greater assurance that it would not allow federal funding of elective abortions. He voted in favor after the administration agreed.

Stupak’s office released some of the messages, declining further comment.

“I hope you bleed … (get) cancer and die,” one male caller told the congressman between curses.

A fax with the title “Defecating on Stupak” carried a picture of a gallows with “Bart (SS) Stupak” on it and a noose attached. It was captioned, “All Baby Killers come to unseemly ends Either by the hand of man or by the hand of God.”

The vandalism and threats surprised a researcher at a think tank that monitors extremist groups.

“I think it is astounding that we are seeing this wave of vigilantism,” said Mark Potok of the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center.

Hoyer said earlier that people have yelled that Democratic lawmakers should be put on firing lines and posters have appeared with the faces of lawmakers in the cross hairs of a target.

While not directly criticizing Republicans directly, he said “any show of appreciation for such actions encourages such action.”

Gun imagery was used in a posting on the Facebook page of Sarah Palin urging people to organize against 20 House Democrats who voted for the health care bill and whose districts went for the John McCain-Palin ticket two years ago. Palin’s post featured a U.S. map with circles and cross hairs over the 20 districts.

McCain defended Palin, saying it was commonplace practice and “part of the lexicon” to refer to “targeted” congressional districts.

In Virginia, someone cut a propane line leading to a grill at the Charlottesville home of U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello’s brother after the address was posted online by activists angry about the health care overhaul. Perriello also said a threatening letter was sent to his brother’s house. The FBI and local authorities were investigating.

Tea party activists had posted the brother’s address online thinking it was the congressman’s home. The post urged opponents to drop by and “express their thanks” for the Democrat’s vote in favor of the sweeping health care reform.

Nigel Coleman, chairman of the Danville Tea Party, said he re-posted the comment that originated on another conservative blog, including the address, Monday on his Facebook page. The posts were taken down after the mistake was discovered.

“We’ve never been associated with any violence or any vandalism,” he said. “We’re definitely sorry that we posted the incorrect address.”

Health Care Reform and Prison Abolition

An Underconsidered Benefit of Health Reform: Fewer Prisoners

Washington Post

By Tracy Velazquez

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

As Congress debates the costs of reforming our health-care system, it should consider one significant collateral cost of not acting: maintaining the world's highest rate of incarceration. Every year, thousands of people are locked up in U.S. prisons and jails because they do not have access to health care to treat mental illness and drug addiction.

People with mental illnesses often end up in prisons, jails and juvenile facilities when they are unable to access treatment in their communities. According to the Department of Justice, one in four people in state prisons experienced mental health issues in the year preceding incarceration, and nearly two-thirds of people in local jails live with mental illness. Untreated mental illness often leads to public order offenses, crises that cause law enforcement to intervene, and "self-medicating" with alcohol and illegal drugs.

Parents of children with serious emotional disturbances who are uninsured or under-insured sometimes turn their own children in to the police, because their kids will get at least a minimum of treatment in the juvenile justice system. Prisons, jails, and juvenile facilities are now some of the largest providers of mental health services in the country.

People with no access to health care are also likely to return to prison after being released. In a visit I made to a state prison, an individual with a serious mental illness told me that earlier that year he had been released from prison with 10 days worth of medicine and $100 in cash. He was left on his own to figure out how to manage his illness. He relied on a local clinic for pharmaceutical "samples" for a time, but ended up homeless and self-medicating with alcohol and other drugs, which led to his being sent back to prison.

And regardless of the billions of dollars spent annually on the "war on drugs," people do use illicit substances. When they become addicted, many do not have access to effective treatment services. As a result, addicted people end up in prison or in jail for things that can include possession, distribution or other offenses that support addiction. Over half of people in state prisons meet criteria for drug dependence or abuse.

While some mental health and substance addiction treatment services are available for people in prison or jail, the Washington State Institute for Public Policy found that, for every dollar spent on treatment in prison, the community receives $5.88 in public safety benefits, but if treatment is provided in the community, the return is nearly $19.

If through improved access to health care we were to reduce our nation's incarceration rate by just 10 percent, the country could save roughly $5.5 billion annually. And this doesn't include the savings in courts, police, parole, and other related costs of incarceration.

Tracy Velazquez is the executive director of the Justice Policy Institute.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/07/AR2009100702939.html

Healtth Care Reform: Jim Ridgeway

Jim Ridgeway's take. This is kind of what I suspected.
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How Real Health Reform Was Killed by Politicians Trying to Look 'Moderate'

By James Ridgeway, CounterPunch. Posted December 23, 2009.

'Moderation' has come to mean weighing the interests of campaign contributors -- Big Pharma vs. the insurance companies -- with little concern for the American people.

Plenty of countries have created excellent health care systems largely through regulation -- so why can’t we do the same? The French and Japanese health care systems, for example, do not exclude private industry. They are not socialist in any sense of the word, and even retain a role for private insurance companies. What each system consists of is a regulatory apparatus that serves as the instrument for carrying out national policy -- which is providing high quality health care for all the country’s citizens, at a reasonable cost. The regulation works because you can’t get around it, and because it was designed -- and actually operates -- in the public interest.

To achieve anything similar in the United States, however, would require a virtual revolution in how our government operates. Our system of government regulations isn’t really what we think of as regulation at all. Rather, it throws up a facade of rules, which corporations walk right through. And no wonder, since although the regulations are supposed to be arrived at independently and designed for the public good, corporations have long had a hand in writing them, as well, thanks to the power of lobbying, campaign contributions, and the revolving door between business and government.

Rather than being enacted to protect the public from the limitless greed of private industry, many regulations are actually passed in support of corporations. The worst example is probably the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is just a clubhouse for Wall Street. Another top contender is the Food and Drug Administration. The basic legislation passed by Congress in the 1930s and updated in the early 1960s set policy governing the sale and use of drugs, which demanded that companies demonstrate the proposed product is safe and efficacious. But that policy directive was quickly abandoned. Today the drug manufacturers breeze through the FDA, setting their own rules for use, establishing their own prices, and exercising their monopoly rights within the patent system which in the case of pharmaceuticals is maintained for their benefit.

An excellent article in the December Harpers, “Understanding Obamacare” by Luke Mitchell, provides a better understanding of how the American system of regulation in the corporate interest works. “The idea that there is a competitive ‘private sector’ in America is appealing, but generally false,” writes Mitchell. He continues:

No one hates competition more than the managers of corporations. Competition does not enhance shareholder value, and smart managers know they must forsake whatever personal beliefs they may hold about the redemptive power of creative destruction for the more immediate balm of government intervention. This wisdom is expressed most precisely in an underutilized phrase from economics: regulatory capture.

In the case of health care, Mitchell argues, “The health-care industry has captured the regulatory process, and it has used that capture to eliminate any real competition, whether from the government, in the form of a single-payer system, or from new and more efficient competitors in the private sector who might have the audacity to offer a better product at a better price.”

What’s really sharp about Mitchell’s analysis, though, is his recognition that “the polite word for regulatory capture in Washington is ‘moderation.’” As he explains it:

Normally we understand moderation to be a process whereby we balance the conservative-right-red preference for “free markets” with the liberal-left-blue preference for “big government.” Determining the correct level of market intervention means splitting the difference….The contemporary form of moderation, however, simply assumes government growth (i.e., intervention), which occurs under both parties, and instead concerns itself with balancing the regulatory interests of various campaign contributors. The interests of the insurance companies are moderated by the interests of the drug manufacturers, which in turn are moderated by the interests of the trial lawyers and perhaps even by the interests of organized labor, and in this way the locus of competition is transported from the marketplace to the legislature. The result is that mediocre trusts secure the blessing of government sanction even as they avoid any obligation to serve the public good. Prices stay high, producers fail to innovate, and social inequities remain in place.

This seems to me an extremely accurate depiction of the forces that have governed our current health care reform -- from the start, when Big Pharma struck a secret deal with the White House, right up to the present moment, when Big Insurance’s bag man Joe Lieberman is deciding the fate of hundreds of millions of Americans.

And no wonder, since as Mitchell points out, the “moderation” formula has been perfected not by Republicans, but by Democrats: “The triangulating work that began two decades ago under Bill Clinton,” he writes, ”is reaching its apogee under the politically astute guidance of Barack Obama.”

This is exactly how health care reform could have turned out so screwed up despite (or, as the case may be, because of) Democratic control of the White House and Congress.

Senate Health Care reform: Representative Slaughter

Well, today the Senate is celebrating the passage of historic health care reform...party line votes, no public payer option - actually, I don't really know what's left. There are a few sources I trust on the issues who may not be heard on msot other media, so I'll see what they have to say:

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Powerful House Rep. Slaughter: Senate Went off the Rails and Passed a Weak Health Care Bill

By Rep. Louise Slaughter, AlterNet
Posted on December 24, 2009, Printed on December 24, 2009

Editor's note: Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, a Democrat, represents the 28th Congressional District of New York. Slaughter is the first woman to chair the House Rules Committee and the only microbiologist in Congress. 

Washington -- The Senate health care bill is not worthy of the historic vote that the House took a month ago.
Even though the House version is far from perfect, it at least represents a step toward our goal of giving 36 million Americans decent health coverage.

But under the Senate plan, millions of Americans will be forced into private insurance company plans, which will be subsidized by taxpayers. That alternative will do almost nothing to reform health care but will be a windfall for insurance companies. Is it any surprise that stock prices for some of those insurers are up recently?

I do not want to subsidize the private insurance market; the whole point of creating a government option is to bring prices down. Insisting on a government mandate to have insurance without a better alternative to the status quo is not true reform.

By eliminating the public option, the government program that could spark competition within the health insurance industry, the Senate has ended up with a bill that isn't worthy of its support.

The public option is the part of our reform effort that will lower costs, improve the delivery of health care services and force insurance companies to offer rates and services that are reasonable.

Although the art of legislating involves compromise, I believe the Senate went off the rails when it agreed with the Obama Administration to water down the reform bill and no longer include the public option.

But that's not the only thing wrong with the Senate's version of the health care bill.

Under that plan, insurance companies can punish older people, charging them much higher rates than the House bill would allow.

In the House, we fought hard to repeal McCarran-Ferguson, the antitrust exemption that insurance companies have enjoyed for years. We did that because we believed firmly that those Fortune 500 corporations should not enjoy special treatment.

Yet the Senate bill does not include that provision -- despite assurances from some members that they will seek to add it. By ending that protection, we will be able to go after insurance companies with federal penalties for misleading advertising or dishonest business practices.

The House bill would cover 96 percent of legal residents, while the Senate covers 94 percent. Compared with the House bill, the Senate's bill makes it much easier for employers to avoid the responsibility of providing insurance for their workers.

And of course, the Senate bill did not remove the onerous choice language intended to appeal to anti-abortion forces.

Now don't get me wrong; the current House and Senate bills are a significant improvement over the status quo. Given the hard path to reform and the political realities of next year, there is a sizable group within Congress that wants to simply cut any deal that works and call it a success. Many previous efforts have failed, and the path to reform is littered with unsuccessful efforts championed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Bill Clinton.

Supporters of the weak Senate bill say "just pass it -- any bill is better than no bill."

I strongly disagree -- a conference report is unlikely to sufficiently bridge the gap between these two very different bills.

It's time that we draw the line on this weak bill and ask the Senate to go back to the drawing board. The American people deserve at least that.

Elected to Congress in 1986, Rep. Louise McIntosh Slaughter (D-NY serves as the ranking Democrat on the prestigious House Rules Committee.

© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/144785/

The Baucus Bill Stops Short.

From Democracy Now! September 18, 2009:

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As Baucus Unveils Health Plan Absent of Public Option, New Study Finds 45,000 Uninsured Die Every Year

A long-awaited healthcare bill from Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus includes no public option and would require almost all Americans to buy insurance or pay a penalty. This comes as a new study finds that nearly 45,000 Americans die every year due to lack of health insurance. We speak with the study’s co-author, Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a professor of medicine at Harvard University, primary care physician, and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program. (click header to see full story at Democracy now)

The Liberal Lion of the Senate

I read a little bit ago that Ted Kennedy died last night. I don't tend to be too soft on white male liberals (many of whom I have admittedly loved), but as I read about him, I wept, and can't really seem to stop. 

Here's what the Boston Globe had to say; I thought they would be appropriate as a solid bastion of liberal white men. Speaking of - Jim Webb reports on his trip to Burma in the Times, and on meeting with both General Than Shwe and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who is back under house arrest. That's pretty impressive. Unfortunately, he could only secure the stupid American's freedom. I am curious how much of his assertion about sanctions comes from Daw Suu Kyi; he doesn't directly disclose what either she or the General had to say, but I think his conclusions are strongly influenced by hers.


In the meantime, the American death toll in Afghanistan is reaching new heights, as the war escalates; and it's still just a trickle next to the people we've killed seeking vengeance or justice or someone else's "liberation" from tyrrany. Some of the injuries are more grim, especially the children. It's been eight years almost and there's really no end in sight. Obama's a war president, and he still has to prove himself tough in the area of national security. I wish he was proving himself smart instead. I think it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

What does war have to do with the prison industrial complex? 

Everything. 


Here's the send-off for Teddy. He always seemed like a decent man, despite Chappaquiddick; I don't know how one reconciles with something like that, except to do right by others for the rest of their lives. I think he really tried to do that...


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Liberal lion of the Senate, symbol of family dynasty succumbs to brain cancer

Kennedy dead at 77

By Martin F. Nolan, Globe Correspondent  |  August 26, 2009

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who carried aloft the torch of a Massachusetts dynasty and a liberal ideology to the citadel of Senate power, but whose personal and political failings may have prevented him from realizing the ultimate prize of the presidency, died at his home in Hyannis Port last night after a battle with brain cancer. He was 77.

“We’ve lost the irreplaceable center of our family and joyous light in our lives, but the inspiration of his faith, optimism, and perseverance will live on in our hearts forever,’’ his family said in a statement. “We thank everyone who gave him care and support over this last year, and everyone who stood with him for so many years in his tireless march for progress toward justice, fairness, and opportunity for all. He loved this country and devoted his life to serving it. He always believed that our best days were still ahead, but it’s hard to imagine any of them without him.’’

Overcoming a history of family tragedy, including the assassinations of a brother who was president and another who sought the presidency, Senator Kennedy seized the role of being a “Senate man.’’ He became a Democratic titan of Washington who fought for the less fortunate, who crafted unlikely deals with conservative Republicans, and who ceaselessly sought support for universal health coverage.

“Teddy,’’ as he was known to intimates, constituents, and even his fiercest enemies, was an unwavering symbol to the left and the right - the former for his unapologetic embrace of liberalism, and latter for his value as a political target. But with his fiery rhetoric, his distinctive Massachusetts accent, and his role as representative of one of the nation’s best-known political families, he was widely recognized as an American original. In the end, some of those who might have been his harshest political enemies, including former President George W. Bush, found ways to collaborate with the man who was called the “last lion’’ of the Senate.

Senator Kennedy’s White House aspirations may have been doomed by his actions on the night he drove off a bridge at Chappaquiddick Island in 1969 and failed to promptly report the accident in which Mary Jo Kopechne, who had worked for his brother Robert, died. (here they cut him a break - he was driving drunk that night. - Peg). When Kennedy nonetheless later sought to wrest the presidential nomination from an incumbent Democrat, Jimmy Carter, he failed. But that failure prompted him to reevaluate his place in history, and he dedicated himself to fulfilling his political agenda by other means, famously saying, “the dream shall never die.’’

He was the youngest child of a famous family, but his legacy derived from quiet subcommittee meetings, conference reports, and markup sessions. The result of his efforts meant hospital care for a grandmother, a federal loan for a working college student, or a better wage for a dishwasher.

“He died the way he lived,’’ said a longtime Kennedy staffer, who did not want to be named because of the sensitivity of the moment, breaking up with emotion during the interview. “Fully in the moment, with incredible courage. He knew exactly what was going on. He wasn’t afraid. And given everything that he had been through his entire life, was always optimistic and knew that this country’s best days always [were] ahead.’’

Plans have already been made for the funeral, which will take place in Massachusetts, the aide said, and President Obama would be expected to attend.

“Without question Senator Kennedy was the most accomplished and effective legislator for economic and social justice in the history of our country,’’ said Paul G. Kirk, Jr., a former Kennedy aide who is chairman of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. “He was the most thoughtful and genuinely considerate friend I have known.’’... (hit the Globe for more)

...In early 2008, shortly before his cancer diagnosis, Senator Kennedy surprised much of the political world by endorsing Senator Barack Obama for president over Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. The endorsement was seen as a passing of the Kennedy torch to the man aspiring to be the nation’s first black president.

Despite his illness, Senator Kennedy made a forceful appearance at the Democratic convention in Denver, exhorting his party to victory and declaring that the fight for universal health insurance had been “the cause of my life.’’

He pursued that cause vigorously, even as his health declined; when members of Obama’s administration questioned the president’s decision to spend so much political capital on the seemingly intractable issue, Obama reportedly replied, “I promised Teddy.’’

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John Broder does a nice job remembering Kennedy at the Times, too.