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Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Kennedy returning to Washington

Aides to Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who has been battling a severe form of brain cancer from his home in Massachusetts, said he plans to return to his second home in Washington this afternoon, a sign that his treatments have been progressing well.
The Massachusetts Democrat, who was diagnosed with a malignant tumor about six months ago, will continue his treatments in the nation's capital."His doctors are very pleased with his progress, and he will receive his treatments here," Kennedy spokeswoman Melissa Wagoner said yesterday. The senator plans to remain in his northwest Washington home and return to Massachusetts for Thanksgiving, she added.
Aides declined to speculate on when Kennedy might return to his duties in the Senate, which is in recess for the rest of the year. But his return to Washington for the next several weeks could coincide with Democrats' plans to call a special session of Congress after the Nov. 4 election. Kennedy is also a strong supporter of Barack Obama, and left Massachusetts to deliver a keynote speech on his behalf at the Democratic National Convention in Denver two months ago.
Since his diagnosis, Kennedy has returned to the Senate just once, in July, to cast a tiebreaking vote on long-delayed Medicare legislation. He was briefly hospitalized last month after suffering a mild seizure, which doctors attributed to a change in his medication.
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Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Kennedy to return to Washington, spokesman says

Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy plans to return to Washington Tuesday for the second time following an operation for a brain tumor in June, his spokesman said.
"Weather permitting, Senator Kennedy plans to leave Hyannis Port to spend time at his house in Washington later this afternoon. He hasn't been there for months and he thought this would be a good time to be back. He plans to return to the Cape for Thanksgiving," spokesman Anthony Coley said.
Kennedy has not decided if he will attend the "lame duck" session of the Senate following next week's elections, Coley said. The 76-year-old senator is not up for re-election this year.
In July, Kennedy made a dramatic visit to the floor of the Senate to cast a vote to help break a deadlock on an important Medicare bill.
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Caroline Kennedy to campaign in Florida

Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President John F. Kennedy, will appear at a campaign event for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Wednesday afternoon at Savannah Center.Doors to the event will open at 3:45 p.m. The event is tentatively slated for 5 p.m.
“Caroline Kennedy is an icon of Americana. She’s been in the public eye since she was just a baby. Many people are excited about Barack Obama in the same way they were excited about John F. Kennedy in the 1960s,” said Laura McGinnis, Central Florida communications director for the Obama-Biden campaign.
(...)
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Kennedy En Route To Washington

Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy is on his way to Washington after spending months in treatment for brain cancer at his Hyannisport home.
Kennedy's office said Tuesday the senior senator will head to the nation's capital to spend time at his residence there because he has not been there in months and believes it's a good time to visit.
His aides said Kennedy will remain in Washington until Thanksgiving when he will return to Cape Cod to celebrate the holiday.
It was unclear whether Kennedy will visit Capitol Hill while in Washington. They said he will continue to work from his district home on the Democratic agenda, particularly his health care bill.
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Monday, October 20, 2008

'Fitz' house for sale

The Kennedy compound has been restored to its former glory. No, not that one.
While the family enclave in Hyannis Port is indeed known as the Kennedy compound, part of Allerton Hill in Hull is considered by locals to be the original. The property was owned at the turn of the 20th century by John F. "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, then mayor of Boston, father of Rose Kennedy and grandfather of president John F. Kennedy.
The 16-room Victorian multi-gabled mansion had fallen into disrepair over the last several years and was purchased in 2006 by developer Ernesto Caparrotta of Hull, owner of Seven Hills Corp. in Weymouth. He paid $950,000 for the 7,163-square-foot house at auction.
Former owner Jamie Edelkind was sent to prison after his 2005 conviction on charges he used phony mortgage and payroll documents to buy the house in 2000.
Caparrotta wouldn't say how much he spent renovating the house, a project just recently finished. It is assessed by the town for $1.52 million and is now on the market for $2.37 million.
"I don't usually renovate homes, I prefer building them from the ground up," said Caparrotta, a native of Italy who came to America 30 years ago and has lived in Hull ever since. "But I always drove by this house, always loved it, so when the opportunity came up, I took it."
The house was built in 1892, and bought by Fitzgerald in 1915 as a summer retreat for his growing family; he sold it in 1921. After Rose Fitzgerald married Joseph P. Kennedy, her father had a home built next to his, down the hill and next to the water. The Tudor-style house was dubbed Rose Kennedy's Dollhouse.
"You can almost see Rose Kennedy walking up the driveway with little John on her shoulders," said T. David Raftery, who 12 years ago bought the Rose Kennedy Dollhouse and has lived in it since, absorbing the local Kennedy legend and happily imparting it to anyone who asks. "There's a lot of Kennedy history there."
JFK reportedly played on the nearby beach, he said, and many were the quiet, respectful parties Fitzgerald threw in the sprawling, three-story home.
"They weren't wild parties; he'd hire quartets to play in the living room," said Raftery, an assistant district attorney in Norfolk County.
The Allerton Hill area was popular with the Boston elite, he said, as a summer getaway, as was Cohasset, but at the time that town turned a cold shoulder to Catholics, Raftery said.
"The Kennedys weren't allowed in," he said. "It was very anti-Catholic at the time, but they were accepted in Hull. Allerton was a summer home for a lot of Boston people."
And the home may be the only one on the South Shore to have been frequented by three American presidents - or those who would be. A photo in Rose Kennedy's autobiography, "Times to Remember," shows her father shaking hands with President William Howard Taft outside the Hull home. Rose Kennedy's son would go on to be elected president in 1960. Another visitor to the home was Calvin Coolidge, then a Massachusetts governor, who became president in 1923.
(...) On the third floor is a wide-open, airy room that he said was a "gentlemen only" room in Kennedy's day, where men would gather to smoke cigars, sip brandy, and discuss heady matters of the day and most likely the effect on their respective fortunes.
(...) But none of those big names possess the uniquely Massachusetts mystique of the Kennedy clan.
"Not many people know about the history of the Kennedys here - I bet if you asked schoolchildren in Hull today, they wouldn't know," Raftery said. "But the old-timers in Hull, they know."
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Friday, October 17, 2008

Robert Kennedy's daughter in Derry

A daughter of assassinated US politician Bobby Kennedy was in Derry yesterday to address an education conference in the Millennium Forum.
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, was the keynote speaker at the Association of Northern Ireland Education and Library Boards (ANIELB). She was welcomed to the conference by the Mayor of Derry, Councillor Gerard Diver.
Professor Kennedy Townsend, a niece of former American President John Kennedy, teaches at Georgetown University’s School of Public Policy and is the eldest daughter of Robert Kennedy.
The conference, which continues today, was also attended by chief executives from all the education and library boards across the North as well as representatives of conference partners NorthgateIS, and sponsors: PricewaterhouseCoopers, Allianz, Fujitsu, Imex, Eteach and Amey.
Incoming ANIELB President, Pat Brannigan, said that the conference provides a vital showcase for education providers in Northern Ireland during a period of educational reform.
“As we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century, we have the responsibility to develop our education system into one which is not only fit for purpose now but which can meet challenges that no-one has yet thought about,” he added.
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Jackie Kennedy, book editor, to be subject of new bio - October 16, 2008

Jacqueline Kennedy's years as a book editor, many of them at Doubleday, will be the subject of a Doubleday book coming out in 2011.
Historian William Kuhn, who has written about British royalty and politics, is writing a biography, currently untitled, about the years that Kennedy worked in the publishing business, starting in 1975 with a brief time at Viking Press and then her 16 years at Doubleday, right up to her death in 1994.
Kennedy's authors ranged from celebrities Michael Jackson and Carly Simon to Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, the Egyptian novelist.
"Her books were a way of revealing the experiences, recollections and passions of a lifetime; in the end she told her own story — her journey as a wife, a mother, aesthete, armchair intellectual and unwilling celebrity — through the medium of other people's books," Kuhn said in a statement issued by Doubleday.
"My book will mine this critical period in her life, the one in which she became the woman she'd always intended to be."
According to Doubleday, Kuhn will draw upon "previously untapped archival material" and has "conducted a series of interviews with her authors, collaborators and friends from the 1980s and 1990s."
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Thursday, October 9, 2008

Kennedy will not testify in Stevens trial (October 8, 2008)

U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy will not testify in Ted U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Hyannis Port)Stevens' corruption trial, The Hill reports.
Kennedy, a Hyannis Port Democrat, was named as a possible witness at the beginning of the trial.
The Hill reports that Kennedy was not on the list of 15 witnesses submitted by Stevens' defense.
Stevens, a Republican U.S. Senator from Alaska, is on facing seven felony counts for allegedly failing to disclose $250,000 in gifts from an oil-services company in campaign finance reports between 1999 and 2006.
The Hill reports that former Secretary of State Colin Powell and U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), a close friend of Stevens', are on the list of witnesses that are expected to testify to Stevens' character instead.

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http://www.politickerma.com/jeremyjacobs/1466/kennedy-will-not-testify-stevens-trial

Big Dig park named for Rose Kennedy

The Rose Kennedy Greenway was abloom yesterday as families from across the area showed up for the park’s inaugural celebration.
“It’s nice to come in here and see this on the way to the waterfront and not just steel,” said Paul Lakus, 62, of Medford, who enjoyed the park with his wife, Alma, also 62.
The park sits where the Interstate 93 Central Artery once dissected the city’s skyline. The Big Dig brought the ugly roadway underground and made way for the narrow, 1.5-mile-long urban park.
Lilacs, day lilies, geraniums and other blooms fill the park’s gardens and offer a respite from the constant stream of cars buzzing by on either side.
Yesterday’s festivities included local musicians, dance troupes and a Ferris wheel.
“What the Greenway has always been about is beauty and connection,” said Nancy Brennan, executive director of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy. “You can really see people remember how much joy there is in city life.”
Brennan said thousands of people attended yesterday’s celebration. Among the attendees were Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg - Rose’s daughter and granddaughter, respectively - as well as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Medford native, and Hub Mayor Thomas M. Menino.
Urban Adventours offered free bike tours of the park yesterday, though bicyclists usually must use the surrounding roadway..
“This is miles better than what it was,” said operations manager Mike Maker, who credits the end of the Big Dig with making the area more bike-friendly, with fewer potholes and detours.
Deb Murphy, 32, of Acton stopped by the park with her daughter Hannah, 1.
What’s their favorite part? “The highway that’s gone,” Murphy said. “But isn’t that a given?”
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Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. champions new national energy policy during Fremont speech

Energy policy is by far the most important issue in this year's presidential election, one that transcends partisan politics and dwarfs the nation's current economic crisis, according to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
AP file photoRobert F. Kennedy Jr.
Kennedy, an environmental activist and attorney, addressed a crowd of nearly 700 people Tuesday at Grant High School. His visit was part of the Fremont Area Community Foundation's Speaker Series.
In a nearly two-hour speech, the son of the late Bobby Kennedy opined on everything from pollution and politics to religion, world history and how he believes media monopolies are hurting the nation's democracy.
But his central theme was that America must transition from a carbon-based economy, which relies on petroleum products, to one powered by clean energy harvested from the wind, sun and the Earth's heat.
"The way we deploy energy in this country is really the key economic and national security issue in this election," Kennedy said. "Carbon is the principal drag on American capitalism.
"We're borrowing a billion dollars a day to buy oil from countries that don't like us very much," he said. "What we're spending to bail out Wall Street ($700 billion) is chump change compared to what we spend every year on foreign oil."
Massive wind farms in the Great Plains and solar power fields in the Nevada desert could provide all the electricity needed for every building and vehicle in the U.S. That would end America's need for foreign oil, generate billions in new investments and create millions of jobs, Kennedy said
The nation's current energy policy relies largely on foreign oil and coal-fired power plants, which contribute to global warming and a host of other environmental and public health problems.
Kennedy said the U.S. should follow the lead of countries like Sweden and Iceland, which use alternative energy sources -- wind, solar and geothermal -- to generate nearly all of the electricity needed to power their economies, homes and vehicles.
Building the energy grid needed to capture and distribute energy from clean sources could cost more than $500 billion. But a modern power grid capable of handling wind and solar power could do for the nation's electric economy what the Internet did for the personal computer industry, Kennedy said.
"The electrons are hitting the Earth every day, free of charge -- all we have to do is harvest them and get them to the consumer," Kennedy said. "All it takes is a little leadership."
He praised presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama for pledging support for alternative energy and reducing America's dependence on foreign oil. Kennedy said either candidate would be an improvement over President Bush, who he called the most environmentally destructive president in the nation's history.
"He's lead a stealth attack ... that has eviscerated 30 years of environmental regulations," Kennedy said.
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Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Kennedy ties helped secure waiver

It was the dog days of summer, and secret negotiations between Massachusetts leaders and federal officials had dragged on for months. The word was that future funding for the state's first-in-the-nation healthcare law looked bleak.
But then, something shifted in the talks. And now, four months later, state leaders are jubilant that Washington will send more money than most had dreamed possible to keep the state's pioneering program afloat. News of the $10.6 billion in federal aid arrived last week.
At a time when many other states are lamenting the lack of support from Washington for health programs, how was it possible for a state known for its liberal leanings to win such backing from a conservative administration?
An unlikely bond forged years ago between Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, an icon of the left, and US Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, a conservative former governor of Utah, is part of the answer. The friendship set a collegial tone for the negotiations. It was crucial in salvaging talks when the White House threatened to slash nearly $2 billion from the state's health financing package, key players familiar with the negotiations said in interviews last week.
The package, known as a Medicaid waiver because it offers not only money but flexibility in federal regulations, allows Massachusetts to provide subsidized health insurance to some residents with incomes higher than would typically be allowed under traditional Medicaid rules. It authorizes Massachusetts to spend up to $21.2 billion, half of it federal money, over the next three years on health programs. That's an increase of $4.3 billion over the state's last Medicaid waiver package.
Leavitt, who oversees the agency that negotiated the waiver with Massachusetts, said he has privately sought Kennedy's advice on reconciling Democrats and Republicans over health insurance issues.
"What I appreciate about him is he is unvarnished on what the political pressures on his side are and what needs to happen to progress," Leavitt said.
He traces their friendship to 2003, when President Bush nominated Leavitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Leavitt asked for Kennedy's support, to which the Senator suggested Leavitt come to New Bedford to tour some polluted sites. Leavitt agreed and, after winning confirmation, visited the city.
"We are in different parties and have different ideas on the issues, but no one can fail to admire his devotion and that day, and others, formed the basis of our relationship," Leavitt recalls.
That friendship was tested in early June, when the Office of Management and Budget stepped into the waiver negotiations because, the regulators said, they discovered that Massachusetts for 10 years had incorrectly listed many children in its Medicaid program when they should have been counted under a program called the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which is not funded by the waiver. The state's way of counting those children had, by Washington's estimate, given Massachusetts about $2 billion more than it was entitled to over the last decade.
"We are talking about having to write a check for $2 billion and having to send it to the federal government," said Governor Deval Patrick. "It was a big problem."
The clock was ticking. Federal funding for Massachusetts' last waiver package was set to expire June 30. Negotiations had hit an impasse. That's when Leavitt went to bat for Massachusetts, said a source familiar with the negotiations, calling Joshua Bolten, President Bush's chief of staff and former director of the Office of Management and Budget, to argue the state's case.
Kennedy also called Bolton from his cellphone on June 19, while en route to Hyannis Port from Boston, where he was receiving cancer treatments.
"We were all very conscious of his very personal challenges," said Dr. JudyAnn Bigby, Massachusetts secretary of Health and Human Services, who helped negotiate the state's waiver. "We wanted to respect the fact that even though he was very committed to this and we wanted to make sure he was kept informed about what was going on, that we would only use him when we needed him," Bigby said.

In his conversation with Bolton - and with $2 billion on the line - Kennedy suggested that if Massachusetts universal healthcare initiative was successful, it could be a model for the rest of the country, and a legacy for the Bush White House.
"The senator and Josh definitely did talk," said White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto. "And Josh communicated to OMB the interest, and then they were able to work out their agreement in a way that was mutually satisfactory."
That agreement on the $2 billion difference came after several more weeks of tense talks, with Washington agreeing to extend the June 30 deadline. During that stretch, the normally restrained Leavitt posted on his blog a candid entry about a phone conversation he had with Kennedy.
"He sounded great! We talked briefly about his health. He was forward looking, crisp and as passionate as always," Leavitt wrote. "There wasn't a single hint of negativity or worry. I'm sure he has moments when both creep in, but the call was an unexpected lift to my spirits."
Ultimately, Washington allowed Massachusetts to keep the disputed $2 billion but insisted that it change its accounting method.
So why was Washington so generous with the Bay State?
"We are all going to learn from what Massachusetts is doing," said Leavitt of the state's innovative attempt at near-universal health coverage. "We will learn from things that don't work and do work, and every state will benefit from what is going on in Massachusetts."
Kennedy was not available last week to talk about his role in the negotiations, but heralded the outcome in a statement: "Any reduction in commitment would have put our reforms at risk."
Final details of the agreement are being worked out and officials say a signed deal is expected soon. Health policy specialists underscored the unusual nature of the agreement, in the context of shrinking federal dollars.
"You have bad relationships between the states and the administration around Medicaid recently, and in the middle of an economic meltdown and an environment where the federal government is not looking to spend money, Massachusetts' waiver stands out as truly unusual," said Drew Altman, president and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit that researches and analyzes health policies.
Several other states are cutting back their programs to reform healthcare, Altman said, because of a lack of funding.
"That's the reason Massachusetts, from a national perspective, is so significant," he said. The new waiver "allows the most sweeping health reform plan in the country to continue."

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http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2008/10/07/kennedy_ties_helped_secure_waiver/?page=full

Friday, October 3, 2008

Ethel Kennedy to campaign in NH for Obama

October 2, 2008
Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert F. Kennedy, is visiting New Hampshire on Saturday to campaign for Sen. Barack Obama.
She will campaign alongside her grandson, Matt Kennedy, who currently works for the Obama campaign in Manchester. She is scheduled to meet with seniors and residents in Salem and Manchester.
Kennedy says she supports Obama for president because he has the same commitment to the country as her husband did.
(...)
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Thursday, October 2, 2008

Kennedy clan member stumps for Obama

Max Kennedy, son of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, told Democratic volunteers assembled in a church hall Wednesday, Oct. 1, that this is the most important election of his lifetime.
"The stakes have never been higher," Kennedy told roughly 35 Sen. Barack Obama supporters at Mt. Zion Apostolic Temple. "The last eight years has become a steady and resolute assault on the Democratic Party, which means a steady and resolute assault on labor."
Kennedy talked briefly about his family's commitment to the Democratic Party — being nephew of America's 35th president and the ninth son of a man who may have become president himself if he wasn't assassinated in 1968 — totaling 88 years working for labor issues.
It was a fiery call to arms, ending with the whole room shouting, "Fired up, ready to go." Kennedy said the party's goal is to get one third of the electorate to the polls in the next six days, before a window closes allowing voters to register and vote the same day.
"If we win Ohio, I guarantee we will win Pennsylvania and Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States," Kennedy said.
(...)
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