The NYT has the details on
the departure of this beloved icon of the redistributionist-thief class:
Robert C. Byrd, who used his record tenure as a United States senator to fight for the primacy of the legislative branch of government and to build a modern West Virginia with vast amounts of federal money, died at about 3 a.m. Monday, his office said. He was 92.
[...]
Mr. Byrd served 51 years in the Senate, longer than anyone in American history, and with his six years in the House, he was the longest-serving member of Congress. He held a number of Senate offices, including majority and minority leader and president pro tem.
But the post that gave him the most satisfaction was chairman of the Appropriations Committee, with its power of the purse — a post he gave up only last year as his health declined. A New Deal Democrat, Mr. Byrd used the position in large part to battle persistent poverty in West Virginia, which he called “one of the rock bottomest of states.”
How many people's hopes, dreams and ambitions were torn down to provide the fuel for Mr. Byrd's "[Ex]propriations Committee"-handouts to his bought-and-paid-for "friends" in West Virginia?
He lived that poverty growing up in mining towns, and it fueled his ambition. As he wrote in his autobiography, “Robert C. Byrd: Child of the Appalachian Coalfields” (West Virginia University Press, 2005), “it has been my constant desire to improve the lives of the people who have sent me to Washington time and time again.”
“I lost no opportunity,” he added, “to promote funding for programs and projects of benefit to the people back home.”
That attention brought the state billions of dollars for highways, federal offices, research institutes and dams.
"I lost no opportunity to steal, trick and connive any chance I got, all carried out under the 'honor' and 'prestige' of my noble, public office. My preferred form of largess granted to my constituents was highways no one wanted to drive on, federal offices that did no useful work, research institutes that bolstered the State's agenda through ceaseless propagation of propaganda posing as science and a series of dams that diverted the flow of natural watercourses, destroying natural ecosystems and forcing local residents to relocate at the point of a gun. Yes, they called me a hero for this, and more!"
Mr. Byrd was the valedictorian of his high school class but was unable to afford college. It was not until he was in his 30s and 40s that he took college courses. But he was profoundly self-educated and well read. His Senate speeches sparkled with citations from Shakespeare, the King James version of the Bible and the histories of England, Greece and Rome.
Well, gosh, if a cranky, belligerent amateur-racist-cum-professional-robber, poor as a sack of West Virginian coal, could educate himself in the middle of the Great Depression in backwards, bucktooth West Virginia, I am not sure why it is we need a bunch of State-supported public [re-]education for everybody else?
