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Senator John F. Kerry


Self Description

"April 2004: "John Kerry was born on December 11, 1943 at Fitzsimmons Military Hospital in Denver, Colorado, where his father, Richard, who had volunteered to fly DC-3's in the Army Air Corps in World War II, was recovering from a bout with tuberculosis. Not long after Sen. Kerry's birth, his family returned home to Massachusetts.

A graduate of Yale University, John Kerry entered the Navy after graduation, becoming a Swift Boat officer, serving on a gunboat in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. He received a Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V, and three awards of the Purple Heart for his service in combat.

By the time Senator Kerry returned home from Vietnam, he felt compelled to question decisions he believed were being made to protect those in positions of authority in Washington at the expense of the soldiers carrying on the fighting in Vietnam. Kerry was a co-founder of the Vietnam Veterans of America and became a spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War -- Morley Safer would describe him as "a veteran whose articulate call to reason rather than anarchy seemed to bridge the call between the Abbie Hoffmans of the world and Mr. Agnew's so-called 'Silent Majority.'" In April, 1971, in testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he asked the question of his fellow citizens, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" Sen. Claiborne Pell, (D-R.I.) thanked Kerry, then 27, for testifying before the committee, expressing his hope that Kerry "might one day be a colleague of in this body."

Fourteen years later, John Kerry would have the opportunity to fulfill those hopes - serving side by side with Sen. Pell as a Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But in the intervening years, he found different ways to fight for those things in which he believed. Time and again, Kerry fought to hold the political system accountable and to do what he believed was right. As a top prosecutor in Middlesex County, Kerry took on organized crime and put the Number Two mob boss in New England behind bars. He modernized the District Attorney's office, creating an innovative rape crisis crime unit, and as a lawyer in private practice he worked long and hard to prove the innocence of a man wrongly given a life sentence for a murder he did not commit.

In 1984, after winning election as Lieutenant Governor in 1982, Kerry ran and was elected to serve in the United States Senate, running and winning a successful PAC-free Senate race and defeating a Republican opponent buoyed by Ronald Reagan's reelection coattails. Like his predecessor, the irreplaceable Paul Tsongas, Kerry came to the Senate with a reputation for independence -- and reinforced it by making tough choices on difficult issues: breaking with many in his own Party to support Gramm-Rudman Deficit Reduction; taking on corporate welfare and government waste; pushing for campaign finance reform; holding Oliver North accountable and exposing the fraud and abuse at the heart of the BCCI scandal; working with John McCain in the search for the truth about Vietnam veterans declared POW/MIA; and insisting on accountability, investment, and excellence in public education.

Sen. Kerry was re-elected in 1990, and again in 1996, defeating the popular Republican Governor William Weld in the most closely watched Senate race in the country. Now serving his fourth term, Kerry has worked to reform public education, address children's issues, strengthen the economy and encourage the growth of the high tech New Economy, protect the environment, and advance America's foreign policy interests around the globe.

John Kerry is married to Teresa Heinz. He has two daughters, Alexandra and Vanessa. Teresa Heinz has three sons, John, Andre, and Christopher. Senator Kerry lives in Boston."

Third-Party Descriptions

May 2010: 'It may have had something to do with what David Halberstam called the “patriotism fault line running through this country.” Writing in Vanity Fair in 2004 about the right’s scurrilous smear on John Kerry’s bravery in Vietnam, Halberstam said, “We require Democrats to work a little harder to prove that they’re really patriotic and not somehow in league with our enemies.”'

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/opinion/23dowd.html

September 2009: "Last year, Reps. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) and Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.) introduced a bill that would remove work-issued cell phones from the list of taxable fringe benefits. Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John Ensign (R-Nev.) introduced an identical bill. The proposal passed the House but was held up by the Senate. The bills were reintroduced earlier this year."

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/57457

June 2009: "Congress passed a law requiring the value of employer-issued cellphones to be included in workers' gross income, unless an employee kept detailed records showing the phone was used only for work.... Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and John Ensign (R-Nev.) have introduced a similar bill [to repeal the law-Ed.] this year."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/11/AR2009061104239.html

May 2009: 'Other American politicians have faced this very threat. The first President Bush lost the White House after he broke his famous “Read my lips: no new taxes” pledge. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democrats’ 2004 presidential candidate, inflicted a mortal wound on his own campaign with his now-infamous line about Iraq war funding: “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.”'

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/weekinreview/24stolberg.html

October 2008: "Not all lawmakers are opposed to voting on the white-space issue. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) sent a letter to Chairman Martin urging the Commission to move forward and establish guidelines for the initial use of white-space technology as scheduled."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10075172-94.html

November 2008: 'During the 2004 presidential campaign, in the first televised debate between President George Bush and Senator John Kerry, the moderator asked each candidate, "What is the single most serious threat to the national security of the United States?" In rare agreement, Kerry and Bush both cited nuclear terrorism. As the president said, "I agree with my opponent that the biggest threat facing the country is weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terrorist network." During the 2005 Bratislava summit, President Bush and Russian president Vladimir Putin for the first time accepted responsibility for addressing the threat and for ensuring that their governments secure loose nuclear material in their countries as quickly as possible. They assigned responsibility for securing nuclear materials to individuals (U.S. energy secretary Samuel W. Bodman and his Russian counterpart, the head of the Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency) and held them accountable by requiring regular progress reports.'

http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/21535/?a=f

August 2008: "Hence, the Net can be used to create a smear campaign and augment a questionable series of more formal assertions like the Swift Boat campaign used against John Kerry. This can be done by the public at large, and neither party really has an advantage."

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2328863,00.asp

June 2008: "This is hardly the first time a Democratic candidate has faced such a challenge -- Al Gore lost white voters by 12 points in 2000, and John F. Kerry lost them by 17 points in 2004 -- but it is a significantly larger shortfall than Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton encountered in their winning campaigns."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/21/AR2008062101825.html

June 2008: 'In 2004, President Bush charged that his opponent for reelection, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), was advocating a pre-Sept. 11 mind-set after Kerry compared Islamic terrorism to other global scourges such as drug trafficking and said it is "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world." The charge appeared to help Bush sway security-minded voters on his way to reelection.'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/17/AR2008061702819.html

August 2007: Some political analysts harshly criticized Kerry in 2004 for failing to counter Bush's charismatic style with an equally attractive appeal of his own. Many, like Slate's Chris Suellentrop, complained that Kerry lacked vision. 'Vision without details beats details without vision,' Suellentrop wrote. Others, like Thomas Frank, wrote that Kerry should have countered Bush's 'cultural populism' with 'genuine economic populism.' But, if Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski are right, it would have been very difficult for any politician--not just the stolid Kerry--to overcome Bush's built-in advantage from being the nation's leader at a time when many voters feared another attack. In 2004, Bush, as the commander-in-chief, still had the unconscious on his side. And that advantage may have proven insuperable.

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20070827&s=judis082707

March 2007: After the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush chose a radically different approach. He declared the fight against al-Qaeda to be a 'war' -- even comparing it to World War II and the Cold War -- and labeled suspects 'combatants' who were subject to military detention. He ridiculed Sen. John Kerry for suggesting that terrorists should be fought primarily by law enforcement means. With the 2001 attacks, he said, 'the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States of America, and war is what they got.'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/16/AR2007031601993.html

Relationships

RoleNameTypeLast Updated
Member of (past or present) Democratic Party / Democratic National Committee (DNC) Organization Feb 6, 2006
Organization Executive (past or present) Massachusetts (State Government) Organization Feb 6, 2006
Member of (past or present) US Senate Organization Feb 6, 2006
Student/Trainee (past or present) Yale University Organization Feb 6, 2006
Colleague/Co-worker of (past or present) Supervisor of (past or present) Senator John Edwards Esq. Person Jan 19, 2006
Family Member Teresa Heinz Kerry Person Feb 6, 2006
Advised by (past or present) Joe Lockhart Person Sep 23, 2004
Financial Recipient from (past or present) Mary O. McCarthy Person May 15, 2006
Advised by (past or present) Prof. Robert A. Pastor Ph.D., M.P.A. Person Jan 10, 2009

Articles and Resources

67 Articles and Resources. Go to:  [Next 20]   [End]

Date Fairness.com Resource Read it at:
May 22, 2010 Lies as Wishes

QUOTE: “I think that lies are like wishes,” said Bella DePaulo, a psychology professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. “So when you wish you were a certain kind of person that you know you’re not, and maybe you’re not willing to do what it would take to become that person or can’t go back, then it becomes very tempting to lie.”

 New York Times
Sep 06, 2009 IRS asked to repeal cell phone tax: Businesses are urging the IRS to cease taxing the personal use of work-issued cell phones.

QUOTE: A message is being conveyed by lobbying groups for a wide array of industries... cell phones are so ubiquitous and have become such an essential business tool that it’s nearly impossible to keep track of the line between professional and personal use [to document for income tax purposes].

 Hill
Aug 22, 2009 Ridge's Telling Tale, or Just Another Tell-All?

QUOTE: There is something about the Beltway culture that seems to discourage protest resignations. Instead, the well-worn path is to collect your grievances, find a publisher, hit the talk-show circuit and recast yourself as a painfully honest critic of the administration you once saluted.

 Washington Post
Jun 18, 2009 Exclusive Wireless Contracts Examined: Critics Say Deals Stifle Competition

QUOTE: growing debate on whether the practice of locking in cellphones to exclusive contracts with only one carrier has led to higher prices and fewer choices for consumers and stifled competition...

 Washington Post
Jun 13, 2009 Employees May Be Taxed for Texting If IRS Updates Work Cellphone Rules

QUOTE: ...IRS would more strictly enforce an existing law that classifies company-issued cellphones as a taxable benefit -- an idea decried by employers and wireless companies who argue that mobile phones are now essential tools in the workplace...

 Washington Post
Jun 12, 2009 IRS Seeks to Simplify Workers' Cellphone Tax Law

QUOTE: the Internal Revenue Service is weighing whether a portion of a work-related cellphone bill should be taxed as income....The law was designed to prevent employees from using employee-issued cellphones for personal calls and then writing them off as a work-related tax deduction.

 Washington Post
May 23, 2009 Nuance Is Fine Until It’s a Flip-Flop

QUOTE: It was the kind of careful, nuanced argument...a methodical laying-out of the facts by a president who seems convinced that if he simply explains himself to the American people, they will surely understand his position and forgive him for changing his mind. It is a tactic Mr. Obama has employed repeatedly as president...

 New York Times
Nov 01, 2008 Nuclear Deterrence in the Age of Nuclear Terrorism An attack on one of the great cities of the world is almost inevitable. But with better detection technologies, a new international alliance could st

QUOTE: Given current policies and practices, a nuclear terrorist attack that devastates one of the great cities of the world is inevitable. In my judgment, if governments do no more and no less than they are doing today, the odds of such an event within a decade are more than 50 percent.

 Technology Review
Oct 24, 2008 Debate to delay 'white space' vote heats up

QUOTE: Google and Microsoft, support the use of "white spaces," because they believe the spectrum can be used to help deliver new wireless broadband services. After more than four years, and over 30,000 filings by the public, broadcasters now accuse the commission of a rush to judgment on the white spaces.

 CNET
Oct 19, 2008 Many Holes in Disclosure of Nominees’ Health

QUOTE: Fifteen days before the election, serious gaps remain in the public’s knowledge about the health of the presidential and vice-presidential nominees. The limited information provided by the candidates is a striking departure from recent campaigns, in which many candidates and their doctors were more forthcoming.

 New York Times
Aug 08, 2008 Dirty Politics in the Internet Age

QUOTE: Hence, the Net can be used to create a smear campaign and augment a questionable series of more formal assertions like the Swift Boat campaign used against John Kerry. This can be done by the public at large, and neither party really has an advantage. The key to success in the upcoming election will be home-brewed dirty tricks—all played out on the Internet.

 PC Magazine
Jul 01, 2008 Mandela off U.S. terrorism watch lists

QUOTE: Mandela and other members of the African National Congress have been on the list because of their fight against South Africa's apartheid regime, which gave way to majority rule in 1994. Apartheid was the nation's system of legalized racial segregation that was enforced by the National Party government between 1948 and 1994.

 CNN (Cable News Network)
Jun 22, 2008 3 in 10 Americans Admit to Race Bias: Survey Shows Age, Too, May Affect Election Views

QUOTE: As Sen. Barack Obama opens his campaign as the first African American on a major party presidential ticket, nearly half of all Americans say race relations in the country are in bad shape and three in 10 acknowledge feelings of racial prejudice, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Lingering racial bias affects the public's assessments of the Democrat from Illinois, but offsetting advantages and Sen. John McCain's age could be bigger factors in determining the next occupant of the White House.

 Washington Post
Jun 18, 2008 Candidates Clash on Terrorism: In Sharp Exchange, Each Side Calls Other's Position a Risk

QUOTE: In a Tuesday morning conference call with reporters, McCain advisers criticized Obama as "naive" and "delusional" in his approach to the handling of terrorism suspects after he expressed support for last week's Supreme Court decision granting detainees the right to seek habeas corpus hearings. Obama fired back, saying the Republicans who had led failed efforts to capture Osama bin Laden lacked the standing to criticize him on the issue.

 Washington Post
Feb 18, 2008 Desiring a Fair Vote, Doubting It Will Be: Pakistanis Expect Rigging by Government

QUOTE: The [Pakistani word] is "dhandali" -- rigging -- a wide-ranging practice that includes blatant acts such as stuffing ballot boxes and hiring thugs to intimidate voters at polling stations, as well as more subtle techniques such as extorting loyalty from public employees and using official vehicles and funds to promote pro-government candidates.

 Washington Post
Feb 17, 2008 A Rotten Way to Pick a President

QUOTE: ...caucuses can be highly undemocratic. They eliminate the secret ballot, forcing voters to declare their loyalties publicly, and are thus vulnerable to intimidation and manipulation. If you can't show up at a specific hour, you can't vote...

 Washington Post
Aug 17, 2007 Death Grip: How Political Psychology Explains Bush's Ghastly Success.

QUOTE: the mere thought of one's mortality can trigger a range of emotions--from disdain for other races, religions, and nations, to a preference for charismatic over pragmatic leaders, to a heightened attraction to traditional mores....Barring another assault on American soil, the moment of September 11--and the reminder of mortality that it brought--may well have passed. And with it, too, the ascendancy of politicians who exploited the fear of death that lies within us all.

 New Republic, The (TNR)
Jul 25, 2007 Agency Erred in Canceling Loans to 8,000 Along Gulf, Audit Finds

QUOTE: The Small Business Administration, which runs the federal government’s largest program to help disaster victims rebuild their houses, improperly canceled thousands of loans it had promised homeowners along the Gulf Coast after the 2005 hurricanes...

 New York Times
Jul 15, 2007 Climate Change Debate Hinges On Economics: Lawmakers Doubt Voters Would Fund Big Carbon Cuts

QUOTE: Energy and climate experts say the world already possesses the technological know-how for trimming greenhouse gas emissions...[but] Because of the enormous cost of addressing global warming, the energy legislation considered by Congress so far will make barely a dent in the problem.

 Washington Post
Jul 02, 2007 Florida election mayhem for 2008: How the home of hanging chads, Katherine Harris and butterfly ballots is shaking up the Democratic primary.

QUOTE: The biggest political event over the past three months in the Democratic presidential race .... came May 21 when Florida Republican Gov. Charlie Crist signed legislation moving the Sunshine State's presidential primary to next Jan. 29. ... Six weeks later, it is slowly becoming apparent that Florida destroyed the last vestiges of sanity in the 2008 presidential calendar by moving its primary.

 Salon

67 Articles and Resources. Go to:  [Next 20]   [End]