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Security

Kerry: Romney Is ‘Naive’ For Calling Russia American’s Top Adversary

By Ben Armbruster on May 25, 2012 at 2:45 pm

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) told Bloomberg News’s Al Hunt in an interview to be aired this weekend that presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney is “breathtakingly off target and naive” for calling Russia the nation’s “number one geopolitical foe.” The Hill reports:

“I think that candidate Romney has been breathtakingly off target, and naive and in fact wrong in his judgment about Russia when he said Russia is our number one foe. I cannot think of any statement that frankly is more inappropriately threatening and simply wrong by any calculus than that,” Kerry told Bloomberg.

Kerry revealed that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told him during a recent meeting that Russian leaders also think that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must go. “We have much bigger problems on this planet in the Middle East, with the evolution of Egypt, with the challenge of Syria, terrorism, al-Qaeda in Yemen, and so forth,” Kerry said.

Bush administration Secretary of State Colin Powell similarly criticized Romney this week for his Russia comments. The former four-star U.S. Army general said Romney “really needs to not just accept these cataclysmic sort of pronouncements.” Powell added, “Let’s be mature people and look at the reality of the situation and not find ways to see if we can hyperbolize the situation.”

NEWS FLASH

Kerry Pens Letter In Defense Of Binational Gay Couple Threatened By DOMA | Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) has written a letter to the Department of Homeland Security on behalf of one woman facing deportation to Pakistan because the federal government does not recognize her same-sex marriage to an American citizen. The Massachusetts woman “lost her student visa because she could not afford to remain in college” and now her spouse has filed a petition to sponsor her for a marriage-based green card, but the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services cannot approve the petition because it uses the Defense of Marriage Act’s definition of marriage as between a man and a woman. In his letter, “Kerry asked that the couple’s petition be put on hold until the Defense of Marriage Act is repealed or the litigation challenging the law is settled. The delay would prevent the petition from being denied and would allow the Pakistani woman to stay in the United States until the legal battle is resolved.”

Election

ROMNEY LIES: Claims John Kerry Released 2 Years Of Tax Returns But Kerry Actually Released 20

By Judd Legum on Apr 17, 2012 at 6:15 pm

In a CNBC interview with Larry Kudlow to air later tonight, Mitt Romney defends his decision to release only two years of tax returns — both filed after he decided to run for President — by claiming that 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry also released two years. From an advanced transcript:

KUDLOW: Why not release your tax returns? Why not go back 10 years?

Gov. ROMNEY: Well, we’ve had people run for president before, and they’ve released two years. John Kerry released two years of taxes.. I’ve released one already, put the estimate out for the next year. We’ll have two years of taxes..

In fact, John Kerry released not two years of returns, but 20. From an April 14, 2004 article by Byron York:

In addition to his 2003 returns, Kerry also released federal tax returns from the years 1999 to 2002 yesterday. There has been some dispute about returns for those years. Kerry has claimed that he had already released the returns — in January of this year, he said, “I released all my tax returns for 20 years. I have never not released my tax returns throughout my political career.” But aside from releasing details from his 2002 taxes — which showed a total income of $144,091 — it is not clear that Kerry has ever made public his returns from 1999 or 2000 or 2001 before now.

Thus far, Mitt Romney has only released one year of returns. Romney’s father, George Romney, released 12 years of returns, stating “one year could be a fluke, perhaps done for show.”

Justice

John Kerry: We Need A Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights

By Guest Blogger on Mar 21, 2012 at 4:15 pm

Our guest blogger is Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA)

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA)

Forgive my frustration, but on the subject of Internet privacy, I feel just a little bit like we’re all starring in a remake of the movie “Groundhog Day.”

Every couple of weeks, the press exposes a company doing something with our information we intuitively know is unfair. The next day, politicians send outraged press releases and letters.

But nothing changes.

And we know Americans want change. The Pew Internet and American Life Project recently reported that sixty-eight percent of Americans are not OK with targeted advertising because they don’t want their online activities tracked and analyzed. And they certainly don’t like feeling powerless to control the tracking. Only 38 percent of Internet users say they knew how to limit the information an online company collects on them. I believe those two data points are related and that if we required collectors to give Americans more and easier to use control over their information, they would be less squeamish about its collection and use.

So why is there talk but no legislative action to give Americans control over their own identities?

Because there’s not enough activism.

Politicians will always acknowledge that polls aren’t a great indication of public opinion. Activism is — because activism reflects intensity.

For decades, Americans told pollsters they didn’t want lakes that caught on fire and drinking water that tasted funny.

But Richard Nixon didn’t feel compelled to sign the EPA into existence until millions of people poured into the streets on the First Earth Day and demanded it.

That’s the difference between opinion and activism, ideas vs. intensity.

I can tell you that there are many companies collecting information on you right now lobbying hard against any new law governing what they do. Even more troubling – they believe that you don’t have or should not have any “rights” when it comes to your information. I disagree, and so does this Administration.

But we need to start a movement that actually gets us somewhere — resulting in passage of the Kerry-McCain Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights. Read more

LGBT

Kerry Seeks ‘Equal Treatment Of LGBT Applicants’ In Financial Aid Process

By Guest Blogger on Dec 16, 2011 at 5:10 pm

Our guest blogger is Crosby Burns, special assistant for the LGBT Research and Communications Project at American Progress.

Earlier this week, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) urged the Obama administration to ensure equal treatment of LGBT applicants in the financial aid process. “Taxpayer-funded financial aid is often being misallocated based on sexual orientation when it should be based solely on financial need,” Kerry wrote in a letter addressed to Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Indeed, as a result of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the FAFSA is often unable to count parents, spouses, step-children, and other family members as part of an individual’s application for financial aid. The resulting unequal treatment leads to significant distortions in the allocation of financial aid for applicants who have two mothers or two fathers. As a recent report from the Center for American Progress found, the FAFSA can rob these families of much needed aid to finance applicants’ higher education or could even result in a larger financial aid package to families headed by same-sex couples. LGBT youth and transgender applicants also experience significant barriers to submitting a FAFSA on time, complete, or at all.

For its part, the federal government assigned more than $134 billion in financial aid to more than 14 million students last year, making it the single largest grantee of aid. Since most other financial aid depends on the FAFSA application for federal aid, these distortions will trickle down throughout the entire financial aid application process, even outside of the federal government’s support.

Economy

Super Committee Member Sen. Kerry: Grover Norquist Is ‘The 13th Member Of This Committee’

By Tanya Somanader on Nov 21, 2011 at 10:25 am

Today, the 12-member congressional super committee is expected to announce failure to reach an agreement to cut $1.5 trillion from the federal budget. One of major “sticking divides,” as Democratic co-chair Sen. Patty Murray (WA) noted, has been Republicans refusal to consider a widely supported tax increase on America’s wealthy.

This intransigence is largely motivated by the shadowy influence of lobbyist Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, who threatens to serve any Republican who breaks his anti-tax pledge with electoral defeat. Today on CNN, super committee member Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) noted that Norquist’s handcuffs on his GOP colleagues essentially makes him the “13th member of this committee without being there“:

KERRY: We Democrats put a $4 trillion dollar plan on the table. We had $1.3 trillion of cuts, and we had $1.3 trillion in revenue. Now, some of that revenue, we’re not asking that to happen tomorrow or the next day, it could happen in a year. This is a ten-year plan and longer. So we have the ability here to do something that’s fair for all Americans. But unfortunately, this thing about the Bush tax cuts and the pledge to Grover Norquist keeps coming up. Grover Norquist has been the 13th member of this committee without being there. I can’t tell you how many times we hear about ‘the pledge, the pledge.’ Well all of us took a pledge to uphold the Constitution and to full and faithfully and well-execute our duties and I think that requires us to try and reach an agreement. So we have to compromise.

Watch it:

Despite Norquist’s desire to “crush the other team,” it seems that more and more members of his own team are starting to agree with Kerry. GOP Rep. Mike Simpson (ID) said regarding Norquist’s anti-tax pledge, “I didn’t know I was signing a marriage agreement.” Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) blasted Norquist for “paralyzing Congress.” Freshman Rep. Reid Ribble (R-WI) vowed to never sign another pledge, noting the last straw came when Norquist wouldn’t let Republicans close tax loopholes that subsidize ethanol production. Former GOP Sen. Alan Simpson simply said, “If Grover Norquist is the most powerful person in America, he should run for president” rather than peddle his influence backstage.

Politics

Kerry: What Republicans Are Telling You Is ‘Patently Not True’

By Travis Waldron on Nov 20, 2011 at 12:10 pm

As the deficit super committee nears its deadline with failure likely, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press today to slam Republicans for refusing to negotiate in good faith. Appearing after Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), the number two Senate Republican, Kerry told host David Gregory that much of what Kyl said was “patently not true.”

He also took on the GOP’s proposal for being egregiously misguided. As ThinkProgress has noted, the super committee plan presented by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) would result in a massive tax cut for the rich while enacting budget cuts and tax increases that primarily buden the working- and middle-classes. Today, Kerry called out the GOP’s plan on Meet The Press, calling the proposal the biggest tax cut since before the Great Depression — “we all know how that turned out,” he quipped — and noting that the super committee was formed to reduce the deficit, not to make it larger with huge tax cuts:

KERRY: This is the most important thing of all: The Toomey plan still results in the biggest tax cut since the Great Depression. It would be the biggest tax cut since Calvin Coolidge, and we all know how that turned out. Now, we didn’t come here to do another tax cut for the wealthiest people while we’re (asking) fixed-income seniors to ante up more, people on Medicaid, who are poor, to ante up more.

Watch it:

NEWS FLASH

Kerry Promises To ‘Leave No Question Unanswered’ On Keystone XL Scandal | Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has raised the stakes on the State Department’s approval process for TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. “There’s a lot at stake here and I’ll do my best to leave no question unanswered, including every possible economic and environmental consideration, before a final decision is made,” Kerry said in a statement. The State Department, which has approval authority over the proposed Canada-to-Texas pipeline, is under increasing scrutiny for allowing TransCanada influence over the environmental impact process and the public hearings, and for potentially undue ties between lobbyists and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

By Brad Johnson on Oct 28, 2011 at 10:30 am

Politics

Kerry Cancels Fundraisers, Vows To Avoid Lobbyists While On Super Committee

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Sep 12, 2011 at 11:05 am

As the work of the debt-reduction super committee gets underway in earnest, lobbyists have launched a “full-court press” to protect their clients from the chopping blocks — meeting lawmakers, hosting fundraisers, and engaging in grassroots outreach. “The 12 Members of the Super Committee are going to be lobbied so hard in the next four months, they will be known as the ‘Dirty Dozen,’” Republican lobbyist Alex Vogel told Politico last month. A Democratic lobbyist quipped that he was “preparing by writing 12 really large checks.”

But at least one member of the bipartisan committee has decided to the steer clear of Washington’s influence machine. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) has canceled fundraisers and is swearing off lobbyists while the committee works:

“I’m not meeting with a lot of lobbyists; I’m meeting with people I choose to meet with, who can inform me, assist in the process of crunching numbers and dealing with consequences, and so forth,” Kerry told the [Boston] Globe last week in his first extensive interview about his committee membership. [...]

Kerry said he has already cancelled two fund-raisers and won’t raise any money during the committee’s work through Nov. 23.

“I will not fund-raise; I will raise no money,” the senator told the Globe. “I’m not raising any money while the committee is working.”

Super committee members have scheduled at least 14 fundraisers through Thanksgiving, the committee’s deadline to find $1.5 trillion in savings, according to the Sunlight Foundation. “These events are basically giving access to these members for special interests,” said Sunlight’s Bill Allison. One of those hosting fundraisers is House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI), who even created a new fundraising organization that will split money between his personal campaign and his PAC.

Most of the members are already prodigious fundraisers, with large war chests and strong backing from corporate donors and lobbyists. For instance, the Wall Street-aligned Club for Growth is the largest single donor to committee members, giving over $1 million to the group’s Republican lawmakers. The health care and defense industries have perhaps the most on the line in the negotiations, and the industries are employing dozens of former congressional staffers to help influence their former bosses. Meanwhile, many of committee’s staffers, especially on the Republican side, are former lobbyists themselves.

Good government groups have proposed special transparency rules for the super committee, given its unusual powers, calling for real-time disclosure of campaign contributions and meetings with lobbyists.

Climate Progress

Climate Hawks John Kerry And Patty Murray Appointed To Deficit Committee

By Brad Johnson on Aug 10, 2011 at 6:58 pm

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) at the Copenhagen climate conference.

Sens. John Kerry (D-MA), Patty Murray (D-WA), and Max Baucus (D-MT) have been named to the fiscal super committee tasked with constructing a bipartisan plan to rein in the long-term federal deficit. Considering that Republicans have practically proscribed new revenues, new investments, or eliminating tax subsidies, the committee is likely to continue America’s slide into austerity.

However low the likelihood, the committee does have the opportunity to put together a package that actually addresses the real long-term threats the nation faces, with desperately needed clean-energy and climate-resilience infrastructure spending funded by strict taxes or a cap on carbon pollution.

Kerry has said he believes that climate change “biggest long term threat” to national security. His 2010 climate bill was scored by the Congressional Budget Office to reduce the deficit by $19 billion, even using its extremely conservative assumptions that a massive investment in clean energy and infrastructure would somehow slow economic growth. A more aggressive climate plan that reflects the true urgency of the climate crisis would do even more to restore jobs and cut the deficit.

“We owe it to our children and future generations to get this issue under control and soon,” Murray argues about climate change.

Unfortunately, Kerry and Murray have not yet spread their climate-hawk wings and pointed out that the only solution to the nation’s long-term fiscal outlook involves solving the climate crisis. On Meet the Press, Kerry described his view thusly:

And the real problem for our country is not the short-term debt. We can deal with that. It’s the long-term debt. It’s the structural debt of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid measured against the demographics of our nation. That, then juxtaposed to the lack of jobs and job creation and growth. That’s our problem, structural.

In a joint statement with Baucus, Kerry and Murray said:

Our challenge is to find common ground without damaging anyone’s principles. We believe we can get there.

Their challenges is to save this nation’s long-term economic future. One can only hope they choose reality over compromise, even if Republican Party principles like denying science are damaged.

Update

The average League of Conservation Voters score of the nine members named to the panel so far is 38.11 out of a possible 100.

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