Markey, E SEN

lcv top score Eight House members had perfect scores: Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Woolsey (D-Calif.), Stark (D-Calif.), Honda (D-Calif.), Capps (D-Calif.), Polis (D-Col.), Quigley (D-Ill.), Markey (D-Mass.).

now SENATE

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SCOTUS REFORM

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"We finally have a Senator who has committed to introduce the #WeThePeopleAmendment in the Senate. But there's a caveat: he is asking us to bring at least 5 other Senators on board, and specifically, to get one or more that serve in the Judiciary Committee.

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80 yo primaried unsucc by

Elections Aug 28, 2026

The Corporate Dem Asking Super PACs To Call Him A Progressive

Seth Moulton once called progressive populism a recipe for losing. Now he’s asking Wall Street financiers to help him claim the progressive mantle.

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The ‘court packing’ myth

Many pundits hailed Roberts for opposing the overturning of Roe v. Wade, but in the Dobbs decision, he lost out to the five Republican appointees on ‘his’ court who are seemingly even further right than he is.

Many progressives weren’t buying the righteous, caring and politically aloof version of himself Roberts portrayed back then, and they say this latest reporting shows they were right.

“That's interesting how there's sort of this story out there that Roberts was like a moderate and mediator. And the [NYT] story would suggest that’s not really necessarily the case,” Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) told Raw Story after voting on the Senate floor this week.

While Republican rhetoric paints all elected Democrats — from the top of the party’s presidential ticket on down — as wanting to expand, or ‘pack,’ the court, only three Senate Democrats have formally endorsed a progressive measure to expand the size of the court, as Raw Story reported last month.

Smith and Massachusetts Democratic Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren are the three who’ve publicly endorsed Markey’s measure to expand the size of the Supreme Court. That’s it.

Even with all the negative press, Smith says other Senate Democrats haven’t approached them about their measure to expand the size of the court.

“I haven't heard any,” Smith said.

That doesn’t mean her colleagues aren’t discussing the Roberts Court....

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Science just proved what we all suspected: the 2024 election was rigged

Thom Hartmann May 09, 2026

It sure looks like tech billionaires and foreign dictatorships gave us Trump in 2024. This is as bad as the massive Russian bot presence on Facebook and Twitter back in 2016, which Robert Mueller documented gave Trump the presidency that time.

A peer-reviewed study released Thursday in Nature, the world’s most prestigious scientific journal, has finally put hard numbers to what a lot of us suspected the moment the 2024 election was called for Trump (and Republicans in Congress) by the big networks: the algorithms that control our largest social media platforms intentionally and explicitly tilted the playing field, and they tilted it for Donald Trump and the GOP.

Researchers at New York University Abu Dhabi created hundreds of “sock puppet” TikTok accounts in New York, Texas, and Georgia (via VPN), uploaded to them either pro-Democratic or pro-Republican videos to show their political leanings, and then watched what TikTok’s algorithm fed back to them every day over the 27 weeks leading up to Election Day.

Across more than 280,000 recommendations, Republican-seeded accounts received about 11.5 percent more “party-aligned content” than their Democratic counterparts, while the pro-Democratic accounts were force-fed 7.5 percent more attacks from the other side. As Professor Talal Rahwan put it:

“The algorithm wasn’t just giving people what they want; it was giving one side more of what the other side says about them.”

The pro-rightwing bias was even more dramatic when researchers looked at how the candidates’ own accounts did. Candidate Trump’s official TikTok videos were pushed to Democratic-leaning users 27 percent of the time, while Kamala Harris’s videos only reached Republican-leaning users just 15.3 percent of the time.

Translation: Leading up to the 2024 election, TikTok was working overtime to expose Democrats and lefties to MAGA’s most persuasive messaging, all while shielding rightwingers, independents, and Republican voters from Harris’s voice.

Making it even more astonishingly consequential, studies show that TikTok matters enormously to young people; roughly half of TikTok users under 30 say they use the app to keep up with politics and news, and that TikTok-engaged demographic shifted a mind-boggling full 10 percentage points toward Trump between 2020 and 2024 following this exposure.

Young men, for example, flipped from voting 56 percent Biden in 2020 to 56 percent choosing Trump in 2024, the kind of swing that decides battleground states.

Even more troubling, other research shows that TikTok isn’t an outlier. It’s one piece of a much larger algorithm-run social media ecosystem, and that system is now the main way a plurality of Americans engage with politics. Pew Research, for example, found that 42 percent of US social media users consider these platforms “important” for getting involved in political and social issues, and almost none of them have any idea how the top-secret social media algorithms decide what they see.

Sometimes it’s so obvious that it’s surprising it’s not a bigger news story.

Researchers at the Queensland University of Technology found a “structural break for Musk’s metrics around July 13th, 2024,” the exact day Elon Musk endorsed Trump. Overnight, algorithm-driven view counts on Musk’s own X posts jumped 138 percent and retweets exploded 237 percent, far above what any other major account experienced.

And it wasn’t just Musk’s own posts that got the boost; other pro-MAGA, pro-white supremacy, pro-GOP right-wing accounts across X were also systematically amplified. A separate peer-reviewed field experiment published this year in Nature randomly assigned active US users to either an algorithmic or chronological X feed for seven weeks. The result — what could only be called successful brainwashing of those being fed posts by the X algorithm — was astonishing.

The scientists noted that those on the algorithmic feed shifted “towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump, and views on the war in Ukraine.”

And once people are initially convinced of a worldview, changing their mind is a huge and usually unsuccessful undertaking, which is why rightwing billionaires were so eager to fund Charlie Kirk and other programs to indoctrinate schoolkids. Switching back to a chronological feed didn’t undo the damage.

This was on top of the roughly $277 million Musk personally spent electing Trump and Republicans, $239 million of it through his America PAC, making him by a wide margin the largest individual donor of the 2024 cycle.

Then there’s Mark Zuckerberg. After spending a decade telling Congress that Meta was politically neutral, Zuckerberg watched Trump win, metaphorically dropped to his knees, and immediately killed the fact-checking systems on Facebook and Instagram that kept identifying and calling out Trump’s and Republicans’ lies and misrepresentations.

Like a loyal puppy (or a terrified rabbit), Zuck called Trump’s reelection “a cultural tipping point,” wrote a $1 million check to Trump’s inaugural slush fund, replaced his head of global policy with longtime Bush-era Republican Joel Kaplan, and then announced he was moving Meta’s trust-and-safety operation from California to Texas. Meta’s institutional pivot toward Trump and MAGA wasn’t even subtle.

YouTube — also largely owned and run by right-wing billionaires — isn’t innocent either. A UC Davis audit using 100,000 sock-puppet accounts found that right-leaning users get systematically funneled into channels pushing rightwing extremism, conspiracy theories, and hard-right “otherwise problematic content,” while left-leaning users see nothing comparable.

A separate Brookings analysis found that YouTube’s algorithm tugs every user, regardless of where they start, “in a moderately conservative direction.”

I’ve been around digital media since the very beginning. My business partner Nigel Peacock and I were running forums on CompuServe back in the early 1980s, when “going online” meant a 300-baud modem screeching into your phone line and a connection bill that could put a small business under in a month.

The platforms were primitive, slow, and gloriously pluralistic; gatekeepers were a handful of sysops who worked with Nigel and me (CompuServe paid us) trying to keep the message boards clean and useful. Things were civil, the feed was chronological, and there was no anonymity; even political arguments were reasonable.

None of us back then imagined that one day a few billionaires would be able to flip a switch in Beijing, San Francisco, or Austin and successfully shift the political mood of an entire continent overnight. But that’s exactly where we are today, and it appears to have been the tipping point that brought us Trump and all the horrors that accompanied him.

The closest historical parallel is the era of William Randolph Hearst and the Yellow Press at the turn of the 20th century. Hearst’s chain of newspapers reached more readers than any information outlet in human history up to that point, and when he decided it would be in his interest for America to have a war with Spain in 1898, he largely manufactured one with wild, sensationalist coverage of an explosion in the boiler room of the USS Maine in Havana harbor, casting it as an attack against America.

He’s said to have cabled his illustrator in Cuba, “You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war.” And, sure enough, within just a few months, America was at war.

The difference between Hearst and the men running today’s platforms isn’t moral; it’s mechanical. Hearst had to print on physical paper and ship it on physical trains. Musk, Zuckerberg, and the executives at TikTok and Google/YouTube can rewrite the political information environment in which hundreds of millions of people are marinating in real time, with no editor, no copy desk, and — unless things change — exactly zero public accountability.

So what do we do about these men effortlessly swinging our elections invisibly and without spending a penny of their own money? Three things are at the top of the list that Democrats in Congress and Democratic candidates need to make priorities.

First, Congress needs to require algorithmic transparency, as I suggested in The Hidden History of Big Brother in America. Senators Markey and Blumenthal have introduced excellent bills demanding that platforms disclose how their recommendation systems weight political content and forcing them to submit to fully independent audits. Given the political power these platforms and their billionaire owners command and how they’ll fight to hang onto it, none of these types of bills will pass without sustained public pressure.

Second, we need to repeal or substantially reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act so that algorithm-driven platforms are treated legally like the publishers they are, rather than like the telephone wires they used to travel over.

Third, the Justice Department’s antitrust division needs to be unleashed against the handful of companies that now control the political conversation in America. Standard Oil was broken up in 1911. AT&T was broken up in 1984. There is nothing about Meta, X, or Google that makes them more sacred that these behemoths that preceded them.

Call your senators today through the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and tell them you want algorithmic transparency legislation and Section 230 reform. Make sure your voter registration is current at vote.org, check on your state-level legislators at openstates.org, and start telling everyone you know that science has now proven that the 2024 election wasn’t a free and fair contest of ideas.

It was — based on this new research — a rigged information environment run by a handful of billionaires that put a corrupt, predatory fellow billionaire in the White House and helped install billionaire-friendly Republican lickspittles in Congress and state houses across the country.

We can fix this mess. But only if we stop scrolling and start demanding change.

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'Polluters must pay': Senators urge Biden DOJ to sue Big Oil over decades of climate lies

Jake Johnson and Common Dreams July 31, 2023

"Thanks to the illegal lies of the fossil fuel industry, climate change is wreaking catastrophic damage upon the United States," four progressive U.S. senators write in a new letter.

A group of progressive U.S. senators on Monday urged President Joe Biden's Justice Department to take legal action against the fossil fuel industry over its deliberate efforts to "mislead consumers and discredit climate science in pursuit of massive profits."

"The actions of ExxonMobil, Shell, and potentially other fossil fuel companies represent a clear violation of federal racketeering laws, truth in advertising laws, consumer protection laws, and potentially other laws, and the department must act swiftly to hold them accountable for their unlawful actions," reads aletter that Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The senators pointed to recently unveiled records that show Shell knewas soon as the early 1970s that burning fossil fuels could cause climate change—knowledge that was not reflected in their public messaging and advertising. Exxon also knew about the link between fossil fuels and climate change in the 1970s but publicly cast doubt on such a link and funded groups peddling climate denial.

"Despite these companies' knowledge about climate change and the role their industry was playing in driving carbon emissions, they chose to participate in a decadeslong, carefully coordinated campaign of misinformation to obfuscate climate science and convince the public that fossil fuels are not the primary driver of climate change," the senators wrote in their letter to Garland.

"To coordinate their illegal misinformation campaign, the fossil fuel industry funded a multimillion-dollar plan through the American Petroleum Institute that sought to make climate change a 'non-issue,'" the senators continued. "According to this plan, 'victory will be achieved' when 'recognition of the uncertainties [in climate science] become part of the 'conventional wisdom.' Exxon, whose climate predictions from the 1970s have proved remarkably correct, was a primary contributor to this plan."

"Like with Big Tobacco, the fossil fuel industry's illegal, coordinated campaign of misinformation has proven tremendously profitable."

The oil and gas industry's efforts to mislead the public about climate change "bears a striking resemblance" to the tobacco industry's campaign of lies about the dangers of cigarettes, the senators argued. In 2006, major U.S. tobacco companies were found guilty of violating civil racketeering laws and making deceptive statements about their products.

"Both industries have used the same public relations firms and researchers since the 1950s," the senators wrote Monday. "Like with Big Tobacco, the fossil fuel industry's illegal, coordinated campaign of misinformation has proven tremendously profitable. From 1990 to 2019, the six largest private fossil fuel companies made $2.4 trillion in profits."

"Thanks to the illegal lies of the fossil fuel industry, climate change is wreaking catastrophic damage upon the United States," the senators added. "Floods, droughts, extreme weather disturbances, and wildfires are causing unprecedented damage. Deloitte estimates that unchecked climate change, driven by the fossil fuel industry, could cost the United States $14.5 trillion over the next 50 years... Polluters must pay."

Dozens of U.S. cities and states have sued the oil and gas industry in recent years, part of a growing global wave of climate lawsuits aimed at holding fossil fuel giants accountable in the face of worsening extreme weather and government inaction.

The Biden Justice Department recently filed a Supreme Court brief siding with local governments in Colorado in a climate lawsuit against oil companies, but the administration has yet to take legal action of its own.

In their letter on Monday, the senators implored the Justice Department to "join the fight and work with partners at the Federal Trade Commission and other law enforcement agencies to file suits against all those who participated in the fossil fuel industry's illegal conspiracy of lies and deception under federal racketeering laws, truth in advertising laws, consumer protection laws, and any other applicable federal law."

"The future of our planet depends on it," they wrote.

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https://www.eenews.net/articles/7-years-later-failed-waxman-markey-bill-still-makes-waves/

7 years later, failed Waxman-Markey bill still makes waves

By Amanda Reilly, Kevin Bogardus | 06/27/2016

7 years later, failed Waxman-Markey bill still makes waves

It’s been seven years since the House passed major legislation to create a cap-and-trade system for heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions, and though that legislative attempt ultimately failed, the bill’s sponsors still say it sowed the seeds for other climate change efforts.

As is well-known, the Waxman-Markey bill was not taken up by the full Senate and never became law. But looking back over the last seven years, the bill’s sponsors and their former congressional aides reminisced with E&E Daily in interviews that the unsuccessful fight was worthwhile and that it has had important repercussions.

"It is always worthwhile to fight for what you believe in," former Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California said in his office in Washington, D.C., "and if you don’t succeed at first, you keep trying."

Waxman retired at the end of the 113th Congress, and early last year he joined his son’s public affairs and government relations firm, Waxman Strategies. The bill’s other sponsor, Democratic Sen. Ed Markey, has been the junior senator from Massachusetts since 2013.

The two former House lawmakers introduced their bill, formally known as the "American Clean Energy and Security Act," on May 15, 2009. The 1,400-page bill would have established emissions caps through 2050 for several greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, and instituted a system for trading emissions allowances.

Waxman-Markey squeaked by the House seven years ago yesterday on June 26, 2009, by a vote of 219-212.

Phil Barnett, who was the Democratic staff director at the House Energy and Commerce Committee under Waxman at the time, said working on the bill was "demanding" and "challenging."

"We worked intensively on it for six months … seven days a week, long hours. The bill was a top priority for Chairman Waxman," said Barnett, now a consultant, adding, "The entire staff poured their hearts and souls into the effort because they thought it would do something to solve the climate problem as well as create economic opportunities and keep costs low."

Looking back, Markey pointed to work on the health care law, another priority for President Obama, for stymying the cap-and-trade bill’s momentum in the Senate.

"We finished Waxman-Markey in the last week of June of 2009. So we had finished our work," Markey said. "We were ready to go. And the politics of it then got much more complicated than anyone thought they would have."

The political dynamics around health care reform became complex with the death of Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy in August 2009. When Republican Scott Brown won Kennedy’s seat in an upset victory in a special election in January 2010, the politics of passing major legislation became more difficult becauseBrown gave Republicans a 41st seat in the Senate, thereby robbing Democrats of a filibuster-proof majority.

Then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) never brought the climate legislation, which was championed in the upper chamber by then-Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, to a vote on the floor. Many people close to the legislation have since blamed a number of factors, including Republican opposition and concessions to special interests.

"It was a disappointment that we couldn’t get a bill all the way through, but we highlighted the issue," Waxman said. "We gave it our best effort. We tried to accomplish that goal. But I know from my own history as a member of Congress, I have to work sometimes decades before some of the proposals I made eventually became law."

He cited, for example, the 15 years it took for Congress to pass the 2009 Tobacco Control Act, which gave the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco products.

Genesis of executive branch efforts

The collapse of the Waxman-Markey bill in the Senate in 2010 spurred the Obama administration to aggressively use the executive branch to issue regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. U.S. EPA issued its final Clean Power Plan for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants last August and helped negotiate the international climate change deal in Paris last December.

In the first term, "the administration really focused on trying to get a big legislative fix to the climate change problem. As you know, that effort fell short," John Podesta, who was a top adviser to Obama and helped drive White House climate policy from 2014 to 2015, said at a recent conference in California. "In the second term, there was more focus on organizing and coordinating the agencies and the White House offices on both the domestic and international side of the equation."

Podesta, who is now campaign chairman for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, said that, if elected, the former secretary of State would likely focus on executive actions instead of attempting to pass a "grand climate fix" through Congress, even if the Senate flips to Democratic control.

Obama’s experience was "illustrative," Podesta said.

"A successful climate agenda requires a senior, serious point person in the White House," he said, "who can drive the agencies to do all they can across the whole suite of federal authorities."

But for the Obama administration, starting with a grand climate fix was "absolutely the right thing to do," Waxman said.

And Markey credited the legislation for setting the stage for the Obama administration’s second-term actions by helping to create necessary alliances.

"Much of what the president has done since then, and even if you look at the Clean Power Plan, it’s based largely on what was inside of the Waxman-Markey bill that we passed," Markey said. "So we had worked out the partnerships, the coalitions, that were still there when the president decided to develop the Clean Power Plan. So I think it was actually a very helpful political process to have gone through."

Michael Goo, another former top congressional aide who worked on the bill, agreed with the Massachusetts senator, saying, "Waxman-Markey is still the yardstick by which to measure climate programs."

"It was economywide, it set reduction pathways based on what the science was telling us, and it showed us how, by working together with industry, we could craft an effective climate program consistent with a growing economy," said Goo, now with AJW Inc. "And I think, sooner or later, we will return to something like it. "

Clinton vs. Trump

Markey called a potential Hillary Clinton administration paramount to the United States "continuing to be the world leader" on climate change.

Obama promised the globe in the time before the Paris climate negotiations that the United States would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions between 26 and 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025. In Paris last December, more than 190 nations agreed to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius and to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5 C. The agreement also commits countries to periodically revisiting their pledged domestic emissions reductions.

Both Waxman and Markey are optimistic that Clinton will become the next president of the United States.

"I think she would be wise to follow the example of President Obama in trying to put this as a high priority to work with the rest of the world to reduce the greenhouse gases that cause climate change," Waxman said. "I believe she’s committed to it."

Markey is harshly critical of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s inconsistent views on climate change. In 2009, before international climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, Trump signed an open letter calling global warming a problem; he’s since claimed that it is a hoax perpetuated by the Chinese to hurt American business.

Trump has more recently vowed to undo the Paris climate pledge, which Obama officials are hopeful will go into force before the beginning of the next administration. Once entered into force, which happens when at least 55 countries representing at least 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions formally adopt it, the withdrawal process for a nation takes four years.

Markey compared Trump’s claim that climate change is a hoax to the businessman’s former claim that Obama was born in Kenya and not the United States.

If Trump is elected, Markey said, "every single promise we made to the rest of the world [on climate change] will be broken."

A campaign issue?

Markey also predicted that climate change would become a more hotly debated issue this presidential election compared with the 2008 race, when both parties’ candidates expressed support for addressing greenhouse gas emissions, and the 2012 race between Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) when climate change was largely a nonissue.

"It’s going to become a larger and larger issue that goes right to [Trump’s] credibility as a leader in our country," Markey said. "So the more he says it, the better for us because suburban swing Republicans and independent voters believe the science of climate change."

Others have said the same.

"The Clinton campaign is going to push these issues, and their allies in the clean energy business sector are going to push these issues forcefully, especially in swing states," said Paul Bledsoe, a former climate adviser for the Bill Clinton administration and an energy consultant. "I think they see it as a profound political vulnerability for Trump and the Republicans generally."

Still, a recent Gallup poll found that, of 17 policy issues, the issue gap for climate change is greatest among voters. The poll found that 72 percent of Democrats say that the issue of climate change is "extremely" or "very" important in how they vote for a presidential candidate. Just 25 percent of Republicans say that the issue is important.

Waxman lamented the hyper-partisan nature of Congress and that "compromise" has become a "dirty word" in D.C. He said he’s surprised that supporters of cap and trade were unable to harness the business community in attracting more Republican support for the legislation.

"It has been a difficult time that we’re going through in getting a more reasonable way to compromise," he said, "because so many of the Republicans that have been elected to office in the last four, six years think that their role is to say no to anything that the Democratic president, Democrats want."

Greg Dotson, who was the chief environmental staffer on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee at the time of Waxman-Markey, said that Republican support did not materialize despite support from companies in the oil and chemical sector.

"The assumption and hope was that if you got businesses on, you got Republicans on," said Dotson, who is now the vice president for energy policy at the Center for American Progress. "So we did a lot of work to address business concerns, and we got a lot of business support, and that did not translate to broad Republican support.

"For an incoming president," Dotson added, "that’s a pretty scary precedent."

At a recent hearing in the Environment and Public Works Committee, Markey said it was ironic that coal-industry allies who are complaining about EPA greenhouse gas regulations’ impact on jobs didn’t support the cap-and-trade legislation.

He complained that the coal industry rejected an offer of billions of dollars for carbon capture and storage technology via the Waxman-Markey bill. Markey argued that the bill attempted to help coal companies stay alive in a way that works "for all the interests."

"We were trying to give them a bridge to the future," he said. "Do you think they wish they could go back to 2009 and grab that money?"

Waxman said that he was hopeful that the dynamic would change in Congress to allow for more collaboration between the parties. He predicted a disaster for Republicans at the polls in November.

"I think it’s going to change because I think they’re going to go down the tubes in this next election, and that’s going to be a lesson to them," Waxman said.

He added: "But I don’t know. I’m giving you my wishful thinking."

sen. Ed Markey applauded for silent dismissal of Texas Republican Dan Crenshaw's lame attack

Walter Einenkel Daily Kos

November 23, 2020

Sen. Ed Markey is the Massachusetts Democrat who has continued to move towards the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party, and the voters have rewarded him, first by defeating the strange Pelosi-supported primary bid by Rep. Joe Kennedy III and then

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-is-bulldozing-democracy-and-democrats-have-no-plan-to-stop-him/

take senate abol fillib

"When Democrats control the Senate in the next Congress, we must abolish the filibuster and expand the Supreme Court," Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts _{tweeted over the weekend}_, a call supported by House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler of New York.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/how-the-so-called-champion-of-american-business-fought-to-protect-profiteering-and-endangered-millions

As hospital intensive care units overflow again, and delays in COVID-19 testing reports reach record levels in many cities, a conversation I recently with Sen. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, reminded me that I had forgotten something utterly critical: Donald Trump’s decision to unilaterally disarm America in the face of the coronavirus invasion was urged upon him by an ostensible defender of American business: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

When the pandemic reached America, we weren’t ready — any more than we were ready when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. But Trump had the tools to do what the U.S. has often done: make up for lack of preparedness. The crucial gaps to fill in March were supplies for testing to limit the spread of the virus, and medical equipment to treat those who got sick — testing kits, swabs, reagents, masks, gowns and gloves — by the billions. Government health agencies estimated that if the pandemic took hold, the country would need, for example, 3.5 billion N95 medical masks. We had 12 million.

Presidents have available, and have routinely used, the Cold War-era Defense Production Act to overcome such critical supply shortages— not just in wartime, but also to ensure adequate relief supplies after natural disasters. DPA can be used to put emergency purchases at the head of a supply chain, but also to require factories to convert their output to provide needed equipment in adequate volumes. Members of Congress urged Trump to appoint a military official as DPA czar to coordinate production and distribution of essential pandemic-related medical supplies, as was done in the Korean War.

In March, Trump was leaning towards robust use of the DPA, fashioning himself as a wartime president and the battle against the coronavirus as America’s “big war.” He invoked the DPA to require General Motors to speed up its production of ventilators. But he quickly discovered that he had an enemy within — not the virus as such, but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Within days of Trump’s announcement that he would mobilize as if for war and use the DPA, the Chamber of Commerce’s lobbying army swung into action. Among the Chamber’s arguments: DPA would impose “red tape on companies precisely when they need flexibility to deal with closed borders and shuttered factories.” Unstated: if the government took charge of the supply chain for tests, masks and gowns, it could also prevent bidding wars from competing hospitals and states that would, and did, drive prices — and profits — through the roof.

In response, labor unions representing nurses, hospital staff and other frontline workers who were unable to be tested, or to obtain masks or gowns, protested and urged the Chamber to join a national mobilization to defeat the coronavirus. The appeal was not answered. On March 23, Markey and his Massachusetts colleague, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, wrote to the Chamber demanding an explanation. The Chamber’s response: Defense Production Act reliance was unnecessary, because “American companies will do whatever it takes to support America’s response to the pandemic and shore up the economy.”

But what the workers had feared — insufficient production, soaring prices and profits, chaotic delivery mechanisms — took over the health care market during the first wave of virus spikes in the Northeast. Some hospitals were paying 15 times the usual price for masks.

The Chamber continued its strenuous opposition to enabling the government to ensure an adequate supply of tests and PPE. Even Trump conceded that profiteering had taken over the market, and ultimately he did invoke the DPA to prevent it — but when it came to the export market.

Supplies increased, but often at exorbitant prices. Only when the shutdowns of most of the American economy brought the number of hospitalizations down sharply did supply and demand come into temporary balance. Americans believed that if there was a second wave later in the year, at least health care workers on the front lines would have the tools they needed.

Trump, denied by Chamber opposition of an easy pathway to acting like a heroic wartime president, seemingly lost interest. By June his focus had shifted from fighting the virus to reopening the economy and then reigniting the culture wars. Media headlines proclaiming his lack of interest didn’t even provoke “fake news” tweets from the East Wing of the White House.

The virus had a longer attention span. With major states like Florida, Texas and Arizona opening rapidly and prematurely, the holes in the jerry-built testing, tracing and quarantine systems each state had fashioned without federal guidance gave the virus its chance.

Cases — although not, initially, fatalities — began to soar. Suddenly, what any nationally coordinated effort would have been tracking and resolving all along — that the nation had stepped up production of tests, masks and gowns to meet the needs of an economy in shutdown, but had nowhere near the level of supplies for a massive second wave — came home to roost. By early July, new cases were flooding the hospital capacity of even some of the nation’s major health care centers, such as Houston.

In New Orleans, testing centers had to close eight minutes after they opened. In 100-degree heat in Phoenix, lines at testing centers were eight hours long. San Antonio and Austin were forced to limit testing to those with symptoms, leaving the system utterly unable to detect asymptomatic cases, when research suggests that to 40% of infections take place. Wait times for test results soared with caseloads, so that even those who got tested might not find out they were positive until they were well past the contagious stage.

Nurses were again forced to use one N95 mask for weeks at a time. Prices for what was actually available soared. States reported they could only fulfill 10% of their orders. Even now, in July, the U.S. has nothing like the 3.5 billion N95 masks that we knew in January we would need. Indeed, how could we? No manufacturer could have guessed in March how severe the crisis would be by fall. With no one managing the system, it was clearly foolish for any private company to produce, on speculation, several billion masks. Market signals cannot prepare America for the massive increase in possible scale required by such a pandemic. Nor can individual cities and states trigger the necessary ramp-up of supplies. Only a systematic national plan designed to ensure that we were ready for the worst-case scenario could have protected us.

Inevitably, the “market solutions” favored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have failed America not once but twice. In failing, they have taken the nation’s economy over the precipice into a deep, long, economic decline. That the loudest voice claiming to represent U.S. business chose to defend profiteering, embrace short-term thinking and risk the collapse of the American health care system and economy is both shameful and shocking.

And that most Americans, including me, had already forgotten this is scary. This is not the first time the Chamber has successfully pursued policies that put us enormously at risk — for years it has been one of the major forces preventing Washington from adopting even the most modest efforts to accelerate a transition off fossil fuels to save lives and protect the climate. But if the Chamber can get away once again with having caused massive economic damage while risking the health of millions, and with its public reputation unscathed, it’s unlikely to change its behavior.

N EXCUSE TO RECUSE: A trio of Democratic senators is asking President Trump's ambassador to the United Nations to recuse herself from dealing with the Paris climate accord as the White House prepares to formally withdraw from the landmark agreement.

A letter to Kelly Craft questions if she has too many conflicts of interest to be involved given her financial and personal ties to the industry.

Craft has $63 million invested in coal, oil and natural gas, according to the letter, and she's the wife of Joe Craft, CEO of Alliance Resource Partners, one of the largest coal companies in the U.S.

"Given your extensive family ties to the coal industry, and given that decisions about climate inherently involve decisions about the future of coal, we urge you to agree to recuse yourself from any actions to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement," wrote Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).

The State Department did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Trump has often bragged about withdrawing from the Paris accord, making an announcement in the Rose Garden in 2017 to say he intended to do so.

But the agreement doesn't allow him to begin the formal yearlong withdrawal process until Monday. The U.S. would officially be out of the deal the same date in 2020 -- just one day after the presidential elections.

All signs indicate the White House is gearing up for a formal withdrawal...

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/trump-administration-seeks-to-unleash-a-pillage-of-arctic-refuge-but-indigenous-groups-vow-to-fight-it/

no lnx

Trump administration seeks to unleash a pillage of Arctic Refuge — but indigenous groups vow to fight it

Written by Andrea Germanos / Common Dreams September 13, 2019

Indigenous leaders vowed Thursday to protect their Alaskan lands from fossil fuel exploitation after the Trump administration moved closer to allowing drilling along the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—a move the House just tried to block.

“The Gwich’in are protectors,” said Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, “and we will not give up.”

The pledge from the Gwich’in—who call the coastal plain “the sacred place where life begins”—came in response to the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for oil and gas leasing, which was released Thursday by the Bureau of Land Management.

The announcement, said Interior Secretary David Bernhardt in a press statement, represents “a big step to carry out the clear mandate we received from Congress to develop and implement a leasing program for the Coastal Plain,” referring to Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-Alaska) provision in the “tax scam” of 2017 requiring the sales for drilling rights in the area. Bernhardt is a former fossil fuel lobbyist.

In the new analysis, the administration, as The Washington Post reported, chose “the most aggressive development option for an area long closed to drilling.”

“The FEIS unlawfully opens the entire coastal plain to leasing,” wrote NRDC staff attorney Garett Rose. “It fails to even consider an approach that minimizes damage to the refuge’s unique environment, violating our bedrock environmental review law.”

But that choice came to “no one’s surprise,” according to Adam Kolton, executive director of Alaska Wilderness League, who said the Trump administration was “not even pretending that this is about restraint or meaningful protection.”

“With an eye on developing the entirety of the fragile coastal plain,” Kolton continued, “the administration has been riding roughshod over science, silencing dissent, and shutting out entire indigenous communities.”

Demientieff, whose community has highlighted the potential catastrophe the exploitation could unleash on the calving and nursery grounds for the Porcupine caribou herd, also criticized the FEIS for disrespecting “the Gwich’in Nation and all people in the Arctic and world who suffer the impacts of climate change and nonstop exploitation, while formally scratching the backs of those who seek to desecrate land and dishonor human rights to fill their pockets.”

The FEIS, as The Hill noted, is “one of the final steps before leases can be sold,” as bidding may begin after 30 days.

The timing of the release of the environmental impact statement also raised the eyebrows of Kolton, who noted that it came “literally hours” after the Democratic-controlled House voted 225-193 to block the mandate for the ANWR drilling.

Passage of that bill was welcomed by its author, by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), who said the measure “reflects a very simple proposition: there are some places too wild, too important, too unique to be spoiled by oil and gas development.”

Huffman praised lawmakers voting in favor of the measure for “protecting not just the beating biological heart of the largest wildlife refuge in the United States, but the Indigenous people who depend on this sacred, natural landscape.”

The vote was also celebrated by Indigenous and environmental groups.

Alex Taurel, head of League of Conservation Voters’ Conservation Program, called the vote “a resounding victory for the Gwich’in people, their sacred traditions, and the invaluable wildlife of the majestic Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.”

“The majority of people in the U.S. oppose oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Refuge—we will continue to stand up against special interest big polluters as long as it takes,” said Taurel, urging the Senate to follow suit.

Democratic Senators including Ed Markey (Mass.) and Michael Bennet (Colo.)took to social media this week to ramp support for their legislation to block the ANWR drilling—though its fate is likely doomed in the Republican-controlled chamber.

Ed Markey

@SenMarkey

We can’t let the Arctic Refuge, one of the last pristine wildernesses in America, be permanently destroyed by oil and gas drilling. That’s why today, we’re intro'ing the Arctic Refuge Protection Act to designate this delicate region as wilderness and prevent all future drilling.

Embedded video

February 7, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced a Green New Deal resolution. The resolution outlines what they plan to include in formal legislation down the line.

Over the following five days, primetime cable news coverage of the Green New Deal was dominated by Fox News. Fox News aired a total of 34 segments on the resolution, more than three times the combined total of MSNBC (8 segments) and CNN (3 segments).

Obviously, the Fox News coverage of the legislation was terrible. Many segments did not even mention climate change.

This is not the only example of cable news discussion of a policy issue being dominated by the right. In the weeks leading up to the State of the Union, Fox News aired nearly seven hours of coverage of state abortion measures, while CNN and MSNBC covered the same stories for less than 15 minutes combined.

Fox News dominating policy discussions of progressive initiatives has real consequences: They are immediately caricatured, with outright lies getting a massive head start. A large number of people get their first impressions through this distorted coverage, including many in the media.

When one of these issues does eventually jump to mainstream media, myths and lies often make the jump alongside. At minimum, the mainstream debate is partially about debunking the lies that have already happened.

Sunday shows fail again: America is in desperate need of an adult conversation about how to address climate change. Instead of that, the Sunday shows talked about climate change and the Green New Deal only through the narrow lens of the political horse race. Maybe we can prioritize fending off a massive destabilizing rise in sea level instead of worrying about whose poll numbers go up or down as a result of endorsing a resolution.

Meanwhile: Right-wing media are somehow worse than useless on the Green New Deal, as they've repeatedly invoked murderous dictators to complain about the initiative. Michael Savage, who has partied with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, even said of Ocasio-Cortez, "“This is a Stalinist in a skirt; this is a Hitler in high heels.”

http://www.alternet.org/environment/senators-and-movement-leaders-introduce-100-percent-clean-energy-bill

Following DeSmog’s Revelations on Spectra Pipeline, MA Senators Demand More Answers from FERC on Alleged Conflict of Interest

In a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Massachusetts Senators...

:{:{http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/02/03/senators-introduce-merchants-doubt-amendment-energy-bill-call-fossil-fuel-industry-end-denial-and-deception

}:}:

Democratic U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Ed Markey (MA) and Brian Schatz (HI)introduced an amendment into the energy bill yesterday intended to express Congress’s disapproval of the use of industry-funded think tanks and misinformation tactics aimed at sowing doubt about climate change science.

The amendment evokes the history of notorious anti-science efforts by the tobacco and lead industries to avoid accountability for the damage caused by their products, focusing similar ire on the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long climate cover-up.

Although it doesn’t name specific companies, the amendment is surely inspired by recent revelations about ExxonMobil’s early and advanced knowledge of the role of fossil fuels in driving climate change — which was followed by the company’s subsequent, unconscionable climate science denial efforts.

Just as tobacco and lead companies sowed doubt about the dangers of their products through the use of front groups and third-party experts, so did ExxonMobil — through its funding of a sophisticated network of denialists — work to deceive the public about climate science and the need for political action to end the fossil fuel era.

The most recent and damning #ExxonKnew revelations were published late in 2015 in investigative articles by both InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times in collaboration with the Columbia School of Journalism.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) joined the amendment as a co-sponsor once it was introduced.

A effort to increase kids’ scientific knowledge of climate change failed in the Senate on Wednesday, after one senator expressed concern that the measure would result in a lot of “wasted paper.”

Put forth by Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), the measure would have created a competitive grant program for public school districts to “develop or improve” climate change education curricula. It was put forward as an amendment to a bill to reform No Child Left Behind, the controversial federal education policy implemented under former President George W. Bush.

Markey argued that the grant program would help equip the next generation to deal with the effects of human-caused climate change, a burden they are likely to bear.

“The children of our country deserve the best scientific education they can get on this topic,” he said. “They are the future leaders of our country and our world. They must be equipped for this generational science.”

The Republican author of the reform bill, however, opposed the amendment on the grounds that it gave the federal government too much power in guiding what kids are learning.

“If you like Washington, D.C., getting involved in Common Core in your state, you’re going to love this amendment,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN).

If the amendment passed, Alexander argued that kids would be subject to frequently changing curricula regarding climate change depending on the president at the time. If the next president is a Republican, for example, he or she may choose to remove climate education entirely from federal education guidance. That would result in textbooks that are constantly changing, Alexander said — which is, ironically, bad for the environment.

“Just imagine what the curriculum on climate change would be if we shifted from President Obama to President Cruz and then back to President Sanders and then to President Trump,” he said. “There would be a lot of wasted paper, writing and rewriting textbooks.”

Markey’s amendment failed by a vote of 44-53. The vote fell mostly on party lines, but two Republicans — Sens. Kelly Ayotte and Mark Kirk — voted for it, and three Democrats — Sens. Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Manchin, and Jon Tester — voted against it.

Of course, the amendment’s failure does not mean schools are not allowed to teach the science of climate change — just that the federal government won’t provide incentives for schools that do. What public schools can and can’t teach is most often the decision of states, many of which have policies regarding climate education. So far, 13 states have adopted the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) as guidance, and those standards recommend climate change education begin in middle school.

Other states have resisted efforts to include climate science in public school curricula. Last year, Wyomingrejected the NGSS after the state’s Board of Education chariman said he did not “accept, personally, that [climate change] is a fact.” That rejection was reversed earlier this year, and the state now is free to adopt those standards if it wants.

http://www.globalpossibilities.org/senate-rejects-effort-to-teach-kids-about-climate-change-in-schools/

udall, say it ain't so:

5/15

What do you get when you let the chemical industry write a “chemical safety” bill?

A bill that protects chemical companies, not consumers.

The last time Congress passed a chemical safety bill — the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) — was in 1976. The TSCA “was broken from the start,” according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), because it grandfathered in thousands of chemicals already on the market. It was so “broken and weak,” says EWG, that it didn’t even allow the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ban asbestos, a known cause of cancer.

Now, 39 years later, tens of thousands of new chemicals have been introduced, the majority of which have never been safety tested by the EPA. These chemicals, more than 80,000 of them, are in the food we eat, the clothes we wear and the homes we live in.

It’s time for reform. But unfortunately, S.697 — which still doesn’t address asbestos — falls far short of accomplishing that. That could have something to do with the fact that the chemical industry has spent $190 million lobbying for this bill. Democratic Sponsor Tom Udall’s (D-N.M.) campaign received $49,050 from the Chemical industry in the 2014 cycle, plus $23,500 from lobbyists employed by the American Chemistry Council. Republican sponsor David Vitter’s (R-La.) campaign received $20,600 in the 2014 cycle, and $14,300 from American Chemistry Council lobbyists. We need your voice to stop this bill.

On April 27 (2015), the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved a rewritten version of S.697, sending it to the Senate floor for a vote. The revised bill gave slightly more protection to state chemical safety laws, by changing the grandfathered date to Jan. 1, 2015, instead of Aug. 1, 2015. The new version also no longer allows federal chemical rules to preempt state clean water and clear air laws.

But the bill is still inadequate, according to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.):

"The legislation does nothing to ensure that terrifying disease clusters of children's cancers are addressed, and the killer of 10,000 Americans a year — asbestos — was entirely left out of the bill," Boxer said. "I will continue to call attention to the flaws of the bill and the improvements that are needed to protect our families."

Boxer and her colleague Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) have introduced anopposing bill, which they say offers far better protection than S. 697, which they say cripples state efforts to regulate toxic chemicals, while leaving the federal government without the resources needed to properly safety test them.

One of the bill’s biggest shortcomings is that it allows the EPA to review no more than 25 chemicals in the first three years. At that pace, it would take more than a century to address the backlog of chemicals in need of review. We already know that some chemicals, such as Bisphenol A (BPA), are hormone disrupters, yet BPA is still found in baby food containers. As for thousands of other unregulated chemicals, the effects are unknown.

In the absence of federal action, states have taken the lead in monitoring toxic chemicals and setting safety standards for industry — 33 states have passed laws to include some form of monitoring or restrictions to harmful chemicals like formaldehyde, mercury, asbestos and BPA. S.697, though it will grandfather in many of these state laws, will hinder states from taking stronger action in the future.

More on how chemicals are regulated here and here.

That means liberal dark money in 2013 makes up 70 percent of all the dark money spent so far. At this point in 2011, liberal money accounted for less than 6 percent of the dark money spent, and in 2009, the total was a little higher, at 6.5 percent.

The top spender, the League of Conservation Voters, has already reported laying out more than $800,000 in direct support for Ed Markey's (D-Mass.) successful run for the Senate seat vacated by John Kerry -- almost twice as much as all dark money groups combined had spent at this point in the 2012 cycle.

LCV's pro-Markey efforts account for nearly half of the liberal dark money spent so far in 2013, and a third of all dark money spent.

Last February, when Markey came under fire for comparing the Citizens United decision to the infamous 1857 Dred Scott Supreme Court decision -- which denied citizenship to anyone of African descent and provided a legal framework for slavery -- his campaign responded by saying, "Karl Rove, the Koch Brothers and anonymous special interests have no place in our elections and no place in this Senate race." Yet once the race was over, it was clear that the vast majority of the anonymous money spent in the race favored Markey.

LCV's efforts in support of Markey were entirely positive, an aberration in dark money spending. Most outside groups use their resources to attack their favored candidates' opponents.

So far this cycle, more dark money has been spent supporting candidates, rather than opposing them -- a departure from both the 2010 and 2012 cycles at this point in time.

opposes oil subsidies http://grist.org/news/can-we-afford-40-billion-gift-to-oil-companies/?utm_campaign=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter

Edward John Markey has been a Democratic member of the U. S. House of Representatives, representing the 7th District of Massachusetts, since 1977. (map)

Contents [hide]

Record and controversies

General information about important bills and votes for can be found in Congresspedia's articles on legislation. You can add information you find on how Ed Markey voted by clicking the "[edit]" link to the right and typing it in. Remember to cite your sources!

Iraq War

Markey voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 that started the Iraq War.^[1]

On January 9, 2007, Rep. Markey introduced a House version (H.R. 353) of Sen. Ted Kennedy's (D-Mass.) bill to restrict Bush from committing more troops to Iraq unless Congress approved the move.

Main article: Congressional actions regarding President Bush’s 2007 proposed troop “surge” in Iraq

For more information see the chart of U.S. House of Representatives votes on the Iraq War.

Abortion

His beliefs on Abortion are not consistent with his beliefs on Environmental issues. He openly believes abortions should be legal when the pregnancy resulted from incest or rape and when the life of the woman is endangered. [1] Usually, a view like this on the issue of abortion is considered quite conservative. His interest group ratings are mostly 100%, and the things he is in support of contrast his beliefs on abortion. [2]

Environmental record

Markey stands strong for the environment. His actions that he takes to save our world cry out, “I’m a liberal.” Markey has introduced new legislation to not drill off Georges Bank [3].

He also introduced a revolutionary Global Warming bill. [4]

A majority of his interest group ratings range between 95 and 100%, showing his compassion for our world.

Energy and Fuel Economy

Markey has fought hard in the fight for energy independence since the beginning of his days in Congress. A long-time advocate of shifting away from a dependence on foreign oil, Markey has been a captain and determined leader of increasing fuel economy standards for automobiles. He has introduced a proposal to increase the minimum fuel economy to 35 miles per gallon by 2020, and became a law in December 2007. [5] His interest group rating of the Campaign for America’s Future is 100%, however, the group is comprised of conservative views. [6]

Markey calls on the house to pass energy bill, here is a link to the video. [7]

Support for gun control

In 1991, Markey cosponsored H.R. 3104, which would have amended title 18, United States Code, to prohibit the importation and the manufacture of firearms designed to accept a silencer, bayonet, grenade launcher, flash suppressor, or folding stock, of certain ammunition feeding devices, and of related devices, and to provide for the imposition of enhanced penalties for the possession or the use of any such item in a crime of violence or in a drug trafficking crime.^[2]

He also cosponsored H.R. 1312 (Assault Weapons Ban and Law Enforcement Protection Act of 2005) on July 28, 2005.^[3]

He also cosponsored H.R. 1022 (Assault Weapons Ban Reauthorization Act of 2007) on March 13, 2007.^[4]

Main article: U.S. gun legislation

Calls for arrest of security researcher

In 2006, Markey called for the arrest of Christopher Soghoian, a security researcher at Indiana University. Markey indicated on the floor of the House that he wanted Soghoian arrested for exposing security problems related to the potential to use counterfeit boarding passes at US airports. [[8]](http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2006/10/congressman_ed_.html) [9] [10]

Later, Markey commented that rather than being jailed, Soghoian should be "put to work showing public officials how easily our security can be compromised." [11]

Network neutrality legislation

The COPE Act

The Communications Opportunities Promotion and Enhancement (COPE) Act became the main vehicle for the network neutrality battle in 2006. On April 26, 2006, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce debated the Act and several amendments. The most relevant of these with regard to net neutrality was sponsored by Rep. Markey. He introduced an amendment which would have specifically given the Federal Communications Commission the authority to prohibit discrimination and enforce network neutrality. The amendment was co-sponsored by Reps. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) and Jay Inslee (D-Wash.).^[5] The amendment was defeated, 34-22. ^[6]^ The committee eventually approved the Act by a vote of 44-12 and sent it to the House floor.

Main article: network neutrality legislation

Chemical security legislation

In January, 2007, Markey announced that he would introduce legislation requiring manufacturers to replace the most toxic chemicals used in production with safer substitutes. One of the primary motivations for the bill was the danger faced by trains which transport the toxic materials. Ed Hamberger, president of the American Association of Railroads, said that more than half of his industry's insurance costs stem from delivering dangerous chemicals. With a $1 billion liability cap on a terrorist event, Hamberger said an attack could literally bankrupt a railroad company.^[7]

Main article: Chemical security legislation (U.S.)

Bio

Markey was born July 11, 1946 in Malden, Massachusetts. He was educated at Malden Catholic High School, Boston College and Boston College Law School, served in the United States Army Reserve, and was a lawyer and member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives before entering the House.

Congressional career

In 2004 he announced that he would run for John Kerry's seat in the United States Senate if Kerry were to be elected President of the United States. Kerry, however, lost the election, and Markey will continue to serve in the House, to which he was reelected easily in 2004 over Republican Ken Chase and independent Jim Hall by a margin of 74%-21%-5%.

Since May 2005 he has been a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post.