Joseph P. Kennedy II
Joseph Patrick Kennedy II is an American businessman, Democratic politician, and a member of the Kennedy family. He is the eldest son of former U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy, and he is a nephew of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy and former U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy.
Kennedy served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from the 8th congressional district of Massachusetts from 1987 to 1999. In 1979 he founded and, until he was elected to the U.S. House, led Citizens Energy Corporation, a non-profit energy company which provides heating oil to low-income and elderly families in Massachusetts.
Early life, family and education
Kennedy was born in the Brighton section of Boston, Massachusetts on September 24, 1952. He was the second of 11 children to Ethel and Robert F. Kennedy. He was named after his grandfather Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., the patriarch of the Kennedy family and his uncle Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. who was killed in an airplane crash in 1944 during World War II. Kennedy spent his childhood between the family's homes in McLean, Virginia and Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.Kennedy had a troubled youth and was expelled from several private schools as a result of his quick temper. He regularly got into fights with his younger brothers and male cousins. He was 15 when his father was assassinated. The night he was shot at the Ambassador Hotel, Kennedy along with two siblings, Kathleen and Robert Jr., were being flown to Los Angeles aboard one of the planes in the Secret Service's presidential fleet.
Kennedy dropped out of Milton Academy, a preparatory boarding school in Milton, Massachusetts, when he was not allowed to take time off to work in his Uncle Ted's 1970 Senate campaign and finished his high school studies at Manter Hall, a tutoring school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1971. During his time at Milton, he was roommate to Thomas C. Wales.
Kennedy attended the University of California, Berkeley in 1972, but dropped out. He returned to school after a major car accident which occurred in 1973 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Massachusetts Boston in 1976.
Early career
While on hiatus from college, he worked for several months as part of a federally funded program to combat and treat tuberculosis in the African American community in San Francisco, California. Mayor Joseph Alioto personally praised Kennedy's work in the community. Kennedy resigned from his position in the program and returned to Massachusetts in the summer of 1973.In 1979, Kennedy founded Citizens Energy Corporation, a non-profit organization to provide discounted heating oil to low-income and elderly families in Massachusetts. According to author J. Randy Taraborrelli, Kennedy started the venture "to alleviate the burden of heating bills for the poor during the oil crisis of that year." By 1984, Citizens Energy helped provide low-cost heat for 250,000 families. In 2010, Kennedy transformed the organization to become a leader in renewable energy generation while continuing to use profits to provide energy savings to low-income families.
U.S. House of Representatives (1987–1999)
Elections
In 1986, incumbent Democrat and Speaker of the House Thomas Phillip "Tip" O'Neill Jr., who had held Massachusetts' 8th congressional district seat since 1953, announced his retirement. Kennedy decided to run for the seat, which his uncle, former president John F. Kennedy, had held from 1947 to 1953. The Democratic nomination was contested by a number of well-known Democrats including state senator George Bachrach and state representative Mel King. However, Kennedy garnered endorsements from The Boston Globe and the retiring O'Neill. Kennedy won the primary with 53%. He won the general election with 72% of the vote. He won re-election in 1988, 1990, 1992, 1994, and 1996.Tenure
Kennedy's legislative efforts in the U.S. House of Representatives included- Expanding the availability of credit to working Americans to buy homes and to open businesses.
- Requiring public disclosure of bank-lending practices in poorer neighborhoods and disclosure of bank home-mortgage approvals and refusals by race, sex, and income. Subsequent Federal Reserve Board studies based on these newly required disclosures found widespread evidence of discriminatory-loan practices. One study found that white borrowers in the lowest-income category were approved for mortgages more than African American borrowers in the highest-income category. Data from Boston, Chicago, and Minneapolis found that African Americans were turned down at three times the rate of whites.
- Helping create hundreds of thousands of new affordable-housing units nationwide by introducing tax credits to stimulate private investment in neighborhood housing developments after federal housing assistance had been cut by 75 percent during the 1980s.
- Chairing the House Banking subcommittee on consumer credit and insurance and holding the first U.S. congressional hearings to expose the lack of access to insurance in low-income neighborhoods.
- Proposing a balanced-budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution as a vehicle to end skyrocketing deficits, reduce interest rates, and free up investment capital for business growth rather than government bonds while fighting to end corporate tax breaks and subsidies.
- Overhauling federal public-housing law for the first time in almost 60 years, giving local housing authorities the ability to raise standards while protecting those who depend on public housing for shelter.
- Co-chairing the U.S. congressional biotechnology caucus and proposing to preserve and expand federal research and development accounts that stimulate the creation of new technologies and build the foundation for new jobs and business growth.
- Proposing the "Mom and Pop Protection Act" to help corner-store owners to install safety equipment and a "National Stalker Reduction Act" to require all states to enact comprehensive anti-stalking legislation, track stalkers, and establish a national domestic-violence database to track violations of civil-protection orders.
- Protecting kids from alcohol by proposing to limit television advertising of beer and wine between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. and to keep outdoor alcohol advertisements away from schools.
- Launching a bipartisan initiative in Massachusetts to fight child hunger that helped lead to an expansion of school breakfast and lunch programs.
In March 1998, following a year of family troubles that included the skiing death of his brother Michael LeMoyne Kennedy, he announced that he planned to retire from the U.S. House, citing "a new recognition of our own vulnerabilities and the vagaries of life." An editorial in The Boston Globe observed that "Kennedy has remained steadfast in his political life to issues and constituencies no poll would have led him to: the poor, the homeless, disadvantaged children, and others swamped in the current tide of prosperity." He served in the U.S. House for six terms, until January 1999. In his final speech on the U.S. House floor, Kennedy delivered "an impassioned plea for unity and forgiveness" in the midst of Congressional debate regarding the proposed articles of impeachment of President Bill Clinton.