Lumpenproletariat
Veteran Member
- Joined
- May 9, 2014
- Messages
- 2,570
- Basic Beliefs
- ---- "Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts."
Does John Kerry Own Multiple Houses, Cars, and Yachts?
A late 2020 meme about the incoming U.S. climate envoy appeared to be based on news stories from the 2004 presidential election cycle.
www.snopes.com
This fact-check by Snopes says Kerry does own a private jet (which he flies), plus yachts and mansions. However, to be precise, it's really his wife who owns them and not Kerry himself.
As for Gore, maybe his trips are charter flights (not "his" jet), but still private jet travel. So "his private" jet means the charter jet he's flying.
But the real question is whether they and other elitists are agreeable to a tax on their fossil fuel, for their extensive travels (and everyone else's). It would be reasonable to impose a special tax on the charter jet fuel higher than on regular commercial flights. All the jet travel should be taxed, at a similar rate to gasoline tax. But it appears the actual tax on jet fuel is lower, or is even exempted (or was until recently).
Though it's true that many of the country bumpkins who demand cheap gas are simply uneducated and are climate-change deniers out of ignorance, this is not the case for the rich elites like Al Gore and John Kerry who know the basic economics of externalities, and know the economic need for much higher carbon tax in order to force the needed reduction in carbon emissions.
Most of the educated elite who know this are not running for political office and so are not at risk to lose an election for taking an unpopular position. So what is their excuse? They not only shouldn't oppose a carbon tax, they have an obligation to publicly promote higher taxes on all carbon, and especially on their private jet travel.
Kerry insists that his trips are necessary, but if that's true, because his speeches are so important, then he should have to pay that higher fuel tax, as everyone should have to, and that higher price he should pay is the same price everyone else also should pay, and those whose need is less important will cancel their trips. No one's business is so important that they're entitled to do the extra carbon-emitting damage at no cost.
Much of the "necessary" trips could be replaced by virtual conferencing, via computer. The obligation to pay the higher tax is the appropriate market mechanism to screen out the more "necessary" trips from the less. But our speechmaker celebrities and their "Green Deal" crusader disciples find that topic to be an "inconvenient truth" which conflicts with their traditional scapegoating and demagoguery Left-vs-Right politics, blinding them to the facts of economics as much as the ignorant Red climate-deniers are blinded by their own scapegoating and need for demagogues to inspire them with their speeches.
These elitist speechmaker demagogues -- Left and Right, Red and Blue -- put higher priority on their public image and crusades and demagoguery and scapegoating than on the facts about how many millions are being killed (and more in the future) by our excess carbon emissions which could be reduced if those demagogues and their disciples would change and start telling the truth -- like Obama did that one time in 2008:
“Under my plan … electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket."
Wasn't he telling the truth when he said that? or Hillary when she said:
". . . we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business."
Why aren't we hearing more of this, from Gore and Kerry and others who know this is correct? (and who are not running for election)? If they can't tell the truth about the need for higher electric bills and elimination of coal mining jobs, why not about the need for higher fuel taxes on travel by the rich elites? What is the code of silence which says they must not tell this truth? and that even their Green-Deal disciples must keep their mouths shut about it?
How has their shut-mouth-and-keep-silent-about-it philosophy served us so far?
