Public Demands to Know How Much Climate Czar Kerry Is Paid, But Government Says You Don't Need to Know Right Now
John Kerry, as the Biden administration’s climate czar, has a very important job.
The former Secretary of State and failed Democratic presidential candidate now serves officially as President Joe Biden’s special presidential envoy for climate, which involves flying around the world and giving media appearances to stump for the administration’s ambitious green agenda.
He’s so good at his job, in fact, that he managed to make Russia’s invasion of Ukraine all about climate change, somehow, which clearly someone needed to do.
This kind of adroit insertion of the Democrat’s radical green agenda into a geopolitical crisis that, on the surface, has very little to do with the United States at all save for the establishment’s desperation to get us involved — let alone the climate — just goes to show that Kerry’s job is important and clearly very necessary.
However, it must be noted that his job is not so important that any of the American taxpayers who are footing the bill for his climate-unfriendly trips around the world need to know what they’re paying him to perform it.
U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican from Alaska, recently tore into the special presidential envoy for climate’s office for refusing to disclose Kerry’s salary to the Boston Herald while speaking on the “Howie Carr Show” last week.
“What? … That should be public. My salary is online. The Secretary of State’s is online, and the president is, too,” Sullivan fumed.
The senator was responding to the State Department’s Freedom of Information Act office, under whose purview the climate envoy’s office lies, which informed the Herald that its request for Kerry’s salary information “does not demonstrate a ‘compelling need’ for the requested information.”
“Therefore, this Office denies your request for expedited processing,” the FOIA office stated.
In other words, a free press media outlet that wants to know what we’re paying an appointed federal official to cruise around the world lecturing the unclean masses about climate change simply doesn’t have a good enough reason to find out this information.
As Sullivan noted, it is easy to determine what he and his colleagues, other cabinet officials or President Biden himself are earning ($174,000, $221,400 and $400,000 annually, respectively, the Herald noted), so why can’t we find out what this fantastical little special envoy position pulls in?
It’s all rather mysterious … or perhaps, more so, infuriating, especially when you consider how Kerry tried to spin the invasion of Ukraine in his office’s favor, as Sullivan pointed out.
“It’s almost getting embarrassing to try to bring a moral equivalent of his job right now to the carnage and brutality and horrendous suffering happening in Ukraine,” Sullivan, who served in the Marines, told Carr. “I think people cringe when they hear this, and it just shows how out of touch” the climate envoy is.
“Out of touch” is exactly the phrase when it comes to Kerry’s comments on how the war’s emissions could be harmful as actual human beings are dying and living in terror amid the fog and chaos of an actual war.
Kerry told BBC Arabic last month that while he was concerned about the Ukrainian people, there were “massive emissions consequences to the war — but equally importantly, you’re going to lose people’s focus. You’re going to lose, certainly, big-country attention because they will be diverted, and I think it could have a damaging impact.”
“So, you know, I think, hopefully, President Putin would realize that in the northern part of his country, they used to live on 66% of the nation that was over frozen land. Now it’s thawing, and his infrastructure is at risk, and the people of Russia are at risk,” he added.
Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on BBC Arabic: The Ukraine Crisis Could Distract the World from the Climate Crisis While Having Massive Emissions Consequences #RussiaUkraineConflict #UkraineRussie #UkraineRussiaCrisis #ClimateCrisis @JohnKerry @ClimateEnvoy pic.twitter.com/nsOC1iZeGm
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) February 24, 2022
So, the guy is worried that the invasion of Ukraine might distract world leaders from worrying about the polar bears? Yeah, the State Department doesn’t think you have a “compelling need” to know what he gets paid to go on foreign television and push drivel like this.
This is patently absurd.
It’s not rocket science. Surely Kerry and his staff have salaries that they take in that are easily represented by figures and probably already written down on paper. It isn’t going to take an exhaustive audit of his special envoy office.
All the FOIA office needs to do is simply touch base with the appropriate administrative offices et voila, the people get the information they requested, the free press continues to serve its purpose as a check on the powers that be and the taxpayers know what they’re paying Mr. Climate Change to peddle the agenda to the world.
Is that so hard?
Yes, apparently it is — although for what reason, we can only imagine.
I will tell you this: The fact that it’s so difficult to disclose how much Kerry is making is even more concerning than the fact that he’s trying to make Ukraine about climate change.
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