Bringing John Kerry’s climate office to justice for transparency
As America’s 250th anniversary approaches, we are falling further away from our founding principles.
John Adams, our second president, called for “a nation of laws, not of men.”
His deep desire for a country and citizenry not subject to an individual ruler’s caprice but governed by the objectivity of codified laws is embedded in the very heart of our founding documents.
It’s how Americans have understood our government.
“Rule of law.” “No one is above the law.”
My organization sued John Kerry’s office to see if this still stands.
Since President Biden appointed him to the previously unknown White House position of “international climate envoy,” Kerry has traveled the world on the American taxpayers’ dime.
We have a right to know what he is doing.
Who is he meeting with?
What is he negotiating?
What is his budget?
Who are his staff members?
When asked these questions, routine for any government worker accountable to Congress and the American people, Kerry refuses to answer.
He does not think he or his office should have to disclose such details, not to Congress and certainly not to watchdog groups like mine that have filed numerous Freedom of Information Act requests.
Kerry is apparently above the law.
By his title, it’s safe to assume Kerry is the embodiment of the Biden administration’s green agenda.
A University of Chicago economist’s report showed the average American family spends $10,000 more just to maintain its 2021 standard of living.
New York City co-op and condo fees have gone up three times the rate of inflation since 2020.
McDonald’s is charging $18 for a Big Mac meal.
The green agenda has made life very expensive in three short years, and so much of that agenda is hatched in John Kerry’s office.
We deserve to know the details.
The Biden administration recently announced, for example, new manufacturing rules that will cripple industry, cost jobs and drive up prices nationwide.
The manufacturing industry was no more a part of the negotiation than the fossil-fuel industry has been on the vast new climate rules.
The American people have had no vote or referendum.
Congress, our elected voice in Washington, has not been consulted.
Just arbitrary rules born in a White House climate office, with secret meetings and opaque staff, in pursuit of a shadowy goal.
Rather than that nation of laws to which Adams aspired, America has become one of men — and we suffer the whims of unelected, unaccountable individuals and their climate-change fixation.
John Kerry uses the full force of government power and doesn’t think we deserve to see his books.
This very attitude led a group of patriots to dump 342 chests of tea in Boston Harbor in 1773, forever changing history.
Everything about the green agenda is filled with obfuscation and misdirection.
Biden’s signature win, what the White House calls “the largest investment in clean energy climate action ever,” was railroaded through Congress as the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.
Activist media runs cover, as with The New York Times’ dutiful “No, Biden is not trying to ban gas stoves” piece — until Biden did announce new rules on gas stoves, air conditioners, ceiling fans and light bulbs.
All negotiated outside the public’s rightly skeptical eye.
Yes, the green agenda is so broad in scope and voracious in appetite for control over personal property and individual freedom that even John Kerry knows enough to keep it off-book.
I fear what Kerry and his team are doing is far, far worse.
They could put all our questions to rest if they would just follow the law, that pesky law, and tell us.
Nobody wants to go to court.
It is expensive. It is time consuming.
With a net worth of $300 million, Kerry enjoys far more attorneys and resources — including taxpayer-funded ones — and can drag this out forever.
Sunlight is always the best disinfectant.
Kerry is no king.
He is accountable to us, the American people.
If we are still a nation of laws, as the left was fond of howling during its Russiagate investigation, we intend to hold him to account, whether he likes it or not.
Daniel Turner is the founder and executive director of Power The Future, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs.
Twitter: @DanielTurnerPTF
