Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. says it makes no sense to provide federal tax credits to ANY of the three proposed carbon pipeline projects.
“These pipelines are one of the biggest boondoggles I’ve ever seen,” Kennedy said this weekend during a news conference at the State Fair,” so this is $173 billion over a 10 year period to the oil industry and big agriculture.”
Kennedy said the pipelines will not address climate change, since carbon from proposed Summit pipeline, for example, will be used to extract fossil fuel from oil fields in North Dakota and Canada. Kennedy said the Iowa Utilities Board should not grant eminent domain authority so the pipeline companies can force unwilling landowners to sign easement contracts. Kennedy described the projects as a transfer of wealth from taxpayers to oil companies, ethanol producers and pipeline developers.
“If they can get away with this, from now on any wealthy businessman who has a project that they want can now go to the government and get eminent domain to condemn your property in order to build a project that has a dubious, if any, public benefit,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy held a town hall forum at a farm near Council Bluffs yesterday and campaigned at the State Fair Saturday. Iowa Democratic Party chair Rita Hart said anyone challenging President Biden is welcome to campaign in the state, but during an appearance on “Iowa Press” on Iowa PBS Hart said Kennedy has made “concerning comments” suggesting the COVID virus was genetically engineered to spare Chinese people and Jews whose ancesters lived in central and eastern Europe.