Emmanuel Macron is toxic and Paris is burning

After just ordering an electric car, with the aid of a €4,000 tax subsidy from the French taxpayers (merci à tous) I am no longer automatically sympathetic to tax privileges for diesel fuel. My whizzy new motor, from Korea, will charge up at night, on cheap off-peak electricity from the local nuclear centrale. But one question does pose itself. How could Macron, who is supposed to be a genius, be so stupid?

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Not even former president François Hollande fell into this hole. When it was suggested that the tax privilege on diesel be lifted, his environment minister Ségolène Royale ignored the green whines and saw the proposal into the long grass.

No matter that Paris has been rendered almost uninhabitable by poisonous diesel fume miasma, and many other cities, too. Or that almost 1,000 French people die every week from respiratory diseases (also maybe smoking too much). Or that Renault and PSA Peugeot Citroen make a lot of diesel cars. Forget all that. But more than anything else, political science 101 folks, do NOT raise taxes on fuel, because it is politically explosive.

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