Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Mitt Romney attacks cap and trade in Iowa (Video)

Mitt Romney repeatedly attacked President Barack Obama for supporting cap and trade legislation during his first speech in Iowa of 2011. His comments were captured on video by Stan Brewer of InsiderIowa.com and posted to YouTube.

The speech came just days before Romney's June 2 visit to New Hampshire, where the former governor of Massachusetts is expected to formally announce his candidacy for president.

Mitt Romney: Cap and trade raises energy costs 

Video 1 8:03

… he came into office and what was happening that people were losing jobs, home values were going down, costs were rising. And instead of focusing his energy on the economy, he delegated the stimulus to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. And they built a stimulus which grew government jobs, but didn’t grow private sector jobs. And then he went to work on his real agenda, and that was cap and trade to raise energy costs…

Mitt Romney: Cap and trade increases uncertainty for small business

Video 1 8:36

… virtually very aspect of his agenda increased the degree of uncertainty that existed in the employment sector. Small business that was say energy intensive wondered what the cost of their energy would be if his cap and trade program went through…
Mitt Romney: Obama's support for cap and trade policy inspired by Europe 

Video 2 2:03

I also think he may be getting some inspiration from our European friends, because when their economy was in trouble they spent more money and borrowed more money. And like the Europeans, when their energy was an issue they raised the cost of energy with cap and trade…





Monday, May 30, 2011

Presidential Candidate Visits to New Hampshire for June 2011

Here is an early look at the presidential candidates who will be visiting New Hampshire in June.

Thursday, June 2:


Mitt Romney is expected to formally announce his candidacy for president at the Stratham, NH home of longtime GOPers Doug and Stella Scamman, according to the Union Leader. Voters can also watch livestream of Romney's announcement speech on Facebook.

Time:

12:30 PM

Location:

Scamman Farm
69 Portsmouth Ave
Stratham, NH


Rudy Giuliani will be the featured speaker at a Republican State Committee Fundraiser held at the home of Dan Philbrick. Click here to RSVP

Time:

6:00 to 7:00 Exclusive VIP reception ($200 per person /$300 per couple)
7:00 Speech ($75 per person)

Location:

3 River Farm Rd.
Dover, NH


Friday, June 3


Mitt Romney town hall in Manchester, NH

Time: 8:30 AM

Location: UNH Manchester - 400 Commercial St., Room 301 in Manchester, NH



The Belknap County Republican Committee Dinner Cruise will feature a host of 2012 GOP presidential hopefuls, including former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, former Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer and Congressman Thaddeus McCotter. Click here for information on how to pre-purchase tickets for this event (required). $45 individual tickets.

Time:

Boarding begins at 5:30 PM, cruise departs at 6:00 PM sharp

Location:

Weirs Beach - Mount Washington Pier
211 Lakeside Ave
Laconia, NH


Saturday, June 4


Governor Jon Huntsman will tour the North Country:



Jon Huntsman in Conway

Time: 8:30 AM

Location: North Conway Grand Hotel - 2 Common Court in North Conway 03860

RSVP: Joe Doiron - jdoiron07@nec.edu or (617) 538-9395




Jon Huntsman in Gorham


Time: 11 AM

Location: Town and Country Inn - 20 State Route 2 in Gorham, NH 03581

RSVP: Wes Grimm weswgrimm@gmail.com or (603) 455-9854



Jon Huntsman in Berlin

Time: 12:30 PM

Location: VFW Post 2520 - 1107 Main St. in Berlin, NH 03570

RSVP: Matt Chisholm mtchisholm@gmail.com or (989) 928-5912



Jon Huntsman in Dixville Notch 


Time: 5:00 PM


Location: Balsams Grand Resort Hotel - 1000 Cold Spring Road in Dixville Notch, NH 03576


RSVP: Joe Doiron - jdoiron07@nec.edu or (617) 538-9395




Sunday, June 5


Jon Huntsman's North Country tour continues

Jon Huntsman in Colebrook


Time: 10:15 AM

Location: Howards Restaurant - 143 Main St in Colebrook, NH


RSVP: Matt Chisholm mtchisholm@gmail.com or (989) 928-5912


Jon Huntsman in Littleton

Time: 3:30 PM

Location: VFW Post 816 - 600 Cottage St in Littleton, NH 03561




Thursday, June 9 


Karl Rove may not be running for president, but he did help former President George W. Bush win two terms in the White House and remains a powerful behind the scenes player in U.S. politics. Rove will be the featured speaker at a Republican State Committee Fundraiser. Click here to RSVP by June 3.

Time:

6:00 PM VIP Reception ($250)
6:45 Speech ($50)

Location:

Executive Court
1199 South Mammoth Rd.
Manchester, NH




Friday, May 27, 2011

Newt Gingrich answers climate change question (Video)

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich campaigned in Manchester, New Hampshire on Wednesday. While talking to voters at a Granite Oath PAC house party, the former Speaker of the House fielded a question about climate change. Here is what he had to say:


Voter: I’d like to commend you for your bravery in condemning the political unviability of the Medicare plan. That’s what we need a lot more of and I hope voters will weigh that more carefully. My own preferences lean towards the means testing of the intake – the money coming in to pay for it – and the money going out… means testing also…
But I’ve been meaning to ask, would you apply that same type of truth telling to the climate/global warming problem?
Newt Gingrich: Sure.
Voter: You have the National Academy of Science's 2+2=4 telling us, ‘Caused by humans, getting worse, we need to deal with it right away.’ Why don’t we hear that from a Republican candidate? A pro-business, pro-economic, pro-New Hampshire way of dealing with the problem.
Newt Gingrich: Well first of all, I think it’s fair to have hearings on the National Academy of Sciences report.
But I’ll also tell you, I mean I wrote a book called A Contract with the Earth, which was an outline of a green conservatism that applied conservative principles to the environment. I used to teach environmental studies. And sometimes when you see 7,000 scientists sign a petition what you are looking at is political science, not science.
Now, I’ll give you two examples of why I say this.
Anybody who walks into me and tells me they can tell what is going to happen to the climate over the next hundred years, which is the essence of this argument, I would say to them, ‘Fine, explain to me why 11,000 years ago the Gulf stream cut off and Europe has a little Ice Age for 600 years and then why 10,400 years ago the Gulf stream started up and the little Ice Age disappeared.
And they will all tell you, ‘You know we actually don’t understand that.’
Now, an Ice Age across all of Northern Europe was a pretty big deal.
I’m an amateur paleontologist, I’m very interested in the age of dinosaurs. It was substantially warmer in the age of dinosaurs. There were no cars, at least not that we’ve been able to find. No factories.
So one of my questions is… I have two different questions about this:
To what degree are we certain that we don’t have patterns we don’t understand yet, that may or may not involve human contributions?
And my second question is, are we better off to think through – and nobody in the scientific community would even think this – are we better off to think through how to cope with it than we are to think through how to avoid it?
It may well be that it is dramatically less expensive to adjust to a change in climate than it is to stop the entire planet from changing.
Now, if you were a left wing intellectual, climate change is the newest excuse to take control of lives and you want a new bureaucracy to run our lives on behalf of the newest thing. But remember, in the mid-1970’s there was a cover of Newsweek and Time that says we’re in the age of a brand new glacial period and they had a cover of the Earth covered in ice. This is the 1970’s. Now many of those scientists are still alive and they were absolutely convinced. I mean, if Al Gore were able to in the 1970’s we would build huge furnaces to warm the planet against this inevitable coming Ice Age.
I’m not disputing or discrediting the National Academy of Sciences, I’m saying a topic large enough to change the behavior of the entire human race is a topic that is more than science and deserves public hearings with very tough minded public questions and we’ve had almost none of that on either side. You have the people over here saying it’s not true. You have the people over here saying, ‘Oh, it’s going to happen Thursday.’ You have almost nobody saying in a practical, calm way, ‘Let’s walk through the material and find out what the facts are.’

Media coverage:


Monday, May 23, 2011

Jon Huntsman on gas prices, natural gas, energy independence (video)

2012 Republican presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman campaigned in Windham, New Hampshire over the weekend. The former Governor of Utah and U.S. Ambassador to China called for a new industrial revolution powered by natural gas. He also shared his concerns about skyrocketing oil prices and America’s reliance on foreign oil:


Jon Huntsman: Industrial revolution powered by natural gas 

(Video of comments starts at 14:32)

This will be, I think, the discussion for the next election cycle. Here’s the choice:

You want the last decade, which is a reality, just kind of moving along, incrementally, ambling along at a slow growth rate and a high level of unemployment or do we want to launch an industrial revolution?

Reform our taxes, look at regulatory reform, take seriously the lowest of low hanging fruit, which is energy. I mean for every reason in this country, we’ve got to be taking seriously an energy policy that moves us towards a transitional product like natural gas. We have it in such abundance. We can use it in manufacturing. We can use it in transportation. We can use it in our electrical and power needs as well.

Jon Huntsman: $13-$14 gallon gas prices 

Video starts of comments at 19:10

Can I just say something about gas prices real fast? We talked about the price of gasoline, and you know I think all ought to be aware of the realities of gas prices, oil prices and when we’re 60% reliant on the importation of oil it is not only an economic issue, it is a national security issue. When people yell and scream about $4, $4.50, $5 gas prices at the pump let us remember that fully loaded for all taxpayers it’s a lot higher than that. Based on some estimates, it’s $13 or $14 a gallon if you want to take into account what we’re paying for foreign deployments, you want to keep into account the costs of the keeping the sea lanes open for the free flow of product, and the cost of transportation importing the product all gets passed on and on and on…

When I made that comment earlier about an energy policy that draws from some of our domestic needs, we’ve talked about this for 8 presidents now, and it’s a low hanging fruit and increasingly we’re finding more and more in way of raw materials available here on the natural gas side.

With each passing year, we have the ability, thanks to innovations within businesses, to get it in a less invasive way and to clean it up ways that protect the environment as well.

So let’s be realistic when we talk about gas prices. We might think they are high, but think about how really high they are.

Jon Hunstman: Dependence on foreign oil 

Video of comments starts at 20:40

What is the biggest single problem we have from a foreign relations standpoint?

I would say that leading that list would have to be our dependence on foreign oil. I think that is crippling us. I think it’s an issue that also we can resolve. 

Monday, May 2, 2011

Tim Pawlenty on RGGI, cap and trade (Video)

Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty was among the five potential 2012 Republican candidates for president who addressed last week's Presidential Summit on Spending and Job Creation in Manchester, New Hampshire. The event was sponsored by the Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFPF), a group founded by Big Oil billionaire and conservative political financier David Koch, Executive Vice President of Koch Industries.

For months now, AFPF and its sister group, Americans for Prosperity (AFP), have been bombarding New Hampshire residents with radio ads and robocalls attacking the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Popularly known as "RGGI", the program has generated millions of dollars for energy efficiency projects in the Granite State, all while only costing the average PSNH residential ratepayer around 36 cents per month.

AFP and AFPF President Tim Phillips, a veteran of the public relations industry, was on hand at last week's summit to ensure that Big Oil's anti-cap and trade message was echoed by the leading 2012 Republican presidential hopefuls.

Tim Pawlenty spoke first, delivering an abbreviated version of his stump speech. As T-Paw prepared to exit the stage, Phillips confronted him with two questions, the second of which was focused exclusively on RGGI and cap and trade:

Phillips: Governor, as you may know, New Hampshire's House recently passed legislation that would allow New Hampshire to pull out of the RGGI system, which is a cap and trade style energy tax. As Governor of Minnesota, you supported something similar in the early 2000's I think on this issue. Have you changed your position and your views on this issue and if so how?

Pawlenty: Yes. A couple of years ago after considering cap and trade in Minnesota or regionally, I changed my position and said its a mistake, its stupid, and I'm sorry. 

It is ham fisted and, this is a couple of years ago I think probably 2 or 3 years ago in a letter and other communications to the Congress I said, "I no longer have that position. It will be detrimental to the economy, destructive to the economy, ham fisted. It's wrongly directed, uh, wrong directionally, wrong philosophically."

I don't try to defend it. Everybody's got a couple of clunkers in their record. I just say, "That's one of mine. It was a mistake. It was dumb."
Watch video of Tim Pawlenty's comments on RGGI and cap trade, which start at the 19:11 mark:

AFP Foundation Presidential Summit from AFPhq on Vimeo.

Barack Obama: End oil subsidies - Video and transcript

Last week, President Barack Obama renewed his call to end the $4-billion-per-year subsidies for oil and gas companies and invest in clean energy:





The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
Weekly Address: Taxpayer Subsidies for Oil Companies are Neither Right, nor Smart, and They Should End

WASHINGTON – As oil and gas companies make tens of billions in profits and the government scours the budget for savings, President Obama called on Congress to stop handing them $4 billion annually in taxpayer subsidies. America’s oil production last year reached its highest level since 2003, but we need to invest in the energy of the future, instead of subsidizing the energy of the past.
Remarks of President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Washington, DC

After the worst recession since the Great Depression, our economy is growing again, and we’ve gained almost 2 million private sector jobs over the last 13 months. But I also know that a lot of folks aren’t feeling as positive as some of those statistics might suggest. It’s still too hard to find a job. And even if you have a job, chances are you’re having a tougher time paying the rising costs of everything from groceries to gas. In some places, gas is now more than $4 a gallon, meaning that you could be paying upwards of $50 or $60 to fill up your tank.
Of course, while rising gas prices mean real pain for our families at the pump, they also mean bigger profits for oil companies. This week, the largest oil companies announced that they’d made more than $25 billion in the first few months of 2011 – up about 30 percent from last year.
Now, I don’t have a problem with any company or industry being rewarded for their success. The incentive of healthy profits is what fuels entrepreneurialism and helps drives our economy forward. But I do have a problem with the unwarranted taxpayer subsidies we’ve been handing out to oil and gas companies – to the tune of $4 billion a year. When oil companies are making huge profits and you’re struggling at the pump, and we’re scouring the federal budget for spending we can afford to do without, these tax giveaways aren’t right. They aren’t smart. And we need to end them.
That’s why, earlier this week, I renewed my call to Congress to stop subsidizing the oil and gas industries.  Understand, I’m not opposed to producing oil. I believe that if we’re serious about meeting our energy challenge, we need to operate on all cylinders, and that means pursuing a broad range of energy policies, including safe and responsible oil production here at home. In fact, last year, America’s oil production reached its highest level since 2003.
But I also believe that instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy, we should invest in tomorrow’s – and that’s what we’ve been doing. Already, we’ve seen how the investments we’re making in clean energy can lead to new jobs and new businesses. I’ve seen some of them myself – small businesses that are making the most of solar and wind power, and energy-efficient technologies; big companies that are making fuel-efficient cars and trucks part of their vehicle fleets. And to promote these kinds of vehicles, we implemented historic new fuel-economy standards, which could save you as much as $3,000 at the pump.
Now, I know that in this tough fiscal environment, it’s tempting for some in Washington to want to cut our investments in clean energy. And I absolutely agree that the only way we’ll be able to afford the things we need is if we cut the things we don’t, and live within our means. But I refuse to cut things like clean energy that will help America win the future by growing our economy and creating good-paying jobs; that will help make America more secure; and that will help clean up our planet in the process. An investment in clean energy today is an investment in a better tomorrow. And I think that’s an investment worth making. Thanks for listening, and have a great weekend.