Tag Archives: Carbon Tax

Julia Gillard’s carbon tax leads to massive defeat in Queensland election

Australia 2010 federal election results
Australia 2010 federal election results (Red = Labor Party)

I was disappointed with Queensland because of the last federal election in 2010. They elected several Labor Party MPs. And now the federal Labor Party is pushing for a carbon tax and gay marriage, too.

Look what happened in 2010:

Turnout 94.41% (CV) — Informal 3.56%
Party Votes % Swing Seats Change
Australian Labor Party 1,020,665 42.91 +8.13 15 +9
Liberal Party of Australia 818,438 34.40 –5.01 10 –7
National Party of Australia 239,504 10.07 +0.32 3 –1
Australian Greens 133,938 5.63 +0.57 0 0

The Liberal Party and the National Party are the two conservative parties – they form a conservative coalition, and they continued to lose seats, just like they did in 2007.

Given that, I was heartened by the results from this past weekend, when Queensland held state-level elections. (H/T Bill M.)

Excerpt:

[Opposition leader] Tony Abbott has sought to capitalise on the Queensland election saying Labor MPs right across the country will be worried about the “fundamental lesson” from yesterday’s landslide defeat.

Speaking on Sky News’s Australian Agenda the Opposition Leader said Labor needed to have a “good, long, hard look at itself” and said the party’s brand was “toxic” around Australia.

“This is a triumph for Campbell (Newman) and the LNP,” Mr Abbott said this morning of the Queensland result.

“I think Labor members of parliament right around Australia would be very worried about the fundamental lesson from this which is that a government which isn’t competent, which isn’t frugal and which isn’t truthful loses and loses big time.

“The basic message is that the Labor brand is toxic right around Australia.”

“Certainly there were two candidates for Queensland one of them Anna Bligh, who was for the carbon tax, and the other Campbell Newman who was against it,” Mr Abbott said.

Mr Newman’s Liberal National Party ended Labor’s 14-year reign in Queensland last night with a crushing win.

The latest forecasts have the LNP winning as many as 78 seats in the 89-seat parliament, with Labor expected to hold just seven seats of its former 51.

Mr Abbott said while the Queensland election had buoyed the Coalition’s hopes of winning the next federal election he conceded things could be different if Julia Gillard improves.

“If the federal Labor government is able to lift its game and be truthful, yes things could be different,” the Opposition Leader said.

“But I think federal Labor has clearly established its character.”

Mr Abbott stood by his comments last week that the Queensland election would be a referendum on the carbon tax and dishonest politicians.

Those results are now final – Labor went from 51 seats to 7 seats! This is as bad as what happened to the leftist Liberal Party in Canada in 2011.

Let’s hope that Julia Gillard, the head of the Australian Labor party, doesn’t learn anything from this and continues to push for left-wing fiscal and social policies. Tony Abbott is quite awesome in general, so they do have a good candidate running against her whenever the next election is held.

Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich’s views on global warming

Rick Santorum does not accept global warming socialism

From WPXI News.

Excerpt:

About 500 people showed up Monday at a local diner in Steubenville, Ohio, to support former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum as he gave a policy speech.

Santorum said President Barack Obama is pushing a radical environmental agenda that unwisely limits energy production and turns its back on science.

Santorum told voters in Steubenville Monday that science is on the side of those who want to aggressively produce more oil and natural gas in America. He said the notion of global warming is not climate science, but “political science.”

Santorum said Obama and his allies want to frighten people about new oil-exploration technologies so they can get their dollars and turn them over to politicians to win elections “so they can control your lives.”

Here’s Santorum in his own words: “There is no such thing as global warming”

And more Santorum: Global warming is “junk science”

Santorum calls global warming a “hoax” and opposes cap and trade carbon taxes:

Do you think that Rick Santorum would build the Keystone XL pipeline and create the 20,000 jobs? YES HE WOULD.

Mitt Romney accepts global warming socialism

What about Mitt Romney’s view on global warming?

Excerpt:

On the environment, Romney seemed interested in carving out an agenda largely in line with the state’s most fervent activists on the left.

After he took office in 2003, some state employees and activists were nervous about how the new governor would approach the climate-change issue. Massachusetts had already reached an agreement with other Northeastern states and some Canadian provinces on a plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Romney surprised them by taking a hands-on approach, personally helping craft a “Massachusetts Climate Protection Plan” that he unveiled in 2004.

He reorganized the state government to create the Office of Commonwealth Development — with the former president of the liberal Conservation Law Foundation, Douglas Foy, as its head — to better coordinate climate work and sustainable-growth activities among different agencies.

As he worked on the plan, according to people familiar with the process, he even overruled some objections by his chief of staff, who criticized the plan as potentially too left-leaning.

Romney backed incentives for buying efficient vehicles, tougher vehicle emissions rules and mandatory cuts in emissions linked to global warming.

The plan not only called for reducing the state’s overall greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2010 and cutting them another 10 percent by 2020, but it said that “to eliminate any dangerous threat to the climate . . . current science suggests this will require reductions as much as 75-85 percent below current levels.”

[…]Beyond the state climate plan, Romney repeatedly pushed to promote clean energy and cut the use of fossil fuels.

In March 2003 he pledged to buy up to $100 million worth of electricity from renewable sources. That month, he declared, “the global warming debate is now pretty much over.”

Here’s Mitt Romney in his own words:

Do you think that Mitt Romney would create the Keystone XL pipeline and create the 20,000 jobs? I say NO HE WOULD NOT.

Newt Gingrich accepts global warming socialism

What about Newt Gingrich’s view on global warming?

Excerpt:

Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich, as a U.S. House representative from Georgia in 1989, was among the co-sponsors of a sweeping global warming bill that, among other things, called for an international agreement on population growth.

[…]The… Global Warming Prevention Act of 1989 (H.R. 1078) had144 co-sponsors, the majority of which were liberal Democrats such as Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), then-Rep. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.). There were only 25 Republican co-sponsors, which included Rep. Gingrich.

The legislation… set a national goal of reducing carbon dioxide levels by at least 20 percent by the year 2000 “through a mix of federal and state energy policies,” as well as “the establishment of an International Global Agreement on the Atmosphere by 1992.”

In addition, the legislation’s summary includes the section “Title XI: World Population Growth.” That section states: “World Population Growth — Declares it is the policy of the United States that family planning services should be made available to all persons requesting them. Authorizes appropriations for FY 1991 through 1995 for international population and family planning assistance. Prohibits the use of such funds for: (1) involuntary sterilization or abortion; or (2) the coercion of any person to accept family planning services.

[…]In 2008, Gingrich appeared alongside Rep. Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a television ad calling for action to address the apparent global warming problem.

Here’s Newt Gingrich in his own words:

Do you think that Newt Gingrich would create the Keystone XL pipeline and create the 20,000 jobs? I say NO HE WOULD NOT.

Which one of these three candidates is the real conservative?

Rick Santorum

Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney on global warming, climate change, environmental regulations

An alarming article from the Washington Examiner about Mitt Romney’s environmental regulations on business.

Excerpt:

Make no mistake, if Mitt Romney secures the nomination, the Tea Party almost assuredly suffers a mortal wound.  As Newt Gingrich just said, while Romney is an exceptionally nice person and a very hard worker, he is also a Rockefeller Republican.

As their standard bearer going into battle with Barack Obama next fall, do Republican primary voters really want the person who drew up the blueprint for Obama-care?

Worse, do Republican primary voters really want the person who the out-of-control job and freedom killing Obama EPA looked to for some of its most draconian ideas?

As reported in the conservative blogs Moonbattery and HOTAIR; “the Romney administration in 2005 essentially did what Barack Obama’s EPA wants to do now.  He imposed CO2 emission caps — the “toughest in the nation” — in an effort to curtail traditional energy production.

“Not only did Romney impose these costly new regulations, he then imposed price caps to keep power companies from passing the cost along to the consumer.  As we have seen in Romney-Care, regulation and price controls eventually drive businesses into bankruptcy or relocation.”

More chilling than that bit of socialist nanny-state big government interference is who Romney looked to for advice regarding the plan.   As reported by these two conservative sites, it was none other than Obama’s Chief “science” adviser, John Holdren.

Are you kidding me?  Is anyone in the GOP paying attention to what is going on here?  Is the Republican establishment so desperate to hold on to its power that it will continually look the other way as a chameleon-like candidate not only dreams up the ideas used by far-left Obama White House, but praises one of the people most reviled by the conservative movement?

With regard to this subject, then-Gov. Romney’s office trumpeted its energy and job-killing plan by saying in part: “Today’s regulations will achieve our aggressive environmental goals and provide incentives to push technological development,” said Stephen Pritchard, Secretary of Environmental Affairs.

“In the development of greenhouse gas policy, Romney Administration officials have elicited input from environmental and economic policy experts.

“These include John Holdren,professor of environmental policy at Harvard University and chair of the NationalCommission on Energy Policy and Billy Pizer, an economist at Resources for the Future, anenvironmental policy think-tank based in Washington D.C”

Again, is anyone paying attention to these surreal, anything but conservative, facts?

Governor Romney’s office then closed the memo by proudly stating:

“Implementing these regulations represents the latest in a series of initiatives that theRomney administration has undertaken to address air pollution.

“In 2004, Governor Romney announced the Massachusetts Climate Protection Plan, which laid out acoordinated statewide response to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect the climate.”

You can’t make this up.  Something that sounds as if it was drafted in the bowels of the Obama EPA was actually part of a memo released with great fan-fare by Governor Romney on December 7, 2005.

Do you remember who John Holdren is? Let me help.

Excerpt:

President Obama’s “science czar,” John Holdren, once floated the idea of forced abortions, “compulsory sterilization,” and the creation of a “Planetary Regime” that would oversee human population levels and control all natural resources as a means of protecting the planet — controversial ideas his critics say should have been brought up in his Senate confirmation hearings.

[…]…many of Holdren’s radical ideas on population control were not brought up at his confirmation hearings; it appears that the senators who scrutinized him had no knowledge of the contents of a textbook he co-authored in 1977, “Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment,” a copy of which was obtained by FOXNews.com.The 1,000-page course book, which was co-written with environmental activists Paul and Anne Ehrlich, discusses and in one passage seems to advocate totalitarian measures to curb population growth, which it says could cause an environmental catastrophe.

The three authors summarize their guiding principle in a single sentence: “To provide a high quality of life for all, there must be fewer people.”

As first reported by FrontPage Magazine, Holdren and his co-authors spend a portion of the book discussing possible government programs that could be used to lower birth rates.

Those plans include forcing single women to abort their babies or put them up for adoption; implanting sterilizing capsules in people when they reach puberty; and spiking water reserves and staple foods with a chemical that would make people sterile.

To help achieve those goals, they formulate a “world government scheme” they call the Planetary Regime, which  would administer the world’s resources and human growth, and they discuss the development of an “armed international organization, a global analogue of a police force” to which nations would surrender part of their sovereignty.

Is that what Mitt Romney believes, too? It would be consistent with his other liberal views.

Click here to learn more about Mitt Romney’s political views on abortion, gay rights, health care, gun control and other issues.