Pawlenty previewed his campaign rollout by saying that he would speak hard truths. And on day one, he has delivered.
He called for a phasing out — albeit gradual — of federal ethanol subsidies, a move long considered a political death wish in a state with such a large agricultural community.
But, Pawlenty didn’t stop there. In his speech he detailed how he will travel this week to Florida — one of the oldest (by age) states in the country — to call for fundamental reform of Medicare and Social Security, to Washington to take on alleged largess in the federal government and to New York to make clear the era of bailouts of the financial industry is over.
“Conventional wisdom says you can’t talk about ethanol in Iowa or Social Security in Florida or financial reform on Wall Street,” Pawlenty said. “But someone has to say it. Someone has to finally stand up and level with the American people.”
Telling the truth. In politics. It’s an idea so crazy, so out of the box, that it just might work.
I give Tim Pawlenty 2 thumbs up for stating the truth. This country in in big trouble. I was leary of him being from Minnesota. Minn. sent Al Franken to the Senate, legally or not. This country doesn’t need 4 more years of Obama.
Now if Pawlenty can only get over his affinity for the scam of “man-made global warming”…
Pawlenty has since recanted his support for the global warming hoax, saying he’d been fooled and it was a mistake, fwiw.
Correct. The Annernberg Foundation’s fact-checkers have compiled the details of Pawlenty’s “Political Climate Change.”
In Stalin’s Russia politicians were required to deny the reality of evolution … now in America politicians are required to deny the reality of climate change … these two forms of ideology-driven denialism amount to the same old, sad, story of ideology-before-science.
It’s particularly sad to see thoughtful politicians like Romney and Pawlenty being driven backwards toward willful ignorance.
URL: http://www.factcheck.org/2011/01/pawlentys-political-climate-change/
Sorry, Fizz—in Stalin’s Russia if you went against the state line you could find yourself with a bullet in the back of the neck, or digging in the Siberian salt mines.
No such compulsion exists in the United States—except, of course, for the pressure upon legitimate scientists to buy into the “man-made global warming” fraud, and the even more fraudulent solutions, if you want to have your grant applications approved. Likewise, any politician who has the integrity to stand against the howling brigade of the global-warming powergrabbers will be smeared as “anti-science.”
So your comparison has about as much validity as—well, as the “man-made global warming” scam itself.
Not enough people realize the herd-like behavior of scientists who are dependent on grants. There is also a strong leftward tilt even in hard science. A friend of mine, a microbiologist, just got tenure after having to move his family as few years ago because he was denied on the basis of his politics. You have to know that.
It is possible the planet is warming although the anthropogenic theory is weak and there has been a lot of cheating on the data. Other possibilities include emergence from the “Little Ice Age” that ended 100 years ago, and the sunspot theory. There is also the Pacific decadal oscillation, which may give us very cold an d log winters for the next 25 years.
The AGW people have completely destroyed their credibility with serious people who know science, It has become a religion and, in England, they are referring to the AGW alarmists as “watermelons.” Green on the outside and red on the inside.
None of this is settled and there is no justification for the radical policies advocated by the alarmists, including you, sir.
Well said!
Rich Vail
Pikesville, MD
The Vail Spot
Folks on this site need to learn respect for what Charlie Martin calls “The Cold Equations” … and respect for history too.
The sobering reality of AGW was first foreseen not by liberals in the 1990s … but by rock-solid Eisenhower era conservatives in the 1950s. See for example, John von Neumann’s essay Can we survive technology? (Fortune Magazine, June 1955)
Von Neumann was of course one of the very greatest mathematicians and scientists of the 20th century … *and* von Neumann was *also* one of the most respected political conservatives of the 20th century.
The truth that von Neumann’s 1955 “cold equations” conveyed was sobering … that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) was destined to become a planetary reality.
Nowadays there is of course a strong consensus among mathematicians and scientists, in every nation and from many disciplines, that von Neumann’s 1955 mathematics and science were absolutely right.
Thus the reality of AGW was foreseen not on the basis of far-left or far-right ideology … but on the basis of cold equations.
Anyone can check the history, the equations, and the data — they all say the same thing … AGW is real.
Conservatism that cannot face up to realities of the cold equation variety … is not conservatism at all … but merely willful ignorance, denialism, and fear, that masquerades as conservatism.
It is shameful to see so many politicians—who call themselves conservative, but are not—nonetheless pandering to ignorance, denialism, and fear.
Sorry, Fizz—you’ve fallen to making an “appeal to authority” (a logical fallacy) on the basis that some guy in 1955 was both a brilliant mathematician and a conservative.
Neither of these things is relevant. A brilliant mathematician may be wrong in his initial data, in his figuring, or his conclusions—and his being “conservative,” whatever you mean by that, or not, is utterly irrelevant. Much more relevant is the fact that in 1955 your guy von Neumann didn’t have the data to make valid predictions (indeed, it is highly questionable whether anyone does even now)—and that the AGW advocates today have been caught out both as dead wrong and as lying about and fudging the data they do have that anything they say is irredeemably compromised.
What is truly fascinating, however, is how the bogus “scientists” who push the AGW delusion show their contempt for the concept of evolution. Human beings have adapted and flourished through the Ice Age, through the warm period which existed during the heyday of the Roman Empire, through the Medieval Warm Period, through the Little Ice Age. Human beings are adaptable and ingenious. If humanity can get the stinking regulators off its collective back, there will be plenty of food regardless of whether or not New York becomes the New Venice. The AGW advocates—yourself among them, clearly—are cowards who do not believe in human ingenuity and adaptability.
I don’t care if you are a physicist. You are a watermelon. And so are the rests of the warmists.
Obama had better pause for reflection. Should Pawlenty win the nomination by employing such candor, among other planks, the contrast between his transparency and Obama’s clouds of meaningless verbiage will be painfully apparent.
Pawlenty will also have available a long list of Obama’s ‘eloquent’ declarations of proposed actions, to compare with its brother list of actions actually taken – nearly all contradicting the former.
This is going about as far as Bruce Babbitt “standing up” for higher taxes back in ’92.
Yeah, but Democrooks are always “standing up” for higher taxes like Republicans are always “standing up” for spending cuts. An ambiguous statement like that lets everybody read into it what they want. In the Republicans’ case, everybody interprets “spending cuts” to mean “any program I don’t like”. Pawlenty here has come out against a specific program with a with small but powerful constituency. That is something we don’t see very often, but we need to see more of it.
I agree. I still think that, if McCain had gone to Iowa in 2000 and attacked ethanol subsidies, he might have been president. There are a lot of people there who do not live off ethanol and who believe our policy is seriously flawed.
If Pawlenty keeps this up, he’ll get my vote.
Do need to keep our eyes on the global warming business, however.
Agreed, on both counts.
Like any other political moment, we’ll have to see if this one sustains itself.
Pawlenty needs to work up the whole “Pastures of Pawlenty” thing when he’s trying to drum up support in Iowa.
This is a great sign. I want to like Pawlenty, but in photographs he just comes across as uninspiring.
However, I like his videos. Yeah, I’m shallow like that. I like the music and the message. And if he’s talking no more ethanol subsidies in Iowa, now THAT I can get excited about.
Keep it coming, Governor. We’re listening.
I hope he hits a chord where the vast majority agree to not fight cuts to their own gov’t largesse so long as everyone else’s is cut too. Needs to be done, hopefully T-Paw’s found a way to serve up that overdue bad medicine.
Darn; the title got my hopes up, but the body just says he demanded an end to ethanol subsidies, not to farm subsidies in general. Still, that’s a very good start.
Agreed. End all subsidies, not just farm subsidies.
He’s got to start somewhere. I think this is a good start. I’m not convinced yet but he’s got my attention.
I have long advocated ‘zero’ federal subsidies! But…when the rubber meets the road everybody has their ‘pet’ subsidies and rejects any actual repeal of them. Just two examples! Try repealing multiple agri subsidies or education subsidies to include Pell and rersearch grants…and watch the folks yell to the high heavens about the high costs of food products, clothing and fiber, education and lack of research, etc.
It is long past for the government to discontinue supporting subsidies that in [all] cases ultimately ‘benefit’ the consumer in every economic industry and services sectors….and time american’s start paying the real costs, now manipulated in their favor, by federal subsidies.
You claim you’re against subsidies, but here’s you wanting government run “deathpanels” to administer our healthcare.
“Is there a solution? Yes of course their is! However, it would require decades of transition. 1) Get the FEDERAL government out of the health care business except for veterans. 2) Get employers out of the health care business. 3) Dispose of health care insurance companies with one exception.
Establish in each State a not-for-profit NGO health care arbitration administration board that would arbitrate health care education costs, health care services including dental and vision and pharmceuticals costs essentially on the basis of the HMO ‘group’ philosophy. They would negotiate on behalf of the entire population of the State as one class void of any age classes….preventive health care protocols and disease class and accepted treatment protocols.”
Your own words, sir, letting us know you are a pompous windbag.
Tommy…I posted a reply to your original such comment where it was on-topic…go read it! You’re exposing yourself a fool!
As for who’s the fool, not too long ago, never with any specifics, you were lecturing all and sundry about how you knew the constitution better than most, the Tea Party wasn’t going to accomplish anything–you never let yourself get pinned down as to whether they were too slow for you, or moving in the wrong direction, or what you would do better.
So, you’re calling me a fool, but your first concrete suggestion is to ban employer provided healthcare and impose death panels to arbitrate the cost of medical treatment; and here you are grousing that Pawlenty isn’t promising to instantaneously do everything at once to end agricultural subsidies.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the Kremlin on the Potomac won’t be taken apart in one day either. You should be glad about that. It’s the only way your favored wing of the building, quoted above, would get built.
Agricultural supports?
Pawlenty seems as ‘in touch” as deputy Chief Duane Robinson on Die Hard who was worried about his men “covered with glass.”
His advisors would doubtlessly tell Schwarzzeneger that his biggest concern right now is getting a new maid.
Wheat rust, bad crops and a possible world-wide food shortage are all over the news. Now is not the time, if there ever will be a time, to dwell on argicultural price supports.
US voters that who will decide 2012 are not interested in Ag Supports and a politician with his hand on the pulse would not be raising them.
The remaining US manufacturing jobs being exported by officials that tax too much, regulate too much and even now insist that Boeing make its planes where some clueless official tells them to.
Federal support for state employee unions that are draining the life from multiple states like some giant tick kept safe by the endangered species list.
State are cutting teacher positions, bookmobiles, and music while they keep unproductive or incompetent “tenured” teachers while firing the good ones who lack seniority; state employees are retiring with 90% penisons and US aid to states is helping to prop up that edifice whihc should have been cut off from a federal lifeline.
The crony capitalism surrounding Obama care and the waivers.
The number of firms that locate off shore, pay no US taxes, and get contracts from the federal government.
The immense amounts of foreign aid we provide for minimal returns while our own bridges, schools, freeways and damns are in need of urgent repairs.
The influx of foreign dependents to the US, who bring neither work ethic or brains, but demands for huge levels of medical, psyschological and financial support.
The continuing laxness in who qualifies for asylum in the US apparently includes anyone with aids, inability to work, or in fear of mistreatment at home, or in need of expensive dialysis they cannot get at home, whatever, we get to pay for it.
The non-existent efforts to expell aliens who live here in violation of what was once our law (no I am not in favor of sending back kids who were born here–yes i favor doing something to legalize their parents but not citizenship; but if their kids are in the army or employed or doing well in school, I don’t want to send them back).
The issues driving voters today, do not seem to be gay marriage, abortion, marijuana or gun control control. And certainly not agricultural supports.
But, I submit its well past time for todays generations of the 60′s to begin to face their consequences and pay the fiddler his just dues. Anything less is simply kicking-the-can-down-the road, to borrow a populist phrase.
I’m wowed.
What is all this stuff about how Pawlenty supposedly “looks uninspiring”?
Did Churchill look inspiring? Eisenhower? John Adams? Abe Lincoln??!!
I know we’re in the Age of TV, but Americans need to forget about candidates’ appearances, or they’ll be stuck with 4 more years of Obama, or maybe Robert Redford if they prefer.
So far he DOES look uninspiring. I am searching for the brave stand, the principled actions, the firmness that speaks courage and will.
Churchill, Lincoln and John Adams took fantastic risks when they took positions and action against the common views.
Churchill had been a military leader, a soldier, a POW and had escaped a POW camp and spoken out against Hitler when “everyone” knew he was wrong.
Lincoln pulled the major card of our time and rejected slavery while others were slicing and dicing hoping not to alienate the powerful south.
Reagan returned money to taxpayers, appointed people who resisted student rioters, and signed a tax increase with his nose held between 2 fingers to cover a deficit left by the outgoing governor Pat Brown.
And Pawlenty has done …what exactly?
good luck finding Churchhill, Lincoln or John Adams.
Comparing him to Mitt Romney (Romneycare, Anti 2nd-Amendment Fudd, Global Warmist) – simply on the merits he stands very far ahead.
Yes, but is he going to cut price supports for cotton? If ethanol production from corn was financially feasible private industry would be all over it by now. Let’s grow hemp.
If he is persuasive enough, he can get support. How about reducing the tax code to 10 pages?
It’s time for ethanol to put on the big boy pants in the energy industry and not only get rid of the per gallon subsidy, but also pay energy taxes like everyone else.
“Ethanol subsidies” are not perfectly synonymous with “farm subsidies”. What is Pawlenty’s position on agricultural subsidies other than the ethanol subsidy, for instance, on the various feed grain subsidies?