I’ve been moving into the Gingrich column for a few days. That clap-trap pushed me over. Too bad more of this wasn’t out before our primary.
Watching the Undefeated now...it is excellent! Breibart did a fantastic job. Found the post on Santorum on Sarahs facebook site:)
Which is worse? Healthcare mandates supported by Newt, or Ethanol mandates supported by Santorum?
Giant ethanol maker among Gingrich’s top campaign donors
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2011-12-06/newt-gingrich-ethanol-campaign-donor/51682042/1
Gingrich’s support for ethanol subsidies puts him starkly at odds with some of his party’s prominent conservatives, who have pushed to end the $6 billion-a-year subsidy. It also offers another example of the ways Gingrich has amassed millions as a consultant since leaving Congress in 1999.
In 2009, for instance, he penned an editorial for POET’s quarterly magazine proclaiming ethanol “pro-American” because of its potential to reduce the nation’s reliance on foreign oil while acting as a consultant to the ethanol trade group. The group paid Gingrich $575,000 between 2009 and early 2011, Growth Energy spokeswoman Stephanie Dreyer said.
“For fiscal conservatives, this is almost a classic case of wasteful government spending, entirely designed not to serve any useful purpose but to buy votes,” said Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. “Gingrich is not a fiscal hawk, and this is symptomatic of it.”
Campaign spokesman R.C. Hammond said Gingrich has never wavered in his support for “any type of American energy.”
“It is better to have it come from inside our borders so the dollars that are generated by whatever it requires to make that energy, whatever it requires to ship it and develop it, stays in America and doesn’t go to Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela,” Hammond said.
Gingrich has faced scrutiny in recent weeks over his business activities, including as a consultant to mortgage giant Freddie Mac. Bloomberg News reported last month that Gingrich’s consulting firm earned at least $1.6 million from Freddie Mac.
Gingrich has repeatedly emphasized that he has never worked as a lobbyist. His consulting work for Growth Energy came as the trade group lobbied to increase ethanol use and boost federal aid for pumps that allow drivers to blend ethanol with gasoline at gas stations. The organization, created in November 2008, spent nearly $2.5 million on lobbying in 2009 and 2010, Senate records show.
Dreyer said Gingrich was tapped for his Washington expertise and support of ethanol.
“We were a newly formed organization at that point, still trying to figure out who we should be talking to and who we should be seeking counsel from,” Dreyer said. “He helped us answer those questions.”
Gingrich has long backed government support for ethanol, voting as far back in 1984 in favor of the subsidy. He also has staked his presidential campaign on a strong showing in next month’s Iowa caucuses, where the subsidies and other federal ethanol aid are supported by the state’s corn producers.
“I’ve been moving into the Gingrich column for a few days. That clap-trap pushed me over. Too bad more of this wasn’t out before our primary.”
??? Gingrich was an ethanol LOBBYIST!!!
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/%E2%80%9Cprofessor-cornpone-ethanol-lobbyist-newt-gingrich%E2%80%94and-the-future-of-the-gop%E2%80%9D/
WSJ blasts Gingrich on ethanol
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0111/48520.html
1/31/11
Challenging his fiscally conservative bona fides, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board slammed Newt Gingrich for supporting ethanol subsidies in Iowa.
The influential Journal said that Gingrich’s “ethanol lobbying raises larger questions about his convictions and judgment.”
But what appeared to really irk the Journal’s conservative board –long critical of the subsidies – was the way Gingrich singled their position out as “just plain flat intellectually wrong” in a speech he gave last Tuesday to a renewable fuels summit in Des Moines.
“Obviously big urban newspapers want to kill it because it’s working, and you wonder, ‘W]what are their values?’” the editorial recounted Gingrich saying.
The Journal also blasted Gingrich for supporting George W. Bush’s 2003 Medicare prescription drug benefit and for suggesting he could support government mandates for flex-fuel vehicles.