[xoxoxoBruce]

Romney says no to "Net Neutrality".

Romney thinks the FCC’s rules promoting “net neutrality” are the fulfillment of a campaign promise that was made to “special interests.” Obama reiterates his support for an open internet, while listing all the issues that compete for regulatory attention–from protection of intellectual property to cybersecurity to privacy.

Romney Cites Energy Report That Advocates Carbon Price.

In his answer to the question on “Research and the Future” Romney writes:

I am a strong supporter of federally funded research… [yet] President Obama spent $90 billion in stimulus dollars in a failed attempt to promote his green energy agenda. That same spending could have funded the nation’s energy research programs at the level recommended in a recent Harvard University study for nearly twenty years.

Yet I was curious about this Harvard study. How would a President Romney focus energy research funding if not on clean energy?

A little Googling later, I discovered “Transforming U.S. Energy Innovation,” a 338-page report published in November 2011 by the Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. (Romney’s domestic policy advisor Oren Cass confirms that the candidate was referring to this study.) Its recommendations are at once completely anodyne—they echo, to varying extent, the opinions of the great majority of policy experts who think seriously about technology, energy security, economics and climate change—and totally surprising, in that they resemble very little of what Romney has been saying on the campaign trail.

Perhaps the most glaring difference is that the report calls for the U.S. federal government to put a “substantial price” on carbon emissions, either through a cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax. The experts argue that a price on carbon will prod private business into developing new energy technologies. Private-sector innovation is a policy theme that the Romney camp extols, but in another question Romney states that he would “oppose steps like a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system that would handicap the American economy and drive manufacturing jobs away.”