Posted on 12/25/2007 1:55:47 PM PST by rellimpank
The legislative logjam in Washington, D.C., broke last week, much to the benefit of South Dakota.
After weeks and months of political posturing, Congress got down to the business of governing and wrapped up the 2007 session with a big bow of huge appropriation bills. It’s amazing the motivation that an upcoming holiday recess can create.
They passed an energy bill, a military appropriations bill, an intelligence budget, a farm bill and an omnibus spending bill that is filled with millions of dollars of funding for South Dakota-specific projects.
The energy bill —- which was signed into law by President Bush quicker than we can say “ethanol” three times fast —- was an especially momentous piece of legislation for South Dakota’s fledgling ethanol industry.
(Excerpt) Read more at rapidcityjournal.com ...
The Dakotans need to stop confusing governance with tyranny.
Deathanol - you heard it here first...
...Will make everyone feel good by doing their part via less food and a major increase in the cost of it.
We deserve it with our determination to save AlGores legacy and the planet./s
Less food? We already have too much.
My guess is that any biofuel derived from food crops will be demonized by the watermelons, very soon after all the laws mandating its use have been passed.
That way, people can easily be vilified, for driving a car & burning up someone else’s food.
Tell that to starving third-world peasants who can’t afford food after corn triples in price due to biofuel-generated demand.
Just wait until you haven't got enough via cost and availability.../
I won't have to, I'm sure they get the message.
America is one of the few countries in the world, in fact in the entire history of human civilization, where overproduction and the resulting financial ruin is one of the biggest dangers facing the farmer.
Peoples around the world evidently haven't bothered to ask themselves why, or tried to emulate how we do things here.
There is a price to be paid for such lack of curiosity, and resulting ignorance.
That price is hunger and starvation.
Ignorant people starve.
You may be talking of Soviet Socialist style government, something we are sliding towards, even as all of us dig in our heels to slow it down.
One of the American Farmers biggest dangers is the danger of over production.
This is compounded by the fact that the existing farm programs are slowing starving farmers out of the business of farming.
Now that's one heck of an over production issue to place concern with....
This is compounded by the fact that the existing farm programs...
'nuff said there to fill a palate.
Some very important points a lot of folks are missing;
Most any alternative to Muslim produced petroleum and the financing of our enemy’s terrorism is worth doing for national security interests alone. Add in to keep the money in the American economy instead of shipping it by the boat load to our enemies and yes it is well worth going thru some growing pains to achieve energy independence.
All hit pieces on ethanol I have ever read ignore a basic fact of ethanol, distilling the ethanol our of corn leaves the corn behind as a high value by product called brewer’s grain.
If the story ignores the brewer’s grains you know right off it is a hit piece on ethanol and short on facts.
This brewers grain can and is being made into hundreds of food and industrial products.
Yes you can make taco shells out of brewers grain, and cow feed and dog feed and breakfast cereals and many industrial chemicals. Brewer’s grain comes wet instead of dry so they have to change the recipes and maybe some of the machinery to utilize it.
Tiny Eddyville Iowa has a 1.5 billion dollar, 1,600 acre, corn processing complex that passes the corn from independent plant to independent plant by augers and pipeline until the corn is consumed, each company drawing off the parts of the corn kernel that they want to utilize.
Indian Hills Community College works closely with the companys and trains people to work there.
The concept that the latest raise in corn prices would not have happened but for ethanol is false. Corn adjusts upward every few years to catch up with inflation just like everything else does. One year it was a big order from China that spiked corn prices and raised corn growing land values all over the Midwest. Other times drouth and crop failures have occured. Yes people have a fit then too and congress usually gets in an uproar over it.
We were due for an adjustment and if not ethanol, something else would have bumped prices.
Good points about the other sources of energy; in fact hundreds of sources of energy are being researched and developed right now. Green algae fed with carbon dioxide emissions from coal power plants is showing promise. They say it is 50 percent oil.
Iowa now has 3 busy manufacturing plants making windmill generator components.
larry
As someone who farmed until 20 years ago, I’m sympathetic to the financial problems facing farmers because of annual over-production of nearly every crop and livestock. The mountains of excess feedstuffs continue to grow in spite of nearly everything that’s tried.
Many non-farmers are very critical of farm programs, which is ironic, as they are designed primarily as a cheap food program. In that respect they have been extremely successful. Never before, in the entire history of the world, has a civiliztion had so much food available for so little money.
Take heart, in time, some decades from now, there very likely will be no need for any farm programs, as the number of farmers will be low enough that they will be able to band together to self-limit food production.
Rush has (correctly) pointed out that ignorance is the most expensive commodity traded in our country. Ignorance of the farm situation is one example of the expense of ignorance.
Blindly wishing for change is another example of the extreme cost of ignorance. I’m no friend of farm programs, but what lies ahead has the potential to be much worse.
The STUPID Ethanol Mandate will just raise the price of booze! Not to mention food.....
You seem too ready to place all the blame on the peasants. I’m not.
First, many are starving because of oppressive or corrupt governments, which isn’t directly the fault of the peasants.
Second, the fact that greenies support government distortion of the food markets (e.g. corn-based ethanol), which greatly increases food costs, also isn’t a fault of the peasants.
The greenie’s position is simply despicable, because they are the ones who would sooner fill their private jets with corn-based ethanol to jet around the globe, selling global warming hysteria, than allow that corn to be sold on the open market. Seriously, if you were Al Gore, would you rather ferment enough corn to feed a village for a month and put the distillate in your plane, or see it go to the peasants and see your plane go unfueled? (Let’s remove charity from the equation: Who is willing to pay more for the corn, the peasants, or Gore needing a fillup?) The fact that there are millions of “enlightened, concerned, caring” people supporting government programs to convert food to fuel is not the fault of the peasants.
Generally, people get the government they deserve. That includes us here in America, the product of a God fearing group of Founding Fathers, all the way to Haiti or Zimbabwe, where witchcraft, voodoo, and other types of heathen worship rule the day. And night.
Whether they know it or not, they have the government they have chosen, and as a result are going to starve at a rate far, far above the rest of the world. There is nothing to add to that.
The answer to their starvation isn’t to wring our hands over ethanol.
A better answer would be to:
1. Invade their countries.
2. Kill their leaders.
3. Convert them to Christianity.
Other than that, the only good thing to come out of our Government Aid Programs is that it props up the grain prices for our farmers. The food itself is being dumped down a rat hole. We could just as well dump it off the ships soon after they leave our shores and save the fuel.
They hate us, they’ve said so. Let’s save the money and effort until they publically come out and proclaim their love for us.
Let’m starve, it’s the only kind thing to do.
Here’s an example of the 3 step process I outlined:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1944203/posts
These folks have a real chance of not seeing starvation for a really long time.
Obviously, the program was originally outlined by Coulter.
If national security was the issue, we would develop our own viable energy sources. National security is only a side issue. The entire idea of energy independence is ridiculous. Energy is a world wide commodity in various forms. We are growing more interdependent on energy as we are on almost every other industrial area.
Corn based ethanol is a product that consumers do not want. Ethanol corrodes engine components and contains only 2/3 energy as unleaded gasoline. Corn-based ethanol has also been linked to smog increases particularly in the Rocky Mountain region in Colorado.
Corn-based ethanol would not exist in its current form without massive mandates and subsidies. If ethanol is the answer, there is no reason to maintain the tarriff on foreign ethanol. The farm state representatives have extracted massive handouts from the rest of the country due to the battle over control of the Senate. For reasons that I do not understand, environmentalists have not strongly objected to corn-based ethanol. Ethanol is not a green product in any way.
These other biofuels may become viable but clearly they are not viable now, nor the near future. The ridiculous mandates in the new energy bill will only result in boondoggles. The high price of petroleum is all the incentive to develop viable alternative energy sources. The energy bill is just a Soviet style central plan doomed to failure. Bush and other conservatives who supported this bill should hold their heads in shame.
No argument that it is better to achieve progress in the energy field by private enterprise than by government mandate.
When I hear people bad mouthing ethanol, I think of the 75 years and billions of dollars we have spent trying to improve gasoline, and it is still a far from perfect fuel.
Would you care to compare a couple years of ethanol subsidies with 50 years of gasoline subsidies?
Of course being independent of Muslim oil is a national security issue, and both Reps and Dems are failing to address it adequatly, tho some progress is being made. The National Strategic Oil Reserves, established in response to the OPEC oil embargos of the 70s is one example of progress. The massive private investment in American Home Grown energy of every description is another.
If Iran succeeds in turning the Mideast into a nuclear cinder block we will sure get energy independent, in a big hurry.
I would toss Venezuelan oil in the taboo column too, what with Chavez using it as a weapon. I have no problem with importing Canadian and Mexican oil, as close as it is.
larry
Please identify the gasoline subsidies. The ethanol supporters like to talk about subsidies of other fuels but I have yet to see anyone identify any specific subsidies. Of course, the rats talk about subsidies but they are referring to tax breaks for research and development that are available to a variety of industries. Ethanol subsidies and mandates are massive: mandates for the amount of ethanol blended in gasoline, subsidies for fuel tax (no federal fuel tax on ethanol), and import tariffs on foreign ethanol. There is no equivalent subsidies and mandates for gasoline. No one wants to put ethanol in their tanks. Ethanol is a boondoggle.
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