Posted on 11/23/2010 6:32:38 AM PST by IbJensen
Former Vice President Al Gore admitted Monday that his pivotal 1994 Senate vote for ethanol subsidies was bad policy but good politics. That says a lot about the reality of environmentalism in government.
As the ethanol tax credit comes up for renewal in Congress on Dec. 31, it's worth noting it only came about because the vice president cast the decisive 51st vote in favor of it in 1994.
At the time, he packaged it as a big move to preserve the environment in a market-friendly, sustainable manner, and for years defended his vote because it was supposedly good for us.
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Now the real story emerges. On Monday he matter-of-factly told a bankers group in Greece it was actually about helping himself.
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Start with what it is — a tax credit for special interests that has cost U.S. taxpayers $16 billion. And costs are rising. The centrally planned ethanol mandate has risen from 7.5 billion gallons by 2012 to 35 billion by 2022. In the last year alone, it's cost $7 billion. From the tax credit, refiners make a profit on blended ethanol even when it costs more than gasoline, an unfair price distortion.
No wonder refiners told farmers they could buy all the corn they could grow — Uncle Sam was picking up the tab. Today, 41% of all corn grown in America goes to ethanol — not to the dinner table.
Among the unintended consequences, farmland that had been efficiently planted with multiple crops ended up as monolithic cornfields, using 1,700 gallons of water to make a gallon of ethanol. Food prices surged as the government's ethanol monster got fed.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
This DemocRAT is worse than a charletan!
Please post only excerpts with a link in the comments section. Thanks.
Blazingly apparent to anyone with an ounce of common sense. Even the LSM were in on the scam. They didn’t speak “truth to power”, because they were on the side of “power”.
A perfect metaphor for the entire environmental movement: Doing harm in the name of good out of lust for power.
“Doing harm in the name of good out of lust for power.”
My Tagline and I agree.
Algore is going to need a 7 day 24/7 Confession before he passes with all the harm he’s done and is still trying to do to this Country!
I’m not sure that even today, he is aware of all the harm he’s done. The Flor-i-duh fiasco unmined the stability of the government more seriously than anything since the Civil War. His support of Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal was craven. Global Warming is the cherry on the sundae.
Ne frustra vixisse videar! No one has done nearly the harm in one lifetime that Al Gore accomplished.
It is as if he’s sold his soul!
A tax credit doesn't cost Americans anything.
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