Posted on 02/01/2011 9:02:58 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Newt Gingrich has been touring Iowa lately, attempting to generate interest in a run for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, and he’s been going the traditional route of defending farm subsidies, especially for ethanol. Gingrich blasted the media for its skeptical approach to ethanol subsidies, especially the Wall Street Journal, saying that “big urban newspapers want to kill it because it’s working,” and then questioned the WSJ’s values. The editors have responded in an unsigned editorial titled “Professor Cornpone,” and they give Gingrich both barrels:
Here’s how he put in Des Moines, with that special Gingrich nuance: “The morning that I see the folks who are worried about ‘food versus fuel’ worry about the cost of diesel fuel, worry about the cost of commodities on the world market, worry about the inflation the Federal Reserve is building into our system, all of which is going to show up as higher prices, worry about the inefficiencies of big corporations that manufacture and process food products—the morning they do that, I’ll take them seriously.”
The morning Mr. Gingrich read the offending editorial, if he did, he must have overlooked the part about precisely those concerns. He must have also missed our editorial last month raising the possibility that easy money was contributing to another asset bubble in the Farm Belt, especially in land prices. For that matter, he must have missed the dozens of pieces we’ve run in recent years critiquing Fed monetary policy.
Of course, the ethanol boom isn’t due to the misallocation of resources that always stalks inflation. It is the result of decades of deliberate industrial policy, as Mr. Gingrich well knows. In 1998, then Ways and Means Chairman Bill Archer tried to kill ethanol’s subsidies for good, only to land in the wet cement that Speaker Gingrich had poured.
Yet today this now-mature industry enjoys far more than cash handouts, including tariffs on foreign competitors and a mandate to buy its product. Supporters are always inventing new reasons for these dispensations, like carbon benefits (nonexistent, according to the greens and most scientific evidence) and replacing foreign oil (imports are up). An historian of Mr. Gingrich’s distinction surely knows all that.
The WSJ then accuses Gingrich of pandering, but says the problem goes deeper than just check-box politics in Iowa. If Gingrich seriously thinks that the subsidies for ethanol really are working to do anything more than distort markets and put politics above science, then the Journal argues that his judgment is seriously lacking. Ethanol gets lower gas mileage, thanks to its lower energy potential, which is one of the reasons that consumers haven’t bought flex-fuel vehicles. As Jazz Shaw noted earlier, ethanol in higher percentages tends to damage engines not specifically built for the fuel, but this kind of pandering means we’ll all have to deal with those consequences by government fiat.
We have an opportunity to reform government, perhaps the greatest such political opening in almost a century. Farm subsidies in general have to be on the table, but that’s especially true for ethanol and corn in particular. Ethanol has simply proven to be too costly, too difficult to transport, and not an effective enough substitute for gasoline to be practical or cost-effective. Subsidies only hide that fact from consumers at the gas pumps and the showrooms, but the cost to taxpayers for the years of subsidies demonstrate the decades-long failure. Even Al Gore admits ethanol is a bust, for Pete’s sake.
Republicans don’t need a presidential candidate who wants to conduct business as usual by buying farm votes with promises of our money. We need a candidate who recognizes the historical moment for change, rather than the opportunity to sell more of the same.
I will support a candidate who goes to Iowa and campaigns on ending ethanol subsidies.
I don't believe that's a true statement. If that were true, we wouldn't need government at all. Yet clearly we do.
There are lots of areas where government appropriately sets rules that benefits us all, that the free market would not do on it's own.
Examples, include:
We need to be dilligent against governmental abuses, but don't let that dilligence lead you into thinking that government is all evil and doesn't do some very good things.
Why do we need proof of benefits? Cut the subsidies and quit forcing us to buy it. If it survives on its own then it can be deemed beneficial.
A free market place is the only test needed.
4 out of 10 loads of Corn now go to produce Ethanol.
And if we up that amount to 15% by volume, it will translate to over 5 loads for every 10. (50% of our Corn production in other words.)
It not only increases our cost at the pump, it increases our taxes to pay off the ransom money supporting the subsidies to produce it!
Gingrich = Old Republican = Not conservative = No money or votes from me.
EVAH!!
Pollution is not a good example. The government enables pollution yet you give it credit for cutting it? Beleive it or not this country is capable of producing better and cheaper housing in the abscence of codes. Etc is not a good example either.
I will agree on defense but i limited scope. And I will add enforcement of property rights and punishing the guilty.
I'm tired of no being able to buy gasoline!
I want good ol'gasoline and nothing but gasoline, so help me God!
The pipeline companies don't like it cause it craps up their lines, are vehicles are no different, they should pay/or be legally rejoined to their responsibility for stealing our money and ruining our property, that's just the truth of the situation, plain & simple.
Ugh, must engage spell check before posting. My apologies.
Amen. Sit down and shut up Newt...you're embarrassing yourself.
I don't think there are any benefits in this case. But suppose that it really was reducing our dependence on foreign oil and in the process helping defund terrorist supporting states. That would certainly be a goal I could get behind and would support government intervention in the market place to help happen.
If Biofuel was likely to be viable alternative to oil given economies of scale and this program was helping achieve those economies of scale, then again I could support the government intervention. Especially if it meant American jobs vs overseas jobs during a time of high unemployment.
But I think there are better alternatives that have already been proven viable like Nuclear, that I'd rather see the government put it's resources behind. I just think the Biofuel, is not going to be viable unless you go to it 100% like Brazil and even then it's very questionable.
Not irrational, just self-serving.
I believe the part about cheaper. But codes aren't federally mandated. Yet practically every community freely votes to adopt them.
"The government enables pollution yet you give it credit for cutting it?"
huh? How does the government enable pollution? They sit in their offices and do nothing? They don't pollute. Individuals and businesses pollute. And many of them do so with reckless abandon, until government steps in.
A little research will reveal that he's on the payroll of one or more alternative-fuel lobbying groups. Just like that former CIA director James Woolsey who writes articles and gives speeches in which he describes our nation's reliance on fossil fuels as a "national security issue" -- when he's got his own agenda lobbying for the alternative fuel industry and even sits on the board of directors of Plug In America (an advocacy group for electric vehicles).
These people get tiresome after a while, don't they?
Newt, stand aside and let the new boys show you ole boys how it is done. You will not get a vote from anyone in my house.
It couldn't be more obvious. Another is Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) who's generally conservative but has never seen an ethanol subsidy he'd vote against.
Here pass out these rotten tomatoes, let's have some fun.
If Bio was viable why would you need subsidies to get it going? You would not. But if you consider Bio to be good then the fact that the free market wont make it or buy it is considered a failure.
I will take a free people buying and selling as they see fit over having your preferences imposed on me by government diktat.
Have you looked at the crap being done in the name of Environmentalism with modern building codes? LEED is a joke.
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