Posted on 07/25/2015 7:37:50 AM PDT by Lorianne
It’s the same party with 2 wings. The Washington Crony Party. If one can fleece the taxpayer it will be done, Republican, Democrat, whatever, so long as money is funneled to the narrow interests which fund your campaigns.
The Republican Party, though it has a free market wing which is young and growing is still dominated by the older big government crony Republicans. How long that generation can hold on, and how much damage they will create to the economy is anyone’s guess.
(From The Surge)
"Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) just can’t help himself. He is intent on using the power of the federal government to prop up biofuels production to help farmers in his home state. This is an inefficient allocation of resources and rank crony capitalism.
Grassley is pushing for two crony ideas.
First, the Iowa senator wants to use government mandates to make sure that Iowa farmers have a government mandated market for farmers grown biofuels.
He has teamed up with other Farm State senators to push for the Environmental Protection Agency to increase the biofuels mandate in the 2016 Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS). Grassley has communicated to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy that he is upset at the way the EPA crafted the new RFS and he wants the government mandate strengthened.
The RFS was created in 2005 and requires that renewable fuels be blended with set at a percentage agreed to by the EPA. The EPA was considering lowering the standards because they doubt that enough domestic production is available to meet the current standard."
Ethanol is bad for your engine, bad for the country’s economic engine, is damaging in terms of the amount of energy needed to create it, and is a vehicle for all kinds of cronyism. No Republican worth his salt should be calling for an extension of ethanol EPA mandates even if he or she is from Iowa.
Only Cruz told the crony capitalist corn farmers in Iowa that he was against ethanol. They didn’t like it.
As always, follow the money. The GOPe loves it more than life itself.
Grassley just wants to bring the pork back to his state (Iowa).
Where does Joni Ernst stand on this?
The Republican Party, though it has a free market wing which is young and growing is still dominated by the older big government crony Republicans.
************
This so-called free market wing is like a fly on the back of an elephant. Its insignificant and is never going to irritate the beast.
The fact is, there is no reforming the Republican Party. The culture of cronyism, established political connections, and contributory mechanisms are way too deeply embedded in the Party’s DNA to ever be reformed. The party has long since been bought and paid for.
Iowa is small and not as important as they want to believe.
It has everything to do with the fact that the CEO of Archer Daniels Midland is more powerful in Washington than the president of the United States.
While I do not believe the government should pick winners and losers in our economy, and from a philosophical standpoint I do not believe in taxpayer subsidies, I do believe that if we were to end subsidies, it would have to be done across the board, for every sector at the exact same time — meaning until and unless that day comes, I will passionately stand in defense of RFS and other related programs,” Ernst said in response to written questions from POLITICO.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/ethanol-fuels-iowa-109557.html#ixzz3gv0j91mH
While I do not believe the government should pick winners and losers in our economy, and from a philosophical standpoint I do not believe in taxpayer subsidies, I do believe that if we were to end subsidies, it would have to be done across the board, for every sector at the exact same time — meaning until and unless that day comes, I will passionately stand in defense of RFS and other related programs,” Ernst said in response to written questions from POLITICO.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/ethanol-fuels-iowa-109557.html#ixzz3gv0j91mH
Once you give people something it is very very hard to take it away. This is why these laws should never be passed in the first place.
This applies to many laws.
You would be hard-pressed to find a stronger supporter of free-market capitalism than your writer. History proves that it is the system that has provided more wealth, freedom and well-being to more humans for longer than any system before it. It’s helpful to be clear that the classic definition of “capital” is the means of production, the ownership of same and the activities surrounding that production.
I have never forgotten what Dr. James Dobson of Focus on The Family once told me during a radio interview: “Without an underlying FAITH system (in his and my case and most of the West, that would be Christianity or Judeo-Christianity), capitalism is just a HUNTING LICENSE”.
As I’m sure you know, who or what OWNS the capital is critical. If you think about it, you’ll see that socialism or it’s evil big brother, communism, is a form of capitalism in which, in varying degrees, the STATE owns and controls the capital. Communism is simply MONOPOLISTIC capitalism.
Someone once asked David Rockefeller why he and others with great wealth (produced under the free market system they clearly seek to deny others) had formed multiple allegedly “humanitarian” organizations, the sub rosa goals of which seek to bring about a socialist or communist system here. His response? “If YOU’RE the state, it’s a pretty good deal”.
Which brings us to OLIGARCHY, the system in which a small group of wealthy and powerful individuals run the state. The citizens have little or no input.
And that’s just about where America is now.
For true free-market capitalism to function as envisioned by Adam Smith, Hayek, Mises and others, those who, by their hard work and enterprise, find themselves in control of the capital (again, the means of production), are cautioned by classical economists to do so based on ENLIGHTENED SELF-INTEREST! For the system to produce benefits for all parties, it is in the capitalist’s interest to play by the generally accepted rules, honor contracts* and treat those with whom he has dealings with respect and not abuse the blessings our unique system allow them to experience. (* The Constitution is the most important man drawn contract in America.)
Let me cut to the chase.
America today is at a very dangerous place. Too many of our capitalists, politicians and others in positions of power are more concerned about JUST their bottom line or maintaining and increasing their power over those around them and are on the verge of destroying the very system that brought them and so many others liberty and prosperity. Too many of them are operating on the basis of UNENLIGHTENED SELF-INTEREST. They remind me of some of the numerous viruses that infect other organisms only to kill it at which time, stupid, unthinking, UNENLIGHTENED CREATURE THAT IT IS, IT ALSO PERISHES!
If OUR capitalists and poliicians persist in this increasingly unenlightened behavior, some of us who understand what that has ALWAYS brought upon us will find ourselves uttering the final lines in the final scene of the classic film at the link below. Not one of my favorites but nonetheless prophetic.
My great fear is that that day will come sooner than later. MUCH sooner!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvuM3DjvYf0
Dick Bachert 7 24 2015
I know exactly where to put the corn cobs...
Iowan are by in large INCAPABLE of electing Non-Crony Capitalism Politicians. They(we) are incurably HOOKED on the Heroin of Crony-Capitalism.
“Watch your cornhole, Bud.”
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