I’ll be gentle this morning

I’ll just start with a chat about ethanol and crop subsidies. And the fact that this may well be about to end, or be radically curtailed.

“The best refutation of the theory of the survival of the fittest is probably the corn ethanol lobby, whose annual $6 billion in federal subsidies have managed to outlive both its record of failure and all evidence and argument,” said The Wall Street Journal.

A little background on this, this article is about Major Newspapers saying enough with this shit. Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, several others. Finally! Fucking JOURNALISM! Well, those aren’t the “big boys”, the LSM, like some others, but they’re pretty big names. Especially WSJ. Several good quotes I’ll borrow to lure you in.

The Washington Post looked at the cost to the consumer in the form of “decades of subsidies the government has showered on the corn ethanol industry.” It suggested that “The debate should be about why corn ethanol deserves any federal protection at all.”

Little known or understood is the fact that the federal government gives “companies that combine corn ethanol with gasoline a 45-cent tax subsidy for every gallon of corn ethanol added to gasoline.” The result is that the cost of replacing a gallon of gasoline with one of corn ethanol is $1.78. “The tax incentives alone cost the Treasury $6 billion in 2009.”

And this one:

Jimmy Carter’s belief that ethanol could replace or reduce dependence on foreign oil imports and reduce greenhouse gas emissions was totally bogus. Nothing about converting corn to fuel makes any sense at all. In July 2007, I laid out the facts, quoting E. Ralph Hostetter, the publisher of American Farm Publications.

“Today, 60 percent of the American corn crop is fed to U.S. livestock,” noted Hostetter. “Therefore, as the price of corn is forced up by the demands of ethanol production and many natural causes such as weather, so is the price of meat, poultry, eggs, milk and more than 3,500 products American use every day.”

Good article, a fair bit more to it. You may want to check it. But the freaky thing about it, and the reason Jeff Bingaman  is still in Congress is this part:

The ethanol subsidy is on the front burner for Congress because it is due to expire and Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Chairman of the powerful Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has expressed support for cuts to the tax credit program. A twenty percent cut (nine cents per gallon) is being debated in the House Ways and Means Committee.

Uhm, Jeff? Not 20%. All of it. Cut it all. Let’s go back to using the corn for all the things it was used for before, let the farmers sell their crops as food, not fuel. Less money out from the government, more other consumables produced and sold. This Ethanol Fuel really sucks, and it costs a fortune. Drop it.

And going absolutely, TOTALLY off that topic, last night I got this bug to research  the various stories about the flood. I found them, Aztec to Zulu, Celt to Viking, by the ton. As I was reading various of them, I came upon this story about the Grand Canyon. There are stories of caves, and being cared for by the “ant people”, and so on, until the waters receded. This article touched on that, but it also spoke of beauty of the canyon, and vortex energies, and “vision quests”, and a whole bunch of other shit. Lighter reading to get you out of the political funk. Just something to lighten the mood, and tickle your brain.