Thursday, August 16, 2012
Obama’s Big Bacon Bailout
I think you may find this article very interesting. Obama's solution to the severe damage to the US corn crop due to the worst drought in over 50 years...........I don't think it takes a "rocket scientist" to figure out that this plan is NOT THE ANSWER and will only make the problem worse.
Instead what his administration needs to do is SUSPEND the ethanol fuel mandate so corn will be available for meat, hog, poultry and other meat producing farmers. This "Big Bacon Bailout" does absolutely NOTHING to help these farmers AND, make more corn available for food products. This is shameful! Total "lack of leadership". Consumers will be left to "eat ethanol" since there may not be enough corn to manufacture the hundreds of products made from corn.
"Pete"
========================================================
Obama’s Big Bacon Bailout
August 14, 2012 | 11:05 am
Charlie Spiering The Washington Examiner
Standing in front of a field of shriveled ears of corn, President Obama unveiled a government plan to help out farmers and livestock producers.
The federal government, he declared, was prepared to spend up to $170 million dollars on meat, thanks to his executive directive.
“We’re not just talking about a few strips of bacon here,” the President insisted. “It turns out that the federal government buys a lot of meat for military bases, hospitals, colleges, food banks and cafeterias, and because of the drought, there are a lot of folks out there that are trying to sell meat right now.”
Up to a million dollars will be used to buy pork products.
As I noted yesterday, livestock producers are suffering due to a corn shortage, due to the drought hitting the Midwest this summer. That puts livestock producers in a tight spot, due to the high cost of feed.
But they are in even more trouble, thanks to an ethanol mandate requiring that 13.2 billion gallons of corn starch-derived biofuel be produced in 2012. Forty percent of the nation’s corn crop now goes to ethanol producers, compared with 36 percent for feed.
With high feed costs, livestock producers are forced to slaughter their herds, rather than spending the money on expensive corn to keep them alive. If you have a freezer, now would be the time to fill it, as the cost meat is expected to drop at the expense of livestock producers.
Thanks to the president’s “meat plan,” however, the government plan will prop up the price of meat in order to help producers rather than relaxing the ethanol mandates. “We’ll freeze it for later — but we’ve got a lot of freezers,” Obama explained in Iowa.
But while Obama’s “meat plan” will absorb the meat surplus in 2012, the cost of meat will skyrocket in 2013, when production slows down. The Department of Agriculture has already predicted a 4 percent jump in beef prices in 2013, and a 2-3 percent jump for poultry, eggs, and pork.
This year, stock up and save by filling up your freezer in advance. But hurry, Obama is already at the store emptying the shelves for the government’s big bloated shopping cart.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
A Hungry World Population? Oh Well, Let Them Eat Ethanol!
The debate over corn for gas or food is still very hot due to the continued EXTREME drought in the corn belt states. The drought and extreme heat has lasted so long that it is unlikely even if rain were to come, that it would do much good. The corn crop loss will likely exceed 50% of the crop when the final figures are in. AND, given that ethanol gas gets 1st priority on corn with approximately 40%+ of the corn crop going to ethanol, you can see that this does not leave a whole lot for animal feed and human food.....
"Pete"
==================================================
A Hungry World Population? Oh Well, Let Them Eat Ethanol!
Patrick Michaels, Contributor - Forbes
At the interface of public science and public policy
This year, given the expected yield reductions, we could easily destroy over half of our corn producing mandated ethanol.
…Here come the corn riots.
Climate change policies—much more than the vagaries of climate–are now beginning to create the instabilities that cooler heads have been warning about for years.
Corn prices on the Chicago Board of Trade are now at or near record levels, around $8.30 per bushel for spot delivery. The rise in recent weeks has been dramatic, driven by the perception of declining yields caused by hot and dry conditions mainly in the upper Midwest.
Much of this corn is beyond redemption as grain. High temperatures render corn’s pollen sterile, and the narrow pollination season—usually around ten days in a given field—dictates that once this time has passed, there’s likely to be very few kernels set on each ear. While rain may allow the plant to recover, its value as feed is dramatically reduced.
(Read the full article here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmichaels/2012/07/22/a-hungry-world-population-oh-well-let-them-eat-ethanol/)
The U.S. corn
growing region is massive in extent, so that some residual yields are always
preserved. The drought of the mid-1950s was a widespread and
multi-year event, but it only reduced yields (the amount produced
per acre) around 20%. The current drought is comparable in extent,
but not in magnitude nor in duration. Yet.
Back then, the average yield was around 45 bushels per acre (a bushel is 56 pounds of shelled corn), and rising at a pretty constant rate that began with the large-scale adoption of hybrid corn, which began in the 1930s.
Despite the wailings of Paul Ehrlich and his tiresome compatriots, there were no great famines because of some fantasy “limits to growth” that were forecast to soon to be breached. Instead, corn yields continued their steady climb. A good year now yields around 160 bushels. Between then and now, there have been several bad years caused by drought, heat, and blights, and pretty much every one of them has seen the same percentage toll on yields, about 25 % of the maximum expected value at the time.
The Department of Agriculture’s July 11 projection is for a 9% reduction from that nominal 160. But it’s been pretty hot and dry since that estimate was made (with data from many days before 7/11), so things are going to drop further, which is why corn prices continue to climb.
Which brings us to ethanol. It comes from corn. The amount to be produced is a mandate, not a choice. It’s 13.2 billion gallons this year. Last year we burnt up 40% of our crop. This year, given the expected yield reductions, we could easily destroy over half of our corn.
The U.S. is by far the world’s largest producer, and our abundant supply is a major factor in keeping the price of the world’s most abundant feed and food grain low—generally around $3.00/bushel. That was before George W. Bush decided that the answer to global warming was to produce ethanol from corn. Hence the rise in corn price that commences with the 2007 passage of the ethanol mandates, followed soon by global food riots. $8.00 corn today will likely bring much more of the same.
Bad weather is a fact of life in agriculture. In the last four decades, the time of maximum and increasing carbon dioxide concentrations, there’s no evidence of an increase in the number of bad crop-years, nor a change in the magnitude of the percent drop in yields that occurs. 2012 is shaping up like a garden-variety crummy year.
What we have seen is a change in policy, not of the weather. Now, the Saudi Arabia of corn burns up half of its supply, instead of selling it to a hungry world. All of this was brought to you by our greener friends and, yes, Republicans, working the political process hand in hand. Later, the environmental community realized—as some of us had been telling them for years—that corn ethanol results in an increase in carbon dioxide emissions, not a decrease.
Of course, there is little chance that the disproportionately influential farm lobby is going to swallow changing the ethanol mandate when its constituents are making money hand-over-fist because of an artificially induced shortage. It’s also an election year. But, isn’t it just too bad about those poor people in Mexico and around the world who actually will suffer for the insanity and depravity of our agricultural/environmental policy?
"Pete"
==================================================
A Hungry World Population? Oh Well, Let Them Eat Ethanol!
Patrick Michaels, Contributor - Forbes
At the interface of public science and public policy
This year, given the expected yield reductions, we could easily destroy over half of our corn producing mandated ethanol.
…Here come the corn riots.
Climate change policies—much more than the vagaries of climate–are now beginning to create the instabilities that cooler heads have been warning about for years.
Corn prices on the Chicago Board of Trade are now at or near record levels, around $8.30 per bushel for spot delivery. The rise in recent weeks has been dramatic, driven by the perception of declining yields caused by hot and dry conditions mainly in the upper Midwest.
Much of this corn is beyond redemption as grain. High temperatures render corn’s pollen sterile, and the narrow pollination season—usually around ten days in a given field—dictates that once this time has passed, there’s likely to be very few kernels set on each ear. While rain may allow the plant to recover, its value as feed is dramatically reduced.
(Read the full article here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmichaels/2012/07/22/a-hungry-world-population-oh-well-let-them-eat-ethanol/)
Back then, the average yield was around 45 bushels per acre (a bushel is 56 pounds of shelled corn), and rising at a pretty constant rate that began with the large-scale adoption of hybrid corn, which began in the 1930s.
Despite the wailings of Paul Ehrlich and his tiresome compatriots, there were no great famines because of some fantasy “limits to growth” that were forecast to soon to be breached. Instead, corn yields continued their steady climb. A good year now yields around 160 bushels. Between then and now, there have been several bad years caused by drought, heat, and blights, and pretty much every one of them has seen the same percentage toll on yields, about 25 % of the maximum expected value at the time.
The Department of Agriculture’s July 11 projection is for a 9% reduction from that nominal 160. But it’s been pretty hot and dry since that estimate was made (with data from many days before 7/11), so things are going to drop further, which is why corn prices continue to climb.
Which brings us to ethanol. It comes from corn. The amount to be produced is a mandate, not a choice. It’s 13.2 billion gallons this year. Last year we burnt up 40% of our crop. This year, given the expected yield reductions, we could easily destroy over half of our corn.
The U.S. is by far the world’s largest producer, and our abundant supply is a major factor in keeping the price of the world’s most abundant feed and food grain low—generally around $3.00/bushel. That was before George W. Bush decided that the answer to global warming was to produce ethanol from corn. Hence the rise in corn price that commences with the 2007 passage of the ethanol mandates, followed soon by global food riots. $8.00 corn today will likely bring much more of the same.
Bad weather is a fact of life in agriculture. In the last four decades, the time of maximum and increasing carbon dioxide concentrations, there’s no evidence of an increase in the number of bad crop-years, nor a change in the magnitude of the percent drop in yields that occurs. 2012 is shaping up like a garden-variety crummy year.
What we have seen is a change in policy, not of the weather. Now, the Saudi Arabia of corn burns up half of its supply, instead of selling it to a hungry world. All of this was brought to you by our greener friends and, yes, Republicans, working the political process hand in hand. Later, the environmental community realized—as some of us had been telling them for years—that corn ethanol results in an increase in carbon dioxide emissions, not a decrease.
Of course, there is little chance that the disproportionately influential farm lobby is going to swallow changing the ethanol mandate when its constituents are making money hand-over-fist because of an artificially induced shortage. It’s also an election year. But, isn’t it just too bad about those poor people in Mexico and around the world who actually will suffer for the insanity and depravity of our agricultural/environmental policy?
Monday, August 13, 2012
Ethanol groups to Congress: Try not to 'out-guess' markets
Now the ethanol groups fight back over demands that the ethanol mandate be eased back or stopped altogether due to the huge corn crop loss from the worst drought in over 50 years in the corn belt..........something will have to be done about this, and soon - or we may again face World food shortages - in large part due to ethanol gasoline and unfavorable climate conditions!
"Pete"
===============================================
Ethanol groups to Congress: Try not to 'out-guess' markets
By Zack Colman - 08/02/12 03:13 PM ET
A pair of ethanol industry trade groups on Thursday accused lawmakers and livestock groups of spreading misinformation to kill a rule that promotes corn ethanol production.
Some lawmakers critical of ethanol have called for the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) renewable fuel standard (RFS) to be waived because of drought conditions lowering the corn harvest and raising prices.
A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers held a press conference earlier Thursday urging EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to waive the standard. They said the EPA can waive the RFS in whole or in part when complying with the rule causes severe economic or environmental harm.
But Renewable Fuels Association CEO Bob Dinneen said the rule should only be waived when ethanol refiners say they cannot meet the rule’s production targets. He added that this won't happen this year.
“The bottom line is this — the RFS is about refiners being able to meet their obligations,” Dinneen said. “Refiners can meet their obligations because of the flexibility built into this program.”
The RFS calls for a certain amount of corn ethanol to be blended into traditional transportation fuel each year. Dinneen said the original mark for 2012 was 13.2 billion gallons, but EPA has revised that downward to 13 billion gallons in response to decreased overall demand for gasoline.
Growth Energy CEO Tom Buis said he's never heard a "bigger whopper" in Washington than the argument that the RFS is hurting food supplies.
In a response to a question from E2-Wire, he said Congress should not try to “out-guess” the market by calling for an RFS waiver. Crop yields could rebound to drive prices back down like they did in 2008, which was when Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) asked for an RFS waiver for economic reasons, he said. EPA denied Perry’s request.
“We’re in that crazy part of the year,” Guis said of corn prices. “It’s kind of the silly season on speculation at this point.”
Dinneen and Buis cautioned lawmakers and the EPA about acting prematurely on the RFS. They said ethanol producers already are curtailing production in response to the high prices. And in previous years, ethanol refiners had overproduced corn ethanol, leaving about 800 million gallons sitting in stocks and 2.5 billion gallons worth of credits that refiners can use
Sunday, August 12, 2012
The end of ethanol?
Do hope everyone had a great weekend. Be very careful as you drive to work this week as many schools are opening and the traffic will be more congested.
The corn for ethanol or food controversy continues to soar! Many US Congressmen and Senators are pressuring Obama and his EPA to reduce or put a hold on the ethanol mandate so more corn is available for food. This would hopefully also reduce the VERY HIGH price of corn. Before the drought in the corn belt states began, corn was selling for in the low $6/bushel. It is now over $8 and continuing to increase. Meat, pork, poultry and other food producing farms are not only having to pay extremely high prices for feed for their animals, but many can't find enough corn and are sending their animals to market early. That may result in very short term lower meat prices, but next year's prices will be very high due to a shortage of animals for food.
Here's another story of the issue of corn for ethanol.............
"Pete"
========================================
THURSDAY, AUG 2, 2012 12:03 PM CDT
The end of ethanol?
The drought is destroying corn fields -- and threatening American politicians' most cherished alternative fuel
BY SARAH LASKOW
Americans excel at processing government-subsidized corn into products — cheap beef, cheap chicken, cheap sugar. We’ve also gotten very good at turning corn into relatively expensive bio-based fuel. In 2010, corn processors turned 10 times as much American-grown corn into ethanol as into high-fructose corn syrup. That same year, for the first time, our addiction to fuel outstripped our addiction to hamburgers — more corn went into ethanol than into feed for livestock.
For years, national politicians could only benefit by supporting ethanol. Oil companies weren’t too worried about it. Farmers loved it, and they lived in swing states. Even as think tankers, scientists and some environmentalists tallied reasonable objections to turning millions of acres of corn into fuel, the Iowa ethanol pander became a rite of passage for presidential candidates. But now, with this summer’s drought killing off America’s most valuable crop, the ethanol industry is finally facing critics with actual political clout — meat producers, auto companies and the average American family. One bad crop of summer corn won’t dismantle the business ethanol producers have built. But it could herald the decline of an industry that’s been propped up for years by political convenience rather than economic or environmental sense.
I first heard the rumblings against ethanol from a dairy farmer in upstate New York a few weeks back: The economics of running a dairy farm were dire enough, he said, without ethanol producers driving up the price of ever-scarcer corn. By the beginning of this week, worries and dissatisfactions like his had coalesced into an official letter of complaint from turkey growers, pork producers, dairy farmers and cattlemen to the Environmental Protection Agency. These producers would rather not compete with the ethanol industry to buy grain, and their coalition made a simple enough request of the Environmental Protection Agency: Just for the moment, stop giving the ethanol industry a boost.
Because of the political benefits of supporting corn-based ethanol, the biofuel gets more support from the government than any other kind of clean energy. When a group of think tanks analyzed government investment in clean tech from 2009 to 2014, they found that tax credits and incentives for creating and burning biofuels together added up to “the single largest contribution to federal clean energy deployment expenditures.” Recently, though, support for those incentives has eroded. Subsidies for corn-based ethanol ended in 2011. The industry still benefits, though, from a standard that requires a minimum volume of biofuel powers the country’s vehicles. It’s an important market-driver for the ethanol industry, and it’s what meat producers are asking the Environmental Protection Agency to temporarily suspend.
The meat industry isn’t alone in its skepticism of the renewable fuel standard: The auto industry is also less than fond. The standards require purveyors of fuel to gradually ramp up the amount of biofuel they use until 2014, when 14.4 billion gallons of biofuel will go into American’s trucks, planes and automobiles. In practice, that means that anyone who has a car will be buying into the clean energy revolution: All gas available at the pump will be blended with ethanol, in increasingly higher percentages. To meet this goal, the ethanol industry has pushed for gas stations to sell E15, a blend that contains 15 percent ethanol. American auto companies have been arguing for years that gas with that much ethanol blended in will screw up their cars, making the engine, fuel storage and emissions systems less durable. Right now, the auto industry has been losing this argument: In Lawrence, Kan., the first E15 pump in the country opened up in mid-July.
Cars and meat — is there a more American coalition? Add to that a third ally — the grocery shoppers of America, the moms and dads who just want to buy their kids milk and chicken fingers — and ethanol might have the beginnings of a problem.
For years, America’s ethanol push has been driving up food prices, just not in American grocery stores. And while a worldwide food crisis sounds like a problem, American politics have never been particularly responsive to hunger in Africa or the Middle East. This corn-killing drought, though, could affect food prices here in America. Across the world, spikes like this one have encouraged political unrest. The Obama administration won’t fall because of $7 boxes of cereal, but rising food prices certainly could create a broader base of voters who’d rather put corn-based products in their mouths than in their gas tanks.
If the political logic for ethanol falls apart, there’s little left to recommend it. Renewable resources aren’t necessarily infinite, and biofuels extract a high cost in land and in water. The World Policy Institute has calculated, for instance, that it takes 32 gallons of water to produce enough oil to drive from New York to D.C. and back again. The production of enough corn-based biofuel to fuel the same drive requires more than 35,000 gallons of water, according to the Institute.
Even renewable energy advocates and experts don’t necessarily see the widespread use of biofuels as a key component to reducing carbon emissions. In his book “Reinventing Fire,” the Rocky Mountain Institute’s Amory Lovins argues that biofuels make the most sense for trucks and planes — modes of transportation that can’t be easily electrified. These biofuels need not come from corn but from plants that people don’t eat — switchgrasses, sorghums and trees like poplars and willows. Conveniently, some of these crops have a greater chance of thriving in a changed climate, in which droughts like the one killing the corn this summer become ever more frequent.
The corn for ethanol or food controversy continues to soar! Many US Congressmen and Senators are pressuring Obama and his EPA to reduce or put a hold on the ethanol mandate so more corn is available for food. This would hopefully also reduce the VERY HIGH price of corn. Before the drought in the corn belt states began, corn was selling for in the low $6/bushel. It is now over $8 and continuing to increase. Meat, pork, poultry and other food producing farms are not only having to pay extremely high prices for feed for their animals, but many can't find enough corn and are sending their animals to market early. That may result in very short term lower meat prices, but next year's prices will be very high due to a shortage of animals for food.
Here's another story of the issue of corn for ethanol.............
"Pete"
========================================
THURSDAY, AUG 2, 2012 12:03 PM CDT
The end of ethanol?
The drought is destroying corn fields -- and threatening American politicians' most cherished alternative fuel
BY SARAH LASKOW
Americans excel at processing government-subsidized corn into products — cheap beef, cheap chicken, cheap sugar. We’ve also gotten very good at turning corn into relatively expensive bio-based fuel. In 2010, corn processors turned 10 times as much American-grown corn into ethanol as into high-fructose corn syrup. That same year, for the first time, our addiction to fuel outstripped our addiction to hamburgers — more corn went into ethanol than into feed for livestock.
For years, national politicians could only benefit by supporting ethanol. Oil companies weren’t too worried about it. Farmers loved it, and they lived in swing states. Even as think tankers, scientists and some environmentalists tallied reasonable objections to turning millions of acres of corn into fuel, the Iowa ethanol pander became a rite of passage for presidential candidates. But now, with this summer’s drought killing off America’s most valuable crop, the ethanol industry is finally facing critics with actual political clout — meat producers, auto companies and the average American family. One bad crop of summer corn won’t dismantle the business ethanol producers have built. But it could herald the decline of an industry that’s been propped up for years by political convenience rather than economic or environmental sense.
I first heard the rumblings against ethanol from a dairy farmer in upstate New York a few weeks back: The economics of running a dairy farm were dire enough, he said, without ethanol producers driving up the price of ever-scarcer corn. By the beginning of this week, worries and dissatisfactions like his had coalesced into an official letter of complaint from turkey growers, pork producers, dairy farmers and cattlemen to the Environmental Protection Agency. These producers would rather not compete with the ethanol industry to buy grain, and their coalition made a simple enough request of the Environmental Protection Agency: Just for the moment, stop giving the ethanol industry a boost.
Because of the political benefits of supporting corn-based ethanol, the biofuel gets more support from the government than any other kind of clean energy. When a group of think tanks analyzed government investment in clean tech from 2009 to 2014, they found that tax credits and incentives for creating and burning biofuels together added up to “the single largest contribution to federal clean energy deployment expenditures.” Recently, though, support for those incentives has eroded. Subsidies for corn-based ethanol ended in 2011. The industry still benefits, though, from a standard that requires a minimum volume of biofuel powers the country’s vehicles. It’s an important market-driver for the ethanol industry, and it’s what meat producers are asking the Environmental Protection Agency to temporarily suspend.
The meat industry isn’t alone in its skepticism of the renewable fuel standard: The auto industry is also less than fond. The standards require purveyors of fuel to gradually ramp up the amount of biofuel they use until 2014, when 14.4 billion gallons of biofuel will go into American’s trucks, planes and automobiles. In practice, that means that anyone who has a car will be buying into the clean energy revolution: All gas available at the pump will be blended with ethanol, in increasingly higher percentages. To meet this goal, the ethanol industry has pushed for gas stations to sell E15, a blend that contains 15 percent ethanol. American auto companies have been arguing for years that gas with that much ethanol blended in will screw up their cars, making the engine, fuel storage and emissions systems less durable. Right now, the auto industry has been losing this argument: In Lawrence, Kan., the first E15 pump in the country opened up in mid-July.
Cars and meat — is there a more American coalition? Add to that a third ally — the grocery shoppers of America, the moms and dads who just want to buy their kids milk and chicken fingers — and ethanol might have the beginnings of a problem.
For years, America’s ethanol push has been driving up food prices, just not in American grocery stores. And while a worldwide food crisis sounds like a problem, American politics have never been particularly responsive to hunger in Africa or the Middle East. This corn-killing drought, though, could affect food prices here in America. Across the world, spikes like this one have encouraged political unrest. The Obama administration won’t fall because of $7 boxes of cereal, but rising food prices certainly could create a broader base of voters who’d rather put corn-based products in their mouths than in their gas tanks.
If the political logic for ethanol falls apart, there’s little left to recommend it. Renewable resources aren’t necessarily infinite, and biofuels extract a high cost in land and in water. The World Policy Institute has calculated, for instance, that it takes 32 gallons of water to produce enough oil to drive from New York to D.C. and back again. The production of enough corn-based biofuel to fuel the same drive requires more than 35,000 gallons of water, according to the Institute.
Even renewable energy advocates and experts don’t necessarily see the widespread use of biofuels as a key component to reducing carbon emissions. In his book “Reinventing Fire,” the Rocky Mountain Institute’s Amory Lovins argues that biofuels make the most sense for trucks and planes — modes of transportation that can’t be easily electrified. These biofuels need not come from corn but from plants that people don’t eat — switchgrasses, sorghums and trees like poplars and willows. Conveniently, some of these crops have a greater chance of thriving in a changed climate, in which droughts like the one killing the corn this summer become ever more frequent.
Friday, August 10, 2012
Ethanol vs. the World
The issue of ethanol or food is getting uglier and uglier. Here's an article from the "Wall Street Journal" from today on the issue.
NOTE: Articles from "major" news media allow me to use their articles provide I only copy the first two paragraphs, then their web page link to the full article. Otherwise, I have to pay an exhorbitant fee to copy the full article.
Guess everyone has heard by now that LSU's Tyrann Mathieu, aka the "Honey Badger" has been thrown off the LSU's football team. Sources close to Tyrann say he failed another drug test. You may recall that last year, he and two other players missed the Auburn team for failing a drug test, apparently from the use of artificial marijuana. Sad to see this gifted athlete throw his career away. Some say he will enroll at McNeese in Lake Charles where he could play this year (lower class school - division 2a)
"Pete"
=====================================================
Ethanol vs. the World
The corn fuel mandate is raising food prices and hurting the poor.
Wall Street Journal - August 10, 2012, 6:33 p.m. ET
In 2007 and 2008, food prices spiked, resulting in much higher U.S. grocery bills and far more hunger in the poorest countries as the global supply chain buckled. The world may now be on the cusp of a 2012 reprise amid the drought in the Midwest farm belt, the worst in 50 years. Luckily, there are plenty of simple, modest things Washington can do to alleviate and even prevent another crisis.
The problem is that these fixes are opposed by a minor industry that adds little if any value to the economy, even counting its prodigious Beltway operations. Yup, the ethanol lobby strikes again. It can't succeed without a mandate that forces consumers to buy its product every time they fill up the tank, and if the resulting corn shortages drive food prices up in a way that punishes consumers around the world, so be it.
(Read full article here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443404004577581140907497810.html)
NOTE: Articles from "major" news media allow me to use their articles provide I only copy the first two paragraphs, then their web page link to the full article. Otherwise, I have to pay an exhorbitant fee to copy the full article.
Guess everyone has heard by now that LSU's Tyrann Mathieu, aka the "Honey Badger" has been thrown off the LSU's football team. Sources close to Tyrann say he failed another drug test. You may recall that last year, he and two other players missed the Auburn team for failing a drug test, apparently from the use of artificial marijuana. Sad to see this gifted athlete throw his career away. Some say he will enroll at McNeese in Lake Charles where he could play this year (lower class school - division 2a)
"Pete"
=====================================================
Ethanol vs. the World
The corn fuel mandate is raising food prices and hurting the poor.
Wall Street Journal - August 10, 2012, 6:33 p.m. ET
In 2007 and 2008, food prices spiked, resulting in much higher U.S. grocery bills and far more hunger in the poorest countries as the global supply chain buckled. The world may now be on the cusp of a 2012 reprise amid the drought in the Midwest farm belt, the worst in 50 years. Luckily, there are plenty of simple, modest things Washington can do to alleviate and even prevent another crisis.
The problem is that these fixes are opposed by a minor industry that adds little if any value to the economy, even counting its prodigious Beltway operations. Yup, the ethanol lobby strikes again. It can't succeed without a mandate that forces consumers to buy its product every time they fill up the tank, and if the resulting corn shortages drive food prices up in a way that punishes consumers around the world, so be it.
(Read full article here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443404004577581140907497810.html)
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Solyndra Revelations Show It’s Time to Close the “Bank of Washington”
My surgical procedure went well today.........learn results of biopsy next week.
Here's an article, while not "directly" related to ethanol gas issues, is nontheless important to show how our taxpayer money is being wasted, just like "corn gas" under this Washington administration..........we have a choice to stop this mess on November 6th, perhaps the most important Presidential and Senatorial election in our lifetime.
"Pete"
=======================================================
Morning Bell: Solyndra Revelations Show It’s Time to Close the “Bank of Washington”
Amy Payne
August 6, 2012 at 8:46 am
“The Bank of Washington continues to help us!” bragged Solyndra CEO Chris Gronet inemails released last week.
An investigation by the House Energy and Commerce Committee revealed that Solyndra—the solar company that went under, taking more than $600 million in taxpayer funds with it—wasn’t ever supposed to be an independent business. It was built to rely on the taxpayers.
“Getting business from Uncle Sam is a principal element of Solyndra’s channel strategy,” wrote Tom Baruch, founder of Solyndra investor CEMA Capital, in an August 10, 2010 email.
Getting federal money was integral to Solyndra’s business model. But even with government backing, Solyndra failed—just one of a growing list of companies in theGreen Graveyard that took taxpayer money and went bankrupt.
The emails released between Solyndra stakeholders and Obama Administration officials show that Solyndra’s investors knew the company was a bad bet for taxpayers, but the Administration wanted the energy loan guarantee program to be perceived as successful. Meanwhile, the Government Accountability Office was finding that the Department of Energy played favorites with the program, and high-level advisers including Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner were raising red flags.
When it became clear that the company wasn’t going to make it, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer wrote to White House insiders Stephanie Cutter and David Plouffe: “This is going to be a real pain, Solyndra is about to go under apparently.”
Despite 12 such failures—companies taking taxpayer money yet going bankrupt—the Administration hasn’t given up its push for solar. In July, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar characterized the bankruptcies and delays that have plagued the solar manufacturing sector as “just minor (and expected) blips for the industry.”
“Across the Administration, we’re looking at ways to create jobs and strengthen the economy—and a big part of that is building a sustainable, clean energy future,” Salazar said. But as Heritage’s Michael Sandoval reports:
Salazar’s touting of job creation is at odds with the Department of Energy’s David Frantz, who oversees the DOE loan guarantee program.…Frantz told House members that these large, utility-scale renewable projects really could not be counted upon for creating jobs. “The predominance of our portfolio—and the objective, really, of the act—is to be creating large infrastructure, utility-scale projects; and, by definition, they are not a multiplier for job creation,” Frantz said.
Still, lawmakers in both parties have embraced the job creation fallacy. Heritage’s Nicolas Loris has noted that both Democrats and Republicans:
…like loan guarantees (or tax credits or direct grants) if they support projects for their politically preferred sources of energy, such as clean coal and nuclear, or if they bring jobs to their districts that they can take credit for creating. But these programs do not create jobs. They misallocate labor and capital by shifting taxpayer dollars away from economical projects and toward political ones.
Energy subsidies, whether in the form of taxpayer-backed loans or outright grants, are a bipartisan boondoggle that simply does not work. Looking back, President George W. Bush’s solar initiative sounds very similar when compared to President Obama’s.
The aptly named “No More Solyndras” Act, now in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, would stop the government from giving out new taxpayer-backed loan guarantees. For applications that are already under consideration or have received conditional commitment, the bill would require the Secretary of the Treasury to make a recommendation based on the merits of the program. Although not perfect, the legislation moves us in the right direction toward finally ending this program.
As subcommittee chairman Ed Whitfield (R-KY) said last week, “Instead of handing out billions in loan guarantees to selected companies, we can do much more good by removing billions in unnecessary regulatory compliance costs.”
There are plenty of job-killing regulations holding back American companies. A lack of taxpayer dollars is not the problem. It’s time to close the “Bank of Washington” and allow truly successful, viable technologies to rise to the top.
See the 10 Most Revealing Solyndra Emails
Here's an article, while not "directly" related to ethanol gas issues, is nontheless important to show how our taxpayer money is being wasted, just like "corn gas" under this Washington administration..........we have a choice to stop this mess on November 6th, perhaps the most important Presidential and Senatorial election in our lifetime.
"Pete"
=======================================================
Morning Bell: Solyndra Revelations Show It’s Time to Close the “Bank of Washington”
Amy Payne
August 6, 2012 at 8:46 am
“The Bank of Washington continues to help us!” bragged Solyndra CEO Chris Gronet inemails released last week.
An investigation by the House Energy and Commerce Committee revealed that Solyndra—the solar company that went under, taking more than $600 million in taxpayer funds with it—wasn’t ever supposed to be an independent business. It was built to rely on the taxpayers.
“Getting business from Uncle Sam is a principal element of Solyndra’s channel strategy,” wrote Tom Baruch, founder of Solyndra investor CEMA Capital, in an August 10, 2010 email.
Getting federal money was integral to Solyndra’s business model. But even with government backing, Solyndra failed—just one of a growing list of companies in theGreen Graveyard that took taxpayer money and went bankrupt.
The emails released between Solyndra stakeholders and Obama Administration officials show that Solyndra’s investors knew the company was a bad bet for taxpayers, but the Administration wanted the energy loan guarantee program to be perceived as successful. Meanwhile, the Government Accountability Office was finding that the Department of Energy played favorites with the program, and high-level advisers including Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner were raising red flags.
When it became clear that the company wasn’t going to make it, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer wrote to White House insiders Stephanie Cutter and David Plouffe: “This is going to be a real pain, Solyndra is about to go under apparently.”
Despite 12 such failures—companies taking taxpayer money yet going bankrupt—the Administration hasn’t given up its push for solar. In July, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar characterized the bankruptcies and delays that have plagued the solar manufacturing sector as “just minor (and expected) blips for the industry.”
“Across the Administration, we’re looking at ways to create jobs and strengthen the economy—and a big part of that is building a sustainable, clean energy future,” Salazar said. But as Heritage’s Michael Sandoval reports:
Salazar’s touting of job creation is at odds with the Department of Energy’s David Frantz, who oversees the DOE loan guarantee program.…Frantz told House members that these large, utility-scale renewable projects really could not be counted upon for creating jobs. “The predominance of our portfolio—and the objective, really, of the act—is to be creating large infrastructure, utility-scale projects; and, by definition, they are not a multiplier for job creation,” Frantz said.
Still, lawmakers in both parties have embraced the job creation fallacy. Heritage’s Nicolas Loris has noted that both Democrats and Republicans:
…like loan guarantees (or tax credits or direct grants) if they support projects for their politically preferred sources of energy, such as clean coal and nuclear, or if they bring jobs to their districts that they can take credit for creating. But these programs do not create jobs. They misallocate labor and capital by shifting taxpayer dollars away from economical projects and toward political ones.
Energy subsidies, whether in the form of taxpayer-backed loans or outright grants, are a bipartisan boondoggle that simply does not work. Looking back, President George W. Bush’s solar initiative sounds very similar when compared to President Obama’s.
The aptly named “No More Solyndras” Act, now in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, would stop the government from giving out new taxpayer-backed loan guarantees. For applications that are already under consideration or have received conditional commitment, the bill would require the Secretary of the Treasury to make a recommendation based on the merits of the program. Although not perfect, the legislation moves us in the right direction toward finally ending this program.
As subcommittee chairman Ed Whitfield (R-KY) said last week, “Instead of handing out billions in loan guarantees to selected companies, we can do much more good by removing billions in unnecessary regulatory compliance costs.”
There are plenty of job-killing regulations holding back American companies. A lack of taxpayer dollars is not the problem. It’s time to close the “Bank of Washington” and allow truly successful, viable technologies to rise to the top.
See the 10 Most Revealing Solyndra Emails
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
NO POST TONIGHT
No post tonight readers as I have to be up real early in the morning for a surgical procedure. Hope to be back home tomorrow evening.
Have a GREAT day Wednesday.
"Pete"
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