Tuesday, February 27, 2007

What isn't the MSM telling us about ethanol

The women's post is still coming but I wanted to squeeze this in.
This is from the Washington Times, read it all, you'll see a weird coincidence about ethanol being added to our gas and the prices going through the roof!

Ethanol and its unintended consequences
By Deroy MurdockFebruary 4, 2007


Many Democrats and some Republicans applauded President Bush's State of the Union proposal for a 20 percent reduction in gasoline use over the next 10 years, largely through greater reliance on ethanol. Mr. Bush's idea, however, is adding corn-based fuel to protests in Mexico City. Existing federal laws that mandate ethanol in U.S. gasoline have diverted trainloads of corn from America's food supply-chain to ethanol factories. This boosted U.S. corn prices nearly 80 percent in 2006. That's bad enough if you buy corn on the cob for a weekend barbecue. But it's much worse if you are a poor Mexican surviving on corn tortillas. A kilo (2.2 pounds) of tortillas recently has shot up 55 percent, from 5.5 to 8.5 pesos. Poor Mexicans are not taking this sitting down. In fact, some 75,000 of them stood up Wednesday in Mexico City's giant Zocalo Plaza. More than 200 unions and social-action groups organized protests to denounce the rising price of this basic Mexican staple. "[Felipe] Calderon stole the elections, and now he's stealing the tortillas," screamed one banner, chiding Mexico's narrowly elected new president. According to the Associated Press, the normally free-market Mr. Calderon has been trying to get manufacturers to follow a gentlemen's agreement to keep tortilla prices flat. How has American energy policy inspired political instability in Mexico? This is a pristine example of the Law of Unintended Consequences. When big government does big things, all sorts of wacky stuff happens, and rarely for the good. Uncle Sam gives ethanol manufacturers a 51-cent-per-gallon subsidy. Anyone who wants to import ethanol is welcome to do so, provided he pays the 54-cent-per-gallon tariff slapped on ethanol imports. This is one reason for another unintended consequence: Gasoline prices shot up last summer since ethanol, largely produced in the Midwest, had to be shipped south and to both coasts to be blended, by law, with gasoline. Importing Brazilian ethanol into Atlantic and Pacific ports would have made sense, but then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Illinois Republican, hated the idea, since that would put competitive pressure on his corn-farming constituents. "I don't see an economic plus in it right now," Mr. Hastert sniffed. What other unintended consequences could the federal government's ethanol-mania propel? First, poor Mexicans will feel even poorer as tortilla prices stay high or climb even higher. At the margin, watch for more of them to throw up their hands and head north, to a neighborhood near you. Second, as fuel companies buy more and more corn, prices will rise for corn flakes, corn bread, popcorn, corn syrup and other food items. Grocery bills should grow, at least marginally. Third, humans eat corn, but so do cows, pigs and chickens. Meat prices will rise, hurting U.S. consumers and making American meat exports less competitive on world markets. Fourth, if they have not already, members of the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee will notice these increases in consumer and producer prices. Fearing inflation, they could start increasing interest rates. That would slow the economy and push into foreclosure more Americans with variable home mortgages.

Only in America would someone suggest BURNING FOOD to make tree huggers happy. You know I bet we could make fuel out of people... SAVE THE CORN!!!

2 comments:

  1. Instead of adding plant derivatives to our gasoline to make environmentalists happy, perhaps we should switch the process around and start adding environmentalist derivatives (tree shredders are good for this) to the fuel and protect the precious plants! It is ultimately what the environmentalist wackos want anyway, isn't? Let's just give them what they want.

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  2. I couldn't care less what Mexico has to endure, they need to be innovative and fix their own damn problems. Perhaps they can start by masscring the damn drug cartels, and inventing some, at the bare minimum, industrialized technology for once.

    In the meantime, maybe they can pull a "Soylent Green" and start recycling all their fellow citizens who ditched them in the US (illegal immigrants) to reduce back the cost of their precious tortillas. After all, they'll have quite an appetite and will need all that energy to pillage and murder filthy drug enablers.

    So we have the recycling of both illegal immigrants, environmentalist wackos, and drug cartels. Three problems solved in one fell swoop.

    I love me sometimes.

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