Corn Fed Pork

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Only a policy created in Washington DC could drive up the prices of gasoline and food, with the added benefits of costing the American taxpayer billions in tax subsidies and killing people in 3^rd world countries.

~Jim Quinn

There is not much we can all agree on but one of them is that while corn makes a great whiskey it makes a lousy liquid fuel.  It actually has a negative EROEI - it takes more energy to grow the corn and convert it to ethanol than it produces when it;s burned.  Jim Quinn asks How many Senators Does It Take To Screw A Taxpayer.

The grand lame duck Congress tax compromise extended a 45-cent incentive to ethanol refiners for each gallon of the fuel blended with gasoline and renewed a 54-cent tariff on Brazilian imports. The extension of these subsidies, besides costing American taxpayers $6 billion per year, has the added benefit of driving up food costs across the globe, causing food riots in Tunisia, and resulting in the starving of poor peasants throughout the world. This taxpayer boondoggle is a real feather in the cap of that fiscally conservative curmudgeon Senator Charley Grassley. He was joined in this noble effort by another fiscal conservative, presidential hopeful John Thune. It seems these guys hate wasteful spending, except when it benefits their states. The bipartisanship in this effort was truly touching, as Democrats Kent Conrad and Tom Harkin also brought home the pork for their states.

A bipartisan group of 15 senators signed a letter in late November demanding an extension of U.S. ethanol subsidies. I wonder if the fact they have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions during the past six years from pro-ethanol companies and interest groups like ADM, Monsanto, the National Corn Growers Association, and the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association had anything to do with this demand. You can always count on a Senator to do what�s best for his re-election campaign rather than what is best for the country.

The ethanol from corn policy makes absolutely no sense economically or as an energy policy.  But it's even worse than that - it kills people.

The amount of grain needed to fill the tank of an SUV with ethanol just once can feed one person for an entire year. The average income of the owners of the world�s 940 million automobiles is at least ten times larger than that of the world�s 2 billion hungriest people. In the competition between cars and hungry people for the world�s harvest, the car is destined to win. In March 2008, a report commissioned by the Coalition for Balanced Food and Fuel Policy  estimated that the bio-fuels mandates passed by Congress cost the U.S. economy more than $100 billion from 2006 to 2009. The report declared that �The policy favoring ethanol and other bio-fuels over food uses of grains and other crops acts as a regressive tax on the poor.� A 2008 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (O.E.C.D.) issued its report on bio-fuels that concluded: �Further development and expansion of the bio-fuels sector will contribute to higher food prices over the medium term and to food insecurity for the most vulnerable population groups in developing countries.� These forecasts are coming to fruition today.

This is what happens when our elected officials are for sale to the highest bidder.  It not only costs you and me money people starve.