Rut Roh E-15 soon

[WB9MCW]

Archers Daniels Midland, a Decatur-based company that produces 1.72 billion gallons of ethanol a year at six plants in the Midwest.

LARGE CORPORATIONS AND THEIR Special Interest Groups AND PAC's ARE THE PROBLEM THESE DAYS

Archer Daniels Midland:
A Case Study In Corporate Welfare

The Archer Daniels Midland Corporation (ADM) has been the most prominent recipient of corporate welfare in recent U.S. history. ADM and its chairman Dwayne Andreas have lavishly fertilized both political parties with millions of dollars in handouts and in return have reaped billion-dollar windfalls from taxpayers and consumers. Thanks to federal protection of the domestic sugar industry, ethanol subsidies, subsidized grain exports, and various other programs, ADM has cost the American economy billions of dollars since 1980 and has indirectly cost Americans tens of billions of dollars in higher prices and higher taxes over that same period. At least 43 percent of ADM's annual profits are from products heavily subsidized or protected by the American government. Moreover, every $1 of profits earned by ADM's corn sweetener operation costs consumers $10, and every $1 of profits earned by its ethanol operation costs taxpayers $30

READ THE REST
>> http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-241.html


SOME OF THE DIRTY DETAILS ON E10

As a result, the net energy efficiency of ethanol is in question. One gallon of ethanol contains the energy equivalent of 76,000 British Thermal Units (BTUs). In 1991, the Department of Energy estimated that to make a gallon of ethanol required 85,000 to 91,000 BTUs.(58)

Moreover, because gasohol gets a 6 cents per gallon subsidy (or 60 cents per gallon for pure ethanol), ethanol-using motorists end up paying more for dirtier air."(62) The National Academy of Sciences likewise concluded that "using ethanol as a blending agent in gasoline . . . would not achieve significant air-quality benefits and, in fact, would likely be detrimental."(63)

As President Bush's reelection prospects worsened, ethanol's prospects brightened. On October 1, 1992, Bush announced plans to partially waive the volatility requirement to allow ethanol to be used even though it could cause more pollution.(68)

On June 30, 1994, Clinton announced that the EPA would ignore the protests and impose its ethanol mandate on the nation's gasoline pumps. Clinton justified the ethanol mandate by declaring that it would provide "thousands of new jobs for the future" and that "this policy is good for our environment, our public health, and our nation's farmers-- and that's good for America

The EPA waiver for ethanol's use in gasoline was the equivalent of allowing city trash trucks to drop as much trash on the streets as they pick up from the curbsides--and to double bill their customers. The federal government had gone from ignoring pollution to benefit big business to mandating pollution to benefit one specific fat-cat corporation.

The Clinton administration's fuel-rule rigging provoked an angry backlash from both liberal and conservative newspapers:

The New York Times: "Ethanol will not clean the air beyond what the 1990 Clean Air Act would already require; nor will it . . . raise farm income very much or significantly cut imports. What the EPA's rule will do is take money from consumers and taxpayers and hand it over to Archer Daniels Midland."(77)
The Washington Post: "The misuse of the environmental laws as patronage to benefit narrow economic interests is a mistake."(78)
The Boston Herald: "The pandering to the farm lobby and big political donors could actually worsen air pollution."(79)
The Houston Post: "Bad science, bad economics, and politics as usual."(80)
USA Today: "Nothing is more likely to provoke a round of fat-cat-happiness than an open-ended federal rule that forces manufacturers and consumers to buy federally subsidized ethanol. It's a pork deal any fool could love."(81)
The Houston Chronicle: "The requirement that a car's fuel be made from a renewable source like corn makes no more sense than to demand that its engine be made from wood."(82)

In sum, one would be hard-pressed to find another industry as artificially sustained as the ethanol industry. The economics of ethanol are such that, for the industry to survive at all, massive trade protection, tax loopholes, contrived mandates for use, and production subsidies are vitally necessary. Only by spooking the public with bogey- men such as foreign oil sheiks, toxic air pollution, and the threatened disappearance of the American farmer can attention be deflected from the real costs of the ethanol house of cards that consumes over a billion dollars annually.

NOTE THIS IS ALL FROM A 1995 REPORT SO YOU KNOW IT IS EVEN WORSE NOW AND WITH E15 IT IS JUST MORE INSANITY!