Category: Ethanol

Hunt: How GOP candidates stack up in early primaries

Posted by dcrim – May 31, 2011

Albert Hunt of Bloomberg says Republicans can quit waiting for a white knight to enter the presidential derby.

Writes Hunt: Godot isn’t likely to show up for the Republicans. Like the characters in Samuel Beckett’s play, the Republican establishment probably will wait in vain for a white knight — Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Paul Ryan are the most oft-cited — to rescue the party’s presidential prospects.

Hunt takes a look at those who have declared and those who may enter the fray on the GOP side to see how the strengths, weaknesses, similarities and differences contrast in the early contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, which are likely to be where a winner emerges.

Tim Pawlenty already has made the case, but the 2012 presidential race may tell who is afraid of speaking up on the ethanol subsidy. Click here for the story.

On Sarah Palin, ethanol subsidy and Urban Meyer

Posted by dcrim – December 10, 2010

Jay Newton-Small of Time magazine takes an in-depth look at the phenomena known as Sarah Palin. The basic question is this: What does she want? There is no definitive answer.

While other Republicans followed predictable and even plodding paths toward the White House this year, Palin has moved along two parallel tracks, one befitting a candidate, the other designed for a celebrity. It is often hard to tell where one stops and the other begins, and that is by design. A presidential candidate used to need a central headquarters and satellite offices in all the early primary states; now all a contender like Palin needs is a cable modem. Working largely from her lakeside house in Wasilla, Alaska, Palin raised millions of dollars, produced three viral Internet videos and endorsed more than seven dozen Republican candidates (most of whom prevailed).

Matt Kibbe of Forbes.com joins a long line of observers who say it’s time to let the ethanol subsidy expire. But he points out that the powerful ethanol lobby is mounting a full-court press to renew expiring tariffs and tax protections that Kibbe says raises consumer prices while doing little to improve energy independence or the environment. A Congress that claims to be fiscally conscious appears poised to extend the subsidy before the Dec. 31 deadline.

While ethanol subsidies and tariffs are supposed to lead to energy independence and reduce gas prices, numerous studies have demonstrated that the program does little for gas prices while raising corn prices and potentially harming the environment. In fact, ethanol is a story of rent-seeking that transcends party lines, providing $6 billion in benefits to an industry that has been created by the government.

Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel said Urban Meyer’s resignation this week was the best thing that could have happened to Florida football.

Urban Meyer forcefully and resolutely said after the humiliating season-ending 31-7 loss to Florida State two weeks ago that he was going to fix the University of Florida’s slumping football program. In a strange, sad, surreal way, he made a bold move to do just that Wednesday. He resigned.

Has the ethanol industry become a taxpayer boondoggle?

Posted by dcrim – December 1, 2010

The ethanol industry is putting a full-court press on the lame-duck Congress to renew the 45-cents-per-gallon ethanol tax credit that expires on Dec. 31. But Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute writing for The Daily Beast, believes the ethanol industry remains a huge taxpayer boondoggle. He says even long-time proponent Al Gore no longer believes ethanol producers, who are now exporting record amounts, are achieving what the taxpayer support was intended.

Writes Bryce:

… taxpayers are giving fat subsidies (about $7 billion per year) to domestic corn ethanol producers who are then using some of that money to ship more and more of their product overseas. And in doing so, the U.S. ethanol sector is consuming nearly 40 percent of all the corn grown in the U.S. … Between 1999 and 2009, U.S. ethanol production increased sevenfold, to more than 700,000 barrels per day. And yet, over that same time span, U.S. oil imports increased by more than 800,000 barrels per day.

If ethanol isn’t ending the dependency on foreign oil, then the industry can only point to the number of jobs it creates as a reason to keep taxpayer help. But even that is misleading, Bryce believes.

According to an analysis done last year by the Environmental Working Group, each of those “green” jobs created by the ethanol scammers cost taxpayers between $195,000 and $446,000 per year. Earlier this month, Advanced Economic Solutions, an Omaha consultancy run by the former chief economist for ConAgra Foods, analyzed how many jobs would be added by extending the ethanol tax credit. Their conclusion: 353 additional ethanol manufacturing jobs would be created, at “an annual cost of $19.68 million per job.”

Dennis Byrne of the Chicago Tribune also wonders if Congress will stand up to the ethanol industry, which he calls the nation’s most gluttonous corporate freeloader.