Via Instapundit comes this story warning that restaurant food prices are about to sharply rise. The challenge for the government? Why, finding who to blame, of course. After all: can’t blame it on short-sighted conversion of corn crops into ethanol; the government’s pushing for even more use of ethanol, despite the objections of the auto industry. Can’t blame it on higher gas prices; the government | Read More »
Senator John Thune took to the Senate floor yesterday to criticize his fellow 2012 presidential contenders for playing politics with the Obama-Kyl tax deal. “It is easy to stand on the sidelines and criticize this deal,” Thune said. “And it would perhaps be politically expedient to stand on the sideline and criticize this tax deal. But to advocate against this tax deal is to advocate | Read More »
From the diaries by lexington_concord… It’s always politically advantageous to support tax cuts. However, it takes more intransigence and fortitude to oppose big government programs and special interest handouts. It is even more arduous to oppose such programs when they are coupled with tax cuts as part of a backroom compromise. Based upon Senator Jim Inhofe’s comments to NRO, it appears that there aren’t too | Read More »
Allahpundit calls House Democrats “a gang of cheap losers” for folding like this, and it’s hard to disagree: apparently, all that rhetoric about tax cuts for the rich can easily be trumped with an additional ethanol subsidy. To which I say, drink deep: because in a world where Al Cubslayer Gore is talking about ending that kind of pork, the odds that it’s going to | Read More »
From the diaries by Erick. To quote my friend ‘Ironman’, “If an uncontested re-election doesn’t give John Thune the political courage to say no to BP and the ethanol robber barons, then he has no business getting near the White House when the successor to Obama needs to stop trillions in red ink.” ————- The ethanol mandates are one of the most regressive socialist interventions | Read More »
You know what’s cool? When organizations and people engaged in political and public policy debates shamelessly exploit tragedies in order to promote their political agendas. The Left is very good at this. But so, it turns out, is the ethanol industry. Essentially a government creation, these guys are currently seeking a whole bunch of policy changes that would further prop up their industry, using both | Read More »
In the 1980s, Congress, searching for domestic energy supplies, created incentives in the form of production tax credits for ethanol and for unconventional natural gas. The history of those two programs, and the current state of affairs in the energy world, speaks volumes about the relative merits of these two fuels. Tax-paying capitalists find tax credits highly motivating. Whereas deductions reduce your taxable income, | Read More »
The Energy Information Agency (EIA) admits in its 2010 Annual Energy Outlook that, under present law, ethanol use in 2022 is projected to be almost a third less than the 35 million gallons-equivalent per year mandated by Congress way back in 2007. What to do? The ethanol industry, with the blessing of Congress and the Obama Administration, is lobbying the EPA to mandate increased ethanol | Read More »
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