Grain for Gain

We've been driven headlong over the oil precipice. Had the bejesus scared out of us thinking we might run out of gas. Attacked Iraq to make sure we didn't, and now we need ethanol anyway. Ethanol according to U.S. energy policy should be the major thrust of alternate energy development.

Most of us will be hurt by this decision.

This blog will provide energy resource related links for you to read about this and help you make up your mind about what you see going on.

It's one thing when one crackpot with a website gets an idea about something and it is another thing when many diverse people in many different places see trouble coming from the ethanol boondoggle.

Nicholas E Hollis is the President of the Agribusiness Council. He wrote the following article about the ethanol policy that has been shoved down out throats and up other places.

This is an excerpt:

'The old hogwash about getting "energy independent" and helping corn farmers keeps building votes- pushed by an aggressive phalanx of paid association liars and bought politicians. . . . The corn gluten angle and even the fact that ethanol reduces engine life and delivers lower gas mileage than conventional unleaded seems a tad too complicated for the journalists to pick up on.

Just as the ethanol has created massive distortions and dysfunctions in the nation, particularly the farm sector, since its introduction in the late 1970's, we can count on more distortions and nasty surprises in the years ahead if this moves forward. You'd think after all the years of phoney arguments from phoney trade groups established by the Supermarkup to the World [Archer Daniels Midland]—a number of which were cited as facades to cover price-fixing cartels by the Federal prosecutors—that some investigative authority would dig deeper.

Ethanol is the largest scam in our Nation's history—only the controlled media won't report the story—and if Congress rachets the subsidy up anymore, this twisted policy (still largely benefiting one company which holds a near monopoly position in the industry) has the potential of undermining our food security."

Read the rest of the article at this link:

The Rolling Stone Magazine has this to say:

"This is not just hype -- it's dangerous, delusional bullshit. Ethanol doesn't burn cleaner than gasoline, nor is it cheaper. Our current ethanol production represents only 3.5 percent of our gasoline consumption -- yet it consumes twenty percent of the entire U.S. corn crop, causing the price of corn to double in the last two years and raising the threat of hunger in the Third World. And the increasing acreage devoted to corn for ethanol means less land for other staple crops, giving farmers in South America an incentive to carve fields out of tropical forests that help to cool the planet and stave off global warming."

Scam! Do you think Dick Cheney would pass up a good deal? It can't be a scam, it must be good for America? Click the link above.

The Wall Street Journal states the problem very clearly providing the framework in which the scam is set.

Columinist Anne B. Butterfield writes about the ethanol boondoggle

At this link ordinary people discuss the problem.