Katie Kieffer, Townhall:
Renowned economist Henry Hazlitt writes in Economics in One Lesson: “The most frequent [economic] fallacy by far today … is to concentrate on the short-run effects of policies on special groups and to ignore or belittle the long-run effects on the community as a whole.” He continues: “In the eyes of most congressmen the farmers simply cannot get enough credit.” But this ends up hurting the society as a whole because the government’s lenders have looser standards than private lenders (who either lend with their own money or are accountable to clients).
Whether a farmer is qualified to farm or not is irrelevant to a government lender. Because bad farmers and unnecessary crops have a nearly equal chance of getting funding as good farmers and marketable crops, taxpayers will not fully capitalize on their investment. Hazlitt explains: “…the recipients of government credit will get their farms and tractors at the expense of those who otherwise would have been the recipients of private credit. Because B has a farm, A will be deprived of a farm.”
Politicians can blame the weather for drought. But they cannot blame the weather for government mandates that led farmers to overplant corn this spring for ethanol production, which monopolizes 40 percent of America’s corn yield.
Miles of useless corn fields are boosting the price of corn (almost 23 percent). Restaurateurs, consumers and livestock farmers will suffer while the many of the farmers who planted the corn have subsidized insurance and, so, despite overplanting, will not feel pain.
As Hazlitt points out, politicians who pass farm subsidies tend to overlook the fact that by helping one group (such as corn farmers) they hurt other groups like hog and cattle ranchers. Today, many livestock producers are unable to afford feed and are desperately selling their animals.
[…]
Republicans like Sen. Roy D. Blunt (MO), Sen. Pat Roberts (KS), Sen. Susan Collins (ME), Rep. Tom Latham (IA), Rep. Tom Cole (OK), Rep. Frank D. Lucas (OK) and House Speaker John Boehner (OH) have run to the people and the press with their reasons for why the taxpayers must bail out farmers.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell lauded a five-year farm bill that the Senate passed in June (which allocates a half-trillion-dollars to food stamp programs and subsidies for select crops like sugar) as: “one of the finest moments in the Senate in recent times in terms of how you pass a bill.”
If Republicans are now the party of just getting things done, we may as well hire a group of third graders to run Washington. Because getting something done is not synonymous with accomplishment.
[…]
Most economists predict that we will notice increases in food prices by next year. When people cannot afford food, their natural instincts kick in and social norms fly out the window. Chaos and depravity surge as starving men, women and children compete against their friends and neighbors for limited resources.
TIME Magazinewarns: “A reduction in the American harvest translates to higher prices overseas. Global food prices have slowly but steadily increased since 2004, with sharp spikes in 2007 and 2010. It’s likely not a coincidence that social unrest in places like Latin America and the Middle East followed those spikes.”
Americans are not yet rioting in the streets. But they are abandoning or selling their animals. And food prices are just beginning to rise.
Many Republicans need to pull the plug on their FarmVille accounts and open a copy of Economics in One Lesson. For, if Republicans do not lead us on fiscal policy, who will?
Oh, Katie. You had me right up there until the end.
The answer, of course, is some collection of classical liberals / libertarians / constitutional conservatives — that is, if the are permitted to lead on fiscal policy. Which of course they are not, because for Republicans, winning elections and holding power justify all the compromises they make in order to win those elections and secure that power. Which wouldn’t be a problem if, say, the compromises came from their side, ideologically speaking — that is, if they began to behave like principled constitutionalists rather than pandering vote whores in order to woo voters and win elections; but that is never the case, and the price of having Republicans in power is routinely cast as compromising if not surrendering the very conservative principle upon which our party support is supposedly based.
Because after all, what are you gonna do? Vote for Obama? Or maybe not vote at all — which is, as well all know, a vote for Obama?
Unless and until we challenge the way the GOP demands our loyalty — which seems curiously always to come down to our willingness to move left for them, in an ostensible move to garner the “moderate” or “independent” vote — why on earth would we anticipate their making a change to the status quo?
After all, they are political pragmatists. Realists. Not “purists” or “True Believers.” Meaning, if getting themselves into power without having to sacrifice ruling class status or engage in anything more than showy and superficial rollbacks of state power — throw us some lower taxes, reform some programs around the edges to make them more “efficient,” temporarily defund Planned Parenthood until Dems take back power and refund it — that’s precisely what will happen.
There’s always a reason to keep the government subsidies going. And I most certainly wouldn’t expect any member of the ruling elite to lead on fiscal policy, regardless of party. And that’s because we rarely demand it in a way that lets them know that we will not take no for an answer — and even when we do, as in 2010, every effort is made to squelch the influence political outsiders try to bring to bear on a system so focused on DC maneuvering that it has lost touch with its very reason for being.
Similar to the saying that all lawyers are jackals except mine, all gubmint subsidies are corrupt except the ones I get.
That’s one place where the geographical heartland needs to man up and take its medicine, for the actual good of the Republic. Because the day will come when the subsides will stop by virtue of there being no money (or no money worth anything) to give anyone, and it’s far better to step down off your meds than stop cold turkey.
It’ll never happen, though. Politicians do the right thing only by accident.
I think a big part of the problem is almost all farming in the US is done by a few major corporations. The family farm is an oddity.
Did you know there are more people working for the Department of Agriculture then there are farmers?
Cases in point. Stock’em up now for some ‘morrow soon they go high.
It’s all so logical.
Against which the left runs on theft, the right on not being the left, and to which the political middle responds by who has better ads.
Meanwhile liberty is a philosophy. Liberty is ideas.
Change your paradigm, failshit little country.
I don’t usually buy ground beef, but I did this weekend. Never before have I seen it over $5.00 per pound, not even for the lower fat ground sirloin stuff.
But the private sector is doing just fine.
“Don’t forget your bag of rice…” Jello Biafra
This is one of those examples of why I like to tease apart different components of overall prices.
For the first time since leaving Pennsylvania, I’m honestly considering a deer hunting trip this fall. Might also have to chat with some of the farmers and land owners near my folks’ place to see if any would be willing to let me hunt their land. Meat’s gotta come from somewhere, and corn-fed deer ain’t a bad way to go.
Cases in point.
That’s some cheap ground beef. Around here it hovers around$3 a pound.
You could do worse Squid.
The family farm is an oddity.
You can thank the inheritance tax for that. The kids have to sell off the family farm to pay the reaper and the conglomerate buys it up.
This is why we say that the Left is against big business getting bigger.
Meat’s gotta come from somewhere
Mallards and Canada Geese are overpopulated.
Worst case scenario is that you play cards and drink some beer with friends, Squid. Meat or no meat, how can you go wrong?
“Mallards and Canada Geese are overpopulated.”
ha, exactly what I was thinking. dicentra, a query for thee (scroll up).
What’s not rare is black people who would have farmed if the gubmint wasn’t so racist. There’s some 85000 of those and that only cost us a couple of billion.
yup. there is a lot of land for sale that is heavily timber and good for hunting deer and turkey. That might be the best way, since farming crops costs so much more in terms of equipment and resources. I still haven’t decided how much land I want, but the death taxes on a farm do act as a deterrent for my kids to keep it after I die.
I have a friend who buys a whole deer once a year, gets it processed, freezes it, and wham – venison meatballs and chili all winter and no bill at the butchers. (Or walmart meat section) She doesn’t even hunt – just buys it from the hunter.
For two years running, ranchers here have sent their cattle to auction early because it is too expensive to feed them out. When we start seeing dairy cattle go to auction as meat cattle, then it’s time to get worried. This happened a few years ago in California where there are many family dairy farms.
The drought in the Midwest is going to impact food prices for a number of years. Feed is expensive because the yields have been terrible. Wheat has been harvested weeks early and not been replanted with more wheat, they’ve been replanted with sorghum and other silage.
Around MO, OK, AR and parts of TX and KS there are many chicken farms. Chickens need to have cool places to live and lay their eggs. Energy prices have spiked, so cooling the chicken houses and transportation costs of farmed food are up.
If you have room and some spare money, get a chest freezer and stock up.
You want me to identify the bird calls in the background of the osprey vid?
Look: there is only one kind of osprey in the world, it belongs to its own private Familia, and it’s found world-wide. I don’t know where that vid was shot, so I don’t know what kinda bird is likely to have been recorded.
If it was recorded with the osprey footage at all. More likely it’s a foley job.
I don’t recognized the birdsong, but I can recognize only a few anyway, around my yard, and definitely not in the mountains, unless it’s a chickadee.
Fortunately we have remarkably gifted leaders:
Sorry for asking.
What’s your point there, JHo? I’m not sure where you’re going.
This was a really excellent essay that synopsizes perfectly how short-term economic bandaids mask massive downstream problems from avoiding rational decision making. Extending subsidies and the ethnanol program are constantly defended by noting that as a percentage of GDP it is minute, but preserves a way of life et al.
Well food prices and gas prices aren’t minute and are important to my family’s way of life. If the USG was serious about giving small farmers a way to stay open, they’d kill the inheretance tax by autumn. Unless you’re in western NY state, your land value has at least trebled over the past 20 years. The minute Dad or Gramps passes on to God’s Golden SHores, you have no choice but to sell to Mr. No-Taste-Overpriced-Houses-In-Green-Farmland-Developer-Man to mitigate the tax hit.
That’s not politics, it’s reality. BTW, for those on either side who need intellectual figleafs before venturing into the water, I have personally heard even Paul Krugman refuse to defend farm subsidies. It’s just done because, well, it’s always been done. Think of how many shitty programs and behaviors have been justified using that excuse.
It’s odd to ponder how politically reinforcing these demonstrably terrible decisions, despite the immediate pain they cause to the most vulnerable in society, is so accepted.
That first sentence was a little screwed up.
I left out “and enable our leadership to avoid” between “downstream” and “rational.”
Sorry.
There was a piece in the NYT today about the arctic sea ice being the thinnest it has ever been in recorded history. I do not buy it is man-made (or if it is it is just a minor component of it), but global warming (even if it were true) will not be our downfall. Today is the anniversary of the Krakatoa eruption. Crops failed in 1883 as a result. There was an even bigger eruption in 1816 (again in Indonesia) that resulted in a summer without winter (fluctuating temperatures across the United States with ice, snow, and frost as far south as Pennsylvania in July and August).
Back then people naturally kept food stocks and could live off the land (populations were relatively light in North America). Imagine an event like that now?
I have never played Farmville. Is there a sim for converting it into a Hunger Games-starvation situation?
That’s a good synopsis, Roddy.
I’ve gone around and around with some people on a different board about energy drivers, policy and food costs. They’re all a bunch of lefties, well most of them, so it’s like beating one’s head against the wall.
Joseph Smith’s family left Vermont for Palmyra as a result of that year without summer.
My point is that I don’t know where they’re going.
One school of economic thinking (let’s call them Hayekian for shorthand) seems to want to teach that rational decision making entails avoiding what another school teaches is rational decision making (may we call these Keynesians?): namely the determination of price by political decision makers, rather than by a vast and for practical purposes innumerable marketplace of decision makers. So we get Wickard v Filburn from the nominal Keynsians, whereas something utterly opposed to it from the Hayekians. But the politicians like to have control. That’s what they do, they’ll say, that’s their purpose at work. Would we take away their purpose?
Roddy is right. The inheritance tax kills family farms and timber holdings.
Like Holsteins — Schleswigian or otherwise?
Heh. JHo, I think that makes at least two of us.
As far as I know serr8d is the only guy eating Holsteins.
One of the problem with subsidies like this are that if everybody else is using them you pretty much have to it you want to compete.
And then get called a hypocrite and ridiculed if you speak out against them.
It really is a nasty game.
Sorry for asking.
You should be. Now I’ve been exposed as a fraud.
The inheritance tax is evil. Evil kills family farms and timber holdings.
Joseph Smith’s family left Vermont for Palmyra as a result of that year without summer.
Well, there you have it: God made the volcano explode to force the entire planet to have bad crops, so that Joseph Smith would be in exactly the right spot to find the Golden Plates.
Because if Vermont’s growing season turns out to be too short, it will definitely be long enough just north of the Finger Lakes.
</idiot marmon>
I thought I saw somewhere that the ethanol mandate was going to kill a lot of farmers, because the farmers signed long term contracts at $4 or $5 a bushel and it’s going to cost a lot more than that to deliver.
We also need to factor into food prices the idling of some of the richest farm land in the world, all because of a bunch of lefties and a stupid fish.
The GOP actually started the whole federal-government-tinkering-with-agriculture idea, via Hoover’s “Agriculture Marketing Act.”
It was the grandfather of today’s agribusiness-driven idiocy, which is to family farms what Henry Rollins is to torchlight music.
Oh, and if you want a helpful game simulation for our times, SPI came out with it in the ’70s:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/5475/after-the-holocaust
As an aside, Dale, Calvin Coolidge didn’t think much of Hoover.
Which, considering all that happened under Hoover’s watch and that which proceeded from Hoover’s policies, Coolidge seems rather perceptive.
– Well, one thing we all learned in the last week or so….Never yell Akin in a crowded movie theater!
OT: RoboShep™ is in New Orleans, hoping for a Katrina repeat.
– How about PuertoGeraldo™. Is he there too?
I don’t know. I only know Shep is there because his show comes on after Special Report. That’s when I either switch channels or turn the idiot box off.
Blake, random trivia: Ronald Reagan cited Calvin Coolidge as his favorite president.
Two TV news correspondents who made their marks covering Hurricane Katrina seven years ago are returning to New Orleans as another hurricane approaches.
Fox News Channel’s Shepard Smith and CNN’s Anderson Cooper will be covering Hurricane Isaac as it hits in or near New Orleans later this week, skipping Tampa and the Republican National Convention. CNN is also sending Soledad O’Brien to New Orleans.
While both Smith and Cooper were known commodities prior to Katrina, the Hurricane coverage propelled the to household name status.
At a Turner Broadcasting dinner held in New Orleans’ French Quarter during the 2008 NCTA trade show, Cooper told the assembled guests (including me) about how important Katrina was to him.
“We try to come every couple of months, just to keep the story alive,” Cooper told us at the time. “For all of us who covered it, the images are still very fresh in our minds.”
In 2010, Smith told the AP’s David Bauder about the experience: ”The emotions, the activism that sort of sprung was natural and for the time, reflectively, I think it was probably right,” he said.
link
“. . . will be covering Hurricane Isaac . . . ”
For the record, if for nothing else, I just wanted to note that as of this moment, there has not been, nor can we be certain there will be, a Hurricane Isaac. And yet, in lots of places we may look to see, Tropical Storm Isaac is referred to as a Hurricane.
sdferr, it’s almost as if through sheer force of will the networks are going to spend as much or more time on TS Isaac as they do on the RNC.
Funny that.
Urgent Action Needed… RNC Is Pushing to Eliminate Grassroots Influence
That story is inaccurate. The move by the RNC is to keep the Paulbots from pulling any shenanigans.
they’ll be rules for the next election 2016 mittbot
DRUDGE DOES IT AGAIN:
Make up your mind, nr. Which is it, I’m a Mittbot or an OFA plant?
Floor fight: Grass-roots activists battle attempt to rig GOP convention delegate rules Updated
Funny that
…look…..bunnies.
BBH, you just know it’s got to be chapping their asses that the TS may blow itself out and not become the worst thing that ever happened!! Ever! Worse than Katrina!!
– Oh Jeebus…..here we go again:
“Tom Smith, GOP Senate Candidate: Pregnancy From Rape Similar To ‘Having A Baby Out Of Wedlock”
– Make it stop…..
I was watching FNC this afternoon when a promo for Shemp’s show came on. My reaction.
Looking again at the timestamp on the tweet again, apparently it was this morning.
– S’ok McGehee….understandable…..We’re all some overwhelmed at the sheer awsomness of the campaign the GOP is running its hard to tell night from day.
– So now we have Akin redux to deal with.
Mark Levin’s commentary on the rules change, via TheRightScoop.
– Wonder how the Lefturds will react to the latest Akinism. /sarc
– Make it stop…..
yea that’s what is wanted
Smith said Monday at the Pennsylvania Press Club that although he condemns Akin’s comment, he agrees with Akin that abortion should be banned without any exceptions, including for rape and incest victims. Pressed by a reporter on how he would handle a daughter or granddaughter becoming pregnant as a result of rape, Smith said he had already “lived something similar to that” in his family.
“She chose life, and I commend her for that,” he said. “She knew my views. But, fortunately for me, I didn’t have to … she chose the way I thought. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t rape.”
When a reporter asked Smith to clarify what kind of situation was similar to becoming pregnant from rape, the candidate responded, “Having a baby out of wedlock.”
He added, “Put yourself in a father’s position. Yes, it is similar.”
but you know killing an aborted baby who survives the abortion is what mainstream
That’s because Hoover was out of the pragmatic, centrist, technocratic wing of the Republican party. Yesteryear’s George Herbert Milhouse McRomney, you might say.
– nr, the Left is hanging on every word of every conservative candidate, especially if they’re running for the Senate. This is just fucking dumb, regardless of which side of the issue you’re on. The Left desperatly needs controversy, any controversy they can find to push the real issues to the background and give Jug ears cover, and the dutiful Pravada press is more than happy to back them.
– Just fucking stupid. Period.
Some sonofabitch seduces MY little girl someday, yeah, I might be inclined to look at that as akin to rape.
Because it is.
Or do people no longer remember what the word meant before it because exlusively synomymous with violent or forcible sexual assault (except of course when it isn’t as in nonconsensual drunken date-rape sex)?
“Just fucking stupid. Period.”
you may be right
Our people look for a cause to believe in. Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people?
Let our banner proclaim our belief in a free market as the greatest provider for the people.
Let us explore ways to ward off socialism, not by increasing government’s coercive power, but by increasing participation by the people in the ownership of our industrial machine.
It is time to reassert our principles and raise them to full view. And if there are those who cannot subscribe to these principles, then let them go their way.”
That one’s pretty silly. I see that only the hyperventilating lefty sites are running with it. And, he’s going to get his ass kicked anyway.
I guess we might as well get used to the fact that the Dems are campaigning on free on-demand abortions for everyone including your children this cycle.
– Look, this isn’t about whats right or whats wrong, whats rape or isn’t rape. abortion or no abortion. We’re in a tough race to take back the WH, and possibly the Senate. Bumbblefuck can’t win on his record, he’ll get trounced if he tries.
– The Left needs desperately to change the narrative anyway they can. You don’t worry about side pissing contests when you’re in a tight race. You don’t talk about draining the swamp when you’re up to your ass in aligators.
– The GOP needs to get back to the economy, anything else is just playing into the Lefts hands.
– The GOP needs to get back to the economy, anything else is just playing into the Lefts hands.
Thank you. I was just going to say that.
Instead of panicing over what we know the left is going to do* everytime one of these things pops up on the radar, we refuse to panic, seek to understand what was trying to be said, and on the basis of that understanding, start pushing back against the left’s invented narratives? Because until it stops working, they won’t stop doing it. And as long as we’re more concerned about what the left is going to say about what was said instead of being concened soley for the truth of what was actually said, it’s still working.
*Because it’s the left. And it’s what they do. Everytime.
anything else is just playing into the Lefts hands.
well next week is abortion/islam fest in charlotte with a sprinkling of #occupy. we’ll see how that plays.
The media doesn’t want to let them, of course. So: “My position on abortion is perfectly clear, has always been clear and is spelled out on my website. If you don’t already know what it is, you can look it up. Now, why don’t you ask me about the deficit or what I think about not having a budget for 3 years?”
– One more time Ernst. Everything you said is true, and laudable, and earnest, and sincere, and principaled, and if you let the Left drag you into issues that are not up for a vote anywhere in the country at the moment, but do serve nicely as a hidey hole for Waffle head, then you might just lose the whole game.
– Its not about ‘panic’. As a matter of fact its the exact opposit. Its keeping a cool head when the bullshit feints from your enemy come, trying to deke you into a dumb move, and you don’t take the head fake. That’s what its about.
“Are you people obsessed with rape or something? You’re all talking about it. What’s up with that?”
Since SDN isn’t here, a little Kipling:
So does that mean we’re keeping Smith? Or are we going to demand his ouster too? How exactly are we planning on keeping the mediacrats from bringing this up?
I mean, Fuck you. Next Question? works for me, but what will the moderates and independents think?
He asked slyly.
Pablo, is that a hypothetical question from a reporter, or one to a reporter?
“Are you people obsessed with rape or something? You’re all talking about it. What’s up with that?”
bill clinton speaking @charlotte brought back memories. oh and the dodd/kennedy samwhich
I’M OUTRAGED! NO ONE IS MORE OUTRAGED THAN I! I DEMAND HE STEP DOWN! LET THE DEMS WIN THE SEAT IF IT MUST BE SO, BUT MY OUTRAGE MUST BE PUBLICLY NOTED!
– The simple fact is that if the American people would have elected a coat rack with a suit on it 4 years ago that sat in the WH and did absolutely nothing we peobably wouldn’t be any worse off than we already are. In fact if the economy was more or less right where it is now at least we wouldn’t have a deficit of 16 trillion dollars. There is nothing, not a damn thing, that Obama can say to ask for the people to give him a second term. Nothing.
– If this was private industry the boss would fire his ass on the spot.
– If the GOP lets him pull of a rope-a-dope on this then we’re totally and truly fucked and deserve exactly what we’ll get.
It wouldn’t be if we weren’t afraid or ashamed of our own beliefs, and if we made the conservative case for them.
But fuck it, what do I know. This season is going so swimmingly, relying on people to make the polished non-answer answer, and if they don’t, burning them as heretical witches.
– Jeff.You can stand on principle and I wou.ld be the last person in the world that would find fault of any kind with that. Do you imagine it doesn’t chap my ass that we have to listen to the constant idiotic hedonists on the Left because, for now anyway they have the public forums and the power?
– I don’t think you want that to change any more than I do. But you can’t sell from an empty wagon, and right now we need to keep our eyes on the donut, not the hole.
–
That’s my proposed question to a reporter, Ernst.
But fuck it, what do I know.
I ask this of myself quite often.
Part of the problem, if that’s the way we’re framing it, is that there is no Conservative Point of View—outside of the PW echo-chamber, of course.
We have congressmen who are running for senate seats. It’s a little like moving up to the Big Show after playing AA ball for a few years. Sometimes it works out and sometimes a lot of money gets spent on a guy with a bum arm or in the case of Akin,a guy who suffers a greivous, possibly career ending injury their first time on the field.
Do we have someone else who can win? If so, I’d make the trade and his remarks would have nothing to do with it.
I don’t. I was being glib.
I have a record here. In writing. And it’s a pretty good one, I think.
– Yes, if we took pricipaled stands on these issues and stood up to their bullshit we might actually fight them to a standstill. But evem as we were possibly holding our own in that arena, the National and Senate races mught be lost from distractions. The Press is going to back the Left in this at every turn. If we don’t make inroads into getting moderates back into power than what have we won?
Bush I, Dole, Bush jr, McCain, Romney.
Keeping our eyes on the donut has gotten us fat, lazy, and now moving toward the left politically as we emulate them intellectually and rhetorically.
I’ll be alone in the hole if anyone needs me.
If the GOP let’s him pull a rope-a-dope it will be because the voter’s are exactly as dumb as the professional nose-counters in both parties believe they are. And in that case we’ll deserve what we get —good and hard.
I don’t. I was being glib.
I know you were, Jeff. I was just waxing.
– Off hand I’d absolutely agree with you on that list of losers. But there is a difference now, and with it comes hope. There is a Tea party movement now that suggests just maybe a good portion of the electorate has had enpugh and is willing to express their will at the voting booth. It also might mean that people in general have learned to a small extent just why you can’t sit back and take no interest in the politics that swirl around you.
– I don’t know if all that’s true, but we got you babe.
It’s a little like moving up to the Big Show after playing AA ball for a few years.
stupid sports analogies are dumb. we have a gop establishment that is comfortable with a little less of the status quo not too much mind you. these baracky clowns should be mocked and ridiculed 24/7 on tv, radio et al. we have an idiot gop ruling class who don’t know how to fight the proggtards.
It also might mean that people in general have learned to a small extent just why you can’t sit back and take no interest in the politics that swirl around you.
big gop gov’t is shutting that down
Damn, I knew I left someone out.
George Herbert Milhouse McRomney, who talks about himself in the third person.
And probably can’t piss and chew gum at the same time!
big gop gov’t is shutting that down
– They’re planning on stationing armed guards at the polling places in November to make sure you vote the ‘right’ way now, because that’s the only way they can stop the Tea party.
– In 2010 the GOP ‘shut the Tea party down, so they won the house for them.
– In Wisconsin the GOP tried to shut down the Tea party and Walker. How’d that work out for them?
– In San Diego the GOP ran three republicans against the Tea party candidate and got their asses handed to them.
– Same thing in San Jose.
Those two sentences must not mean what I read them to mean.
“Overplant” implies surplus. Since when does a surplus result in higher prices?
stupid sports analogies are dumb.
You only say that because you always got picked last.
Corn used for ethanol is not considered edible.
– Trying to find the data on the US corn crop for current years, even 2011, is interesting. It isn’t there. The most current data is for 2007-8. An accident? I think not.
– However one higher up in the Agri business did an interview a few weeks back and he mentioned the numbers although he was there mainly to talk about GMO’s.
– Foodstuffs (cereals, fructose, ect.) : 7%
– Fuel: 10%
– Animal feedstock: 82%
– Export for human consuption : <1%
– These are the figures for major producers. Small local farms/organics are generally different.
– The fuel percentages will drop now that the subsidy has been removed.
– We don't sell corn for foreign consumption because they won't buy GMO products except for feedstock. We do expoet a percentage for feedstock.
– The general status of a crop, particularly corn, depends on location. The midwest was hit terribly hard, California has more corn than it knows what to do with.
Europe will not accept American corn for trade because of the genetic engineering.
They’ll eat unpastuerized cheese, but forget it with the GMO grains, buddy!
Has the ethanol subsidy been removed?
If so, I guess Archer Daniels Midland (they have a mill pretty close to where I live) didn’t pay the proper danegeld to Obama.
Beats me. Almost all the gas stations around here have 10% ethanol.
– So we don’t produce corn (major producers) for any large percentage of human consumption. Thats handled by locals.
– So much for ‘starving the poor’/
They are planning on raising it to 15% around here. That will kill a lot of cars.
So, there is a subsidy in that they require it to be added to gasoline. I was thinking of direct subsidies, though.
I thought ethanol corn and feed corn were the same corn.
Even if they’re not, ethanol corn competes with feed corn (marginal buyer and all that).
And in these here parts a shitload of marginal land or former conservation acreage was put back into production because corn prices have been so high.
The last time we had a boom/bust, it was the ethanol producers on the short end of the stick. A number of companies went bankrupt (a company called VeraSun comes to mind)because they agreed to contract ridiculous prices for corn and couldn’t earn enough money to be able to afford the contracts when they came due.
This time the shoe is on the other foot. It might be mildly interesting if the ethanol companies take the same haircut the farmers took when it was the ethanol manufacturers who were filing for bankruptcy.
I thought ethanol corn and feed corn were the same corn.
They are the same. Sweet corn for eating off the cob, etc is a different type of corn.
– Cars built after 1983 will run with no mods on up to 50%. Above that you need a simple mod to run.
– Fuel only uses a portion of the kernal, the rest can be used for feed.
Good news, BBH. My cars, while ancient are not older than an 87 Nissan pick-up my boy drives.
– The oil companys for years faught ethanol with endless scare tactics. Then when all the other additives were outlawed, guess what they now use.
Ethanol.
– Ethanol is the best possible additive. It burns totally clean. No monoxides. But it cost more than chemical additives so naturally they fought it with a massive prpopaganda campaign.
Brazil is 75/25. They still keep 25% oil based because they need a lot of other oil based products and fuel is a natural byproduct, otherwise they’d go 100%.
Certainly sounds as though ethanol would require no subsidies, mandates, or assorted regulations to be freely accepted in the marketplace then.
Let’s start there and see how it works out.
As I understand it, the producers want the subsidy to go to the retailers so they can create a demand for the supply.
– Ethanol is competitive. Nilage is slightly less, about 8% on average, but that depends on the type of driving you do. Since its much higher octane than normal fuels and burns very much cleaner, its a lot less rough on engines, so the whole life cycle costs would project to be lower.
– At present the distribution is still somewhat limited. There are reasons for that. I’ll let you figure that out.
Side note: There are farmers that havn’t bought a tank of oil based gas in years.
You’ve got to train it everywhere because there’s no or next to no pipelines.
And the training everywhere stops the first time a derailment causes more than one or two tankers to burn.
I believe cranky was referring to engine damage above not whether or not a car will run on an ethanol mix. Here’s an article.
It’s not just cars either. Lawn mowers, outboard motors, everything.
that’s a cynical remark about risk averse leftist controllers (make it safe vs. minimize risk) rather than the dangers of burning ethanol.
I’ve heard plenty of arguments in favor of ethanol (there are lots and lots of corn fields in Wisco) but I’d be greatly more receptive to any of them if a) I owned a single engine without components that alcohol degrades and b) had a choice of buying what I wanted at the actual market price.
– Oil stock gets piped to refineries, fuel gets trucked to distribution centers and stations.
– With agrifuel you cut out the piping.
– There is a booming business that most Ameicans are blissfully unaware of. Amercan compamies can’t manufacture bio-mass stills fast enough for export all over the world.
– Rising sugar costs offsets the savings somewhat, but moonshine still costs about a 5th of oil based fuels. Kentuckyians amd West Virgnians have been doing it since the Hatfeilds and the McCoys.
Another subsidy.
– That and gas costs 42 cents a gallon in Kuwait.
I realize this comment is late. But I suspect the RNC has a difficult time distinguishing between Paulbots, teatards and ordinary conservative Republican activists who wish the RNC would stop with the whiny “I don’t know, I don’t know what to do Godfather” and start *SLAP* “act like a MAN! (what’s the matter with you?)”
They’ve made a chage to the amendment, but I haven’t read it. Perhaps it’s a one-time only deal.
Why is moving it via Union Pacific an BNSF better? Honest question. I haven’t thought about it.
– The FCC: A federal agency that takes the citizen owned airwaves and sells them to the Telecom industry, who then rents our airwaves back to us at any price they can get.
Why is moving it via Union Pacific an BNSF better?
– They do use trainage for long huals and difficult to reach/remote urban area’s. They always have, but the vast majority is trucked. I think I saw the percentage some years back as ~90% trucking.
If you try to burn a fuel with too much ethanol in a car made for gasoline the engine will run lean and burn valves. That is a fact.
It takes roughly twice the amount of ethanol per air charge to have the correct fuel ratio as compared to gasoline. A gasoline engine assumes it is getting fed gasoline and adjusts its fuel metering accordingly (if it can).
If you design the engine to account for different fuels (mostly it’s done by using sensors in the fuel tank and having a computer that can adjust the fuel injectors over a wide range, as well as having the correct materials used for seals and fuel lines) then you can run different fuels.
That should have read, “correct air-fuel ratio.”
Mileage on pure ethanol is about half that of gasoline. Ethanol also absorbs water like a sponge.
Ethanol takes more energy to produce than you get out of it. It might make sense as an additive to reduce emissions (in place of MTBE), but otherwise, it’s a loser.
– I’m not an expert at it but I’ve heard that most current models are able to auto adjust to up to 25% ratios, metering and timing are two of the area’s. Ethanol is the current additive, no others are any longer legal.
I cannot afford to buy a new car. I doubt I’m alone in that.
If they destroy a good portion of the used cars that are on the road, this economy will likely be even worse off.
I hate it when legislators don’t ask for expert advice. 10% ethanol is pretty much the limit.
The ethanol producers seem to think that 30% ethanol 70% gasoline is the optimum blend, if I remember what my insider told me.
That would be a disaster, Ernst, for anyone with a car more than a few years old.
It was after I ate, on a Monday (in anticipation of one of your weekend-ruining mental images) so I assumed it must have been afternoon.
As an aside, Dale, Calvin Coolidge didn’t think much of Hoover.
Which, considering all that happened under Hoover’s watch and that which proceeded from Hoover’s policies, Coolidge seems rather perceptive.
Coolidge definitely disliked Hoover, and with some good reason.
The sad thing is that Hoover did wonders for European hunger relief during and after the First World War, with a combination of public and private funds. He actually used private networks to distribute it. Ditto Mississippi flood relief in 1927-28.
As a quirky aside, he was fluent in Mandarin Chinese and Latin, with he and his wife translating an obscure text into English during their minimal spare time in the 20s.
I’m inclined to think of him more as a tragic figure, as his belief that he could solve massive problems was not without foundation. But unfortunately, he greased the skids for even more massive statist approaches.