We can eat corn or fill our gas tanks with it

Good day all, with the recent heatwave, I thought I would look into something that has been bothering me. This is the Renewable Fuel Standard ((Renewable Fuel Standards)) which the EPA uses to mandate putting ethanol in our fuel supplies.

Why is this a good time to look at this mandate? Simple really. We are going through a very severe drought right now which is causing serious problems with our crops, primarily corn and other grains. The problem is so bad that various sources are predicting much higher food costs for the next year…or more.

One of the uses, which I’ve been opposed to for some time, is converting grains into ethanol and using it as a fuel supplement. There are several issues with using ethanol as fuel. Right off the bat, it actually lowers your mileage. Ethanol is not as energetic as normal gasoline so an engine actually has to work harder in order to do the same work. Another problem is damage to the fuel systems. Ethanol attracts moisture and water in a fuel system will cause the fittings and tubing to corrode far more quickly than normal. A third issue is small engines such as lawn mowers and 2-stroke engines. They are simply not designed to handle ethanol and pretty much self destruct after a few years.

This is something I can attest to. I’ve had several lawn mowers flat out implode and it was the mandated gas that caused the problem. Shortly after these mandates went into effect, I had a gas line rust out and had to have that replaced. All these issues were known at the time this piece of bad law was rammed through, but the morons in Congress were more concerned with keeping their fat asses in those seats then doing their actual jobs of representing the people and the nation.

Until recently, the Federal Government was paying a subsidy to put ethanol into the fuel supply. This was ended at the beginning of the year. However, the mandate to use ethanol is still in place and the Obama Regime is actually trying to ramp it up. Here are a few details from Breitbart.com:

Oral arguments began last week on another controversial Obama Administration policy. It’s not Obamacare in the Supreme Court, but the outcome will affect a major sector of the economy: energy. In particular, the fuel most Americans use daily.

At issue is the administration’s continued abuse of science at the agency level in an effort to dictate what type of energy we use.

The Environmental Protection Agency has fast-tracked the approval of a 50 percent increase in the amount of ethanol that can be mixed into the fuels we use in our cars and other engine-run vehicles, such as boats and snowmobiles. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with such a major increase in ethanol, (from 10% to 15% total,) but the law requires and common sense dictates that the EPA test the new fuel mix in all engines in which it would be used, to make sure it works properly and doesn’t damage the engines. The lawsuit alleges that EPA failed to properly do so in approving use of so called E15 fuel.

Under the current regime, science will not be allowed to interfere with their religious belief of Global Warming Man made Climate Change.

For example the EPA only evaluated E15’s impact on automobiles’ emissions systems, rather than how it affects the entire car, “bumper to bumper,” as Charles Drevna, President of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, a lead plaintiff, put it in a recent interview with the trade publication Energy and Environment News.

As I mentioned before, ethanol reduces the normal lifespan of the Internal Combustion Engine. (ICE or IC Engine) Of course, since the idiots at the EPA all ride around on bicycles, they aren’t all that worried about the effects on IC engines.

Perhaps even more troubling, according to Drevna, is that the EPA’s “testing didn’t come in until the day before they announced, or they published the regulation.” There’s simply no way the testing could have been fully considered (as required by law) in the next day’s rule-making, not even if the bureaucrats stayed up all night before filing the paperwork.

I gather that Mr. Drevna isn’t aware of just how much contempt Der Fubar has for the rule of law and the constitution. Nothing shall be allowed to get in the way of the SCoaMF’s ultimate plan to turn the United States into a true socialist utopian paradise. However the blame for this mess doesn’t rest exclusively with jugears. The original law was passed in 2005 ((Energy Policy Act of 2005)), expanded in 2007 and signed into law both times by President Bush ((Who voted in the Senate for the Energy Policy Act of 2005)) , ((Who voted in the House for the Energy Policy Act of 2005)).

Now, if I recall correctly, when this new law took effect, food prices started to escalate. In fact, there was actual starvation in some third world hellholes countries because the price of various grains had gone up to the point where people literally could not afford to eat ((2007–2008 world food price crisis)). I seem to recall that when the RFS was first being proposed, people did mention that it would cause food prices to go up. This didn’t stop the morons in the house though. It passed with most of the Democrats and a few RINO’s supporting it ((Who voted for the Energy Independence and Security Act in the House in 2007)) , ((Who voted for the Energy Independence and Security Act in the Senate in 2007)).

Granted there were other things in the bill, but no one wanted to strip this section out. We now have 7 years of experience with this mandate, and it is, to be honest, another big government failure. Now there are studies being done scientifically, (An alien concept to the EPA of course) and the results aren’t good. Here’s some details from the Drovers Cattle Network:

Conducted by Thomas Elam, Ph.D., president of FarmEcon LLC, an Indiana agricultural and food industry consulting firm, the study found that federal ethanol policy has increased and destabilized corn, soybean and wheat prices to the detriment of food and fuel producers and consumers.

“The increases we’ve seen in commodity prices are strongly associated with the RFS mandate,” said Elam. “At the same time, we haven’t seen the promised benefits on oil imports or gasoline prices. This means that while Americans are forced to pay more for food, they’re also not seeing lower prices at the pump; it’s a lose-lose situation.”

No kidding.

Now, with the current drought, we need to seriously revisit this law and cancel the mandate asap. We need to put every kernel of corn and grain of wheat into the food systems, not the fuel systems. One of the biggest users of grain is cattle and poultry farms. They don’t feed grass and hay to their livestock. It isn’t that nutritious. They use grain. However, not all farmers are opposed to the mandate. Here’s a story from the Journal Star:

Among those shaking his head over those developments was Nebraska farmer Steve Hanson of Elsie.

Hanson spoke up as a corn producer, a beef producer and as the current chairman of both the Nebraska Beef Council and the Nebraska Ethanol Board.

He made it clear that he does not favor action against the mandate, which calls for 13.2 billion gallons of ethanol in highway fuel this year, even though that threatens the corn supply for his feedlot calves.

Mr. Hanson seems to be conflicted. He is opposed to the EPA but likes the mandate. I suspect he likes the back-end subsidies the mandate generates.

It’s far past time to start shutting down all these mandates and subsidies. You are now seeing the results of Big Government’s meddling in things they really don’t understand. Top down micromanagement didn’t work in the Soviet Union ((Five-Year Plans for the National Economy of the Soviet Union)), It didn’t work for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt ((The New Deal)), ((Wickard v. Filburn)) and it sure isn’t working for the Obama Regime. What is it going to take for those incompetent clowns in Washington to start ending this mess? People starving to death in America?

Remember in November!

Thatisall

~The Angry Webmaster~

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