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| Corn! You can eat it, you can give it to your cows, you can ferment it for liquor and gasoline, and you can cut mazes through it for the kids! I can see corn from my house! |
I'm pretty sure it's all related.
Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has been agitating for the ethanol rule change. It's good for Iowa farmers, who lead the nation in ethanol production. (Iowa produces twice as much ethanol as the next biggest ethanol-producing state, Nebraska. Ethanol is also big biz in eight other Midwestern states.)
Grassley and his Midwest cohorts in the Senate needed some good economic news for farmers since Trump's trade war with China has depressed foreign sales of corn and soybeans. Now they can spread the good news, and Trump can tout the news that his policy offsets sales lost to China. Given Trump's proclivity for hyperbole, I expect his take will be that MY NEW ETHANOL POLICY WILL MAKE FARMERS RICHER THAN EVER BEFORE IN HISTORY!!! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!
However, looser ethanol regulations may be bad news for public health and the environment. Until this month, ethanol was banned during the summer months, when fuel emissions combined with heat and humidity increased smog. Smog not only poses environmental hazards but endangers those with respiratory problems.
Hard not to wonder whether ethanol was the carrot offered to Grassley for shepherding through the Kavanaugh confirmation as Judiciary Committee chair. Or whether Kavanaugh's win was leveraged into a policy change on ethanol.
Either way, the losers here are everybody who isn't making ethanol.
Meantime, Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow (D), who has supported increased biofuel production in the past, has been quiet about looser restrictions on ethanol. (Michigan produces less than one-tenth the amount of ethanol that Iowa does.) She's up for re-election and has the support of the Farm Bureau. My guess is that she's going to keep mum about ethanol and hope it stays off the campaign radar.
Ethanol subsidies are dumb in and of themselves, but they are even worse these days in that they also help enable our bone-headed trade wars: as the Trump Administration methodically removes foreign markets for our agricultural products, farm subsidies help cushion the economic blow to farmers.
ReplyDeleteYou may be right that Grassley extracted a price from Trump to ensure the former's support for Kavanaugh. Conceptually, I don't have an issue with that sort of horse trading in Congress. But I probably stand alone here in that I supported Kavanaugh's confirmation: I consider him well-qualified; I don't think his enemies met any sort of reasonable burden of proof or likelihood in the charges against him; and even if Blasey Ford was telling the pristine truth with perfect recall, I don't think that teenage misdeeds are ipso facto disqualifying, if they were followed by an adult lifetime of literally-unimpeachable conduct. So if Grassley and the Trump Administration made a deal on Kavanaugh's confirmation, I wouldn't consider it corrupt, even if the handshake was made in full knowledge of Ford's accusations.
Yeah, deals are pretty much expected in politics. I still think Ben Nelson was excoriated unfairly over the so called "cornhusker kickback" when he broke ranks with the GOP on the ACA. We need more people willing to break ranks and reach across party lines.
DeleteFor better or for worse, Kavanaugh is a done deal. The effect of the sex scandal was that it prevented any meaningful discussion of his judicial record or partisan connections.
Jim, my point isn't so much to pan political deals per se as to highlight what I think are a Trumpian quilt of deals that have been generally bad.
DeleteI was on the fence about Kavenaugh until his post-Ford appearance in which he alternated between crybaby and sh*t head to Amy Klobuchar. Once an entitled brat, always an entitled brat.
We have an ethanol plant here, owned by Archer Daniels Midland. They hire some lab people, and over the years people have told me that I ought to try to get on there because the pay is better. But I knew they do rotating 12 hour shifts and they don't shut down for holidays. My body wouldn't have handled flipping nights and days every four weeks, not to mention 12 hours is grueling. Nebraska of course is a right to work state.
ReplyDeleteI said they were an ethanol plant, but people tell me now that they're not making ethanol anymore here. Corn sweetener always was a side business, and now apparently it is their whole business. It seems to be a more stable income stream than ethanol. There are other ethanol plants in the area, they have gone through periodic shutdowns, depending on the demand for ethanol. One of them closed permanently. But the plant here has never shut down, or gone through layoffs that I have heard of. So ethanol is apparently an iffy proposition as far as being profitable, unlike sweetener.
I know ethanol is controversial environmentally speaking. It burns cleaner as a fuel additive, but requires fossil fuel input to grow the corn. It isn't profitable unless it is subsidized. Of course red staters hate government subsidies. Unless they're the ones getting them.
I have been reading some interesting things about ethanol made from biomass such as algae that can be grown with dirty or brackish water.
Algae is definitely the way to go. You don't have to use good acreage. Also, algae is around 6% efficient for using sunlight compared to 3% for plants. Jean's post also reminded me to check if anything new is happening with artificial photosynthesis.
DeleteGeez, 40 years ago one of my vet school friends did a bunch of research on algae as a source of animal feed. Maybe the cows didn't like it ...
DeleteBitlet: http://www.algaeindustrymagazine.com/microalgae-animal-feed/
I did a report on algae as a human food source when I was in high school, nearly 50 years ago. I even got a cookie recipe from the food science department of UNL. Never did try it, growing algae and processing it is a lot of work. My mom wasn't anxious to have algae in her kitchen. Probably just as well. (Though now people drink spirulina smoothies).
DeleteWe have plenty of blue-green algae around here. At the moment, it is forcing the tourist boards to advertise our museums, hiking trails and Art Deco buildings -- anything that is not near water. If anyone can use our blue-green algae, they are welcome to it.
DeleteHow is Mar-a-Lago doing, Tom. Do the members get a cyanobacteria rebate?
DeleteI doubt Trump had to deal with Grassley over Kavanaugh, although the aged Iowan may have been one of the committee members suggesting that other names on the Federalist Society list would be easier to pass. That was before, of course, it was decided that most of Kavanaugh's political record is a State Secret.
ReplyDeleteThe courts seem more like an Addison Mitchell McConnell product, though. McConnell said the other day, btw, that government is running fat deficits because of programs people like -- like Social Security and Medicare -- and that Congress will have to get after cutting them to re-balance the budget. Just thought you ought to know.
Tom, yeah, I saw that. You said a while back that McConnell is a thug. He keeps on proving it. Now he's trying to mug seniors. Or rather he's trying to mug my kids when they get to be seniors. And wasn't one of Trump's campaign points, that he wasn't going to mess with SS? Of course we all know by now how much to trust anything he says.
DeleteMy kind of corn maze.
ReplyDeleteOh man, I remember taking The Boy and his friends to a corn maze when they were about 8. I was sure we would never be seen again. I kept oriented by keeping the barn roof in sight, and bribed them out with promises of cider and donuts. I like your corn maze better!
ReplyDelete