Commodities: Obama's Failed Ethanol Policy

Ethanol as a viable commodity is a joke, yet Obama following same failed Bush policies

The more things "change," the more they stay the same, and that is how it will be with Barack Obama and the ongoing ethanol debacle in America.

With Obama, it's obvious the reasons why, as government subsidies pour into his home state of Illinois, the nations second-largest producer of corn.

Obama campaign senior energy adviser Heather Zichal said concerning Obama's ethanol policy that "Obama recognizes how important the renewable and biofuels industry is to creating jobs and meeting our goal of reducing dependence on foreign oil. He's fully committed to it and sees tremendous value in the renewable fuels standard and continuing down this path."

So the man of change is going to keep the Bush policy goal of a "minimum of 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022," said Zichal. At this time ethanol loses close to 66 cents a gallon at existing prices.

Oil refiners receive a subsidy of 51 cents a gallon for the ethanol mixed with regular gasoline, and a stiff 54 cent-a-gallon tariff is put on the sugarcane-based ethanol from Brazil.

The continued idiocy of saying we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil when we have billions upon billions of barrels proven to be on American soil or off its coastlines is dishonest at best.

There is no way the corn-based ethanol industry currently touted can survive, no matter what the government says. The idea now being thrown about is to use cellulosic ethanol, which is made from non-food crops.

One major problem is it costs about twice as much as corn-based ethanol to produce. Another is it's years away from being any significant contributor to our energy needs, if it ever will be. We need answers in the near future, not 10 or more years from now.

The corn-based ethanol problem is even worse, as it has already caused a lot of pain to poor people around the world who suffered from the resultant high food prices from the misguided effort, and riots ensued in a number of countries because of skyrocketing food costs.

Another huge problem is the increased costs to meat producers in the U.S., who have been damaged greatly from higher feed costs.

This is one area we need to simply toss aside and refuse to bring politics into. The damage is extensive and it'll only get worse if we keep going in this direction.

I wonder if this is the type of "change" Obama was supposedly going to initiate? This ethanol policy and the resultant illusion that it's a real commodity continues to be destructive, as shown by the damage it does to small engine power equipment like chainsaws, snowmobiles and generators.