Wheat, the Stuff of Revolutions

By Alan Caruba

In a recent column, Lawrence Kudlow, an economist and popular radio host, opined that “the sinking dollar and skyrocketing food prices (may have) triggered the massive unrest now occurring in Egypt—or the greater Arab world for that matter.”

When barely two percent of America’s population is engaged in agriculture, growing the crops we eat or that is fed to livestock, it is perhaps understandable that the other 98% has no clue how all that food shows up in their supermarkets and restaurants.

Methinks that the turmoil we are witnessing in Middle Eastern nations derives more from the rumblings in empty bellies than in any real concern for human rights.

Historically, food is the stuff of revolutions. It was the origin of the French revolution that toppled the monarchy and, as we watch the Middle East and the Maghreb nations of northern Africa, it was food that was the match that set off the present popular demonstrations against dictatorships of varying description.

The monthly edition of Wheat Life, a publication of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers, always features a look at the status of the “wide world of wheat.” It is particularly instructive this month.

“There’s a reason governments make every effort to keep food affordable. Just ask the deposed president of Tunisia, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. A popular uprising in the mostly desert country of 10 million was sparked by the self-immolation of a man who was arrested for selling vegetables without a license as well as rising prices, particularly bread.” Ben Ali was sent packing after decades of tight-fisted control.

The price of food along with his thirty years of control toppled Egypt’s Mubarack. As Kudlow noted, the mainstream media are so focused on the turmoil in the streets that it is “overlooking the impact of rising inflation, driven mainly by record food prices.” Egypt is the world’s largest wheat importer but “Egyptian inflation is now over 10 percent while some experts estimate that Egyptian food inflation has risen as much as 20 percent.”

Much of the world’s inflationary woes come right back to actions being taken here in the United States. “Commodities are priced in dollars, and the Federal Reserve has been overproducing dollars for more than two years." As the value of the dollar declines, it drives up the cost of everything everywhere. The rise in food costs said Kudlow is “a global phenomenon. It is a monetary phenomenon as much as anything.”

“In dollar terms,” noted Kudlow, “ the price of wheat has soared 114 percent over the past year. Corn has surged 88 percent. These are incredible numbers.” There is a reason for the increase in corn prices and it is the United States’ idiotic and insane mandate that ethanol, made from corn, be added to every gallon of gasoline. There is no justifiable reason for ethanol.

A look around the world also shows how Mother Nature is playing her role in the availability—or lack of it—of wheat. Do not fall for the “climate change” blather that hides the global warming fraud. Droughts and deluges alike are a normal part of the Earth’s weather and quite beyond the control of dictators or democracies.

In Russia, drought cut the 2010 wheat production of wheat by a third. Its government declared a moratorium on exports until the 2011 harvest. By contrast, China has had seven years of rising wheat harvests, but Chinese agricultural experts worry that grain production is increasingly concentrated in the water-scarce northern region of the nation.

So, while people around the world watch the Middle Eastern turmoil in the streets, it is factors such as the declining value of the U.S. dollar, the U.S. ethanol policies, and Mother Nature that are driving revolution.

A government that cannot affordably feed its people, it will not last for long.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Thou Shalt Not

By Alan Caruba

Is there anything that some special interest group or some government agency doesn’t want to forbid you from eating, driving, wearing, using, and enjoying? We live surrounded by a multitude of “thou shalt not’s.”

Throughout history people have been afflicted with rulers and others who felt compelled to create lists of things forbidden to them. In matters of moral behavior, the Decalogue, otherwise known as the Ten Commandments, is quite sufficient to get you through life. Generally speaking, everything else from dress, food, and fun should be an individual decision so long as no one else is harmed.

The biggest “success” story among the lifestyle puritans are the endless restrictions on smoking. The biggest crock is the claim that “secondhand smoke” killed a lot of people who did not puff on a cigarette, cigar, or pipe. Worse, millions in “stimulus” money, public funds, have been allocated to anti-smoking campaigns.

As just one example, Georgia’s Dekalb County’s Board of Health received $3.2 million for an anti-smoking campaign and it is just one of four urban areas that have received such funding. A total of $650 million is being wasted in this fashion. How many jobs will this create? None.

My late Father lived into his early 90s and I cannot recall a day he did not light up his pipe, nor the sweet perfume of the smoke as it wafted around the house. My late Mother, who never smoked a day in her life, also lived well into her 90s.

Mother was a cookbook author who taught classes in gourmet cooking and dining for three decades in the adult schools where we lived. An authority on wines and liquors, we had a wine cellar in the basement fit for royalty; apparently all that wine had no adverse affect and likely prolonged her life, Dad’s and mine.

Americans love fast food. We love our McDonald’s, our Burger King’s, the many pizza franchises, Red Lobster’s, Olive Garden’s, Outback, and all the other wonderful places to take the family or a date. They all remain the object of scorn and scolding by endless self-appointed “consumer advocates” They and every other thing we eat are blamed for an alleged epidemic of obesity. Do I care if someone is fat? No. It’s none of my business.

Claiming that fat people cost taxpayer’s money is absurd. Many come from a long family line of hefty ancestors. Surely all those people who are genetically disposed to cancer, heart disease, and other illnesses cost money as well, particularly if they have lost their jobs and no longer have health insurance.

I am concerned about illegal drug use, mostly because it fuels the Mexican drug cartel wars that are killing Americans foolish enough to wander into bandito land. I yield to my libertarian inclination to think that we could eliminate a lot of wasted time and money if we just legalized drugs and let those foolish enough to use them pay taxes for the privilege.

I know that drug users, like alcoholics, underage drinkers, and a wide variety of solid citizens will drink and drive, but that’s why we have police and jails. Nothing will stop it except perhaps for bartenders who refuse to sell “one more for the road.” You could close every liquor store in sight and people, as in the bad old days of Prohibition, would find a way to have a drink or two or three.

I grew up in a time when kids rode bikes without mandatory safety helmets, drank water from the garden hose, played ball in the street, and lived to tell about it. We were told “don’t talk to strangers” and it was good advice. We were told to be home for dinner, a time set aside for the entire family to sit down together and discuss the events of their day.

I dislike the eco-freaks who demand that everyone buy a hideously expensive electric car when the ones we do buy are marvels of technology while there’s an estimated thirteen trillion untapped barrels of oil sufficient to keep them running on high octane for a very long time to come. Consumers will save an estimated five billion dollars if the government allows the ethanol mandate to end this year.

I don’t frankly want to hear that every single thing I buy is not sufficiently “Green” or that my “lifestyle” is an offense to planet Earth. I harbor the notion that the Earth doesn’t care and that these annoying people will complain that my ashes were despoiling the Atlantic Ocean when I pass from this mortal coil.

I have a friend who lives in a cabin in the backwoods of Missouri with two dogs as his companions. In the past he has enjoyed a fair degree of success as an author and other literary endeavors, but these days, when not earning a living as an editor, he is into the distilling arts and sciences, making some excellent hard cider and other potable potions. For his 51st birthday, he has signed off social networking on Facebook and yanked his blog from the Internet. To his longtime friends he said you know my phone number and address.

He is a happy man, having earlier rid himself of a crazed wife and dodged a potential one for whom he was the perfect “fixer-upper.” An unfortunate investment in a saloon in the methamphetamine capitol of the U.S. did not pan out. He accepts the fact that the nation is broke and that he cannot do a damn thing about it, nor does he expect Congress will do anything sensible to avoid this outcome.

I find his attitude refreshing though it is my “job” to warn against the coming collapse.

It is, however, the nature of all people elected or appointed to any position of power, no matter how low or high, to thereafter enlist an army of bureaucrats to enforce a multi-volume encyclopedia of regulations intended to save us from ourselves and to behave exactly as they want us to. I don’t like any of these people.

I wish all those harridans, hypocrites, and others who think they know better how you and I should live our lives would all be transported to the dark side of the Moon.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Time to End the Ethanol Rip-Off

By Alan Caruba

Psst! Want to avoid $25-to-$30 billion in new deficit spending over the next five years? You do? Okay, then email, fax or call your congressman and tell him you want to let the 45 cents-per-gallon Volumetric Ethanol Tax Credit (VEETC) expire on December 31, 2010.

In the same way you want Congress to extend the Bush tax cuts that are due to expire the same day, letting the VEETC expire will end a subsidy to ethanol producers. It is the only way they can stay in business. It is a hidden tax we pay every time we fill up our gas tank and it is one that deprives us of the full value of pure gasoline.

When Republicans take control of the House and possibly the Senate as well, they will have not just an opportunity, but a mandate to end support for ethanol and biodiesel, two of the worst ideas ever foisted on drivers.

Need it be said that the ethanol scam began with former President Jimmy Carter? He also thought that solar and wind power was a great idea. Ethanol, though, is particularly pernicious because, simply put, it is corrosive to engines. It takes a bite out of every driver’s wallet every time they fill up with a federally required ethanol-gasoline mixture, and it actually reduces the mileage you will get from every gallon.

As a recent issue of Business Week magazine points out “Today the U.S. offers a 45 cent per gallon tax credit to refiners that blend ethanol with gasoline. The government also requires gasoline makers to use a steadily increasing amount of the additive, and it imposes an import tariff to deter foreign competition.”

If you wonder why such stupidity is permitted, Business Week points out that it is a $27 billion industry today. Last year the tax credit was worth more than $4.7 billion.

If the tax credit for ethanol expires on December 31 along with a protective tariff consumers will cease being ripped off. When the $1-a-gallon incentive for biodiesel expired at the end of last year, so did the niche industry making it.

Ethanol is made from corn and biodiesel is made from soy beans. The farmers growing these crops will cry bloody murder, but there is a global market for them so they won’t be selling the farm any time soon. Instead, the cost of the countless food products made in whole or part from corn and soy beans will likely decrease, along with the cost of feed, mostly corn, for livestock.

The battle over ethanol pits its producers and corn farmers, along with the U.S. Agriculture Department against an unusual coalition of environmental groups and cattle ranchers. The former have come to question the alleged benefits of ethanol and the latter have always opposed the way the government’s ethanol mandate forces up the cost of feed corn.

Applauding from the sidelines will be the major U.S. auto manufacturers that worry ethanol will corrode engines that are not designed to handle the stronger blend. Take away ethanol and the cost of an auto will be reduced.

The ethanol tax incentives are just one part of the appalling failure of bad environmental ideas and policies that Americans have had to suffer since the days of Jimmy Carter.

All those “Green jobs” and Green energy projects Obama promised as he rolled out his economic stimulus plan just over a year ago have proven to be a boon…for China! The Department of Energy estimated that 82,000 jobs were created, but government job creation estimates are notoriously wrong. Meanwhile, DOE acknowledged that eighty percent of some Green programs, including $2.3 billion of manufacturing credits, went to foreign firms in China, South Korea, and Spain!

About the only “good” news is that only some $20 billion in stimulus funds have been spent.

Americans are slowly realizing they have been robbed at the gas station courtesy of the U.S. government and that their tax dollars are being shipped overseas to purchase wind turbines and solar panels that, together, produce barely three percent of the electricity used daily.

The problem is that the Greens and the U.S. government have kept Americans in the dark for a very long time regarding all these squirrelly “solutions” they have come up with to save the world from “global warming” (ain’t happening) and dependence on foreign oil (they won’t stop selling it to us and we have virtually stopped drilling here).

The sins are many, the jobs for Americans are few these days, the borrowing continues unabated, government spending is obscene, and, next year, you will not be permitted to purchase a 100-watt incandescent light bulb.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Is the EPA Trying to Murder the USA?

By Alan Caruba

Day after day the news arrives regarding some new announcement by the Environmental Protection Agency that is often so bizarre that it seems a parody of regulation, science, and common sense.

Most people don’t have time to pay attention to the cast of characters setting the agency’s agenda but these days that includes the president’s top environment advisor, Carol Browner, a former EPA director under Bill Clinton, and Lisa Jackson, the current administrator, an acolyte of Browner and, if possible, more obsessed with destroying the nation than her former boss.

Browner is a dedicated Socialist, but Jackson is a bounce-off-the-walls enviro-wacko for whom real science is a great nuisance while pseudo-science is a blunt instrument with which to impose a regime that will destroy the economy and take down the whole nation.

At the heart of the EPA’s latest initiatives is the thoroughly debunked theory of “global warming”; that carbon dioxide (CO2) is “causing” it, and that human beings are producing too much CO2 by using various forms of energy such as coal, oil, and natural gas. All three assertions are utterly and completely false.

As you read this, the Earth’s atmosphere is composed of 76.55% nitrogen, 20.54% oxygen, 0.91% argon, and 0.0389% carbon dioxide. Of the so-called “greenhouse gases”, the largest is water vapor—clouds.

When the EPA recently announced it had lifted the cap on how much ethanol had to be mixed with gasoline to increase the consumption mandates in the 2007 energy bill from 10% to 15%, it set off a firestorm of resistance. At the last count, more than 90 companies and trade associations have filed legal challenges.

The ethanol mandate was and is bogus. When mixed with gasoline, ethanol actually produces more CO2. It reduces the mileage per gallon and, in the process, damages automobile engines because it is corrosive. Made primarily from corn, it drives up the cost of countless food products. Its use is solely dependent on government mandates and subsidies. It is moonshine.

While companies and jobs depart the United States, the government flushes billions down the green toilet subsidizing ethanol, wind and solar energy.

The EPA has been asserting the right to regulate CO2, claiming that the 1970 Clean Air Act permits this. It does not.

When the State of Texas protested, The Wall Street Journal noted that Ms. Jackson was “threatening to punish Texas and other green dissenters with a de facto moratorium on any major energy or construction projects.” The Obama EPA is not run by touchy-feely tree huggers. “Put bluntly,” said the Journal, “this coercion is illegal.”

In an October 10 editorial, the Journal warned, “the EPA decision to strip permitting authority from the states is tantamount to a ban on major construction or building expansion—not merely Texan refineries, but any kind of carbon-heavy utility, industrial production, manufacturing plant or even large office buildings.”

The authority it claims would enable the EPA to shut down every kind of industrial activity or construction project nationwide.

We have witnessed the damage the Obama administration’s moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico has wrought. Despite two court rulings that it was illegal, the administration ignored them and, only when it concluded that the moratorium might cost Democrats votes in the midterm elections, was it lifted.

This is the most anti-energy administration in the nation’s history and it poses a grave threat to the economy.

CNSnews.com reported on a June 3 EPA statement, noting that “Tough new rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency restricting greenhouse gas emissions will ‘slow construction nationwide for years’—but will only reduce global temperatures 0.0015 (15 ten-thousandths) of a degree Celsius in the next century.”

Mother Nature is already reducing worldwide temperatures as the result of a natural cooling cycle that began around 1998. We are more than a decade into a cycle that some meteorologists fear could become a new Little Ice Age.

A GOP minority report on the EPA’s greenhouse gas emission reduction proposals estimated than more than 800,000 jobs would be put at risk with no evidence of any environmental benefit.

In January, the EPA proposed lowering the ozone national ambient air quality standards from 75 parts per billion (ppb) to between 60 and 70 ppb. A study by the Manufacturer’s Alliance/MAPI declared that the EPA’s proposed revision of the “primary” (health based) standard would have “devastating economic impacts.”

The study estimated the new ozone standard would impose compliance costs of $1.013 trillion between 2020 and 2030 with a resulting reduction of GDP of $687 billion by 2020. They estimate 7.3 million jobs would be lost by 2020.

Ozone and carbon dioxide levels, and even levels of airborne dust are the Trojan horse the EPA is using to wreak havoc on an already fragile economy and rising levels of unemployment.

If the EPA is permitted to have its way, in ten years the economy will have been effectively destroyed. This all-encompassing federal agency gives daily evidence of trying to murder the United States of America.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Turning Off the (Incandescent) Light of Liberty

By Alan Caruba

What if the government banned air conditioning? What if flat-screen televisions were determined to use too much electricity and were ordered phased out of production? What if the use of all plastic grocery bags were banned? What if the incandescent light bulb, one of the greatest inventions of Thomas Edison in the 1870s was banned? Oh wait, it has been banned!

In a nation where the Medicare “reform” requires Americans to purchase health insurance they may not want and may not be able to afford, was rammed through Congress, what can stop the government from dictating just about any choice you have regarding any purchase you make? The answer? Nothing.

Only it would no longer be a Constitutional government, a nation of laws that reflect anything resembling the truth. The ban on incandescent light bulbs turns off the light of liberty throughout America.

Here are some truths to keep in mind. (1) Carbon dioxide (CO2) along with other “greenhouse gas emissions” does not cause global warming. (2) There is no global warming. (3) The Earth has gone through known warming and cooling cycles for millions of years. (4) The Earth is in a cooling cycle.

(5) Beginning January 1, 2012, government rules will make it impossible to purchase a 100-watt incandescent light bulb. After that, in time, all such light bulbs will be phased out leaving Americans with only dim, over-priced, mercury-filled light bulbs. And (6) they will be made overseas, primarily in China.

By 2012, by order of the government, Americans will no longer be able to purchase any incandescent light bulbs. Why? Because Congress banned them, citing the need to reduce “greenhouse gas emissions” to reduce global warming that isn’t happening.

It’s the same Congress that had already determined how much water your toilet can use to flush. It’s the same Congress that determined “cafe” rules that determine how many miles per gallon your automobile must achieve. It’s the same government that requires ethanol be added to gasoline, thus reducing the mileage a gallon of adulterated gasoline can produce, while also driving up the cost of gasoline as well as of corn, a food product, used to produce ethanol.

It’s the same Congress that has blessed a Renewable Electricity Standard that requires utilities to use electricity produced by wind and solar power even though both sources also require 24/7 backup by traditional coal-fired, natural gas, or nuclear plants because they cannot be relied upon to generate electricity in a predictable fashion or during periods of peak capacity.

It’s the same Congress that initiated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two “government entities” that purchased the sub-prime mortgage loans that banks and mortgage loan firms were required to make to people who clearly could not afford to repay them. The result is the financial crisis that occurred when those “bundled” mortgages turned out to be “toxic”, worthless paper sold to investment firms and banks as assets.

In early September, The Washington Post, published an article, “Light bulb factory closes; End of era for U.S. means more jobs overseas.” It reported that “The last major General Electric factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month…the remaining 200 workers at the plant here (Winchester, Virginia) will lose their jobs.”

In June, The Washington Times reported that the Federal Trade Commission earlier this month (released) 91 pages of regulations that will force manufacturers to revise their packaging and make costly compact fluorescent bulbs appear more appealing to consumers,” that they have refused to willingly purchase them. “Congress wants to force the pale, cold fluorescent curlicue fixtures on everyone because it makes members feel that they are doing their part to ‘save the planet’.”

While the ban was initiated in 2007 before the Obama administration took power, it has not gone unnoticed that the CEO of General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt, “sits on Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.” And recovery is no where in sight while GE closes its factory making incandescent light bulbs.

There’s more. GE was the recipient of bailout funds and, according to an article on FrontPagemag.com, “stands to benefit from current and future contracts with the U.S. government.” Connect the dots. GE owns MSNBC, a cable news channel famous for its adulation of Obama before and since his election.

The issue, however, is far less about GE than it is about the vast global warming fraud, the equally vast matrix of U.S. laws and regulations that is based on it, and most importantly, the way they are being used to undermine and destroy the U.S. economy along with the freedoms that Americans take for granted.

One of the many tasks facing a Congress in which Republicans are expected to regain control in November is to repeal the ban on incandescent light bulbs. After that, the mountain of other laws and regulations strangling consumer freedom and even threatening the health of Americans must also be repealed.

All nations must evolve, but America is moving toward less freedom of choice; more control over the choices that a free market requires. It is rejecting its founding principles and it is doing so based on environmental lies.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Major Newspapers Urge an End to Ethanol Subsidy

By Alan Caruba

On Friday, July 23, the Chicago Tribune published an editorial titled “Enough Ethanol” and on Saturday, July 24, The Washington Post editorial said, “It’s time to end the excessive subsidies for corn ethanol.” On Monday, July 26, The Wall Street Journal joined the chorus.

“The best refutation of the theory of the survival of the fittest is probably the corn ethanol lobby, whose annual $6 billion in federal subsidies have managed to outlive both its record of failure and all evidence and argument,” said The Wall Street Journal.

The ethanol subsidy is on the front burner for Congress because it is due to expire and Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Chairman of the powerful Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has expressed support for cuts to the tax credit program. A twenty percent cut (nine cents per gallon) is being debated in the House Ways and Means Committee.

Jimmy Carter’s belief that ethanol could replace or reduce dependence on foreign oil imports and reduce greenhouse gas emissions was totally bogus. Nothing about converting corn to fuel makes any sense at all. In July 2007, I laid out the facts, quoting E. Ralph Hostetter, the publisher of American Farm Publications.

“Today, 60 percent of the American corn crop is fed to U.S. livestock,” noted Hostetter. “Therefore, as the price of corn is forced up by the demands of ethanol production and many natural causes such as weather, so is the price of meat, poultry, eggs, milk and more than 3,500 products American use every day.”

I noted that, “Among the products affected by the rise in the cost of corn are cake mixes, pizza, beer, whisky, candies, cookies, corn flakes, cosmetics, instant coffee, carbonated beverages, fertilizers, vitamins, tires, toothpaste, paper products, pharmaceuticals such as aspirin and more than 85 different types of antibiotics. And that’s just a short list.”

The Washington Post looked at the cost to the consumer in the form of “decades of subsidies the government has showered on the corn ethanol industry.” It suggested that “The debate should be about why corn ethanol deserves any federal protection at all.”

Little known or understood is the fact that the federal government gives “companies that combine corn ethanol with gasoline a 45-cent tax subsidy for every gallon of corn ethanol added to gasoline.” The result is that the cost of replacing a gallon of gasoline with one of corn ethanol is $1.78. “The tax incentives alone cost the Treasury $6 billion in 2009.”

What does the consumer get? For every gallon of a gasoline-ethanol mix, the price includes less mileage. Ethanol is a poor source of power. FlexFuel vehicles run on E85 or 85% ethanol and, according to the Department of Energy, they get about 25% less mileage than a car fueled by undiluted gasoline.

For those still worried about greenhouse gas emissions, ethanol emits carbon dioxide and, since natural gas or coal is used to produce ethanol, it ends up putting more CO2 into the atmosphere than the production and use of gasoline.

The Congressional Budget Office concluded that supporting ethanol through subsidies means that taxpayers are shelling out about $750 for every metric ton (2,205 pounds) of carbon that, in theory, is kept out of the atmosphere.

It gets worse. I have not read or heard a single climatologist or meteorologist who believes that carbon dioxide plays any role whatever regarding the bogus global warming. As I frequently remind readers, there is no global warming. The Earth has been cooling, due to natural factors, for the past decade.

This is why, behind the scenes, the producers of “clean” or “alternative” biofuels are in a state of panic. There is no justification for ethanol, no matter whether it is produced from corn or cellulose. The same goes for biodiesel fuel.

Who keeps insisting on raising the mandates for the use of these “green” fuels? The Environmental Protection Agency.

Slowly, in the wake of the huge financial disaster called the United States of America, costly former priorities, many sold on the basis of stopping the dreaded global warming, are finally being examined by newspapers and other media. It’s only taken since the late 1970s to finally get around to it, but better late than never.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Just What You Don't Need! More Ethanol!

Here's a news item from the Ethanol Transparancy Project:

June 9 - ADM has taken its "ethanol game" to a new level with a brazen announcement yesterday the company was "asking" EPA to immediately permit raising the percentage blend of ethanol in gasoline to 12% (up from 10%).

The EPA is currently considering an earlier "request" by one of ADM's mouthpiece groups, Growth Energy, to raise the ceiling to E15 (15%) but EPA's cautious deliberations have frustrated the dominant ethanol producer based in Decatur, Illinois.

ADM, best known for its serial price-fixing and other criminal behavior dating back to an era when the company was run as a family fiefdom by chairman Dwayne O. Andreas, is desperate to force government into providing an expanding ethanol market.

By appearing reasonable in its incremental approach to seizing more federal support (and increasing the deficit), ADM continues to advance its taxpayer subsidized agenda of "ethanol hegemony" while claiming lamely that the company is only trying to comply with federal law imposed through the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act.

This position is twisted since it was ADM which literally rammed the passage of ethanol mandates, both in 2005 and 2007, by muscling and threatening lawmakers after some of its pocket politicians introduced the carefully crafted provisions (within larger energy legislation) to benefit the company and its so-called "ethanol industry".

Andreas remains "chairman emeritus" and the family controls the largest private stock holding of ADM shares. Although Andreas, now over 90, has receded from view, a number of his hand picked directors, including former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, remain on the ADM board. Mulroney you may recall played a critical role in guiding ADM through the price-fixing scandal of the nineties and remains under clouds of corruption allegations in Canada.

Meanwhile motorists resistance to ethanol in fuel are increasing as downsides of the corn-based additive are becoming more widely recognized, including lower gas mileage, pollution and engine damage.

Higher ethanol blends will likely force millions of perfectly good, older vehicles into crippling retirement to the detriment of those who can least afford to be deprived of personal transportation.

Unfortunately for the nation's interest EPA finds itself practically surrounded by hostile, politicized federal agencies. such as DOE and USDA, which are pushing for more ethanol. Somehow EPA must find a way to resist this latest campaign led by the "Supermark-up to the World" (ADM), and its proxies. The ethanol mandate and the tax credit which buoys this bogus fuel additive should be rolled back and save taxpayers billions at the pump and at the supermarket.

Nicholas E. Hollis
Ethanol Transparency Project (ETP)
Washington, DC

The EPA Monster

By Alan Caruba

Among the legacies of Richard M. Nixon, famed for the Watergate scandal that forced his resignation, it should be noted that he created the Environmental Protection Agency. There was no vote in Congress. He did it with an executive order. Today the EPA has an annual budget of $9 billion and some 18,000 employees.

Not satisfied with the authorized powers given it to ensure clean air and water, the EPA has never ceased to seek expanded powers, culminating soon with a battle over whether it can regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) as a “pollutant.” Labeled a “greenhouse gas”, in the eyes of the EPA it is an “endangerment” to the health of humanity in general and Americans in particular.

CO2 is as vital to all life on planet Earth in the same way as oxygen. It is what plants consume in order to grow, much as oxygen is essential for life among living creatures that, in turn, are dependent on vegetation, crops, for their sustenance. It’s a neat little cycle that has existed since life emerged on Earth.

If the EPA gains the power to regulate CO2, it will have the power to regulate the activities of every individual and the entire economy of the nation. Traditional sources of energy, with the exception of nuclear and hydroelectric power, involve the emission of CO2. A modern society cannot function without CO2 emissions, but they have nothing to do with global warming because there is NO global warming.

CO2 represents a mere 386 parts per million of the Earth’s atmosphere. Humans are responsible for 3% of its generation; Mother Nature produces the other 97%. And the EPA wants to regulate ALL of it!

Actual science is of no importance to the EPA. If the EPA really cared about human life, it would not have a long history of banning beneficial chemicals such as DDT and other pesticides that protect humans against a laundry list of transmittable diseases like malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, et cetera.

The EPA is actually seeking to limit the amount of deicing fluid used to protect commercial and other aircraft on the grounds that it might get into nearby streams and rivers. Never mind the lives of the passengers and crews on planes that would be brought down as the result of such ice. This defies common sense.

In truth, the EPA threatens the economy and our lives in so many ways it is difficult to know where to point first. To my mind, the way it infiltrates the nation’s education system to fill the minds of children with visions of a planet threatened with “warming” or that every species is “endangered” or that all the waters and air are “polluted” is criminal.

The EPA is currently accepting grant applications “to help manage the National Environmental Education Training Program over the next ten years.” Costing $10 million, it “will provide teachers and other education professionals with resources and support to enable them to teach about environmental issues more effectively.” The EPA was not created to go into our nation’s schools in this manner. This is propaganda. This is indoctrination.

Let us grant that, when it stuck to its original purpose, it did make the air cleaner and some of the nation’s waters. Now, however, the EPA is a massive machine designed to destroy the nation’s economy and impede growth and development in every way possible.

The primary tool for this are lies concerning any element of the environment it wants to control and, as a result, retard the economy. As but one example, there are the new “smog” standards the EPA recently announced. It has reduced them to a level of 60 to 70 parts per billion in the air. It released a list of counties it says are in violation of the new limits.

The cost of achieving the lower standard is estimated from $19 billion to $90 billion. If you took one tennis ball from an olympic-sized pool filled with them, you would achieve the same result. It’s not merely absurd; it is yet another attack on every single business and industry operating in those counties.

The same idiocy applies to setting mileage rules or requiring that ethanol be added to gasoline. To achieve the mileage rules, the weight of automobiles must be reduced. People inside those thinner, lighter cars will die from an accident at a rate in excess of larger vehicles. As for ethanol, it requires more energy to produce than it saves. It drives up the cost of all the food we consume. It also reduces the mileage from every gallon of gasoline while emitting more CO2!

The EPA is currently at war with the coal industry, responsible for providing the source of 50% of all the electricity generated in the United States of America. A recent “endangerment” finding against all surface coal mining in the Appalachian States of Virginia, Kentucky, and West Virginia is based on the protection of the Mayfly population, an insect that typically lives for one day!

The list of EPA abuses of common sense and known science could fill a shelf of books in much the same way its ever-expanding regulations do, but the worst of it is yet to come if the Cap-and-Trade Act is passed.

Despite the fact that CO2 has nothing to do with the non-existent “global warming” and therefore does not need to be regulated for any reason, the enactment of the bill will literally prevent a homeowner from selling their home without permission from an EPA administrator. The cost of buying or selling a home will soar.

The Environmental Protection Agency needs to be reduced in size and authority to its original intent. Better still, eliminate it entirely. It is a monster.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Bits & Pieces of News

By Alan Caruba

There is so much news coming at us from all directions that it is easy to let some important aspects of it slide by. Here are some bits and pieces of recent news items.

Associated Press: “Last week’s Iraqi elections appear to have been a rousing success—a major step toward a stable democracy that will hasten the day when U.S. troops can leave.” That was the first paragraph of a Feb. 4 story, but in my daily newspaper the headline read: “One peaceful election hardly testifies to stability in Iraq.” Give me a break! President Bush said it was vital to the Middle East that more democracy be encouraged there and, guess what, in addition to Turkey and Israel, it’s called IRAQ!

EnergyTribune.com: “Ethanol Bankruptcies Continue, 14 Studies Have Exposed the High Cost of Ethanol and Biofuels.” That’s the Feb 4 headline. It turns out that “about nine percent of all the ethanol plants in the U.S. have now filed for bankruptcy and some analysts believe the numbers could reach as high as twenty percent.” That’s because the whole ethanol thing is a scam. It has driven up the costs of corn so high even the producers can’t afford it any more. And ethanol does nothing to reduce dependency on imported oil. Producing and using it puts more, not less, greenhouse gas emissions into the environment.

The Middle East Media Research Institute: Reporting on “The Reality of Oil Import by the United States”, it turns out that we are not sending billions entirely to the Middle East as is commonly reported. Figures for 2007 reveal that, although Saudi Arabia remains second among the nations from which the U.S. imports oil, Canada was number one, Mexico was number three, and Venezuela was number four. We imported oil from England as well and, with the exception of Iraq and Kuwait, the rest were either African or South American nations.

Numbers USA: They sent a notice on Feb 2 that addressed some statistics the mainstream (or is that lamestream?) press have neglected to report. Among the figures cited was the fact that 2.5 million Americans lost jobs in 2008 at the same time the federal government was permitting the immigration of 1.5 million new foreign workers! To put it another way, 138,000 new foreign workers continue to arrive each month while Americans are filing for unemployment benefits!

Agence France Presse: Would you believe that the forthcoming Durban II United Nations racism conference has Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya chairing the planning committee and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran as the vice-chair? You can’t make up stuff like this. UN Watch, an independent group, said, “it’s heart-wrenching though not surprising that Durban II is hijacking the noble cause of human rights and anti-racism, with the aim of legitimizing an agenda of hate and extremism that targets innocents in Mumbai, Madrid, Israel, and elsewhere.” The UN is a place where totalitarian governments get together to undermine the most fundamental tenets of Western civilization.

Star-Ledger (NJ): The headline on a Feb 6 four-paragraph story read “Activist gets 22 years for Michigan State fire.” The real story however is that she was a member of the Earth Liberation Front, never mentioned at all in the report, and had caused a million dollars damage and destroyed years of valuable research on New Year’s Eve 1990. She also admitted to a dozen other acts of property destruction. Describing her as an activist is comparable to saying that Osama bin Laden is an “activist.”

All Media: The big news is, of course, the impending breakdown of the national and international financial system. If calmer heads prevail, we may just avoid it, but with President Obama bad-mouthing the economy and breaking out in a public sweat, there isn’t much hope of a happy outcome.

Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.” Obama’s new theme is “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”

Living in a Funhouse Run by Morons

By Alan Caruba

It is hard not to believe that the United States is being run by people who have no idea regarding science, economics, or history.

Case in point, back in 2007 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that carbon dioxide was “a pollutant.” That is to say, CO2 is, according to SCOTUS, a gas that must be limited, sequestered, and subject to vast bureaucratic efforts to save the planet from its deleterious affects.

The only problem with this definition is that CO2 is responsible for every blade of grass, every field of wheat, every giant Sequoia tree. Not one bit of vegetation on earth grows without it. Moreover, human beings exhale about two pounds of it daily. No vegetation. And soon no animals that are herbivores. Take away the herbivores and the carnivores, meat-eaters, have nothing to dine upon. This makes life dodgy for humans who are both herbivores and carnivores.

One can only conclude that the judges have drunk as deeply of the Green Kool-Aid as apparently every other member of government. Environmentalism will not save the planet or a single life. Just the opposite. Its opposition to pesticides like DDT has already cost millions of lives lost to malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases.

But who could be against clean air and clean water? Well, certainly not Republicans because the Environmental Protection Agency was foisted upon us during the Nixon administration along with other agencies that expanded the size of the federal government.

Now we keep hearing that the present Recession will be solved with millions of “green collar” jobs. This is so absurd as to be laughed out of the room, but then, so is the notion that CO2 is a pollutant.

The one thing it surely is not, is a gas that has any effect whatever on climate change.

A policy analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, William Yeatman, pointed out that in my home state of New Jersey, Governor Jon Corzine repeating the same green job nonsense, “is doomed to failure for the same reason communism failed in Russia: government is incapable of successfully planning any industry,” adding that “the only jobs government can create are those for bureaucrats and regulators.” States that do not have a constitutional mandate to balance their budgets are also doomed to failure.

Right now, the wind and solar power industry produces about one percent of all the electricity Americans need, but we keep hearing that countless new green jobs will result from growth in both these areas. The problem is that without government subsidies, neither wind, nor power would even be in business.

In some cases, states have passed laws requiring utilities to get some of their power from wind and solar even though it is the least efficient and reliable means. Some states have required utilities to buy million of dollars of bogus “carbon credits” and guess who ends up picking up the tab for this? YOU!

The Obamaloonies cannot wait to take office and start running America and, if you think life is getting difficult now, you ain’t seen nothing yet. One of the reasons Detroit’s Big Three auto manufacturers are in Washington begging for a loan are the mandates imposed on them by Congress in the form of CAFÉ standards and a dozen other ways to insure every car and truck will cost more for no good reason.

I am all for safety standards, but have you noticed that more than 40,000 Americans die in car crashes every year no matter how many air bags and other gimmicks are added?

If you think the Congressional mandate that ethanol be blended with every gallon of gasoline was useful to anyone other than those making ethanol, think again. The ethanol debacle forced up the cost of corn and soy to the extent that food riots broke out around the world and now some of the same ethanol producers are going out of business because corn and soy’s prices have risen to a point where, even with major subsidies, they can’t make a profit.

If the word “subsidies” keeps popping up, it’s because Congress is under the impression that it can take public monies to prop up private enterprises whose sole purpose is to help save the Earth or make us “energy independent.”

The Earth is 4.5 billion years old and no nation on Earth is energy independent. If that was the case, oil-rich Venezuela would not be tottering on the edge of insolvency. Of course, it helps that socialism is the economic system there.

And creeping socialism in the United States has not yet convinced anyone that it does not work. It has never worked. When you use “saving the environment” or “social justice” to justify one new socialist government program after another, eventually you end up with a DEPRESSION.

A Snowy Halloween

By Alan Caruba

Some folks in my home state of New Jersey woke up to a blanket of snow the same week as Halloween. The state’s largest daily headlined the story as “October Surprise: Snowfall snarls traffic and cuts power to 62,000 homes.” In a swath of northern counties, snow fell as if it were mid-winter. Fourteen inches of snow fell at High Point State Park.

Snow in October is, indeed, a surprise to most, but not to those of us who, for years now, have been both debunking the “global warming” hoax and warning about a coming ice age. It may be one of short duration as in the case of the Little Ice Age that gripped the northern hemisphere from around 1300 to 1850 or it could be another like previous, major ice ages that alter history.

If you visit http://www.iceagenow.com/2008_Other_Parts_of_the_World.htm you can read about scores of weather events occurring right now that attest to the way the entire world has gotten much colder of late. Meteorologists track the latest cooling cycle to 1998, making it a decade old at this point with no end in sight for decades to come or longer.

From Austria to Australia, in places like Costa Rica and New Zealand, all around the world the Earth is getting cold and snow is occurring. To ignore this is pure folly.

To continue passing legislation to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) or other “greenhouse gases” isn’t just stupid, it is lethal. What people are going to need more of is the energy to heat their homes and workplaces. Thwarting the building of more coal-fired or nuclear plants to generate electricity is suicidal.

That is, however, exactly what Congress intends to do and we can anticipate blizzard of legislation, instituting “cap-and-trade” requirements, increases in ethanol requirements, and a host of other poisonous legislation that will severely handicap any recovery from the current financial crisis and inflict a host of allegedly “unintended” consequences.

One of those consequences were the food riots that occurred earlier this year around the world when the price of corn rose in response to U.S. mandates that ethanol be used along with gasoline. Proposed increases in such ethanol use will require engineering changes in new automobiles and likely damage to current models. It is highly corrosive, to the point where it cannot be transported by pipeline, but only by truck. The public is never told that ethanol increases the cost of each gallon of gasoline while at the same time reducing the mileage it gets.

Both candidates for the presidency profess to believe in global warming. Both are wrong. Both need to visit northern New Jersey or any one of a swath of northeastern states that could well be under a blanket of snow on Election Day.

A lot of scary ghosts, goblins, and other creatures will go trick or treating on Halloween, but future Halloweens will likely be scary for the early arrival of winter conditions similar to those experienced this week.

DON'T PANIC!

By Alan Caruba

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” was best known for the two words on its cover, “Don’t Panic!” Of course, when you have Vogons wandering around destroying entire planets to make way for galactic highways it’s hard to remain calm.

Anyone familiar with the “Hitchhiker” as a book or a movie would be well advised to consider its advice as the nation’s financial system deals, once again, with another greed-driven calamity.

Don’t panic! The nation has been through these financial shocks throughout its history. The one that historians point to, of course, is the Great Depression, but that occurred in part because then President Herbert Hoover did not want the federal government to get involved and matters just got worse. Hoover was an engineer by profession. Twice in the modern era engineers, Hoover and Carter, managed to make a muck of the nation’s economic well-being.

It was Franklin Roosevelt and his New Dealers that rather frantically tried every program they could think of to end the Great Depression, but it must be said that a nation rallying to the threats of World War II had much to do with the turnaround. Up until Pearl Harbor in 1941, the nation was struggling economically.

What came out of the Depression, however, was a matrix of government agencies whose purpose it was to avoid another Wall Street “crash” as occurred in 1929. Many of these agencies and New Deal programs linger on; some well beyond their practical use and some, such as the entitlement programs of Social Security and Medicare, verging on bankruptcy of their own. Government programs are rarely allowed to die.

Warnings about what is occurring to some large investment banks and the AIG, the insurer, have been circulating for a very long time. The mainstream media does not like to report such concerns. It is focused on today’s Dow Jones Average and the rise and fall of individual companies. You have to read publications like Business Week or The Economist to get the larger picture.

Since 1982, the nation has been through four major financial crises; five if you include the aftermath of 9/11.There was the savings-and-loan collapse, the dip the stock market took in 1987, the hedge fund implosion of the 1990s, and now the seizure of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the two government-backed financial entities that underwrote the sub-prime mortgage mess.

In essence, greed drove the sub-prime mess because anyone with any sense at all knows you don’t loan money to people who are unlikely to repay it. Driven by misguided notions that low-income people have a right to own homes just like the middle class, the sub-prime mortgage program was doomed from the start.

Social parity or, to use one of Sen. Barack Obama’s favorite words, “fairness”, is not a substitute for sensible loan requirements. Indeed, it is usually not a good reason for any government program whereas personal responsibility is always a good idea.

The poor are, as often as not, poor for perfectly understandable reasons. They drop out of school. They have poor work habits. They prefer crime to a regular job. They engage in drugs and other bad habits. When you add in a middle class that has grown accustomed to easy credit and taking on too much unnecessary debt, you have the makings of a financial shockwave that spreads across the entire system.

Right now, some very big investment banks are in big trouble. The U.S. treasury is tapped out and, having swiftly learned the lesson of the Bear Stearns rescue, is saying you guys are on your own. Made bad loans? Have no idea what your assets actually represent? You call yourself bankers? Not for long.

Wall Street will be in a funk for a while, but most of us need to sit back and wait out the bloodletting that must inevitably follow. Bank deposits, to a certain level, are FDIC protected. Big, well-run banks like Bank of America just picked up Merrill Lynch at a bargain basement price and you can bet they believe the stock market will rebound at some point.

Why were the warnings ignored? For the same reason that people tend to ignore warnings. We don’t want to believe them.

Right now Americans are being warned that Congress has to open up ANWR and the continental shelf to oil and natural gas exploration and drilling.

They are being warned that we need to build more coal-fired and nuclear plants to cope with the doubling of our need for electricity.

They are being warned that we need to encourage the oil industry to build more refineries.

They are being warned that the nation’s electrical grid needs upgrading.

You think the financial crisis is bad? Just wait until you cannot turn on the lights.

Vote for people who want to cut your taxes.

Vote for people who want to reduce the size of the federal government.

Vote for people who want to fix Social Security and Medicare.

Vote for people who want to drill here and drill now. And don’t vote for people who talk about “Big Oil” as if it is an evil institution instead of a vital national industry.

Vote for people who will eliminate the ethanol mandates.

Vote for people who know there is no "global warming" and will not support policies based on this United Nations-generated hoax.

Vote for people who want to kill Islamic jihadists, not talk to them.

Vote as if your life and the future of the nation depend on it because it does.

And don’t panic!

When Candidates are Dangerously Wrong

By Alan Caruba

Americans have painted themselves into the corner on energy and the two presumptive candidates for President are ready to finish off the nation with the worst possible “solutions.”

Sen. Barack Obama is talking of “windfall profits” taxes on the oil companies, thus threatening to take away the money they need to invest in exploration, extraction, refining and delivery of the gas and oil we need to fuel our cars and trucks, and heat our homes.

It takes up to ten years between finding a new reserve of oil and actually delivering it. It’s been nearly four decades since any oil company has built a new refinery because the United States has made it too expensive to do so thanks to lawsuits and a maze of environmental laws. As for exploring for oil in the U.S. or off-shore, would you spend millions doing that if you knew the government wouldn't let you drill or extract it?

Like Sen. McCain, Sen. Obama believes in global warming even though the planet stopped its long, completely natural warming in 1998. The Earth is cooling, but please don’t let that get in the way of either candidate proposing “solutions” to address a drastic warming that is not happening.

Sen. John McCain says that global warming in undeniable even though literally hundreds of scientists worldwide say it isn’t happening. In March I attended a conference on climate change sponsored by the Heartland Institute. It attracted over 500 meteorologists, climatologists, economists, and other very smart people from around the world who sat through two days of presentations and seminars all jammed with information confirming that there is no global warming, if you interpret this to mean a massive rise in the temperature of the planet.

Sen. McCain, however, is worried about “carbon fuel emissions” at a time when the cost of those carbon fuels, gasoline in particular, is going through the ceiling thanks, not to a lack of supply, but the speculators in the world’s commodity exchanges.

It is moronic to worry about carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) when this gas, vital to the growth of every piece of vegetation and all life on Earth, constitutes a mere 0.038% of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Look up at the sky above you. It’s about 95% water vapor. You know, water as in hydrogen and oxygen molecules. You drink it. You wash in it. You swim in it. There are large bodies of it called oceans. Those oceans which normally retain and release 80-90% of the Earth’s heat are now cooling!

So neither one of the candidates has a grasp of economics or science and we are about to elect one of them the next President of the United States of America!

Meanwhile, The New York Times on May 11 published an editorial, “Rethinking Ethanol” in which the geniuses who write such things have concluded that maybe diverting food products like corn into a fuel product that provides less mileage per gallon, costs more to produce than gasoline, and adds its own pollution to the air, is probably not a good idea. Their solution? End the tax subsidy that goes to ethanol producers.

According to The New York Times, “The other reason is a spate of studies suggesting that some biofuels—corn ethanol in particular—could accelerate global warming.” You have to be a special kind of idiot to (1) advocate a Congressional mandate for billions of gallons of ethanol as a gasoline additive and (2) continue to maintain that global warming is occurring.

The New York Times has been lying about global warming since the 1980s. The good news is that it is laying off large numbers of its reporters and editors. Its circulation has been sinking like a stone and maybe someday it will be sold on street corners as a single broadsheet hawked by boys shivering in the snow while shouting, “Read all about it! No more global warming!”

If you get the feeling that the United States is heading over the cliff for failing to anticipate and encourage its energy industries, for codifying in law requirements to deal with a non-existent problem, and for refusing to reverse course, you’re right.

There is a price for being an idiot. Think about that the next time you fill up your gas tank.

Incongruities

By Alan Caruba

A new supermarket opened in my town. The Garden of Eden is part of a chain that specializes in providing every kind of fresh and exotic food one could want to satisfy a discriminating palate.

On opening day shoppers were wandering from aisle to aisle examining all manner of spices, mustards, vegetables, fruits, breads, and selections of prepared foods from all around the Earth. I came upon a canister of Café du Monde, a special blend of coffee that I formerly could not purchase except from New Orleans, its home.

I stopped in front of a display of freshly cooked brisket; its red center suggesting it had been done to perfection. Would I like a taste? Yes, indeed! And then I ordered two slices, cut to just the width I wanted. The display of cheeses was dazzling. I bought a wedge of Jarlsberg and made a mental note to get some brie the next time. In the end I just wandered around the place in a happy daze.

My late Mother, Rebecca, was a famed teacher of haute cuisine, a gourmet who authored several cookbooks. Every night my late Father, Robert, and I would sit down to meals that rivaled the best restaurants in the world. An expert on wines, she was the first woman to become a member of the board of the Sommelier Society of America. We drank wine like most Americans drink soda. When she passed away, those freshly baked breads and other gastronomic delights passed with her.

Here then is the incongruity.

In the midst of this splendorous, ostentatious display of foods of every description, I had a thought about the one billion people who share this planet with me who live on a dollar a day. Then I thought about the speculation concerning wheat, soy, rice and other grains that has caused prices, from 2005 to today, to rise 80% according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

To date, at least fourteen nations have had food-related riots and violence.

Now, weather has had, as always, some role in shortages, but all this is happening mostly because some idiots decided to require that billions of gallons of ethanol be added to gasoline.

Since ethanol is made from corn, soy and other food products, it started a cascade of shortages. Even wheat farmers planted less in order to grow corn to cash in on the subsidized bonanza of ethanol. Without this legislated environmental “solution” to the reduction of “greenhouse gases” there would not be rising food prices worldwide.

The irony is that the Earth is cooling these days, not warming. It has warmed quite naturally from the end of the last mini-ice age around 1850 to the tune of one degree Fahrenheit. Since 1998, scientists say there is a perceptible cooling occurring worldwide, including the oceans that trap and hold 80-90% of the world’s heat.

What kind of idiots would buy into the junk-science of global warming? The answer is almost the entire Congress of the U.S. with the exception of a few who have courageously and vociferously spoken against it, the House and Senate Majority leaders, all three of the candidates currently hoping to be the next President, and the idiot we have currently in the Oval Office.

A lot of people colluded to create this mess. Beyond Congress and the White House has been an international and national grotesquery of environmental organizations that have fought against the introduction and use of genetically modified food crops to feed the six billion-plus people of the world. They continue to do everything they can to thwart the access and use of all manner of energy sources from coal to natural gas and oil.

Population and consumption are the targets of the Green movement. The odds are that a large part of the world’s population will be victimized and die from their efforts to bring about these imbalances and shortages of food. The speculators are no less to blame.

A classroom of fifth graders could have told you that burning food crops to make a useless fuel additive was a stupid thing to do.

Meanwhile, I will wander the aisles of the Garden of Eden and, because I can afford to, ask myself if I want to purchase that tray of pork tenderloin in a rice wrap? Yes, I think I do.

One Bush Betrayal After Another

By Alan Caruba

George W. Bush will remain President until January 20, 2009 and the only question remaining is how many more betrayals does he have in store for the trust Republicans and other Americans granted him over his two terms?

On Wednesday, April 16, Reuters reports that he plans to announce “an intermediate goal to limit greenhouse gas emissions in the United States”, adding that he “will not make specific proposals.”

Let us understand the fundamentals. There is no global warming. What warming that has occurred has been since the last mini-ice age ended around 1850. It is perfectly natural. The net global warming since 1940 is a miniscule 0.2 degrees C., even after 70 years of unprecedented human CO2 emissions.

I repeat. There is no global warming. There is, in fact, a global cooling occurring. Sunspot activity has been unusually low for several years and is directly related to the cooling trend that is likely to continue in the years ahead. NASA reports that the oceans have "stopped warming" about 4-5 years ago.

The primary greenhouse gas to which the Greens are always referring is carbon dioxide (CO2) and it represents a bare 0.038 percent of the entire atmosphere of the Earth. Most of that atmosphere is water vapor, good old H2O. Without CO2, however, not one single blade of grass grows on planet Earth and that includes no forests, no jungles, and no crops.

On Wednesday, President Bush will put one more nail in the coffin of his legacy by selling out to the Greens and endorsing schemes to reduce emissions that do not need reducing and schemes to buy and sell “carbon credits” through exchanges set up to prosper based entirely on a lie.

I repeat. There is no global warming.

I don’t care if President Bush says so; if Sen. John McCain says so; if Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton say so. The science says there isn’t.

We now are burdened with a President who signed every spending bill Congress sent to him until just after re-election to his second term.

He signed a Medicare Prescription Plan to add to an entitlement program that is rapidly running out of funding.

He signed Teddy Kennedy’s “No Child Left Behind” program to transfer control of the nation’s education system to the federal government despite a total lack of Constitutional authority.

He has ignored our nation’s porous southern border with Mexico that allows a million more illegal immigrants to enter America every year. He won’t even pardon two border guards jailed by a zealous U.S. district attorney for the alleged crime of shooting an admitted drug smuggler.

He signed a misnamed “energy bill” that mandates the use of corn to produce thousands of gallons of ethanol, a fuel additive that actually reduces mileage while adding to the cost of gasoline. This has started a cascade of food shortages worldwide, needlessly driving up the cost.

He misled the nation to involve it in a war in Iraq and then sat back as it was disastrously mismanaged for years. He will pass it along to whoever replaces him.

And now he proposes that the U.S. burden its economy with a program that has failed throughout Europe to curb emissions and which exempts both China and India. Even if CO2 was a problem—which it is not—why would any rational person expect that limiting our emissions would have any effect on the atmosphere? Why add billions to the cost of doing business in America?

There is a reason the President’s approval ratings are at a new low and may yet surpass those of the unlamented Jimmy Carter. He cannot be trusted and he likely to do more harm before he leaves office.

America's Bakers March on Washington

By Alan Caruba

On March 12, the American Baking Association, representing 85% of the total baking industry, will lead a “Band of Bakers March on Washington.” Representatives from more than 50% of the nation’s largest baking companies will call on Congress to correct the policies it has created over the years that have led to soaring food and oil prices.

Not since the days of the Depression when World War I veterans marched on Washington to get their overdue benefits have we seen such an event. At stake is the ability of all Americans to afford to put food on the table.

Everyone knows that food prices have increased along with oil prices, but few people know that it is government policies that have brought the nation to a point where we are facing a wheat shortage.

Despite record-breaking wheat prices, the devaluation of the U.S. dollar has made the import of wheat extremely attractive to foreign nations. Wheat exports are up more than 60% over last year. The result is creating a very tight supply situation at home and that, in turn, is driving up the cost of flour and wheat to American consumers.

The owner of a local pizzeria recently lamented to me about the cost of this staple of American fast food. From the flour to make the crust to the cost of the cheese, prices are requiring him to charge more and more. Now multiply his problem by every food product producer that uses wheat, starting with bread.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the price of a bushel of wheat went from $4.71 in February 2007 to $10.40 this year. That’s a 220% increase. Your pasta dishes will cost more too. Made from durum wheat, prices went from $5.16 per bushel to $16.40 by February 2008, a 317% increase. The nation’s supply of rye is exhausted and bakers are importing it from Germany and the Netherlands.

Around the world, global demand for wheat is outpacing global production. The bakers will demand a policy that balances domestic supplies of wheat with export demands. They will call for a “rethink” of ethanol policies involving corn because wheat farmers, seeing the price of corn rise, are tempted to plant corn, rather than wheat.

Ethanol is the single greatest scam perpetrated on Americans in modern memory. It literally burns food to provide a gasoline additive that drives up the cost of a gallon while reducing its mileage. The consumer is robbed in two ways at the pump. The energy bill recently passed by Congress increased the amount of ethanol to be used.

The bakers want the USDA to take some acres out of the Conservation Reserve Program, one that pays farmers to leave idle some 35 million acres at a time when they are needed for the production of wheat to meet domestic needs.

When it comes to food and oil prices, Americans are looking at a perfect storm created by those in Congress who keep telling us that global warming is the threat, when the real threat is the bankrupting of American consumers with policies totally unconnected to real science.

We have arrived at this point thanks to the alarmism of the environmental movement, led by people like Al Gore, and perpetrated in Congress by the global warming cabal that includes Pelosi, Reid, Boxer, Lieberman, Warner, and even McCain.

The likelihood is that the nation’s bakers are going to be joined by many more marchers in the weeks and months to come if this economic horror story is not put right.