Looking for link suggestions
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I am looking for the perfect link for my tagline: Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, starving the poor one gallon of ethanol at a time. Fill your tank with E85 and cull a village
In the meantime I am using a link suggested by upcountrywater.
What I'm looking for in a link is something of shock value. I want to dramatize the catastrophic policy failure of Ethanol blending with gasoline upon the world's poor. Barack Obama is pushing the EPA to impliment the E15 standard for gasoline which represents a 50% increase from E10.
An exerpt from one of the links I'm considering: http://actionaidusa.org/assets/Interactive_map/
U.S. farmers have diverted 40 percent of corn production from food and feed to fuel, and land once used for soybean production has been converted to corn to meet the demand for biofuels set out in the federal RFS. Seven times as much corn is sent to ethanol plants than is being kept in our national stockpiles. Over the last two years, the amount of corn fed to livestock fell by 3 million metric tons, while corn shipments to ethanol producers grew by 33 million tons. These shifts put pressure on food stocks until they cross a tipping point, driving prices up.
It's Getting Harder to Bring Home the Bacon
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870433040457629177224561002...
Food price inflation isn't a problem confined to America's shores. "This ethanol policy has impacted the world price of corn," Mr. Pope says. The Mexican, Canadian and European industries have "shrunk dramatically. . . . We have an unsustainable meat protein production industry," he says. "We're built on a platform of costs, on a policy that doesn't make any sense!"
Nor does the science. The ethanol industry would supply only 4% of the nation's annual energy needs even if it used 100% of the corn crop. The Environmental Protection Agency has found ethanol production has a neutral to negative impact on the environment. "The subsidy has been out there since the 1970s," Mr. Pope says. "If they can't make themselves into a viable economic model in 40 years, haven't we demonstrated that this is an industry that shouldn't exist?"
So what's the solution? First, Mr. Pope says, get rid of the ethanol subsidies and the tariff. "I am in competition with the government and the oil industry," he says. "It's not fair." Smithfield's economists estimate corn prices would fall by a dollar a bushel if ethanol blending wasn't subsidized. "Even the announcement that it is going away would see the price of corn go down, which would translate very quickly into reduced meat prices in the meat case," he says. Imagine what would happen if the mandate and tariff were eliminated, too.
Food prices jump 36% worldwide!
Food prices: World Bank warns millions face poverty
The World Bank has warned that rising food prices, driven partly by rising fuel costs, are pushing millions of people into extreme poverty.
World food prices are 36% above levels of a year ago, driven by problems in the Middle East and North Africa, and remain volatile, the bank said....
...The bank suggests a number of measures to help alleviate the impact of high food prices on the poor.
They include encouraging food-producing countries to ease export controls, and to divert production away from biofuels production when food prices exceed certain limits..
The world bank may not have considered this added risk
US corn reserves expected to fall to 15-year low
Apr 8, 10:40 AM EDT
ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Rising demand for corn from ethanol producers is pushing U.S. reserves to the lowest point in 15 years, a trend that could lead to higher grain and food prices this year.
[...]
The limited supply is chiefly because of increasing demand from ethanol makers, which rose 1 percent to 5 billion bushels. That's about 40 percent of the total crop.
[...]
Biofuels raising the price of food on the poor in Africa
Rush to Use Crops as Fuel Raises Food Prices and Hunger Fears
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/science/earth/07cassava.html?_r=2&hp
Racial implications?
I don't have a tagline for you, but, I saw this press release:
[...]
The author presents the results of an evaluation of the Renewable Fuels Standard, which was first enacted in 2005 then doubled in 2007, to a mandatory 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol blended into the nation's gasoline supplies by 2015. His surprising finding—that federal ethanol policy has little to do with energy and everything to do with wealth transfer—is particularly compelling because, after three decades of federal subsidies, trade protection, and, most recently, mandated ethanol blending, ethanol remains uneconomical. Also, according to the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration forecasts, ethanol never has and never will have a significant impact on petroleum imports compared to what could be achieved under a competitive market policy. Glozer's sobering conclusion is that the taxpayers and consumers are the victims of the current policy in that they have no choice but to pay and pay.
I understand that the press release is one way Glozer is promoting his book, but his conclusion that federal ethanol policy has little to do with energy and everything to do with wealth transfer caught my attention.
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Public Interest Groups Challenge Misleading Government Information Used to Justify Ethanol Mandates and Subsidies
"Recently, ActionAid USA and CEI filed a correction request under the Data Quality Act targeting misleading claims made by the EPA regarding the effects of ethanol mandates and subsidies, claims that have obscured how government policies have contributed to world hunger, malnutrition, disease, and death."
http://www.openmarket.org/2011/10/21/public-interest-groups-challenge-mi...
How many more people must die to enrich campaign contributors? Apparently, if foreigners are dying from US policies enacted by liberals, their deaths don't count much like the Mexicans from Fast and Furious. Some people are definitely less equal and less necessary than others.
It reminds me of a quote from A Christmas Carol after saying the surplus population should die and : "It's not my business. It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies me constantly." Scrooge
... "Man, if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die. It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God. to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust." GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PRESENT
What is Obama's business and what responsibility does he bear in carrying it out?