So why is butter a buck a stick?

“Rather than an infant industry, ethanol is an industry that, in economic terms, was born senile and has since gotten fat.”
–James Bovard, Archer Daniels Midland: A Case Study in Corporate Welfare”

I must have been staring rather hard at the dairy counter for a while, because the dairy manager asked whether he could help me find something.

“Maybe butter that doesn’t cost four dollars?” Ah, there was a special: Darigold was only three.

Then the manager, who has a family to feed and a van to drive, began explaining the rise in dairy prices in the context of Archer Daniels Midland Corporation’s ethanol subsidies. Ah yes, it all came back in an instant. Ethanol, dressed down as a mere granola greenscam, is the lingua franca of politicians whose mainstay is corporate welfare. They arrange government subsidies, and the corporations arrange campaign friendships. It’s like a Pez refill they all use. Press again, ethanol again. Your money goes in, inefficient fuel comes out, and your money goes into ADM’s well-padded pockets.

Ron Paul gets poor reviews from the corporate welfare set. Seeking Alpha, an alternative energy site that stands for government-sponsored energy at taxpayer-sponsored cost, ingloriously gave Ron Paul the lowest rating among all the presidential candidates for alternative energy support. Freemarket citizens should be happy, proud, and thrilled with Ron Paul’s voting record on alternative energy. He voted NO on the Clean Energy Act of 2007. He voted NO on the Energy Policy Act of 2005. He voted NO on the Energy Omnibus Bill (2004). And he even had the principled audacity to vote NO on Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE) in 2001. Why would Ron Paul do such a thing? To keep gas in your car and butter on your bread.

Unfortunately, ethanol welfare means urban-agrarian warfare. Right now, farmers are understandably selling their feed corn for ethanol production, removing it from the stock feed market. The big push for ethanol is manipulated by the manipulators of the consumer price index. Housing, food, and fuel are excluded from the CPI.  They are excluded because the government says they are too volatile to be included in an index of core inflation. That pretty much leaves discretionary items that change with people’s discretionary income once they’ve paid for homes, food, and fuel–and, of course, taxes and insurance.

You have to scratch your head while rubbing your growling belly and wonder what’s the point. It’s invisible inflation: you don’t see it in the statistics, but you feel it, like a piercing wind ripping through your checkbook. And what is your checkbook, after all, if not your control over what becomes of your own life energy?

Citing an article by Lester Brown in Fortune Magazine, economics writer Bill Bonner notes that, “The grain required to fill a 25-gallon tank (with ethanol) would feed one person for a year.” Bonner exhorts us to reason: “Once again, the cure is worse than the disease. If only the meddlers would take note.”

Still another liability of ethanol is its insufficiency to run a boat engine. Trevor Bothwell reports the well-lobbied alternative fuel can shred a fiberglass fuel tank. Plus, his boat wouldn’t start on ethanol.

Now, when a Lew Rockwell columnist and Slate are on the same page, I read the page. Even liberal icon Slate is debunking ethanol in this excellent column by Robert Bryce, “The stupidest federal subsidy”:

“Ethanol won’t significantly reduce our oil imports; adding more ethanol to our gas tanks adds further complexity to our motor-fuel supply chain, which will lead to further price hikes at the pump; and, most important (and most astonishing), it may take more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than it actually contains.”

Mr. Bryce cites many other liabilities inhering in ethanol, including logistics of refining and gas-blending technologies, transit, net-energy loss, and evaporation.

The refining technology gap between gasoline and corn alcohol is a significant obstacle to energy-efficient production. This is one reason Mr. Bryce cites for the net-energy loss in ethanol production. Our entire refining infrastructure would require overhauling. Can you wait to see who’d win the government contract?

Ethanol isn’t any greener than Exxon; it’s just another way for corporations to exact taxpayers’ life energy in exchange for a feel-good myth. It’s corporate theft: it’s stealing food from our mouths and money from our discretionary use.

Ron Paul is the one principled candidate who has consistently voted against subsidized production of ethanol, and the only candidate courageous enough to say “no” to bogus “alternatives.” And you can see him in the South Carolina GOP debate tonight at 6:00 PM Pacific Daylight Time on the Fox News Channel.  You can listen to the debate live at Fox News Radio. You can also hear the debate at your convenience after 8:00 PM Pacific Daylight Time tonight at the website of KVI Radio. Seattle Fox affiliate station KVI graciously agreed to post the debate after it’s over to make it available online for everyone. Thanks again, Kirby and Dennis.