Wednesday Ag Secretary nominee Tom Vilsack appeared before the Senate Ag Committee for his confirmation hearing.
Unsurprisingly he reiterated his strong support for the renewable fuel industry and the farm bill.
Here's what he said:
“It is important to continue to maintain the infrastructure because, if you’re going to transition at some point in time to cellulosic ethanol, you have to have the capacity to produce it, and you don’t want that hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars, that’s already been invested, not to be fully utilized.”
Think of it. He wants to maintain the failed experiment because it would be a waste of money if he was to get rid of it. It blows the mind. We need to keep wasting taxpayers money because of the faulty idea, and then continue to keep expanding it, while continuing to lose money.
Admitting the billions of dollars already spent are wasted, Vilsack's reasoning is to spend more so we didn't waste the already wasted money. This guys going to be fun to watch and comment on going forward.
Another ignorant senator from Indiana, Richard Lugar, pressured Vilsack to keep the "hope of biofuels alive." He also showed his lack of grasp of the issues surrounding ethanol by saying there's a need to bring it above the 10-percent mix, which is already breaking almost everything it's put in as far as small power equipment goes.
Keep the hope alive? That's about as dumb a statement that can be made. The best thing to do is immediately drop the disastrous and expensive program, and look for viable alternatives going forward.
What does Lugar think this is - a religion? Actually to many it is, as they blindly continue to drink the mixed ethanol koolaide, when money could be spent much better things.
Rather than being focused on bogus issues like disappearing polar bears and beluga whales, the government needs to push into existing, known reserves of the billions of barrels of oil on American soil and off its coastlines.
From there we can slow things down, take a deep breath, and find legitimate alternatives. We aren't in no hurry. There's plenty of oil out there for decades, only only idiotic, earth worshippers are keeping us from tapping into.
Sooner or later we'll have to, as the hype and false hope of a quick fix is teaching biofuels proponents that it'll take a lot more time than they thought to transition to alternative fuels. Oil is the current answer to the non-existent problem at this time.
Whether people like it or not, we'll have to drill and find ways to extract it during this period of time.
Vilsack will probably be confirmed on Tuesday as President-elect Obama is sworn in. Too bad!
Showing posts with label Tom Vilsack. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tom Vilsack. Show all posts
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Monday, January 5, 2009
Obama's Pick of Tom Vilsack for Agriculture Secretary Grim News for Nation
Obama hasn't shown a lot of wisdom in his cabinet choices so far, and is evidenced in relationship to ethanol, as he picked ethanol subsidy proponent Tom Vilsack, former Iowa governor, to lead the Department of Agriculture.
The conflict of interest is too obvious to have to comment on, in that Iowa has been the largest recipient of taxpayer dollars, receiving the largest portion of the over $25 billion wasted on ethanol subsidies so far.
Not only that, but Vilsack is even more radical in pushing for larger subsidies for the failing biofuel strategy.
It's hard to understand how Obama on one side of his mouth asks for a cap on subsidies for wealthy farmers, citing the excessive power the special interest group wields, and then on the other side of his mouth places someone like Vilsack in charge of the Department of Agriculture. It's a grim, complete disaster.
"The president-elect’s own history is difficult to square with his recent farm-reform talk. Obama ardently backed ethanol subsidies while in the Senate — his home state of Illinois trails only Iowa in corn production — and one of his closest confidants, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, is as responsible as any politician for the explosion in these subsidies."
Not only does corn-based ethanol require more inputs than other crops, but the usual unintended consequences have emerged, and as usual hurt the little people the most, as processed food prices soared in response to the artificial propping up of the prices of corn, driven only by Federal subsidies.
It looks like a lot more pain will have to be inflicted on people before politicians and environmentalist admit the failure of this venture, which was instigated by the unholy agreement between the two.
Now that the obvious results of the disaster are becoming known, green groups are trying to distance themselves from the debacle, as they're made to look like the fools they are.
All of us are still waiting to see where the reform promised by Obama is going to implemented. So far it's business as usual in Washington. And in the case of ethanol, it's an increasing disaster no one is willing to admit to and just drop off the subsidy list.
The conflict of interest is too obvious to have to comment on, in that Iowa has been the largest recipient of taxpayer dollars, receiving the largest portion of the over $25 billion wasted on ethanol subsidies so far.
Not only that, but Vilsack is even more radical in pushing for larger subsidies for the failing biofuel strategy.
It's hard to understand how Obama on one side of his mouth asks for a cap on subsidies for wealthy farmers, citing the excessive power the special interest group wields, and then on the other side of his mouth places someone like Vilsack in charge of the Department of Agriculture. It's a grim, complete disaster.
"The president-elect’s own history is difficult to square with his recent farm-reform talk. Obama ardently backed ethanol subsidies while in the Senate — his home state of Illinois trails only Iowa in corn production — and one of his closest confidants, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, is as responsible as any politician for the explosion in these subsidies."
Not only does corn-based ethanol require more inputs than other crops, but the usual unintended consequences have emerged, and as usual hurt the little people the most, as processed food prices soared in response to the artificial propping up of the prices of corn, driven only by Federal subsidies.
It looks like a lot more pain will have to be inflicted on people before politicians and environmentalist admit the failure of this venture, which was instigated by the unholy agreement between the two.
Now that the obvious results of the disaster are becoming known, green groups are trying to distance themselves from the debacle, as they're made to look like the fools they are.
All of us are still waiting to see where the reform promised by Obama is going to implemented. So far it's business as usual in Washington. And in the case of ethanol, it's an increasing disaster no one is willing to admit to and just drop off the subsidy list.
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