Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 02/25/2011 7:23:47 AM PST by USSR Didnt Fall
To big rounds of applause, three of the world’s richest men — Richard Branson, Ronald W. Burkle and Vinod Khosla — trooped onto a New York ballroom stage with former President Bill Clinton to pledge support for renewable energy projects to combat global warming and create jobs.
It was September 2006, and the Clinton Global Initiative, the annual star-studded networking event for philanthropists and investors, had generated commitments to spend billions on ethanol and other alternative fuels. Cast as good works, many were also investments by businessmen hoping for a profit.
And sitting in the audience was an influential public official who had also taken an active interest in renewable sources of fuel: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Several months earlier, Mrs. Clinton had sponsored legislation to provide billions in new federal incentives for ethanol, and, especially in her home state of New York, she has worked to foster a business climate that favors the sort of ethanol investments pursued by her husband’s friends and her political supporters.
One potential beneficiary is the Yucaipa Companies, a private equity firm where Mr. Clinton has been a senior adviser and whose founder, Mr. Burkle, has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Mrs. Clinton’s campaigns. Yucaipa has invested millions in Cilion Inc. — a start-up venture also backed by Mr. Branson, the British entrepreneur, and Mr. Khosla, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist — that is building seven ethanol plants around the country. Two are in upstate New York.
A Cilion executive said Mrs. Clinton’s office had been helpful to the company as it pursued its New York projects. More broadly, by steering federal money, organizing investor forums and offering the services of her staff, she has helped turn the upstate region into an incubator for ventures like Cilion’s, while providing a useful showcase....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Both the Clintons and Algore should be investigated for fraud.
There’s a kickback in there somewhere...
Could someone please explain to me how ethanol is related to nailing chicks?
Ethanol. Take corn out of the mouths of children in support of a hoax. Great plan. So when does the world court in the Hague issue subpoenas. As if.
Cronnie Capitalism at its finest
Ethanol. Take corn out of the mouths of children in support of a hoax.
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In the latest ‘safety recall’ of an automobile manufacturer that didn’t take a US Government hand out, one of the reasons attributed to the ‘Automatic Shut Off Valve’ (when refueling vehicle) not working properly.
One of the published ‘causes’ is the people using more than 10% ethanol gasoline.
I’d be glad to end ethanol subsidies, it’s time to move beyond ethanol and use ag products for other things. Not necessarily cheap meat though.
Ethanol is about government control and driving up the prices of food and energy its as simple as that. This is all intentional and precisely what they want to happen.
The primary use for corn is animal feed, the leftovers of the ethanol process are used for animal feed as well, so no loss there.
The main competitor to ethanol is the soda pop industry. Not exactly food.
Ethanol is cheaper than gas right now. I’m paying 10 cents less for ethanol gasoline than regular.
Sounds like propaganda to me sir.
The production of ethanol uses far more energy than the use of sole fossil fuels.
Ethanol can’t be sent up through the pipe lines and need to be loaded on trucks, which I remind you need gasoline to run.
When you add the natural gas use to run the plants to create the ethanol it just puts it over the top.
Don’t forget the engine damage it causes in boats and cars which has opened a whole new market of additives that prevent this damage.(more energy)
Ethanol is a total government grab for control, creating inefficiencies and more environmental problems of fertilizer runoff etc....
Sorry bud, not sure who is paying you but it flies in the face of reason.
Ethanol is driving the price of all foods up because they are using land (finite) to produce corn not available for consumption. Basic economics, go educate yourself and come back to me then we may be able to have a reasonable discussion.
It's pretty simple really, if ethanol was such a great thing there wouldn't be a need for government support. Also it's pretty clear that if farmers can choose between growing something people eat and growing something people don't eat but because of subsidies makes a better profit then the farmers will grow the something people don't eat. When the government gets involved it corrupts the value of things.
You are welcome to use facts to refute me newby.
Ethanol is slightly energy positive. The main proponent of your ‘facts’ is David Pimintel, know leftist hack professor. He says ethanol is a heavy user of water because he counts the rain that falls on the corn that would fall anyway if no corn was planted there.
Oil is brought over in ships, piped in pipelines, and hauled in trucks. All use energy to do that, as do the refineries to refine it. You are acting as if it is only ethanol that does that. There are several studies showing ethanol is energy positive. Educate yourself.
I’m not arguing engine damage, but that wasn’t your original argument. Changing the subject doesn’t bolster your facts.
Ethanol sucks, but if we didn’t have ethanol we’d have subsidized meat and exports as a foreign policy tool, which was the original intent of our farm policy. I have no desire to go back to that paradigm either. If you don’t like subsidized ethanol, then you don’t get subsidized meat.
Much of the propaganda about ethanol is by people who want cheap meat back. The farmer isn’t obligated to feed the world out of his own pocket.
Farmers don’t get one dime in ethanol subsidies. The entire amount goes to the blender. Farmers were growing corn in abundance long before ethanol.
That’s why ethanol exists, because we overproduced so much farmers were desperate for an outlet to raise the price to make it profitable. Corn acreage didn’t increase because of ethanol. You have it backwards.
Listen you clearly have a hand in this ethanol is not different from those new fluorescent light bulbs vs the more efficient and safer Edison lightbulb period.
If ethanol was so efficient and a money maker the private sector would have invested in it a long time ago without the need for government subsidies.
Move along...
It is profitable to produce ethanol at today’s prices, even without subsidy. The subsidy was to get the blenders to handle it.
It wouldn’t take much to take ethanol to an ester, say ethyl buterate or make butanol profitably. BTU’s near gasoline, no blending problems, no need for subsidy.
Of course there won’t be subsidized meat any more either.
And I’ll move along when I damn well feel like it newby.
It doesn’t matter if farmers get the subsidy. The subsidy increases demand artifially driving up prices.
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