Posted on 07/24/2010 4:59:23 PM PDT by neverdem
WHEN WASHINGTON starts handing out cash, it can be hard to stop. See, for example, the decades of subsidies the government has showered on the corn ethanol industry. The fuel was supposed to free America from its dependence on foreign oil and produce fewer carbon emissions in the process. It's doing some of the former and little of the latter. But corn ethanol certainly doesn't need the level of taxpayer support it's been getting. Lawmakers are considering whether to renew these expensive subsidies; they shouldn't.
The feds give companies that combine corn ethanol with gasoline a 45-cent tax subsidy for every gallon of corn ethanol added to gasoline. That's on top of a tariff on imported sugar cane ethanol from Brazil and federal mandates requiring that steadily increasing amounts of these biofuels be produced. The Congressional Budget Office this month estimated that, all told, the costs to taxpayers of replacing a gallon of gasoline with one of corn ethanol add up to $1.78. The tax incentives alone cost the Treasury $6 billion in 2009.
How about the environmental benefits? The CBO calculates that it costs a huge $750 to reduce annual carbon dioxide emissions by one ton using corn ethanol. And that figure relies on assumptions extremely favorable to the industry.
Not only are these subsidies expensive, but they are redundant...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Yes and yes.
Just stick your finger in your cold exhaust pipe and see the gunk that is in there.
I dont know any professional that questions gasoline being dirty. That is like snow being white and the sky being blue. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent trying to fix the problem
Engineers have spent billions of dollars trying to clean up gasoline, but not very successfully.
Your Yamaha failed to run because of dirty gasoline, a very common problem. After you cleaned out the old dirty gas, it ran.
The gasoline subsidy is around twice the ethanol subsidy today, and has been very high for generations. Politicians support high gasoline subsidies to keep pump prices down, and keep consumers happy and voting for them.
If we could get rid of the gasoline subsidies to level the playing field we would not need an ethanol subsidy.
I dont have problems with my 92 LeBaron, but a vehicle that has been running on straight gasoline will have dirty fuel lines. The ethanol will clean out the lines and plug up the gas filter.
When you mix ethanol with dirty gas, you precipitate out the dirt in the gas, sometimes creating a sludge.
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