me? You and the other so called conservates are blinded by, hell, I don't know, personal interest or plain ignorance. Ethanol sucks as a fuel source. E10 contributes to air pollution
http://www.hamilton-consulting.com/updates/docs/dnr_final_e10revised_090805.pdf
And it must be subsidized to be remotely attractive.
The support for ethanol is not a conservative position. Subsidies are not a conservative position. Promoting inefficient use of resources is not a conservative position. Taxing a better fuel to support an inferior fuel is not a conservative position. Mandating use of ethanol is not a conservative idea.
But all those things are done by people like you - and they still think they are conservative. Conservatives respect the free market and freedom and choice. That is something the ethonal lobby hates - because if people had a free choice in the matter, they would not subsidize or buy ethanol.
I can see your interest - you're in a state that benefits most from being an ethanol parasite. But again, if iowa was primary #50, nobody would take your little inefficient fuel seriously. Be honest with yourself -that's the only reason anyone gives a damn about it. Oh, and ADM buys politicians to get a boatload of subsidies from everyone else's pocket.
This country is going to hell in a handbasket, and it's because of people like you who refuse to recognize the truth if it goes against their own agenda.
You sound like a disciple of David Pimentel of Cornell University and Tad Patzek of the University of California, Berkeley - both of whom have bend resoundingly discredited in their conclusions. Both of whom are left-wing nut jobs.
>>>This country is going to hell in a handbasket, and it's because of people like you who refuse to recognize the truth if it goes against their own agenda.<<<
Same to you.
I'm curious, so I'm going to do some research and math on ethanol subsidies.
Looks like the current federal subsidy is $0.52/gallon blended into gasoline. Corn subsidies vary widely. In recent years, they've been something like $3B, so lets go with that. American corn production is, what, 9B bushels? So that's a $0.33/bushel subsidy on corn. 2.5 gallons of ethanol are produced per bushel, so the corn subsidy is $0.132/gallon. Lets assume that ethanol is 75% of the profit of that bushel (since you still get the protein, etc for animal feed), and it goes up to $0.176/gallon. So, since the ethanol subsidy effectively displaces the corn subsidy (the higher corn prices (i.e, the more the demand), the less subsidy is given), lets say that the real effective ethanol subsidy is like $0.34/gallon. The non-subsidized price of ethanol is something like $2.00/gallon to produce, so 17% of the price of ethanol is effectively subsidy. If you don't count the offset to corn subsidies, it's closer to 25%.
Hmm, that's not as much as I was expecting. If I did the math right, that is. Anyone know how much of gas prices are subsidized? I know there are subsidies, but I'm not sure of the scale of them. Darn interference with the free market makes simple cost comparisons difficult. :P