Posted on 01/23/2016 7:55:50 AM PST by Kaslin
This seems like it may be a day late and a dollar short as the saying goes, but someone has decided to ask a question in Iowa this week which would normally border on blasphemy. Do Iowans really know much about the ethanol issue and, even more to the point, do they really care? Going by the conventional wisdom this seems like a preposterous prospect. Iowa is the domain of King Corn and it drives all things political out there, right? Well, the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF) decided to take the question to the voters directly rather relying on the state GOP leaders and some of the answers may surprise you.
With the Iowa caucuses fewer than 10 days away, research commissioned by the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF) and completed this week provides new insights into what 700 likely voters across the state know about corn ethanol mandates, how much they care about or are following them, and whether they’re likely to vote on the basis of a candidate’s position on the issue.
Their answer? Not much, not really, and not at all.
"For as long as anyone can remember, conventional political wisdom dictated that candidates had no choice but to support ever-expanding corn ethanol mandates to win in Iowa," said George David Banks, Executive Vice President of ACCF. "Unfortunately, they forgot to ask actual Iowans what they thought about it. As this polling makes clear, not only aren't folks in the nation's largest corn-producing state paying particularly close attention to the back-and-forth over the RFS, they're definitely not using it as some sort of litmus test in determining who to vote for. That might qualify as a revelation to the political class in Washington, but something tells me actual Iowans won't be too surprised to hear that."
Here are a few of the results that jumped out at me:
If true, that might have made a bit of a difference in the shape of the race this year, but coming out less than two weeks before the caucuses it’s difficult to see what changes at this point. And yet it may at least prove useful for the midterms, assuming anything else backs this up later on. The only real questions I have about these numbers are the same ones that crop up whenever we run into these issue polls as opposed to surveys about candidates and elected officials.
If you’re looking for data on which candidates are doing well it’s not nearly as difficult to manage. Do you plan to vote for [CANDIDATES 1 THROUGH 10 or UNDECIDED] in the upcoming election? Similarly you can poll voters about the people in office with a basic query of approve or disapprove. (Strongly or somewhat.) When you get into issue questions, however, a lot depends on the wording and the ebb and flow of the news cycle. Seeing that 94% of Iowans don’t have ethanol in their top three concerns might say something, but it doesn’t mean it’s not a concern, either. Only a third of respondents knew where the candidates stood on the subject, which might be even a bit more telling, but I immediately found myself wondering if that’s just because they assume that all of the candidates back the RFS. It’s been baked into the cake for so long that perhaps they just take it for granted at this point.
Again, one data point such as this isn’t likely to be a game changer. But by the same token, maybe we’re finally seeing the beginning of a new trend. That would shake up both state and national elections and come as a refreshing change.
Conservatives should not support subsidies.
Only for the large amount they will need if hellary wins.
It seems that yes, they do care.
Trump got a big bump in the polls after he read his statement for increasing ethanol subsidies.
Read the following and let us know what you think? Actually, the link norwaypinesavage sent is from Auburn but is about irrigated corn grown on the high dry plains in Texas, a poor place to grow corn anyway. Most corn of course is dry land raised and the article provides some good science-based evidence, not the leftIsts usual attack on private businesses. The following is straight out of the executive summary of the article and is supportive of what I have written.1 A more comprehensive analysis by USDA found a 34% net energy gain,2 rising to 67% after accounting for co- product energy credits.3 The consensus is that dryland production of corn results in a net energy gain of 30-70%, depending on soil productivity, production practices, and distillation technology.
There is no ETOH subsidy now.
Exactly. I'm not against ethanol, but I'm against it if you have to subsidize it with tax money. And, for that matter, if you decide to subsidize something to get it started, do the subsidies have to continue into eternity?
The answer should be no.
It takes some nerve to tell corn farmers to their faces that you will end the subsidy. But if you are honest you have to do it.
What subsidy? It ended what, 2 or 3 years ago.
The subsidy needed a couple of years ago.
Trump will say and promise anything to get elected. He and Sarah Palin make a great team.
I see Bush is your favorite president on your home page.
Many people claim that they hate pork until it is their pork. Pork buys votes.
Reagan bailed out Harley Davidson when Pat Buchanan convinced him that it was predatory of the Japanese to help Kawasaki put them out of business. The Saudis are doing the same with their oil. We may have to go in that direction for a bigger issue involving security, terror, and international trade. Sugar tariffs?
Yes, it isn’t a subsidy, but it IS a MANDATE.
Refineries are forced to use the stuff. It essentially produces the same result, a government intervention to use something that doesn’t work very well in the first place.
They drink loads of it.
What subsidy? It ended what, 2 or 3 years ago.
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INFORMATION FOR THE LOW-INFORMATION VOTERS AMONGST US:
There exist federal government MANDATES which have the same qualitative EFFECTS on the economy that SUBSIDIES do -—but, from a quantitative perspective, their effects are FAR LARGER THAN SUBSIDIES. Both MANDATES & SUBSIDIES cause YUUUUGE (maybe that’s why Donald likes them) distortions in the economy and cause it to be less efficient than would be the case under actual FREE Enterprise and an actual MARKET Economy.
SUBSIDIES & MANDATES pick winners & losers. People and products become “winners” when they would otherwise be “losers” because a free people would not pick them and people and products become “losers” when they’d actually be “winners” otherwise.
Only a few people (mostly agribusiness like Archer-Daniels-Midland or Con-Agra) have ever made much money from ethanol production, and that was only because there was a subsidy paid for its production. The farmers are indirectly encouraged because the market price of field corn as grain was artificially propped up, encouraging the planting of WAY more corn for grain than would otherwise be done. This has seriously impacted the costs of feeding harvested corn crop to animals for meat and milk production, and caused some overuse of resources better diverted elsewhere.
The whole corn plant is run through a harvester that chops the whole plant up into pieces no more than about three-eights of an inch long, hauled to a silo, sealed away from outside air, where it pickles in the natural formation of lactic acid, and is fed out later to dairy or beef cattle as roughage feed. The stuff is rather sour, but cattle relish the taste of it (rather like pickles), and it has a high energy content, which transforms into heavier milk production and greater rates of growth for beef animals.
Corn used in this manner, of course, unless the ears are harvested separately, cannot be used for ethanol production. And the corn grain used for ethanol is only partially available, later, as wet brewer’s grains, the part left over from malting and making ethanol from the corn grain. While the product is a good source of concentrated protein and some fiber, the starch portion is missing, and the cost of producing this “sour mash” in and of itself, makes it less competitive with simply using whole-grain crushed corn kernels as part of concentrated cattle, swine and poultry feed mixes. But here again, the production of ethanol competes directly with animal feed, and the costs of operating a feed lot, egg production, or dairy facility are increased commensurately.
The thing is, none of these additional steps are really “for free”, as these extra steps require extra money and resources input to the cost of producing the ethanol from corn grain, and the overall process is pretty much a wash, in terms of the energy produced.
Yeah, there are 100,000 regulations on the federal books.
Re read what I wrote from a scientific, evidence- based publication. Government confiscating half my income doesn’t work well for me.
In that context, federal income tax deductions are subsidies too. Do you take this form of welfare?
It really depends. Last year under the farm program, most of the plains states (South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa) were encouraged to increase their corn base (percentage of crops grown per year). This affects not only subsidies but other farm business as well (like crop insurance). Farm bases are not adjusted every year or even every farm bill, so if ethanol is cut then many farmers are going to be hurt.
It is easy to say ‘conservatives shouldn’t support subsidies’ but reality is much more complicated (and only farmers really understand this - sorry). As a farmer, I am of two minds. I oppose price controls in general, and I object to welfare being part of the farm bill. But I also understand the history of it (subsidies were to help keep farmers afloat and the excess product bought was given to the poor - now it is cash funds not product which I object to).
The other side, is subsidies overall help the larger farms, and some do abuse the system but it does keep smaller farms like my tenants (I no longer drive the tractor but either sharecrop or cash rent the land) going and keeps the monopoly farms from taking over a lot of the family farms.
Refineries once used Pb in gas too. How did that work so much better? Should we still burn leaded gas so we can inhale the fumes in big cities?
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