Posted on 02/03/2016 11:23:25 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
"There's an Iowa way of doing this, and the rest of the candidates did it the Iowa way," Majda Sarkic, a spokeswoman for the pro-ethanol group America's Renewable Future, told National Review days before the Iowa caucuses.
All of the candidates except Ted Cruz, that is. In a highly unusual move for a man who sought, and ultimately won, the support of Iowa caucus-goers, Cruz didn't court, kowtow to, or bow down before King Corn. From the time they arrived in the Senate eyeing a presidential run three years ago, he and his advisers have known that his opposition to the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which requires gasoline to contain a minimum level of ethanol, would cause him headaches in Iowa. But as early as the state's agricultural summit last May, he signaled that he would play to win the state on his own terms.
How did he pull it off? Yes, the Republican party has grown less tolerant of crony capitalism and government subsidies in the Obama era. And, yes, only a fraction of Republican voters in Iowa turn out to caucus - a generally quite conservative fraction at that. So Cruz knew that there was a limit to how much harm he could do himself by writing the issue off.
"If ethanol was your issue - if you're essentially saying it is more important to consider my taxpayer-funded gravy train than it is to limit the size and scope of government, create economic growth, nominate a candidate who has moral character, who might inspire the country .... if that's what you were voting on, you were never going to vote for Ted Cruz," says Steve Deace, the Iowa-based talk-radio host who endorsed Cruz early on.
But if Cruz wrote off the ethanol lobby, and he did - "We asked him to fill out our questionnaire, we invited him multiple times to visit plants, we tried working with his campaign, and really they did not communicate back," says Eric Branstad, the president of America’s Renewable Future and the son of long-time Iowa governor Terry Branstad - he also managed to change the subject and promise Iowans something no other candidate would.
With the help of a few key allies and a host of research, he began to tell the state's voters about another arbitrary government regulation that was holding the ethanol industry back: the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) so-called "blend wall." And he swore he'd do away with it if elected.
It was Iowa representative Steve King and an ethanol-industry executive, Dave Vander Griend, who brought the blend wall to his attention. Vander Griend, the CEO of Kansas-based ICM, which engineers and constructs ethanol plants, had requested meetings last fall with several Republican candidates. Cruz and Ben Carson were the only ones who responded to him. Cruz, he says, "didn't just smile and give lip service. He wanted to understand what the issue was with the RFS," and he assigned staff members to research the matter.
In his meeting with Cruz, Vander Griend ticked off all of the EPA regulations that were hampering the ethanol industry. "I went through a whole list of a half a dozen things that were limiting the ability of our industry to grow," he says. Chief among them was the fact that the RFS serves as both a floor and a ceiling for corn-ethanol production, and that without it, more ethanol would enter the marketplace. He says that Cruz, who had already introduced legislation to phase out the RFS, understood that "in order for the RFS ever to be sunsetted, these limits have to be removed."
On the campaign trail in Iowa, Vander Griend began popping up alongside Cruz, and his concerns became part of the senator's stump speeches.
Last Saturday, just two days before voters would caucus, Cruz arrived at Darrell's Place in the town of Hamlin, population 252. Darrell's Place sits in the middle of the state's famous cornfields, a 90-minute drive from the state capital of Des Moines. The family-owned restaurant is as Iowan a place as one will ever see: It serves an award-winning tenderloin sandwich, and you can get a cheese on rye - Darrell's favorite - for 75 cents.
Cruz drew a crowd of about 200, or about 80 percent of the town. When he turned to take questions from the crowd, a 60-something gentleman clad in a t-shirt and suspenders raised his hand. Referring to Cruz as "Mr. President," he asked him for his views on the RFS. "Let me give you my broader view on energy," Cruz said. "As the gentleman noted, I don't think Washington should be picking winners and losers, and there should be no mandates or subsidies for anybody." A few audience members offered tepid applause, and Cruz pressed on, pleading guilty to having put forth legislation that would do away with the RFS, before pivoting to the blend wall.
"There is a far more important government regulation for ethanol than the RFS. And that is what's called the EPA's blend wall..... And as president, I intend to tear down the EPA's blend wall."
"Hot damn!" a gentleman shouted from the back of the room.
"You're way ahead of us," Cruz responded. "Now, what does that mean?" What followed was an explanation that owed much to Vander Griend, who used many of the same details when interviewed by NR:
That means it would be legal to sell mid-level ethanol blends, things like E-25 and E-30. That in turn would allow automakers to sell cars with engines optimized for E25 and E30. Now, these are not new engines - they sell these cars now in Europe and South America. They don't sell them in America because it's illegal to buy the fuels to power those cars.
Now, how big a consequence is allowing mid-level ethanol blends for the ethanol industry? Earlier today on our bus tour, somebody who joined us was an individual named Dave Vander Griend. Dave has built more than half of the ethanol plants in the state of Iowa. Dave makes his entire living, his entire livelihood, from building ethanol plants. There is nobody in the state of Iowa that knows more about ethanol than Dave Vander Griend. Dave has estimated that lifting the EPA blend wall could result in ethanol increasing its market share by 60 percent.
The crowd, standing in the middle of miles of cornfields, erupted in cheers as Cruz concluded that "by lifting the blend wall, by getting rid of an arbitrary government regulation, we can enable ethanol to expand its market share dramatically with no government mandate, no subsidy, no dependence on Washington."
In 2000, John McCain chose not to campaign throughout Iowa because he believed his opposition to the RFS would do him in with voters. The last two Republican caucus winners before Cruz, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee, both supported the mandate. The industry did its best to maintain that tradition this time around. America's Renewable Future dispatched an RV to trail Cruz around the state. And last month, Governor Branstad, who has historically stayed neutral in the caucuses, attacked Cruz for opposing the RFS, saying that, "I think it would be a big mistake for Iowans to support him."
Donald Trump used the issue to mount a last-minute attack on Cruz, too. "Your ethanol business, if Ted Cruz gets in, is going to be wiped out within six months to a year. It's gonna be gone," Trump told a Waterloo, Iowa, crowd on Monday morning.
But one of the ethanol industry's leading executives had already helped Cruz explain why that wasn't the case, perhaps redefining "the Iowa way" for future Republican presidential contenders in the process.
Even if my grammar had a melt down...
I would not know, as I despise pharma of all kinds, and I am no longer in Israel.
You obviously have no idea what you are talking about, so I guess you are a Trump supporter, a Jew hater or both.
No - I don’t like the idea of ethanol fuel. I also don’t like gov’t intervention. Don’t mandate it, don’t subsidize it, don’t limit it. If the ethanol producers think they can make money on it on the free market - great! (Cruz said their are cars in other countries that run on 50% ethanol).
The trouble is, if we burn our food as “cheap” fuel, then food gets more expensive. (All crops). Of course then the farmers will figure that out pretty quick. “Hey everyone is growing corn for fuel - and the price of beans is way up. I’ll grow beans!”
The trouble with corn - it takes a lot of fertilizer and water compared to other crops. Even the greenies now are against ethanol because of that.
How about reading what I wrote, I didn’t even mention Trump. I was just parotting the rabid anti-Cruz Trumpbots who start foaming at the mention of Cruz.
You do not get irony do you?
Do you not realize the inherent irony of hoping that Trump the lifelong liberal and NWO supporter of Hillery and Pelosi will change America to something conservative.
Perhaps If I put HOPE and CHANGE in bold letters.
Do you not see the exact same speach patterns of rambling emotional hit points with no substantive plans that Obama used to rise to power with the no information voters?
Trump is a white Obama. And you are what Stalin called a useful idiot. You hand him the Presidential office and you’re screwed, again.
WAKE UP NEO!
“a Jew hater or both.”
So I’m a Jew Hater? And why would you call me that? Just because from your screen name I assumed you were in Israel and that since you mentioned drugs I thought you might be a user? Is that it? I have a very dear friend here on FR who is Jewish. I’m going to pass your comment along to her. Who knows, maybe she will drop you a note. As for Trump, yes, I support him and so does she. Now does that make her a “bad Jew,” inquiring minds want to know? I don’t hate Jews, but I think you’re a moron.
In postings here in FR T did my relentless best to zero in the Cruz election on his ethanol position which would work . Because even here in Wisconsin which grows a lot of corn and has an ethanol plant nearby I knew Cruz position was acceptable. It did. Btw Walker took the same phase out government position.
ooops, you misconstrued my sarcastic first post.
Mother Jones: Here's One Issue Ted Cruz Actually Gets Right
"...Cruz wants to abolish the RFS (along with all government mandates and subsidies for energy, including for fossil fuels and renewables). Last week in New Hampshire he described the RFS as yet another way in which the government is "picking winners and losers.".......
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But the writer likes solar panels - but solar is still needing subsidies.
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"An acre of solar panels can produce up to 300 times more energy for vehicles than an acre of corn."
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But see how "environmentalists" always get it wrong - but they always have a new idea!
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....."The original promise of biofuels was based on a basic accounting error, explains Tim Searchinger, a researcher at Princeton University and the World Resources Institute. Burning biofuels still produces tailpipe emissions; the climate benefit was supposed to come from the carbon dioxide emissions sucked out of the air as the corn grew. But the EPA's early estimates assumed that the corn diverted to biofuel wouldn't be replaced in the food supply. In other words, Searchinger explains, "the offset is that people and livestock eat less." Instead, the opposite happened: As ethanol boomed and corn prices climbed, farmers in Iowa and elsewhere planted millions of new corn acres, sometimes at the expense of grasslands and forests that did a better job of capturing carbon than rows of corn do.
"If you have any amount of land use change to replace the crops, that wipes out the [climate] gain," Searchinger says.
A similar problem arose with soy-based fuels, as soy diverted from cooking oil to biodiesel was largely replaced with palm oil from Southeast Asia. Deforestation to produce palm oil is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions.
Still, some energy analysts remain hopeful about the climate benefits of more advanced, cellulosic biofuels."....
No more corn dole.
Because corn is such a heavy feeder, being upbred from maze, it cannot be grown without rotation or Petro Chemical based fertilizers.
Corn is a vicious circle, once you go there for three generations, your soil is like a Meth Junkie, it will not produce without a fix.
And once you mono crop such a heavy feeder in the same spot, your crops become massively dependent on petro chemical insecticides, nature hates mono crops.
Americas industry runs on Corn, and oil. You cannot have corn without oil in the scale we now produce it.
A good read is “The Omnivores Dilemma”, written from a leftist viewpoint, it was a real eye opener for me none the less.
SORRY!
My bad.
My “sarcasm” reading meter wasn’t turned on.
Ah... ha!
A wise man can learn from fools, a fool cannot understand a wise man.
Me, I am a blend. I really do not care what you think, your ability to reason has been amply demonstrated in your off the wall insults because you could not understand why I wrote what I wrote.
And it was not even wise...
“The trouble is, if we burn our food as “cheap” fuel, then food gets more expensive. (All crops). Of course then the farmers will figure that out pretty quick. “Hey everyone is growing corn for fuel - and the price of beans is way up. I’ll grow beans!—
I agree with everything you posted. The oil companies came up with MTBE as an additive to reduce emissions. They had a deal going since it was a throwaway byproduct of refining. The problem was that it was “persisitent” and began to poison our groundwater, so they troted out Ethanol as an alternative. But it too is problematic when used in large quantities in IC Engines. So now the government has it’s butt in a crack because the corn farmers like being rich at taxpayers expense. My bet is that Cruz, being in the pocket of the oil companies, wants Ethanol out not because it’s a bad idea, but because the oil companies make more money if gasoline is all gasoline. 99% of the time, all you have to do to figure out why something is so, is to follow the money and who makes it.
Oh, and one other thing, you “forgot” in your quote of me to include “Trump supporter, Jew Hater or both” That was duplicitous to then say “so I am a Jew Hater?”
You claim to not hate Jews, fine, good for ya.
But you are duplicitous, insultingly obnoxious and willfully obtuse. Some of the very qualities I feel disqualifies Trump from the office of the President. I do understand better why you relate to him though.
Have a good night, I am hitting the rack, this conversation is not worth staying up for.
Cruz doubles down on phasing out ethanol mandate
"In a Des Moines Register op-ed Wednesday, Cruz said he would look to "phase out the Renewable Fuel Standard, end all energy subsidies, and ensure a level playing field for everyone,".....
ethanol is destructive to engines, especially small ones
There is no good reason to subsidize or mandate this crap be added to gasoline and a lot of good reasons not to.
My guess is that since ethanol degrades petrochemicals and causes lower fuel efficiency beyond just its lower therm rating, its effect on the oil industry is a wash. Add ethanol, and you will burn more oil anyway. And you can no longer store it long term, so there is more wastage.
I don’t think big oil gives a rip about ethanol. However you may have a point that Ethanol is mandated. I suspect big oil can out produce Ethanol right now with the oil glut, that might not be true at all when oil is a hundred bucks a barrel.
I would go farther.
I would phase out all forms of corporate welfare.
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