SeniorJunior

Fool Me Once….. [Excerpts from a NYTimes.com article , interspersed with mild mannered commentary .] Agriculture Secretary Edward T. Schafer is preparing to walk into a buzz saw of criticism over American biofuels policy when he meets with world leaders to discuss the global food crisis next week. He’s carrying the Big Bush Talking Point, “Golly, ethanol from corn is only making a tiny difference in the price of food around the world.” See, the ethanol mandates and subsidies are just terrific for BS (Bush Supporters) in Big Ag, like Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Tyson and lots of millionaire big farmers. So the Bushies are going to fight hard against this new awareness that corn is a really bad feedstock for ethanol in terms of cost, climate benefits and unintended consequences. So… Mr. Schafer took the offensive at a press conference on Thursday that discussed the food summit, planned for Rome. He said an analysis by the Agriculture Department had dete...

We Are Smarter Than That! A friend sent me a fascinating PowerPoint presentation on how gas will probably hit $11 a gallon before too long. (It's from Mathew Simmons' Energy Investment Bank. ) I like it! Plus I'm dreadfully afraid it's true. So then after gasoline hits $11/gallon and natural gas $25 per MMBTU, water will go up, food following in lockstep. Minimum basic food will be entirely too expensive for a billion people to buy. So they will starve. Seriously, starve to death. Billion; that's a thousand millions. Puts earthquakes and Cyclones to shame. I liked the PowerPoint presentation, and I think that Simmons Energy is right. They point out that this is not all bad. The good side effect is declining hydrocarbon use - good for the climate. Still it's a painful way to get there. Well designed, fairly enforced government incentive programs for lower energy use might do the same thing without driving so many individuals and companies to ruin - ...

... Or "Who's more important, corn farmers or the rest of us?" Now that it is perfectly clear that using food (corn in our case) to make fuel doesn't do anything good it was supposed to do, you would think Congress would hustle to undo the damage it is doing. Do you suppose? It's not helping the environment, it is hurting it. It's not freeing us from our dependence on foreign oil. It is contributing to the scarcity of and the rising prices for food. It is making big, rich agribiz companies even richer and making small farmers even poorer . It's forcing people with reservations about genetically modified food to throw in the towel because of desperate hunger . It is eating up tax dollars that could be doing a lot more good elsewhere. Well, Congress (no use even talking to the Bushies ), there you have it. Time to undo the damage done by wrong assumptions and too-quick response to lobbyists, no? Kill those ethano...

Not the NYTimes or the LATimes, THE times... The whole world is upset about the rising cost of food. And part of the problem is definitely diverting some food into fuel. As in ethanol. Brazilians turn sugar cane into ethanol. Americans turn corn into it. [Ok, it's sort of self serving, but...] This blogster has been grumping about this nonsense for nearly two years. So why didn't Congress, the Department of Agriculture and Keith Olberman jump right on this when they had the chance... TWO YEARS AGO? I try, I try... Lord knows I try. For your reminiscing pleasure: " Ethanol, Schmethanol " June '06 " Starvation " April '07 " Food Prices Rocket " June '07 " Another Shot at Ethanol " July '07 " Deadly Brew " January '08 "Will starve for Ethanol" January '08 When the tortillas went out of reach for Mexicans, we should have known that corn ethanol was a really stupid idea. This stuff is to EAT!

Such a Simple Solution (Attn: Howard Dean) Barrack and Hillary, listen up. Here's the plan. Each of you start ignoring the other - in your speeches, your ads and the comments from your "aids." Each of you focus your attention strictly on McCain . Oh, and the calamities of the W administration. At the end of every day, all of us Dems will score you in our minds about how effectively you are at running the General Election Race. Perhaps some pollsters will start asking how our scores are going. Not only is the vicious infighting abandoned, the primary battle becomes the dress rehearsal for the General and all the firepower is aimed at the Republicans instead of at other Democrats. What a concept! The final benefit is that whoever loses this titanic battle for the Democratic nomination has a totally face-saving way to back down, wreathed in honor and humility - all for the greater good and with enough good will in the party left over to run again another day.

In this greatest of nations, how about this? In Michigan, one in eight residents now receives food stamps. Imagine. 13% of Michiganders on food stamps . Now that is pitiful. Good job, Bushie.

DARN IT (With an apology for my inconsistent adds and updates to this thang - for all those regular readers, of course!) Mostly I have been moved by ... what? Incredulity - outrage - at stupidity, irresponsibility, greed and the whole corrupting influence of unbridled partisanship ... to write something. Not always, of course, but mostly. The last couple of months have had so MUCH of that bad stuff, that I guess I have been sort of strangled as to what to grouse about. But here goes again. The Good Old NEW YORK TIMES editorial this Sunday morning reminded me of just how stupid, counterproductive and downright crappy the GWB Administration is. Stubborn George continues to insist that his torture-justifying lawyer pal Steven Bradbury be his appointee to run the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. (As I'm sure you know) Bradbury wrote all those "Torture's legal. It's OK," then "It's OK to ignore the law that makes it illegal" memos. He has abs...

“Keeping Our Word,” “Trustworthiness,” and Other Corporate Myths I guess I’m grumpy most about hypocrisy. While the Right spins “values” into political gold, appealing to the righteousness gene in Americans, they spin a parallel theology, the holiness of “the market.” So it’s time (again and again) to look at actions, not words. Is the market actually self-correcting? Do market excesses and dishonesties actually fix themselves when the cop isn’t on the beat? Apparently not. In the Weekend Edition of The Wall Street Journal, two stories leap off the pages and slam into my hypocrisy button. 1. Corporations have been trying to save money by screwing their older employees by “freezing” their pension plans. Congress (a reluctant cop) tried to stop the vicious practice, but they did an inadequate job. Plus the offended corporations did what they do best, bribed the cops. According to the WSJ article , “Employers responded with a volley of lobbying, en...

More " Ethanol, Schmethanol " Video fans... Here's a powerful little documentary on the human price of ethanol. Look down the list of vids on this site and prepare to have your soul rocked. I don't like the idea of Bloomberg running for prez as an Indy... But I like his website and his news channel. Both are straight-ahead, no hype and competent.

THE OTHER OIL SHOCK Asymptotic Short Sightedness I love "asymptotic," the word. Maybe most people say "through the roof" or "scary growth" or "to the moon!" (Thank you Ralph Cramdon .) Here are some asymptotic graphics: See how those lines shoot up, faster and faster as time goes by? That's asymptotic, baby. Any fool can see that eventually they go almost straight up, right past disaster into the catastrophere . These are from a NYTimes online article about another pending disaster resulting from short term thinking: "Hydrocarbons bad. Biofuels good." Never mind the inevitable impact on the cost of food. Never mind that irreplaceable forests will be destroyed to plant more palm oil trees. Never mind that more people will starve and the net effect on the environment will be negative. Never mind thinking a little ahead of the nose on your face. (I guess I'm angry. Dang.) You faithful readers of the Duffst...

Making Liquid Gold Back in October, this blogster offered the BIG FOUR solution package for the pending water crisis. (Put your hand on a water faucet and believe ... because it's true and maybe the scariest result of coming climate change.) In short, those four solutions are: 1. Drip irrigation on a huge scale for agriculture. 2. A national pipeline system for redistributing flood water. 3. Catch and store every drop of rainwater that hits our roofs. 4. Desalination of sea water on a huge scale. This week in the Wall Street Journal was a great article about the technological and financial progress toward large scale desalination . Not "huge" yet, but promising. I like their graphic. (You might conclude this plant is run on pure solar power - it's not, but it should be... plus wind, geothermal and, heck, I'll say it, nuclear*. Anything but hydrocarbon energy.) Ring our sea-to-shining-sea country with bigger and better desalination plants, (sequestering t...

Where Has John Gone? Have you noticed a sudden drop in the amount of coverage in the "mainstream media" of John Edwards? To the casual viewer it looks like the Democratic nomination contest has become strictly Obama vs. Clinton. The populist theory about the Populist Candidate is that he has stepped over the line in his criticism of "Big Business, the corporations that own and control most of Congress these days." So sayeth John Edwards, loud, clear and long. So those corporations - which own a lion's share of the mainstream media - have just sent down the word to their media minions to start ignoring him. Dang. Now we read that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is going to raise another $60 million specifically to fight any populist, "anti-business" candidates for President. Guess who has top billing in that fight? Here's the way the match-up looks: John Edwards, Populist /// Thomas Donahue, Pres U.S. C of C Under Donahue, the U.S. Chamber has b...