HIGHWAY ROBBERY

"Ethanol is a magic elixir. It allows politicians and political operatives to promise voters that America can achieve "energy independence." In this new energy Valhalla, American farmers will be rich, fat and happy, thanks to all the money they will be making from "energy crops." Better yet, U.S. soldiers will never again need to visit the Persian Gulf - except, perhaps, on vacation. With enough ethanol-blended motor fuel, America can finally dictate terms to those rascally Arab sheikhs with their rag-covered heads, multiple wives and supertankers loaded with sulfurous crude.

First, the subsidies. Making ethanol from corn borders on fiscal insanity. It uses taxpayer money to make subsidized motor fuel from the single most subsidized crop in America. Between 1995 and 2005, federal corn subsidies totaled $51.2 billion. In 2005 alone, according to data compiled by the Environmental Working Group, corn subsidies totaled $9.4 billion. That $9.4 billion is approximately equal to the budget for the U.S. Department of Commerce, a federal agency that has 39,000 employees.

But the ethanol lobby isn't satisfied with the subsidies paid out to grow the grain. They are also getting huge subsidies to turn that grain into fuel. According to the Global Subsidies Initiative, meeting Bush's goal of producing 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels per year by 2017 will require total subsidies of $118 billion. The group claims that this price tag "would be the minimum subsidy" over the eleven-year period. In a report released on February 9, the group said that adding in tax breaks that the corn distillers are getting from state and local governments and federal tariffs imposed on foreign ethanol (mostly from Brazil) "would likely add tens of billions of dollars of subsidies" to the $118 billion estimate.

In April, Mark Z. Jacobson, an engineering professor at Stanford University, published a study concluding that the widespread use of E85 (fuel that contains 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline) "may increase ozone-related mortality, hospitalization, and asthma by about 9 percent in Los Angeles and 4 percent in the United States as a whole" when compared to the use of regular gasoline. Jacobson also found that because of its ozone-related effects, E85 "may be a greater overall public health risk than gasoline."

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$118 BILLION DOLLARS in future subsidies to the ravenous, pork laden ethanol industry. The ethanol industry is turning out be one of the biggest scams in recent memory.

Not only will taxpayers be forced to feed this "FRANKENFUEL" monster with their hard earned money, they will also be the ones to reap the "benefits", like polluted water and air, a depleted Ozarks Aquifer and cancer clusters around the ethanol plants.

With that much pork to be spread around, it's no wonder the present and future ethanol producers are crowding around the feed trough, waiting for the next delivery of YOUR tax dollars that go into their ever expanding stomachs..... and wallets.