Producers Panic as Ethanol Mandate Loses Support | OilPrice

GE Comment: It is high time that this asinine program be demolished. Like AGW and the carbon scare, the greens and sheeple were duped by corporate ag into believing that pouring topsoil, RoundUp and tractor fuels into the gas tanks on their Honda Accords would ‘save’ the planet. Facts are, indeed, stubborn things.

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Source: politicalclimate

Ethanol producers are panicking amid speculation that the ethanol mandate could be drastically reduced or scrapped entirely this year as the biofuel loses its allure and bipartisan allies and former friends team up against it.

December saw California Democrat Dianne Feinstein—a renewable fuel champion–coordinate efforts with Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn to come up with a Senate bill to get rid of ethanol from the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), citing fears that corn-based fuel production mandates will harm livestock producers.

In November, Washington proposed cutting the biofuels mandate for 2014 by 16% to 15.21 billion gallons. This would be the first cut in biofuels requirements, which were ideally set to grow each year with incremental increases in renewable fuel targets laid out in a 2007 law.

For renewable fuel targets, this represents a major setback because not only is 15.21 billion gallons for 2014 much less than the originally intended 18.15 billion gallons, it is also less than this year’s mandate of 16.55 billion gallons.

Two years ago the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved the E15 blend, which contains 15% ethanol and 85% gasoline, for vehicles manufactured in 2001 or later. There has been little progress towards widespread use of E15 though, and today’s blend is commonly E10.

They Want To Tag Us Before They Bag Us | Dave Hodges

If President Obama, John McCain (R., AZ),  Lindsey Graham (R., SC), Marco Rubio (R., FL), Lindsey Graham (R., SC.), Charles Schumer (D., NY.), Jeff Flake (R., AZ.), Michael Bennet (D., CO.), and implicated child molester Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), get their way, it will soon be law that if you want to board an airplane, to vote, to purchase a firearm, hold a job and basically buy and sell anything, then you will be required to submit to a National ID Card which will soon become part of a global ID system.

In effect, the proposed national and soon-to-be global ID card will serve as a permission slip to do all of the ordinary things that you presently have the right to do as an ordinary American citizen. Of course, if you are the president, or one of these senatorial traitors and your intention is to eliminate U.S. sovereignty by requiring American citizens to become a part of a global identification system, then this is a requisite step in this treasonous give away of our country. Of course, the good senators are not calling this a national ID because that has been tried, opposed and rejected back in 2008. These senators are cloaking their treason under the guise that the implementation of this universal ID system is an immigration issue.

The Immigration Trojan Horse.  The National ID and soon to be Global ID system is being sold to the rank and file of Congress as a means to control terrorism and to further prevent illegal immigration. Showing ID’s to board a plane on 9/11 did not prevent the destruction of the Twin Towers now did it? And we have drones and satellites which can read the inscription on a dime from the upper reaches of the atmosphere and we can’t identify and stop foreign nationals from crossing our borders? Our government does want to stop illegal immigration. And now we are being asked to swallow the myth that only an ID can prevent illegal immigration. Only a member of Congress who is more focused on becoming enriched at their insider-trading potential would be distracted enough to fall for this ridiculous excuse. And when one considers that a bi-partisan group of congressman are trying to simultaneously create a path to citizenship for all illegal alien residents, this justification of requiring a national ID to solve the immigration issues of this country is based wholly on deception.

The CBO Just Rendered Its Verdict On The Cost Of Obamacare, And It Isn’t Pretty | Forbes

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just rendered its latest opinion on the cost of Obamacare following the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold most of the law back in June.  The numbers aren’t pretty. Despite breathless media reports of additional “savings,” the government’s bean counters actually exposed several flaws in the law that will, in the long term, lead to higher costs and reduced access to insurance coverage.

Rant warning re “Does Reproductive Freedom Imply a Right to Free Birth Control? | Reason Magazine

RANT WARNING: I am so over this faux controversy, this conflation of “wants” with “needs”, “privileges” with “rights”, “health” with “behaviors”.  On the one hand this nonsensical issue is so illuminating of the poverty of the left / Obama / Obamacare / Socialism premises. On the other this is a painful distraction from real or truthful regarding things such as:

• The role of the Federal Government in personal needs and wants;
• Duties of others to meet needs and wants of the some;
• The constitutional constraints on Executive authority;
• The spinelessness of the Legislative branch;
• The reproach-ability of the Judicial branch (coming soon?);
• The long ignored overpopulation issue (wonder what Paul Ehrlich thinks of this state of affairs?);
• The recent synonymy of “pregnancy” with “disease”;
• The implied misanthropy and human-hating premise of the left and this contraception policy;
• The apparent supplanting of some non-existent ‘birth control debate’ for the ‘abortion debate” which has devolved into an electoral non-starter on which progressives have traditionally relied;
• How this relates to Obama’s low approval ratings among women and the coming election;

My head will burst if I think about this any more…Thank you Rush Limbaugh BTW.

via Reason Magazine… Supporters of Obama’s birth control rule conflate liberty with subsidies, insisting that you are not really free to do something (in this case, use contraceptives) unless it’s free. According to this logic, observant Jews do not have religious freedom unless the government pays for their kosher food, bloggers do not have freedom of speech unless taxpayers buy them computers, and Americans in general do not have a right to keep and bear arms if they have to pay for guns with their own money. By contrast, the religious institutions that object to the contraceptive mandate are not asking for subsidies; they are resisting them. They object to a regulation that forces them to pay for products and services they consider immoral. They want the freedom to offer their employees health plans that do not cover contraception and sterilization…