a Reader Responds to "Biofuel"

Anonymous left a comment on "biofuel rundown":

"It's a lie that biofuel can only be produced from corn. That's what Fidel Castro and Chavez want us to believe. When the US goes after the oil, they complain. Now Aericans want to reduce their dependency on oil but the leftists won't stop bitching. Some people are never happy, I guess...

The truth is that biofuel can also be produced from sugar cane, like they do in Brazil. That kind of fuel is more efficient and won't raise food prices. But hey, the left wants to make us believe that corn is the only option. It always amazes me to see how some people twist and pervert the truth to suit their purpose."

Anon makes at least 1 good point and probably more than that (especially if you include "bitching leftist" as a description of yours truly) and his/her comments are truly welcome.

However, toward a rational discourse, he/she's gonna have to give up the tired "limbaugh" constructs that have worked so well for 25 years but have now become a bit threadbare:

#1. trotting out Castro/Chavez as the supposed ally of any liberal Democratic critique of their policy failures and...

#2. invoking the "same thing!" device in which they boldly equate two unrelated examples just to pollute the discussion, add to the cognitive dissonance, and make the liberals flee the debate rather than come up with a soundbite that shows the million ways they are wrong/lying.

But like I said, it's worked like magic since the Reagan administration so it's gotta be a tough habit to shake.

But Yanqui Mike don't play dat.

Let's begin, as did Anon, with a comparison of corn to sugar.

Then we might even take swipe at "Some people are never happy, I guess..." as it pertains to a group that for 6 years controlled the White House, the Senate, the House, the Supreme Court and the press ...but still couldn't stop crying "victim!"

Of course, biofuel can be produced from grains other than corn ...I even mentioned soy. The article I referenced concentrated on the effects of this goldrush on the Great Plains/corn belt part of the US.

Sugar is, indeed, probably the crop that is most efficiently converted to alcohol ...that's been known since the great triangle of Sugar/Rum/Slaves of the 18th century. The Brazilians are the champs right now owing not only to their massive production of sugar but also to their emphasis on converting it to biofuel since the 1970's oil shocks. As Argentina presently contains the highest number of natural gas fueled automobiles, Brazil is home to the largest fleet of alcohol fueled vehicles.

Corn has been converted to biofuel in the US for decades as another sop thrown to first small US farmers ...then to the megaagribusinesscongloms that ate so many of those small farmers that the US census stopped counting them.

But converting corn to biofuel has always been just that: a sop. Converting corn to biofuel has always been a joke. Unlike sugar, it takes more than a gallon of petroleum related products to produce a gallon of fuel from corn. US subsidies for the fuel conversion were always just a small part of the tremendous overall corn subsidy that gave yanquis and the world incredibly cheap food ...and kept most other countries out of the corn business thus destroying the competition with US agribusiness.

Traditionally, any oil producing nation or company has leapt in to put a damper on any alternative fuel. I suspect strongly that the Bush family and their close associates in the petroleum sector have not only failed this time to leap into the fray but are now actively supporting this "alternative" fuel because they know that they will actually sell MORE petro-products for every gallon of corn-alcohol produced.

US sugar has already been so heavily subsidized thru price supports that they really can't pump anymore money into it. Chicago was always the penny-candy capitol of the US ...the factories are now almost all closed to production and they import the finished candy from ...anywhere! Anywhere sugar prices are not so heavily supported. Even mighty Coca-Cola allowed a change to their famous secret formula (from sugar to corn syrup). That's why Coke down here tastes to us yanquis like it did when we were kids.

"Now Aericans want to reduce their dependency on oil" ...now? What are you talkin' about "now"? Americans have wanted to do that for more than 30 years. Is the "now" somehow related to almost 4000 American dead in the middle east since the beginning of whatever you prefer to call the current war? The same conflict that is draining the US treasury to the tune of $2 billion per week ...in addition to biofuel subsidies? You guys love having your cake and eating it too.

I've been "bitching", it's true. But I've been bitching about what it's been doing to food. You are paying record prices for food since this bamboozle was inaugurated.

But I suspect that you are a true-believing 29 percenter. You've been feasted on God, guns, and gay-bashing. Finger-lickin' good distractions to those food prices as your jobs and sometimes whole factories were sent overseas, your sons and daughters to war, your treasury into the pockets of profiteers and speculators, your legal protections into the shredder.

Even as your income shrank you were exhorted to spend lest the terrorists win, fattening the credit card companies that eventually took away even your hope of bankruptcy.

There is probably nothing that could convince someone so long-suckered into believing that you made enough money to be a Republican. But I think that there is the creeping realization among the rest of your party that someone has made off with the till and that they will be much poorer than when love was new.

"Some people twist and pervert..." Some people twist and shout. Some people just get left to twist in the wind.