Earlier in response to Tim Pawlenty's call to end Ethanol subsidies, Russ made the case why repealing them would either not be that big of a deal or possibly even bad policy. (Just to clarify...Russ writes in an addendum below his post wasn't a direct response to the Pawlenty announcement post but a clarification to the earlier post on Pawlenty's USA Today Op-ed)

Let me say upfront: Russ lives this stuff, I like corn on the cob.

With that said, I will appeal to the authority of the Heritage Foundation.

Ethanol. Henry Ford called it the “fuel of the future” in the 1920s. Decades later, policymakers put laws in place to increase the amount of ethanol in our fuel supply. Environmentalists and the Midwest sold it as a way to decrease American dependence on foreign oil and a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But it’s accomplished neither and instead become an industry reliant on subsidies, mandates and protectionism. Washington needs to reverse these policies and Senator Coburn’s (R-OK) amendment to repeal the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC) is a good first step.

The VEETC is a 45-cent blender’s credit that doles out $5-6 billion a year for petroleum refiners to blend ethanol into gasoline. Although some claim this is another handout for oil companies, the credit will be passed up the line to the ethanol producers and corn growers, or as the Wall Street Journal says, ethanol producers “can charge some 45 cents a gallon more than the market would otherwise bear.”

...Although it may be a catchy sound bite, America is not addicted to oil. As the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Marlo Lewis says, “consumers will stop buying gasoline the moment a superior product comes along.” Ethanol and other biofuels may eventually be that superior product. Electric vehicles could as well. But it’s not the role for the government to force these sources of fuel and technologies into the marketplace.

In a free market, fuel producers and users should be allowed to make their own fuel decisions without federal bureaucrats and powerful special interests deciding that for them.

There's more at the link.

Now, this isn't going to solve the deficit or debt problems and I'd really like to see a candidate take on the Ethanol mandate in gas and farm subsidies in general. So you can say this is weak sauce but...at this point it's the strongest one on offer.

Beyond what it does for Pawlenty's own political calculations and positioning is forces every other Republican running to take a stand. Either they will be with the special interest in Iowa or Republican and general election voters.

The structure of government subsidies, market distortions and the picking of winners and losers wasn't created overnight, nor will it be undone overnight. The first step is challenging the assumption that these things always grow and expand.

If we can't get rid of something as simple and demonstrably counterproductive as Ethanol subsidies (and just because a theoretical President Pawlenty would support that doesn't mean Congress would even pass it), what can we get rid of?

What this hopefully leads to is a bidding war between candidates to see who can promise to slay more sacred cows than their competitors. It's about trying to change the political culture and assumptions about the role of government. So much dogma around policy favors Democrats and liberals: expanding government is seen as normal and natural while cutting spending and reducing the reach of government is extreme and cruel.

Pawlenty has made an opening offer, it's a good start but we should be forcing him and the other candidates to up the ante.

As always, keeping them to their promises once they are elected is essential but until we get some folks elected who at least make the right promises, we'll never get anything done.

UPDATE (Russ): Thanks for the kind words, Drew. In response to your information from the Heritage Foundation, I just have one question for you. Are ethanol prices in your area less than straight gas? more...

Posted by: DrewM at 03:56 PM | Comments (101)
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Here you go. I've got nothing to say, but I would like to see less of the Sarah 4 Ever crew spreading disinformation in every other thread.

Remember, it's just so awful how other Republicans treat Palin. It's just awful, the things they say. The lies, the half-truths, the use of foul language like the c-word.

The made-up stories, the errant "facts," the myths, the slanders.

The caricatures, the disrespect, the cheap dismissals, the superior tone, the constant attacks, the unrelenting unfairness.

The reliance on heavily edited MSM reports by wily reporters looking to do a hit.

Just awful. Awful! Why, I've never seen another candidate treated so! Except for... every other candidate, by the people decrying such treatment of Palin.

Have a ball. Promote her non-candidacy here. Let's just do the full oppo dump here.

Latest FB Entry: It's about Israel.

Posted by: Ace at 03:00 PM | Comments (599)
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Joking around, he also said no one was more Irish than he.

And then he made trouble for the British again.

Meanwhile, Obama's appointed some kind of new internet tough-guy to patrol online media for negative stories and knock them down.

I don't think he's actually "Terminating" stories -- or else I'm getting a ticket to the impeachment before they run out -- but he does include a picture of the Terminator in his tweet about this to let you know he's going to be aggressive.

Thanks to gg.

Posted by: Ace at 02:43 PM | Comments (122)
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David Freddoso reports that the Fourth Circuit, which is considering the Virginia ObamaCare lawsuit, has ordered supplemental briefing in the case on an issue mostly ignored because it is so farfetched.

This afternoon, the Fourth Circuit panel considering the Commonwealth of Virginia's challenge to Obamacare has asked for supplemental briefs from all parties related to the arguments about the federal government's constitutional powers of taxation. This may mean that the court is setting itself up to rule that the penalty for not purchasing insurance under Obamacare is, in fact, a tax and not a penalty at all, and that therefore the court lacks jurisdiction to hear the case.

Most of the discussion of the individual mandate has focused on the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause. One of the defenses that the Obama Administration has raised is that it is a tax, even though Obama explicitly stated in no uncertain terms during the run-up to the vote on the bill that it was not a tax and the language of the statute does not use the word tax. If it is then under the Tax Anti-Injunction Act courts would not have jurisdiction over the ObamaCare lawsuits until taxpayers pay in full before challenging the legality of any tax.

No court, including the courts that ultimately upheld the individual mandate under the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause have held that the individual mandate is a constitutional exercise of the Tax and Spend Clause. This is because, among other problems, it would be an unconstitutional capitation tax.

Freddoso thinks that this is bad news:

This completely unexpected development strongly increases the odds that the separate Florida lawsuit against Obamacare will be the decisive one that eventually reaches the Supreme Court. As the Examiner reported two weeks ago, the three judges on the Fourth Circuit panel are all Democrat appointees, including two Obama appointees.

Well, he's right that the "Florida" suit will probably be the decisive one (more on that below), but not because these Democratic appointees have decided to muck about with a bad tax argument. In fact, I think this is good news. If the judges are taking a swing at the dubious tax argument, then they're probably having a hard time with the Commerce Clause and Necessary and Proper arguments. It is possible one or more of the judges has decided that untrammeled federal power to intrude into private economic decisions is a bridge too far. They may be hoping to dispose of the sticky Commerce Clause problem by finding authority for the mandate in the Tax Clause. A decision on tax grounds is a decision that we will win in the Supreme Court.

As far as the Florida lawsuit, which is actually a multi-state lawsuit against ObamaCare, being the important one, I've written before that it is the lawsuit to keep an eye on. Unlike the headlines-grabbing (and politically ambitious) Virginia AG, who jumped as fast as he could to be first in line with these lawsuits and managed only to challenge the individual mandate, the multi-state suit challenged multiple sections of ObamaCare on several different grounds and with several different types of plaintiffs, therefore giving the appellate courts and (eventually) the Supreme Court more options to find it unconstitutional. Moreover, it is procedurally the better case since, of course, it actually won below on the severability argument.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:13 PM | Comments (39)
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Aw, it's so cute. What is it? A boy or girl?

The parents aren't saying. Because...

“If you really want to get to know someone, you don’t ask what’s between their legs,” says Stocker.

When Storm was born, the couple sent an email to friends and family: “We've decided not to share Storm's sex for now — a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm's lifetime (a more progressive place? ...).”

The parents have done this gender-suppression mad scientist experiment on their other children, you'll be happy to know, and those older boys are apparently... girls.

“As a result, Jazz and now Kio are almost exclusively assumed to be girls,” says Stocker, adding he and Witterick don’t out them. It’s the boys’ choice whether they want to offer a correction.

Ah, well that's just peaches.

So, Jazz, Kio, and Storm have been not only de-gendered but re-gendered to be girls, psychologically, and the parents will pay to make it official and hack their genitals later, as, I guess, a sweet 16 gift.

A lifetime of outpatient treatment and confinement in mental institutions -- that's "a more progressive place?..."

Read Jawa, who has the important stuff, or wade through the long article.

One thing: I never heard of "parentcentral.ca." Who knows, it could be fake. You may have heard about the Sun (UK) controversy, where they posted a story about a woman giving Botox injections to her 8-year-old daughter, and now that mom says she was paid to lie, and the Sun says that is a lie, and then I got bored.

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, and you don't need to be a psychic to realize their "boys" or whatever are going to suffer at least a 33% suicide rate.

And then, dead, they'll go to a more progressive place. Or something. At least they'll escape the mad scientist gender-confusion suicide-factory their parents have constructed for them.

Thanks to momma. more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:59 PM | Comments (143)
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Lot of deadly weather lately.

The images today are shocking after a mile-wide tornado ripped a six-mile path through the once-bustling town of Joplin, Mo., leaving 90 dead and many more missing.

According to meteorologists, it's the deadliest single tornado to strike the country in 60 years. Red Cross representatives say that 75% of the town is gone (via Daily Mail).

From from Oklahoma to Wisconsin, the Joplin twister was one of 68 reported tornadoes across seven Midwest states over the weekend, according to the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center.

Awful. Meanwhile, they're rebuilding in Alabama after last month's killer twisters. And offering prayers for the Midwesterners just stricken.

Willie Walker is still trying to put a new roof on his house because of the wave of tornadoes that killed more than 230 people across Alabama last month, but he took time Monday to do what he could for victims of twisters that killed scores in the Midwest.

“We’re praying for those people,” said Walker, a retired Marine, as workers stripped the remaining tar paper off his roof before a new layer went on. “We know what they’re going through because we’ve been there already.”

Meanwhile, via Jezebel, a cute little happy accident during an interview with one of the survivors of the Alabama storms.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:41 PM | Comments (57)
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Damnit, that's before Captain America and Fright Night come out.

Ahmadinejad's "team" has done the calculations, and the 12th Imam drops, as the kids say, June 5.

Based on a report from Iran’s Ayandeh, one of the officials within “The Deviant Movement” has informed his confidants that certain sources close to the “Mahdi’s Emergence Movement” have stated that an important event will soon change the course of operations to Ahmadinejad’s favor. According to interpretations offered by Ahmadinejad’s team, a high-ranking member of the Islamic Republic will meet with a climactic incident. This in turn will build up to the announcement of the “covert emergence” of the Twelfth Imam (or Mahdi) in Medina, Saudi Arabia.

Hardliners critical of Ahmadinejad maintain that his team believes a covert emergence will commence on the 14th of Khordaad (June 5) in Medina, setting the stage for the announcement of the actual emergence in the next few years.

Now, here is the thing that makes this really cool. As you know, Ahmadinejad and his fellow maniacs have been accused by less-florid maniacs of sorcery. Conjuring genies. Yes, this is Iranian politics.

"I am not a sorcerer... or am I, bitch?!"

The emergence of the Mahdi, who by the way is an imaginary being like Frosty the Snowman, is of great consequence to Iran's politics, because... oh, man, is this great.

The Deviant Movement states that: “At the time of the covert emergence, his regent (i.e., the supreme leader) will be deposed from his position.”

You see, now that the Mahdi (who, like Scooby-Doo, is not real) is back in da house, that means Ahmadinejad no longer has to listen to supreme leader Khameini, and in fact may depose him.

Read it. Good stuff.

In Iran, an imaginary being with 40 hit dice and a +6 mace of disruption is about to appear in the nation's all-government LARP, and see, they think this is real.

The maniacs we want to win are slightly less crazy than the maniacs we want to lose because the maniacs we want to win are at least not so maniacal to be trying to roll natural 20's on their coup d'etats melee rolls.

But What If He's Real? Chuckit asks a question, that I first thought was a joke:

"How do you know he's not real?"

Ah-ha. Now I get it. What if Ahmadinejad has a cleric picked out, who looks the part, and is in league with him, who will declare himself, and be certified as such, as the 12th Imam?

Hm. Good question! I was thinking something like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, but what if he's just a dude elevated to the exalted position of Supreme Warlock Assassin?

Well... either way, it will be trouble. Trouble, hopefully, just in Iran, but who knows what happens when maniacs rally around a supposed deity.

Below, a dramatic pre-enactment of the coming turmoil in Iran.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:29 PM | Comments (296)
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Pawlenty is a phony. I dont believe a word he says. He is exactly the kind of guy who would say a bunch of bold stuff and then once elected, back off it all and do nothing. Be warned. The guy isnt a conservative, no matter what he says....cap and trade? No serious conservative thinker would ever give a seconds thought to that scam and we know Pawlenty backed it at one point. Dont like him....dont trust him....his words wont change that.

So your theory is that T-Paw is making the difficult, vote-losing, support-losing, caucus-losing statement up front, but he's lying, he actually intends to keep the ethanol gravy train rolling, but instead of saying that (which could win him Iowa), he actually writes off a state and gives up support from that state...

...so that he can then, later, when he owes nothing to Iowa farmers (because they voted against him), give them everything they wanted from him in the first place?

This passes as a sound theory now?

Yes, two people wrote this. At least two I saw.

If it had just been one, I would have skipped it.

Two.

Two people figure that Pawlenty is probably planning on bribing Iowans to vote for him, except later, after they have voted against him already and his bribe is therefore pointless.

I kinda get the feeling some people aren't really analyzing this rationally and with an open mind.

Posted by: Ace at 12:10 PM | Comments (203)
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I'm f'n' awesome at headlines. I should just do headlines. Enough with this "writing" horseshit.

Anyway, DNA was found on her dress.

This isn't exactly news because Geraldo Rivera reported the prosecutors' case is overwhelming and incontrovertible, at least as regards sexual contact. The only possible defense is consent.

Geraldo went further. With actual sex rejected, Strauss-Kahn went for sodomy. Both kinds -- Country and Western. (This is Blues Brothers reference, not a joke about the Heartland.)

It's good to be the king. (R-Rated Mel Brooks Off-Color Comedy There.)

Now, if you can at all follow this logic, please do explain it to me in the comments.

But Bill Maher thinks that the Strauss-Kahn archsocialist-forcible-sodomy-on-the-world's-taxpayers'-dime should teach "Teabaggers" some lessons about socialism, and, I shit you not, that lesson is that... socialism is good.

His point seems to be that the $3000 a night hotels and sodomy-rape of chambermaids proves to us teabaggers that socialism is all about "profit" (both pecuniary and in non-pecuniary License to Rape form, I suppose), which we should appreciate.

That's right, Teabaggers, this is a teachable moment for you. The fact that this guy was living like a king, and raping like a king, on the taxpayers' dime is proof that socialism is not scary, and yes, that s what he says.

Do you get that? I don't. I assume this insight comes from a place of cocaine abuse brain damage.

More: Wanted to link this yesterday. This NYP report on Strauss-Kahn's post-forcible-sodomy behavior is hilarious slash horrifying.

What he does is horrifying; how they report it is hilarious.

The guy walked out of one forcible sodomy and immediately began molesting women on the airplane he got on.

I gotta tell ya, all of a sudden Bill Maher is making an awful lot of sense to me.

Posted by: Ace at 11:27 AM | Comments (283)
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I probably should have just created an addendum to Drew's earlier post on Pawlenty/Palin; however, after a couple of readers in St. Louis told me this weekend "You need to post more", I decided to create a stand-alone thread. Lesson: Be careful what you ask for.

Anyway, on the "ethanol subsidies" that everyone keeps talking about. What they are is a blender's tax credit, not a subsidy. With the ethanol tax credits, the government foregoes collecting road use taxes on that fuel. Here in Iowa, the State/Federal fuel taxes are approximately $0.60 a gallon, which is why E10 (blended fuel with 10% ethanol & 90% gasoline) is typically $0.06 less than straight gas here in Iowa. Instead of taking money out of the federal/state treasury (subsidy), the industry is incentivized by the federal/state treasury foregoing collecting some taxes.

Is it still a "subsidy"? Well, if you want to say that a case where the government says you can keep a little more of your own freakin' money is a subsidy, then yeah, I guess it is........but you might want to rethink that position due to The Law of Unintended Consequences.

In fact, I think you can make a case that the use of ethanol actually SAVES the government money in direct crop payments. Under the Farm Bill, counter-cyclical payments are made to farmers when grain prices fail to meet a minimum level. The increased demand for corn due to ethanol fuel has helped increase prices to a point where almost NONE of the corn farmers are receiving payments for selling their prices below the federal minimum levels.

And for everyone saying that "Ethanol causes grocery prices to go up": Ninja please. The old "rule of thumb" used to be that the cost of the corn needed to produce a box of corn flakes added up to SEVEN CENTS per box. That rule dates from back when corn prices bounced around between $2.50 and $3.50 a bushel (approximately 56 pounds per bushel of dried corn), so increasing the price of corn to between $5 and $7 a bushel would cost consumers an additional seven cents per box of cornflakes.

Do you hear anyone complaining about groceries going up by less than 3%? Nope, me neither. Farmers and "Big Ethanol" are a convenient scapegoat for higher transportation costs, labor costs & packaging costs in the wholesale & retail food industry.

Posted by: Russ from Winterset at 10:53 AM | Comments (253)
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