As soon as the really smart people down there in D.C. started hopping on the corn ethanol bandwagon, I knew we were in trouble.
Corn is a basic food and a basic ingredient. Turn over a tin can and you’ll find corn products mentioned on the label. But now that the Congress has blessed the farmers with a new and ignorant profit center based on the utterly inefficient process of turning corn into alcohol, we are all screwed.
Prices on everything are going up. Why? Not enough corn to eat and drive at the same time. People who point to other countries using ethanol always fail to point out that none of them are using a primary food source to provide fuel.
This could have been avoided of course, but the Neanderthals in the Republican Congress decided in 1995 to close the Office of Technology Assessment, which provided Congress with realistic information about this sort of thing. From the Princeton site http://www.wws.princeton.edu/ota/:
The Congressional Office of Technology Assessment closed on September 29, 1995. During its 23-year history, OTA provided Congressional members and committees with objective and authoritative analysis of the complex scientific and technical issues of the late 20th century. It was a leader in practicing and encouraging delivery of public services in innovative and inexpensive ways, including distribution of government documents through electronic publishing.
This corn nonsense would at least have gotten a good factual analysis. Of course I don’t know that it would have mattered to an administration that sees science and facts and evidence and honest analysis as tools of the devil and goes out of its way to sabotage them every chance it gets.
