Everybody taunted ethanol as a racing fuel when it isn't. The racing fuel is methanol, which is much more powerful than ethanol, and the only reason that it is used is that it runs cooler than gasoline.

Solution-get rid of all the subsidies. Get the government out of the energy market. Those organization that oppose power production by the most efficient means should have their power cut off -mandatory requirement.

Ultimate aim of all the extreme environmentalists is a socialist state. They despise Americans with a population of just 5% of the world population productively employ 20% of world's resources to produce nearly 40% of the world GDP! Obama himself had stated it during the election campaign. They want to see the standard of living go down in this country.

Let us call a spade a spade- perhaps not politically correct!

How so?

Understandably, once again the majority of voters weren't presented with and/or didn't perceive enough of a difference between candidates (which, once again, consisted of raving Leftist/Socialist Big Government Democrats and fraternizing Republicans), and thus the minority of voters did the "electing", complete with practically blatant, albeit denied, voter fraud (ACORN, etc.).

So now the Leftist/Socialist minority gets to rule by even more of a Leftist/Socialist/Big Government majority through both Congress and the White House; now that "majority" gets to lead further into Socialist oblivion, like "Pied Pipers" with "government bail-out" among their favorite tunes, and, unfortunately, they're succeeding all too far in getting away with it through media panic-mongering and legislative "majority rule".

Indeed, unfortunately the Leftist/Socialist/Big Government types, and their willing accomplices in the media, are already succeeding with their "government bail-out" siren song, starting with panic-mongering for government control of the financial industry, and now that that "genie" is "out of the bottle", well, it's like the saying goes: "Once such a genie is out of the bottle, it's practically impossible to get it back in!"

So, now that the Leftist/Socialist/Big Government "genie" is "out of the bottle", don't be surprised at the probability that the financial sector most probably won't be the only things they take over next through so-called "government bail-out".

http://www.kansascity.com/105/story/937292.html

http://happyarabnews.blogspot.com/2008/12/smashin…

Ethanol being more expensive than regular gasoline is not a disadvantage when it's mixed in mandatory blends. What should go is the subsidy. But the extra cost of ethanol should be allowed to make the overall blend more expensive to curb the demand for autofuel acting as a variety of carbon tax. In fact, ethanol is not that expensive relative to gasoline. Brazilian ethanol is competitive at $40-50 per barrel and some countries in Latin America can produce even cheaper ethanol.

The claim that ethanol is competing with food is a bogus claim invented by NGOs as I explained in one of my posts. If you are interested – http://happyarabnews.blogspot.com/2008/12/smashin…. To put it short, the third world is not interested in low prices for agricultural produce and the global talks have been blocked for years because of the Western farm subsidies. During the last rounds India and Brazil repeatedly walked away after their demands for the West to stop dumping subsidized agricultural produce on global markets were rejected.

There may be some truth in the claim that the regulators were raising the mandatory blend too fast and so created a short term explosion of prices of wheat and corn (never mind the prices have already crashed). But fundamentally, it's impossible that there is such a thing as ethanol vs food competition, when the US and Europe are paying billions of dollars to either destroy agricultural surpluses or dump them onto the global markets. The third world is protesting non stop against the subsidized exports from the first world. In many countries whole sectors of agriculture were destroyed by exports from the first world. Under present conditions ethanol is the only solution to this mess and the regulators should immediately start phasing out all all agricultural subsidies while moving land and farmers to biofuels.

Finally ethanol is an intermediary solution. The biofuels market will look very differently in 2-3 years as the market keep maturing. It may look like this: http://www.kansascity.com/105/story/937292.html. But to keep it maturing, such a market should simply exist.

And to cap it all, I would like to say this. Unsubsidized ethanol is a pure blessing for the US economy as it will both keep the demand for autofuel at bay and replace a large part of gasoline in it. It will attract investors who will pump billions in both improving the technology and research for second and third generation biofuels. What messes the market is the subsidy. That's why the mandatory blend should be expanded through biofuels taxes that will target blenders who fail to mix ethanol in the proportion established by RFS. Without the subsidy ethanol is perfect.