Understanding Government

So reports Eartha Jane Melzer of the Michigan Messenger: There is bipartisan support in Congress to cut down on ethanol subsidies.  Some Republican candidates for president, including erstwhile Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, also support a subsidy rollback. This seems particularly notable because the whole ethanol-aura is that any presidential candidate running in the Iowa caucus dare not speak ill of the subsidies.

As Melzer notes, corn-based ethanol depletes the U.S. corn supply and drives up international food prices. More than that, though, despite all Barack Obama’s talk of “winning the future” through renewable energy, no renewable energy product gets more federal subsidies than environmentally dubious ethanol.

Ezra Klein of the Washington Post interviewed secretary of agriculture and former Iowa governor, Tom Vilsack and asked why the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture so generously funds rural America through programs like ethanol and farm commodity subsidies. Vilsack responded that rural Americans are cool. “There is a value system to support,” he said. “These are good, hardworking people who feel underappreciated.” The comments highlight the Obama administration’s irrational preference for rural communities over urban ones, which of course has big implications for states like Iowa and other midwestern agriculture centers.

To Vilsack’s credit, he get into some specifics and even argues that corn and ethanol subsidies “need to be phased out.”  But the money is still flowing right now. (more…)

Writing at the Washington Monthly, Heather Rogers has an authoritative takedown of biofuel energy, i.e. ethanol and biodiesel, and the federal government’s continued subsidies to the Iowa-based biofuel industry. Rogers even finds Iowa farmers who share the view that biofuels are environmentally and economically unsustainable. “Growing crops for biofuels damages their soil,” she writes of these farmers, “and keeps them at the mercy of predatory multinational corporations.”

One quibble with the piece, though, is that Rogers glosses over possible changes being made by the Obama administration. (more…)

Illinois so far has sidestepped major problems with the national outbreak of salmonella-tainted eggs that were made in Iowa.  The Washington Post’s David Brown reports that salmonella-tainted eggs produced by Wright County Egg in Galt, Iowa have sickened 1,200 people nationwide. The company has initiated a recall of 380 million eggs, but the worst could be still to come: (more…)