{"id":184858,"date":"2012-01-02T20:58:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-03T01:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/01\/02\/well-knock-me-over-with-a-mackerel\/"},"modified":"2012-01-02T20:58:00","modified_gmt":"2012-01-03T01:58:00","slug":"well-knock-me-over-with-a-mackerel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/01\/02\/well-knock-me-over-with-a-mackerel\/","title":{"rendered":"Well, Knock Me Over With a Mackerel!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Congress has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailytech.com\/Federal+Govt+Finally+Kills+6B+USD+Corn+Ethanol+Subsidy\/article23593.htm\">ended both the subsidy on corn ethanol and the tariff on imported Brazilian sugar based ethanol<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: blue;\"><p>Tom Buis, CEO of Growth Energy, an ethanol trade group, clearly wasn&#8217;t thrilled with the decision, but in an interview earlier this month he claimed the ethanol industry would survive without government handouts stating, &#8220;The blenders&#8217; tax credit initially helped the ethanol industry develop. But today, we don&#8217;t have a production problem, we have a market access problem.  Without the tax credit, the ethanol industry will survive; it will continue to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, create jobs and strengthen our economy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>By some estimates the total gifts to corn ethanol business totalled $45B USD since 1980.<\/p>\n<p>The subsidy cut &#8212; approved by a 73-27 Senate vote in June &#8212; also is accompanied by the end of a tariff on the importation of Brazilian ethanol.  Brazil has an excess of sugarcane ethanol, but the U.S. government had previously penalized this fuel stream as a means of allowing U.S. ethanol producers to escape competing on the free market.<\/p>\n<p>The ethanol debate has divided both political parties and even set federal representatives within certain corn-producing states against each other.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I wonder if this says something about the increasing irrelevance of Iowa caucuses this year.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m pleasantly surprised by this development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Congress has ended both the subsidy on corn ethanol and the tariff on imported Brazilian sugar based ethanol: Tom Buis, CEO of Growth Energy, an ethanol trade group, clearly wasn&#8217;t thrilled with the decision, but in an interview earlier this month he claimed the ethanol industry would survive without government handouts stating, &#8220;The blenders&#8217; tax &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1029,998,1135,1020,983],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","category-congress","category-energy","category-legislation","category-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184858"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184858\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}