Putting the bacon in your gas tank

Except for a panicky spike to nearly eight bucks a bushel in 2008, , the price of corn is at an historic high,  about $5.50, so Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack  has decided this is a good time to jack it up a little more.  He will  use your money to buy the oil industry 10,000 new fuel pumps.  Yes, to blend in more alcohol and biodiesel to burn up in our engines. Save the world. Burn food.

“I believe the state of the rural economy and President [Barack] Obama’s vision for rural America compels us to action now."


Let it pass that President Obama's real vision for rural America is a lopsided vote for his party in ten days, probably combined with a federal feasibility study on raising unicorns. Never mind that, at $5.50 a bushel,  the affected members of the rural economy are doing just fine, thank you,

Here in the Midwest we have a multi-year history of watching ethanol plants,  built with huge federal and state subsidies,  prosper and crash  in concert with the level of those subsidies.

Look, ethanol is a marginally acceptable fuel. Mixed with gasoline it will make your car or lawnmower go -- with less power, badly reduced mileage, and a more-than-negligible danger of reduced engine life. It is not cheaper than gasoline.

Anyone can foresee a time when biofuel might become necessary, and when that happens the market will tell us. It will be in demand  without the corrupt price fixing  which so attracts the farm conglomerates and Secretary Vilsack, former  mayor of Mount Pleasant where, as previously reported, he  often raised a mighty fine tomato plant on his pack porch. That's how come he knows so much about agribusiness.