Emily Schwartz Greco: Trump slurbs up the ethanol scam

As the “lamestream” media, late-night talk show hosts, and Sarah Palin impersonator-in-chief Tina Fey lapped up the former Alaska governor’s first remarks to Donald Trump’s “right-wingin’ bitter-clingin’” supporters, one of her most hilarious lines didn’t get the attention it deserved.

Some Republicans are “even whispering they’re ready to throw in for Hillary over Trump because they can’t afford to see the status quo go,” John McCain’s 2008 running mate said. “Otherwise, they won’t be able to be slurping off the gravy train that’s been feeding them all these years. They don’t want that to end.”

Seriously?

Iowa, home to the first official contests for the major parties’ nominations, is the nation’s . Saluting its corn-flavored gravy train is a rite of passage for presidential candidates courting Iowa voters like the ones at the Ames rally Palin was addressing.

And Trump, like every presidential candidate other than the libertarian-tinged Republicans Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, supports the government-pampered ethanol industry.

On the same day that Palin made her boisterous return to the political spotlight — and just one week before his state’s caucuses — Gov. Terry Branstad proclaimed his opposition to Cruz. “I think it would be very damaging to our state” for Iowa’s other leading GOP contender besides Trump to become president, Branstad told reporters at the Iowa Renewable Fuels Summit.

Trump also addressed the event, hosted by Iowa’s main ethanol trade group in Altoona.

“We are with you, folks, and we’ve been with you since day one,” The Donald said, after assuring the assembled leaders of Big Corn that he would leave the Renewable Fuel Standard intact.

The RFS is a government program that requires gasoline sold in the United States to beblended with ethanol. This mandate theoretically boosts U.S. energy independence, buffers gas prices from spikes, and helps our nation fight climate change.

But growing government-subsidized corn to power transportation makes no environmental sense. It increases the acreage dedicated to a single crop, destroying farmland for a harvest that feeds no one. It does nothing to improve the American diet at a time when millions of us are obese and badly nourished.

Then there’s the crop’s horrible water footprint: It takes 75 gallons of water and 50 acres of land to grow enough corn for a single gallon of ethanol. It takes another three gallons of water to convert that corn into fuel in a factory. And the agribusiness model for corn grown for fuel consumes vast quantities of fertilizers and pesticides, which poison local waterways.

Meeting the challenge of the climate crisis means that Americans must drive less and get more miles per gallon when we hit the road. Burning gasoline blended with 10 percent ethanol, as the mandate currently requires, shaves 3 percent off a vehicle’s fuel efficiency, according to the government’s own data. That wastes oil — as does growing the corn and hauling it to processing plants.

And at current prices for oil and corn, ethanol has become so expensive to produce that the numbers no longer add up, according to professor Scott Irwin and professor emeritus Darrel Good of the University of Illinois Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics.

In other words, if the government stopped forcing industry to purchase the fuel, ethanol demand would evaporate. But since Iowa happens to be one of only seven swing statesthat will probably decide the 2016 presidential election, this gravy train will surely keep chugging along for years to come.

So slurp, baby, slurp.

Emily Schwartz Greco is the managing editor of OtherWords.com, a non-profit national editorial service run by the Institute for Policy Studies, where this piece originated. 

Don Pesci: Senator Murphy for a 'progressive foreign policy'

VERNON, Conn. U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D.-Conn.), who has been in the Senate only a little more than  two years and two weeks, is now “Desperately Seeking A Progressive Foreign Policy,” the title of a column the senator wrote on his new blog. According to Mr. Murphy, the modern progressive movement is still in its swaddling clothes. The new movement was “founded on foreign policy” after Democrats had spent a couple of decades "in the wilderness during the era of the Democratic Leadership Council… in the early days of the Iraq war.” The modern progressive movement, Mr. Murphy writes, sprang from Howard Dean’s presidential bid, in 2004, during which time “progressives mounted their first serious assault in years on the conventional thought hegemony by challenging the neoconservative foreign policy vision. Many of today’s icons of the progressive movement — MoveOn, Democracy for America, Daily Kos — arguably originate from this fight. Today’s progressives were molded in the fire of foreign, not domestic, policy.” The young progressive movement now has become reactive, “absent, from serious, meaningful foreign policy debates.” Progressives have been unwilling to engage in such debates in part because there has been for the last few years a Democrat in the White House. Mr. Murphy does not point out in his maiden progressive articulation that President Barack Obama is possibly the most progressive chief executive since Woodrow Wilson left the White House, in 1921. Progressives have understandably deferred to the commander in chief “when it comes to articulating views on international events.” Mr. Murphy rejects neo-conservativism robustly as “a non-starter” a “philosophy of knee jerk military intervention” and “the original motivating force behind the modern progressive voice.” Isolationism is likewise repugnant “as most progressives believe in America playing a positive role in the world. We simply believe that we should lean into the world with something other than the pointed edge of a sword.” Mr. Obama struck a responsive chord in his May 2014 West Point speech, “where he prioritized the use of our military for counterterrorism efforts and emphasized the need to strengthen rule of law and human rights in developing nations.” However, “we break with him on rather substantial questions like domestic surveillance, drone attacks, and most recently, military intervention in Syria.” From the battlements, Mr. Murphy shouts out orders to his progressive troops: “It’s time for progressives to outline a coherent, proactive foreign policy vision, (italics original).” The organizing principles of Mr. Murphy’s progressive vision, he writes, would involve: a) “A substantial transfer of financial resources from the military budget to buttress diplomacy and foreign aid so that our global anti-poverty budget, not our military budget, equals that of the other world powers combined,” b) “A new humility to our foreign policy, with less emphasis on short- term influencers like military intervention and aid [which Mr. Murphy highly recommended in a)] and more effort spent trying to address the root causes of conflict,” c) “An end to unchecked mass surveillance programs, at home and abroad, as part of a new recognition that we are safer as a nation when we aren’t so easily labeled as hypocrites for preaching and practicing vastly differently on human and civil rights,” and d) “a categorical rejection of torture, under any circumstances.” A rapid implementation of Mr. Murphy’s principled vision is necessary because “We are entering well into the fourth month of unauthorized U.S. military actions in Iraq and Syria amidst calls from the new Republican Senate majority to send ground troops back to the Middle East” and “fragile negotiations to end Iran’s nuclear weapons” program are under threat “from good-intentioned but misguided efforts to pass new sanctions legislation against ISIS.'' A recent request to  Congress from Mr. Obama for additional presidential authority to prosecute a war against ISIS, a terrorist group that beheads American journalists, murders American aid workers and crucifies Christians, would seem to violate Murphy principle a), since both the congressional authority and the funds necessary to prosecute a war against ISIS for at least three years certainly would not involve a “transfer of financial resources from the military budget to buttress diplomacy.” It would also violate Murphy principle b), which calls for a new humility that emphasizes a greater “effort spent trying to address the root causes of conflict” rather than investing time and money on “on short- term influencers like military intervention and aid.” Still we are left with the two remaining principles of Mr. Murphy’s progressive vision as yet unassaulted by the progressive Mr. Obama or non-progressives in Congress. Rand Paul, an arch libertarian, has come out strongly against snoops hiding in the telephone receivers of average Americans, and Mr. Obama has long favored assassination, death by drone, to torture. It turns out that the progressive principles enunciated by Mr. Murphy in his progressive blog are not all that cutting edge. Progressives within the Democratic Party may want to start looking for a new John the Baptist. Don Pesci (donpesci@att.net) is a writer who lives in Vernon

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Don Pesci: Nader's nattering in Conn.

  VERNON, Conn.

Ralph Nader once again is prowling the countryside saying things that are not so much wrong as passé. He does this because he himself is passé. Consumer advocacy, Mr. Nader’s specialty, reigns supreme everywhere in Connecticut, which only a short while ago sent to Congress the nation’s first consumer-protection senator, Dick Blumenthal, a little stiffer than Mr. Nader, but made from the same ideological cloth.

Not having kept up with the times, Mr. Nader seems to be laboring under the illusion that both major political parties in the United States “continually reject even considering cracking down on corporate crimes, crony capitalism or corporate welfare.”

Not at all true. In fact, the fight against crony capitalism may play a significant part in the Connecticut gubernatorial race this year.  Guess which one of the parties has rejected crony capitalism? Hint: It isn’t the party of Jefferson, Jackson and  the Nutmeg State's late and iconic Democratic boss, John Bailey. Is it not curious that the sharp-sighted Mr. Nader could have failed to notice that real capitalists have an aversion to fake capitalists?

In a column that appeared in The Hartford Courant, Mr. Nader, who appears to be supporting Jonathan Pelto for governor this year, asks rhetorically, “What if they [both major political parties] reject a proven, superior way to educate children? What if they refuse to consider an end to unconstitutional wars or to a grotesquely twisted tax system favoring the rich and powerful — to name a few of the major agenda items not even on the table for discussion by the two parties?”

Apparently, Mr. Nader’s “superior way to educate children” is the same as Mr. Pelto’s superior way to educate children -- which, for reasons not mysterious, is the same as the education lobby’s superior way to educate children. This method involves unlinking education outcomes and salaries, the rejection of testing to measure educational outcomes, and supporting without question or hesitation extravagant union demands, however much they strain taxpayers' ability to pay.

It may surprise Mr. Nader, but Steve Forbes -- to be sure, a successful businessman (via  his family's Forbes Magazine) and therefore suspect -- long ago supported a flat tax that even redundantly wealthy progressive tax supporters such as Warren Buffett would pay. Other Republicans favor a fair tax. The idle rich love progressive taxation because they alone are able to afford pricey tax lawyers to exploit a tax code awash in exceptions, which is why, come to think of it, Mr. Buffett’s  effective tax rate is less than that of his secretary.

Republican libertarian heartthrob Rand Paul, who most recently has called for demilitarizing the police -- police, mind you -- is the opposite of a warmonger, and the U.S.  Constitution has played a major role in Tea Party gatherings. One gasps at the thought that in some important respects Mr. Nader may be at heart a closet Randian Republican.

Mr. Nader’s fire in his column is pointed in two directions: at the Journal Inquirer newspaper,  of Manchester, which from time to time has spanked his backside, and at the notion that spoilers are spoilers.

Jon Pelto, for most of his life a Democrat, has entered this year’s gubernatorial contest as an Independent. Some reporters and commentators have noted that Mr. Pelto might well end up “spoiling” the campaign of Gov. Dannel Malloy, who prevailed over his Republican challenger, Tom Foley, in his first gubernatorial campaign by an uncomfortable razor-thin margin.

  In preference polls, Mr. Malloy noted recently, the needle hasn’t moved a jot since the first Malloy-Foley gubernatorial campaign. Mr. Foley once again is challenging the sitting  progressive Democratic governor and, marvel of marvels, the notion has been bruited about that Mr. Pelto’s Independent campaign might “spoil” Mr. Malloy’s progressive re-run against Mr. Foley – meaning that Mr. Pelto may draw a sufficient number of votes from Mr. Malloy so as to cause him to lose his gubernatorial election bid. A similar brief has been filed against Joe Visconti, once a Republican and now an Independent who is challenging Republican Party hegemony on the right.  Among some eccentrics on the left, the irascible Mr. Nader in particular, it has now become inadvisable to state the bald truth – which is this:

Jon Pelto’s presence in the gubernatorial race is designed to move Mr. Malloy further left, while Mr. Visconti’s presence in the gubernatorial race is designed to move Mr. Foley further right. Neither of them have a snowball’s chance in Hell of becoming governor. If either of them were successful in actually winning the gubernatorial contest, the victor will have been a successful spoiler.

The chief defect in Mr. Nader’s complex character is that he does not know when to stop protesting; this is the disabling defect of the entire Western World since the beginning of the Protestant Revolution, which helped lead to the Enlightenment. The protesters do not know when they have won; they continue protesting until all their gains have been lost.

Mr. Nader lives in Connecticut, the most progressive state in what used to be called, before the near total victory of the administrative state, the American Republic. He has won. He should go home, pop a beer, watch a ball game, and celebrate the destruction of the Republican Party in Connecticut.

Don Pesci (donpesci@att.net) is a  political columnist who lives in Vernon, Conn.