February 27th, 2008 Posted in News | 1 Comment »
Senator McCain’s recent statement that it cost the United States 400 billion dollars to import oil “last year”, seems a well rounded number given the barrels of oil imported and the 2007 price of oil, so we will use that as a starting point. It would therefore seem expedient to use a relatively small portion of that figure to retain the rest here in the United States if such an expenditure looks promising It has consistently, for many years, been the stated goal of the United States to reduce or eliminate its dependence on foreign oil, therefore, if any alternative energy source seems capable of achieving that goal, it should be pursued with the utmost vigor. We have here in the United States the only method known to man which can take any non-nuclear material containing carbon, and using this process, deliver a diesel quality fuel oil in two short hours! Despite the promise inherent in this system to not only alleviate our dependence on foreign oil, but to do so while contributing to a major degree in cleaning the environment, it borders on culpable negligence to be aware of this systems existence and do nothing. This administration has been repeatedly informed of this systems existence and the potential it contains to reduce or eliminate the nation’s dependence on foreign oil, and has repeatedly ignored it in favor of a system, ethanol, which does little or nothing to reduce our oil imports, and is in fact counterproductive to its stated goals, and yet, costs the taxpayers billions of dollars a year in support. Any good businessman would jump at the chance to invest a relatively modest sum if he could achieve a return of several thousand percent. The United States is in that enviable position! Why do we not exploit this opportunity? For the purposes of this presentation let us recall that this, and previous administrations have repeatedly stated their desire to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Their actions belie their words! Each administration since Nixon has paid its obeisance to Archer Daniels Midland, (ADM) the agribusiness conglomerate, by promoting two products which are effectively controlled by ADM. Those products are sucrose and ethanol from which ADM has reaped billions in profits taken out of the taxpayer’ pockets, with the blissful co-operation of the Congressmen and Senators from the Midwest farm belt. This story reads like a spy thriller and is much too lengthy for presentation here. I refer you to a Cato Institute study entitled “Archer Daniels Midland: A Case in Corporate Welfare” If your reading of this doesn’t make you feel like the character in the movie “ Network” who leans out the window and shouts for all the world to hear, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” then you should meekly submit to the government fleeing. The Executive Summary of the article reads as follows; “Executive SummaryThe Archer Daniels Midland Corporation (ADM) has been the most prominent recipient of corporate welfare in recent U.S. history. ADM and its chairman Dwayne Andreas have lavishly fertilized both political parties with millions of dollars in handouts and in return have reaped billion-dollar windfalls from taxpayers and consumers. Thanks to federal protection of the domestic sugar industry, ethanol subsidies, subsidized grain exports, and various other programs, ADM has cost the American economy billions of dollars since 1980 and has indirectly cost Americans tens of billions of dollars in higher prices and higher taxes over that same period. At least 43 percent of ADM’s annual profits are from products heavily subsidized or protected by the American government. Moreover, every $1 of profits earned by ADM’s corn sweetener operation costs consumers $10, and every $1 of profits earned by its ethanol operation costs taxpayers $30.”
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