Sunday, March 24, 2013

Cornered

I wish that somebody would do an investigation on Senators Grassley and Harkin and maybe try and figure out if either of these two dudes has any Archer Daniels Midland stock in their portfolios (I know that they've both gotten campaign contributions from them). ADM was probably the biggest beneficiary of the federal government's ethanol policy (this, in that they were one of the major processors of corn ethanol) and, while I'm sure that pimping for votes (both of these Senators shamelessly and moronically pandered to the ethanol lobby FOR DECADES) was itself a huge motivator, I really think that the tax-payers need to get the facts here...especially as it pertains to the damned money trail. Anybody out there want to tackle this one?

4 comments:

dmarks said...

I'd be curious on your take on the civil liberties related discussion at Leticia's blog:

http://leticiasworld.blogspot.com/2013/03/federal-government-preparing-for-war.html

As in, what does the small-L libertarian in you think of turning Federal agencies into paramilitaries.
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Sorry it's off topic. Not much to add to your thoughts on ADM and all. I see you didn't make the common error of calling tax breaks "subsidies", when definitionally, they can't be. I avoid this error by referring to such tax breaks as special preferential treatment by government.

Marcus said...

OK Bud...we may not agree totally on Climate change or green energy but I am with you 100% on this one. We should not be using food crops to produce energy, nor should the government subsidize ANY energy production...Even if these guys fingers are in the cookie jar, I'm not sure it will change anything

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

dmarks, I'm not exactly sure how the ethanol program worked. But I do know that it cost the taxpayers tens of billion over the life of it and that that was damn tragic.............Marcus, this is probably the most bipartisan scam in U.S. history. From Harkin on the left to Santorum on the right, they pretty much all had a grubby hands in it.

dmarks said...

If you remove all subsidies and special punitive taxes and taxpayer advantage, and have the tax policy be as neutral as possible, oil/gas/coal will rule for sure.