Saturday, December 17, 2016

Out with the Ethanol – In with Scott Pruitt at the EPA







Earth people to Other-worldly Bureaucratic Elites – we have an announcement.  Donald Trump’s nominee for EPA head, Scott Pruitt, should be approved immediately. The sooner the better.  The EPAs Other-Worldly contingent, with its absolutely nuts RFS (Renewable Fuel Standards) is crushing us little people.  Mr. Pruitt has a history of opposing the RFS – for a variety of valid reasons. 

But let’s look at it on the human level. I had two chain saws destroyed by Ethanol before figuring out that it was ethanol that was throttling the engines, making them virtually unrepairable. Okay, I'm a nobody. I don't matter in the scheme of things. Who gives a damn about my little plebeian problems? 
  Then I found out there was a nation wide conspiracy against all of us who worked with our hands. The objective was to destroy our lawnmowers, chainsaws, tillers, and other small equipment so that we felt no longer competent to till the soil, mow the lawn, cut down a dead tree or any of the other myriad jobs we try to do ourselves because, unlike the EPA Green-elites, we don’t live in D.C. condos or tony Washington suburbs and can’t afford to hire people to do all these things for us.

Agricultural welfare may help politicians on both sides of the aisle stay in office, but it’s hypocritical to complain of one type of welfare while doling out another.  The ethanol in gas pumps is currently limited to 10 percent, but the current EPA wants to pump it up until gasoline powered cars choke out completely and we are forced to buy electric cars from Elon Musk.  Unfortunately, few people will be able to afford electric cars from Elon Musk and, even if he could, we would like to travel more than 100 miles. 

Of course, you could buy one of those Elon Musk designed Tesla Model S with their base starting price of $75,000.  That one supposedly has a range of 270 miles.  I saw one parked outside the Apple Corporate headquarters in Cupertino, California once – what a beauty!  Chump change for some people, I know.  Wouldn’t you rather own a house than a rapidly depreciating pile of status-y metal, glass, plastic, and rubber? If ethanol was such a good thing, maybe Tesla could produce hundreds of thousands of affordable cars running on 100 percent ethanol. Then everyone would be happy.

Now you must understand that a lot of people are hating on the ‘Big Oil Companies’ and unwilling to look beneath the hood.  But the fuel standards favor ‘BIG OIL’ because the large oil companies are the only ones with enough infrastructure to process the corn into ethanol (while depriving the starving people of the world). 
If the idea is to counter monopoly oil, the fuel standards are doing just the opposite. The smaller oil refineries cannot afford the expensive equipment needed to process and dilute petrol into the necessary solution capable of poisoning your lawnmower, and eventually your hoopty (jalopy to those of us of previous generations).

Now’s our chance to be rid of the EPA Renewable Fuel Standards fantasy. This is for the good of all political parties, Jill Stein’s included.  The standards have had no impact on environmental quality and cannot, because of the process of producing and delivering it.
Whether one likes Trump or hates him (and there is no room on the planet for haters), his pick for EPA top exec is a good one and should be supported.  

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