Letters to the Editor
cabdriver
Published Letters: 594 Editor's Choice: 8
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shooter 242's ethanol sub-topic
[Read the article: Interview with Aaron Brown on NYT "military analyst" story]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"the liberal pessimist meme that insists we are in dire peril and need to pour untold amounts of grain into making ethanol"
The corn ethanol subsidy was pioneered by Senator Robert Dole, Republican Senator from Kansas.
George W. Bush is a powerful booster of corn ethanol. John McCain supports the use of corn ethanol.
My point isn't to paint the corn ethanol hype as an exclusively Republican project. There are also many boosters of corn ethanol to be found in the ranks of the Democratic Party- a label not to be confused with the term "liberals", although some overlap admittedly exists.
My point is to show that, contrary to shooter 242's assertion, corn ethanol as an alternative energy source is hardly a project that's the ideological inspiration of "liberals."
Of all the ways of producing ethanol, direct conversion of food crops is by far the worst.
The June 14, 2007 testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works of Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute- an environmentalist who could fairly be called a "liberal":
"...The escalating share of the U.S. grain harvest going to ethanol distilleries is driving up food prices worldwide. Investment in fuel ethanol distilleries has soared since gasoline prices jumped at the end of 2005. Once completed, distilleries now under construction could double U.S. ethanol output, turning nearly 30 percent of next year’s U.S. grain harvest into fuel for automobiles. This unprecedented diversion of the world’s leading grain crop to the production of fuel will affect food prices everywhere, risking political instability..."
"...Against this backdrop, Washington is consumed with “ethanol euphoria.” President Bush in his State of the Union address set a production goal for 2017 of 35 billion gallons of alternative fuels, including grain-based and cellulosic ethanol, and fuel from coal. Given the current difficulties in producing cellulosic ethanol at a competitive cost and given the mounting public opposition to coal fuels, which are far more carbon-intensive than gasoline, most of the fuel to meet this goal might well have to come from grain. This could take most of the U.S. grain harvest, leaving little grain to meet U.S. needs, much less those of the hundred or so countries that import grain.
The stage is now set for direct competition for grain between the 800 million people who own automobiles, and the world’s 2 billion poorest people. The risk is that millions of those on the lower rungs of the global economic ladder will start falling off as rising..."
http://www.earth-policy.org/Transcripts/SenateEPW07.htm
http://tinyurl.com/3ybo2x
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"hippies"
[Read the article: Tangled up in Dylan]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"What were hippies, after all, but proto-corporate bloodsuckers still in pupa?"
Kid, maybe you should email Stephen Gaskin, and break the news to him.
http://www.stephengaskin.com/
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A prime factor in the '60s cultural explosion
[Read the article: Tangled up in Dylan]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Cheap rent.
For more great personal historical recollection, I also recommend Chronicles Vol. 1, by Suzie Rotolo's boyfriend.
(Hopefully, that will re-rail this thread...)
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well...
[Read the article: Tangled up in Dylan]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"America went from Jo Stafford’s “Shrimp Boats Are A’Comin’” to “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road” in one generation. From Norman Rockwell to “Piss Christ.” From “Pillow Talk” to “Bonnie and Clyde” to “Last Tango in Paris.” From Gale Storm to Annie Sprinkle to Madonna to Amy Winehouse."
No one said there wasn't a downside to the '60s.
However, I wouldn't say that the transgression overdose that got rolling back then could fairly be attributed to a hippie conspiracy. More along the lines of karmic payback for an American popular culture having been governed for the previous 40 years by the likes of Cardinal Spellman, a prime overseer of the National League for Decency- the organization that pretty much dictated Hollywood standards on "moral conduct", such as insisting that married couples in films be depicted sleeping in separate beds, for decades.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Legion_of_Decency
http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0521565928?showViewpoints=1
http://www.nypress.com/15/18/news&columns/signorile.cfm
(More history you won't find either in school, or on the television screen...)
begging your pardon...the Rotolo & Dylan discussion is certainly free to resume at any time.