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The Imposed Surcharges We Shoulder
by Robert Jackman
juliusno1776 -+at+- yahoo.com
http://roberto-de-sonora.blogspot.com/

Special to The Libertarian Enterprise

I grew up on a small farm and cattle ranch in my teens. With that disclosure up front, that was almost 4 decades ago. I work in a service business related to home repair and construction today.

Let's talk of State interference in Energy, Food:

What few people realize is the only thing removed from corn to make ethanol is the carbs that cattle can't digest, as too much carbs give them gas and that can cause bloat which can kill.

The only corn people eat directly to make tortillas and corn chips, etc. is corn varieties that comprise 1% of the total corn crop.

Another 6% of corn is made into junk food additives, things like High Fructose corn syrup that can trigger migraine headaches, and HFCS is also not helping the 50% of Americans who are not getting omega 3 fats in quantity and quality to avoid type 2 diabetes. HFCS also has the interesting property in that after you consume it, You are hungry and end up eating more food.

You can chart obesity with introduction of HFCS via High school pics across the last 40 years, there is no doubt. HFCS is in everything made today.

That leaves the 92% of corn grown on dry land that is used for livestock feed and Ethanol. Not either or, but actually can be both. The missing one percent is whiskey.

A higher corn price is actually good for everyone except cattle feedlots that have to pay more to finish cattle, however, once the excess carbs are removed from corn to make 18 pounds of DDGS from a bushel of corn, a more balanced feedstock can be fed which is a mix of DDGS, some raw corn, other grains and a bit of hay, the resulting cattle when slaughtered will be healthier to eat. This is not a minor improvement.

Cattle were designed by nature to eat forest browse, not grasses like corn. Man got into feeding cattle on grass back when Kings owned cattle and they needed to keep the cattle in plain sight to limit theft to maintain their ill gotten assets. The King's forest was shared with Robin Hood and the browse there was what cattle should have been eating, but the King was Selfish in the extreme.

Farmers planted about 19 million EXTRA acres of corn last season, only 11 million went into corn ethanol. You will notice prices of every commodity not nailed down skyrocketed last year. Corn has now dropped to $5 and will probably stay there which is good for farmers but bad for cattle feedlots that used to count on cheap corn to make them profits based on corn over-supply due to State policy that would predictably bankrupt additional farmers every year.

Last season's price spike was according to people investing in anything but the dollar, since it had been recently revealed by retired world bank official Stiglitz that the so called War on Terror, which is off budget, has cost the US 1 trillion dollars and will cost another 2 trillion dollars even if we stopped the mess tomorrow.

This is a replay of Viet Nam. We will see, if lucky, inflation that will last half a generation, and then some stability until the next War is foisted upon us. If unlucky, the Dollar might go into hyperinflation and we could likely experience a situation not unlike 1920s Germany, with destruction of the middle class.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

There is good news too.

We can grow from 2 to 15 times more ethanol per acre, some crops without any commercial fertilizer or herbicides or pesticides needed. Farmers will catch on in time but they are slow to change their ways. Fodder Beets can yield over corn 3 times the ethanol per acre and twice the cattle feed as a by product. You need only return the manure from cattle fed the beet pulp to regenerate the land for rotation to another crop!

There are ways to improve soil health as well, the whole complete story Americans need to see is in "Alcohol Can Be A Gas" by Permaculturist and Environmentalist David Blume, who is not afraid to mold plans that include man and nature. David is the real deal.
http://www.alcoholcanbeagas.com/?bid=2&aid=CD96&opt=

Here is a link we can use to increase transportation dollars spent locally and save some money every week,
http://acbagnetwork.ning.com/group/unmodifiedvehicles/forum/topic/show?id=2051603%3ATopic%3A381
but... You won't likely understand it unless You read the David's 600 page book above, or at least listen to his radio interviews here:

http://network76.com/ (My site)

I will give a hint of how people are being mislead:

Anti Ethanol articles are initially generated by nominally Free Market Foundations funded by Big Oil. Foundations like Reason, CEI, CATO and others that in the singular case of Oil, are curiously "blind" to alternatives and are actively promoting the false corn ethanol myths which could kill Ethanol investment into even better solutions. The Neocon Rapist of Life Rove is correct, in the sense that if People don't know something, then it will not get attention, nor investor financing.

Step two: Walter Williams, John Stoessel and others in media parrot their adopted anti ethanol religion to keep the myth alive. They don't know, or they don't care that the Foundations have a single source for most of the Anti Corn Ethanol myths. A source of mostly Lies by omission and some outright Lies.

Dr. David Pimentel from Cornel. He is the man who authored the corn is negative myth while taking money from Mobil and publishing a paper for the DOE while forgetting who handed him 30 pieces of silver. For that palmed silver, You get a 7 ton tractor "needed" to farm a 81 acre squirrel ranch when that tractor could easily do 1800 acres. You can't treat distillation leftovers as sewer waste you have to pay to get rid of when that leftover is superior livestock feed in higher quality than the raw corn it came out of. Using tilted data You get "corn ethanol is energy negative." This is the kind of fog being spread by Stossel, Williams, and others.

In short, The American Petroleum Institute is very adept at pushing the food versus fuel myth.

One other thing:
Mad about the 62 cent State Subsidy to Ethanol?

Do to a change in Legislation, The one who blends Ethanol with Gasoline gets the 62 cents. In most cases, guess who that is?

Big Oil, who already gets about $5.65 a gallon in State subsidy for each gallon of gasoline sold.

This State subsidy is why we seem to be the Mythic giant with magical powers... Somehow having $4 gasoline while the rest of the world pays $9 to $15 a gallon. People forget that Corporations who pay no tax get the $4 gas and individuals pay the difference via their income taxes. Ever wonder why Corporations grow while individuals are going broke? None of this was crafted by mistake. It is a plan evincing a design.

That's not even counting the expense we also pay for the 10x bigger Military Industrial Complex than we need, not to mention the recent surcharge on our future I call "The War on some Terrorists"

Then there is the 40 million acre farm land conservation bank which pays farmers not to farm. That land could net enough fuel if planted to Fodder beets to give us a third of our auto fuel needs, but NOOOOOO! We must continue to push the Arms for Oil scheme pushed by that Sex Symbol Dr. Henry Kissinger.

Let's Talk of State Interference in Education:

Know how much it costs to shove a child through 13 years of Public Education?

Cato shows this annual number to be growing with inflation from about $1000 a year in 1940s to $7,000 today.

Your child can get a Superior K-12 education at home for about $200. Plus the cost of mom and dad sharing some quality time with the children to see how they are doing with the self directed learning method from Art Robinson. http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com/ The result is self directed human beings, fully actualized Adults, some as young as 15.

For each child born, the cost for public education has increased the cost of everything sold mostly via property taxes. This equals the value of 1 starter home in today's flakey dollars for every child entering school. Note I didn't say Graduate.

For each person alive today measuring across their productive lifespan, the cost of a bloated military industrial complex 10x larger than necessary has siphoned off enough wealth to leave our children with a 10 trillion dollar debt, and some say 6 times that in unfunded Liabilities which can't possibly be serviced. Hence the need for Economic Hitmen to plunder ther rest of the planet for God and Country and we are still not keeping up.

For every dollar You have earned, about half of it is stolen by the suspects listed above, but the hidden in plain sight private administrators, the F.R.B. has siphoned off a good deal too.

Some Drugs: Need I say anything? Regulation of Legal and Illegal drugs has siphoned off even more wealth, plus the destroyed lives. The result of redirected wealth to man prisons and a bloated law enforcement and court system I don't know how to calculate all the costs, not to mention the theft of our Liberties. Not everyone got hurt, Politicians with names like Kenneddy, Bush, Delano and others did, and do, Very Well.

How about We add it all up?

(No cheating using a digital calculator, just use your brain and gut.)

As regards spendable income You have to direct, really, actually, direct:

Do we individually chart our course through life here on earth?

Or, are we at best, pulling oars for interests that are laughing, drunk with power, steering the ship we are on in random circles and going NO WHERE?

Are we experiencing Genuine Civilization?

If We are, then like my favorite author Mark Twain said, I want no part of it.

Some Answers:

With the gift of technology, I would rather work 9 to 11 Hours a week to earn the necessities my family needs and expect all others to do same. We would all be better off in such a world, even if those hours were spent washing windows so the rest of one's time could be spent working with others to travel to the stars, or what ever tickles one's fancy.

An incredibly small percentage of population is needed to staff today's modern factory, there is no reason that with proper scheduling, those few factories could operate on 3 8-hour shifts with those who want to work an 8 to 48 hour work week doing their thing.

No need to distort State education to churn out factory workers who are "happy" to work 40 hours a week. It's simply not necessary. Especially State Education.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/index.htm

There is a bigger problem. People are used to what they are conditioned to. The farmer should know by now that He could plant fodder beets, more than triple his ethanol income over corn, and double his feed for livestock.

In this sense, We are all Farmers. The toughest battle we all face is breaking the habits we are born into. We are addicts if we must do something, know it but don't do anything about it. Here is an answer that could help us all:

http://emofree.com It doesn't matter if You believe it works or not. It's that good.

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