"D. Strang" wrote in message
news:MM7_b.9908$Ru5.9336@okepread03...
"George Z. Bush" wrote

...and if the stuff is made of surplus corn not otherwise needed to nourish
human beings,

Whoa now!

This isn't surplus corn. The corn is a contract to the government. The
farmers
sell it to the buyer, and the buyer sells it to the distiller. The buyer and
the
distiller are then subsidized by Congress. There is no Capitalism involved.

Hold it just a minute, please. You lost me there. I know you'll straighten me
out if I have it wrong, but I thought that the way it worked was that the
government established a production level for corn and, for whatever amount
above that level that was produced, the government bought it up at a set price
in order to keep it off the market, thereby maintaining the price on corn at a
level that would keep the farmers economically viable.

I thought that the stuff the government bought and kept in silos against the day
when the annual supply might drop below the level needed to satisfy demand
without resulting in raised prices is what I called surplus. That corn was
bought and paid for by the taxpayer and intentionally withhelf drom the market
against the day when what was produced wouldn't be enough to satisfy public
demand.

I think one of us must have the process wrong.

This may answer your other questions. The cost of manufacturing Ethanol is
wired-in to the taxes you pay to the Revenue Service. The Revenue Service
puts it in the general fund, and no accountant on Earth can decode it for at
least 10 years, in which case a completely different administration is in
power, and the previous ones are millionairs on retirement.

Here, too, I think it works another way. I thought that the way it worked was
that the government owned corn was sold to a distiller for a mutually agreed
upon price and, from that point on, the corn was in the capitalist system
pipeline. It belonged to the distiller, who processed it into ethanol, did his
cost accounting to establish his costs, and distributed it into the gasoline
distribution net to be retailed, presumably at a profit of some sort at every
level where it was handled before it ended up in somebody's gas tank. Not so?

Bottom line, oil is in depletion until alternatives (Capitalist ones) reach
the
break-even price, and then oil reserves (while still in depletion) will last
for
centuries longer. Conservation is one-half of the equation, if you want to
play with that equation. Many of us want our Revenue spent on an
alternative engine, or an alternative fuel, and not get Ethanol and a God
Damned trip to Mars for no purpose.

It may come as a shock to you, but here I agree with you, from top to bottom.
There's a helluva lot more we can do with our money, much less than that we'd
have to borrow from banks, than to pour it into a relatively useless trip to
Mars at our expense while we have so many unfulfilled needs in our own country.
First things ought to come first, and Mars will be near the bottom of the list,
where it belongs.

George Z.