WSJ on Ethanol

[just_wondering]

thanks for all the replies I will digest and get back to you.
I was at a funeral today for an old friend and am half drunk.
So I'll get back to y'all
Anybody going to the save my CWB rally tomorrow?

[just_wondering]

sorry about the Last post ,Bad Form.
Sorry

[TOM4CWB]

Fransisco,

What is the market Place?

Oil is as much a outcome of gov. policy and non-"free market" influence and Biofuels!

The "Level" playing field does not exist...

So if "popular opinion" is the policy framework... then organisation/development of policy... is as much a media/Communications public relations sell job as anything to do with economics theory... at the same time the "perception is reality" principal drives both the public opinion and economy!

Decision makers get power... WHERE?

Planet earth is Fantasy Island... if public opinion gets tired of you... TOAST... FINISHED.

P.R. Tricks WORK. THe CWB BuLL is proof!

Most farmers don't have a clue, or care... about perception and powers/spheres of influence.

Governance is the reaction of the few in the position of power... to maintain/obtain "public" confidence to retain/create the institutional power to govern.

This is an artform, to be in sync with future events... which are determined by what we do/actions now!

I think I am getting dizzy!

There must be a black hole distorting the space time continium!


Its OK to think outside the box... isn't it?

[Fransisco]

You're about as clear as mud here Tom. Maybe you should give it another try.

[TOM4CWB]

Fransisco,

Exactly where we are at on Ethanol.

I believe the 'Bio-Economy' will be the future... High Tech will drive where we go... using the "Environmentally correct" method of public opinion... to drive major policy initiatives...

EU and GMO's are a perfect example!

The public drives the agenda... eventually fighting this is proven as futility!

[Fransisco]

Tom, nobody knows what the next big thing will be. Nobody.

You mentioned Bill Gates in your other posting on this subject. Bill Gates changed the world and he made it a better place but it was Bill Gates, not the government, not an opinion poll.

He didn't need anyone's permission, he didn't need a boat load of government bills, he didn't need some stupid PR campaign to get him the dough. When he started I don't think even he knew how big he was going to get.

History is full of these kinds of people. Einstein worked in a patent office for heaven's sake.

You remember the days before computers Tom before the internet. I think all of us here do. Think back to those days its not that long ago. If back then someone told you that in ten years you won't be able to function without one you'd have thought they were crazy.

Politically correct public opinion and government eggheads trying to choose winners has an incredibly poor track record.

Nikita Khrushchev was right when he said," Politicians are the same everywhere. They promise to build bridges even where there are no rivers."

At some point we will have some kind of cheap alternative energy to oil. It's not a question of if but when. But no one knows what its going to be. Trying to force it into existence doesn't help. More than likely its counter productive.

[Fransisco]

Some interesting reading on the subject can be found here.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/123464.html

[TOM4CWB]

FRANSISCO,

You should think again about WHAT you just wrote!

The INTERNET was designed by who?

Computers were developed for what purpose in the first place?

US MILITARY/SPACE PURPOSES.

Please name one industry more subsidised than this one!

GPS Technology... it goes on in an endless spiral!

[TOM4CWB]

"An inconvenient task: Bush to honour Gore
Peter Baker in Washington
November 19, 2007


THE former vice-president Al Gore plans to return to the White House next week, apparently for the first time since leaving office, to be honoured by the man who beat him seven years ago.

The US President, George Bush, will host five American winners of this year's Nobel Prizes in the Oval Office on November 26, including the winner of the Peace Prize, who fell 538 votes short of hosting the event himself.

Mr Bush regularly invites Nobel laureates for a handshake and photograph and decided this year would be no different, even if they include his vanquished rival from 2000.

The Gore camp said the White House went out of its way to accommodate the former vice-president's schedule, even moving the event when there was a conflict with the first proposed date.

Mr Bush personally telephoned Mr Gore on Friday to finalise the arrangements. A Gore adviser acknowledged the awkward nature of the event.

"It's unusual, that's for sure," he said. "But the conversations were good, and the White House has been very gracious about it."

Mr Bush and Mr Gore have never reconciled the bitterness from their showdown, and the adviser believes that Mr Gore has not been back to the White House since leaving as vice-president.

Mr Gore has been a vocal critic of Mr Bush's policies, while the president has been dismissive of his former opponent's work against global warming.

Asked once whether he would see Mr Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth, Mr Bush had a curt response: "Doubt it".

This could be the chance to change that. "I'm sure he would love to give the slide show to the president," the Gore adviser said.

The Washington Post"

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/an-inconvenient-task-bush-to-honour-gore/2007/11/18/1195321608404.html


Fransisco,

This is all about P.R. and public opinion, pleasing those who are powerful and pulling the power/profit strings!

"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of 2,000 scientists from 140 countries, has over the past several months been releasing volumes of its work on global warming. The report released Saturday is the synthesis of that work, a six-year endeavor to measure most of what is known about global warming and its effects on human health, the oceans, wildlife and how the world might adapt, among other topics. The first of the five-year assessments came out in 1990 and was used as the basis for the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change."

Who funds this?

P.R. at the MAX!

[Fransisco]

Yes, its a perfect example of the power of propaganda. The whole global warming hysteria thing is a hoax without a scientific leg to stand on, yet it doesn't seem to matter does it.

Well that's where you are wrong. It does matter. You can't build a successful long term business or society on propaganda. Its been tried and it has failed spectacularly every time. Again look at our favourite topic around here the wheat board. All the propaganda they have spewed out over the decades hasn't helped your bottom line one bit, now has it.

You are not thinking outside the box Tom, you are right smack dab in the middle of it. What you are longing for is one of the many variants of socialism.

Listen to yourself, <b>"its all about pleasing those who are powerful."</b> Well they've certainly got you goose stepping in the right direction now don't they.

It looks like you can't tell the difference anymore between a true genius like Bill Gates who does something useful and positive for the world and a huckster like Al Gore who wants to plunge us all into another Dark Ages. One where people like him hold all the power.

Using Al Gore as a role model for business is like using 'Butch' Harder as a role model on how you sell wheat. With the difference being that old Butch is probably the more sane one.

[TOM4CWB]

Fransisco,

I think there should be one thing we can agree on.

If you step in front of a freight train going 110km/hr... it will hardly know the difference when it schmucks you on the cow catcher.

My points are simple observations... not personal views of what I "want" to see happen! Please don't confuse one for the other!

Knowing where we are going and why... is half the skill of being a good manager that can guide a family business between the mines in the field farmers must trek through.

[jensend]

i think part of what tom is saying (pretty tough to interpret at times, though!) is that the playing field is has so many hills and valleys in it now that you can't see the middle from any side of it. i don't know how you level it. nobody can afford to be the first to have their subsidy taken away. what per centage of a farmer's income comes from subsidies or tax breaks? how many farmers could survive without them?

[Fransisco]

Well Tom that brings me back to my first point which was this, -I doubt that ethanol has a non subsidized future outside of sugar cane territory.-

It's not so much about getting hit by the train as it is riding one that may be running out of steam.

[Fransisco]

Jen, Ronald Reagen had a saying about how government looks at a business. "If it moves, you tax it, if it keeps moving you regulate it, if it stops moving, you subsidize it."

Less of the first two means you can get away with less of the third. If we as farmers could simply keep more of the money we make in the good times we wouldn't need the handouts to get us through the bad.

[jensend]

that's fine but my point is how do you get there? how do you dismantle a system that has built into a monster over decades? do you want to be the first to take the hit?