WSJ on Ethanol

[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?

[jensend]

and just while we're all helping each other out with grammar, spelling, etc. you might want to check reagan.

[TOM4CWB]

Fransisco,

I get a real kick out of watching the OPEC folks play their game.

How can OPEC be legal in the first place!

Price fixing should be illegal under WTO rules one would think... yet these guys do whatever they feel like. Stop the flow... play the game... and this is a "free market"?


It doesn't matter if it is the AWB, CWB or OPEC... when these players enter the futures market... they are not playing with the same deck of cards as everyone else!

[Fransisco]

One thing about oil is that it definitely doesn't work in the 'free market' arena. Some of it does but the vast majority of it doesn't.