Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Tuesday, June 21. 2011

A rare "Bravo" to Congress


Senate votes to eliminate Ethanol subsidies.


That terrible Ethanol cost me $60 in repairs to my chain saw last week. Good riddance to that scam.


Update: Readers inform me that I was in error - the mandate to use that junk remains but the subsidies go away.

Posted by Bird Dog at 13:02 | Comments (10) | Trackbacks (0)

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Unfortunately they didn't get rid of the mandate for Ethanol in gasoline, just the tax credits for ethanol producers. Maybe the Palin administration will take care of that.
#1 JimK on 2011-06-21 14:04 (Reply)
Yep. Now we have the mandate without the subsidy. So we will pay more for the same crappy alcohol tainted gas.
#1.1 NJSoldier on 2011-06-21 14:57 (Reply)
Yeah, it suques, but I hope its a start... It better not be an end!
#2 mudbug on 2011-06-21 16:20 (Reply)
I agree it would have been excellent if they eliminated the ethanol mandate. I believe it trashed an older lawn mower of mine, and is raising the prices of food, by making corn less available.
#3 Mark on 2011-06-21 19:44 (Reply)
Ethanol is slated to go up to 20% in our gasoline by 2014 or 2015, I believe. That nonsense remains. The only thing that would do us any good would be immediately halting the mandatory addition of ethanol to gasoline pumps.

It doesn't just destroy small engines. It also gives you worse mpg in your car. When you buy a car it is tested (and the rating on the sticker is for) 100% gasoline, but when you drive it with 10% (and soon 15% ethanol, your mileage and performance get much worse.

When we are paying $4.40 a gallon where I live, it makes me pretty cranky to be forced to use worse fuel.

And others have posted at great length on the worse carbon footprint of producing ethanol anyway. It's a complete boondoggle.
#4 retriever on 2011-06-21 20:40 (Reply)
I concur wtih all. That crap has screwed up more of my yard machines than........... Will the fishheads in Congress puhleeze finish the job on getting rid of it. I guess they really want to make sure we meant it last election cycle. Time to get off the couch again in time for unelecting some more congress critters. Sheesh!!
#5 Charles on 2011-06-21 22:06 (Reply)
I'm not sure what to make of all the claims of ethanol damaging engines. It is all I have used in the lawn mower, weed trimmer, chain saws, ATV's, a 1950's vintage farm tractor and my vehicles of varying ages for several years and have yet to have a single problem. I'm suspicious someone bought into the scare tactics from years ago and now wants to blame everything that goes wrong with any fuel burning tool on ethanol.
#6 Dirk on 2011-06-21 23:12 (Reply)
The STIHL corporation just issued a safety recall on dozens of late-model string trimmers, backpack blowers, etc to replace fuel caps which become hardened and leak with prolonged exposure to ethanol-laced gas. Anecdotal, but relevant.

TC
#6.1 Leatherneck on 2011-06-22 09:19 (Reply)
We will see if Coburn or some other senator displays the same "courage" by introducing bills to eliminate tax breaks for oil companies. Given that Oklahoma is one of our bigger oil producing states I doubt that is going to happen. McCain's statement about taking less energy to produce a gallon of gasoline than ethanol is idiotic. We don't produce gasoline, we pump it out of the ground, clean it up and burn it.
#7 farmer on 2011-06-22 06:25 (Reply)
Are you referring to depletion allowances?
#7.1 BD on 2011-06-22 10:56 (Reply)

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