End the binge - Chicago Tribune

The excuse for this favor to corn farmers and ethanol producers is that it reduces our dependence on foreign oil. But the effect is modest at best. In 1997, the General Accounting Office (now called the Government Accountability Office) said that "ethanol's potential for substituting for petroleum is so small that it is unlikely to significantly affect overall energy security."

If reducing our reliance on foreign oil producers were truly the goal of federal policy, the government wouldn't be so intent on keeping out foreign ethanol. The high duty on imported ethanol, noted the 17 senators, "discourages transportation fuel imports from Brazil, India, Australia and other sugar producing countries, and leads to more oil and gasoline imports."

In better fiscal times, it was easier to excuse our leaders for having their fun doling out subsidies for ethanol and protecting its makers from competition. But it's time for the party to end.

Climate Common Sense: 6.3 Trillion Dollars - "New Wealth"

Bloomberg reports that Japanese adviser Nishimura suggests over ten years selling carbon allowances to emitters and that "the huge chunk of new wealth" generated be distributed to poor nations for global warming "and other needs" .

Mutsuyoshi Nishimura, who was Japan’s chief climate-protection negotiator during the five years through 2008, proposed a $6.3 trillion carbon market to kick- start stalled talks. A small memo to the Mr Nishimura - imposing a costly tax is not generating wealth - it is an impost on companies and organisations that do create it. You actually generate wealth by reducing taxation !The thing that really worries me is that so many dumb politicians might agree with him given the spread of the equally dumb warming alarmism.

From Cancun to Kyoto - Steven F. Hayward - National Review Online

The poet Edna St. Vincent-Millay is reported to have quipped that “history isn’t one damn thing after another — it’s the same damn thing over and over again.” The world is about to be reminded of this at the current international climate-change summit, which is grinding into its second week in Cancun. It is worth recalling the back story to this increasingly obvious farce.

The abdication of the West | The SPPI Blog

How can we, the people, defeat the Secretariat and keep the democracy we love? Simply by informing our elected representatives of the scope, ambition, and detail of what is in the Cancun agreement. The agreement will not be called a “Treaty”, because the Senate, particularly after the mid-term elections, will not pass it. But it can still be imposed upon us by the heavily Left-leaning Supreme Court, which no longer makes any pretence at judicial impartiality and may well decide, even if Congress does not, that the Cancun agreement shall stand part of US law on the ground that it is “customary international law”.