Ethanol Hurts Worse Than It Helps

I recently noticed a drop in my gas mileage. I'm always very aware of what my gas mileage is all the time, and having an on-board computer to monitor it helps. A drop in gas mileage can indicate a problem with your vehicle before anything else, in some cases.

I drive Buick LeSabre, just for reference here. Last summer on a road trip to Michigan, I averaged 34 mpg. In March, on a trip down to the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, I got 35 mpg, probably because I wasn't using the air conditioner.

Recently, however, I've noticed my gas mileage dropping. I took it in for an oil change, air filter, tire pressures, etc, but not much changed. Only then did I realize that for the past several weeks I've been using gasoline that contains 10 percent ethanol. My mileage on the highway is down about 4 mpg. So I then examined my wife's truck, a Dodge RAM 1500 with a big hemi V8, and her mileage is down too, from about 15.8 to 14.5 mpg average.

So an 8 to 11 percent drop in gas mileage is not helping, is it? I guess inflating our tires for a 3 percent gain is a moot point now.

For those of you who support ethanol use as a replacement for gasoline, consider what the Houston Chronicle says about it, and then do your own independent research. I think you'll come to the same conclusion.

As for lessening dependence on foreign oil and cleaning the air, ethanol does little for either. It takes almost as much energy from power plants, diesel fuel and fertilizer to grow the corn, refine it and distribute it to gasoline blenders as ethanol gives out when it is burned. The fertilizer runoff creates a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. If the electricity used to refine the corn comes from a coal-fired plant, ethanol hikes pollution and carbon emissions.

Why is ethanol so popular with politicians, including Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama? (Sen. John McCain opposes ethanol subsidies.) Presidential candidates want to win the Iowa caucuses. In Congress, like-minded farm-state legislators represent a significant voting block.

Perhaps one day the United States will have a rational policy on energy and environmental protection. But not before it ends the destructive and disruptive rules designed to please farmers and corn refiners regardless of the consequences to the rest of the world.

The forced-use of ethanol has been one of the worst edicts from our government in recent memory, and is just another example of how government meddling hurts us.

It's a BANANA case

"We must develop alternative sources of energy," says just about everyone, including Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, John McCain, even President George Bush. Hey, then there's Al Gore and his global warming crowd. Drilling won't get us out of this energy mess, but alternative sources of energy will.

As a side note, here's an example of liberal "logic:" drilling won't help for at least 10 years, so we need to invest in alternative sources so that in 10 years it can help us. Huh?

Anyway, our U.S. Government, after pressure from environmentalist groups, is delaying -- for up to 2 years -- the installation of solar panels in places like Colorado and Arizona that could power up to 20 million homes. As Investor's Business Daily reports:

The Bureau of Land Management quietly decided in May that the development of solar plants in 119 million sun-soaked, federally owned acres in the western states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah would have to wait at least two years while bureaucrats sorted out their environmental impact.

For decades environmental groups have been pushing the government and private sector to develop more alternative sources of energy. But that campaign is beginning to look like a sham to cover the groups' BANANA — Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything — activism.

So we can't drill, can't build solar power, can't build nuclear power plants, can't really do anything can we? As long as the left is in control -- and it seems there are -- then our situation will continue to get worse.

• Fuel prices will continue to go up, and there will be shortages.



• Food prices will continue to go up, and there will be riots in some places on the planet, sooner rather than later.



• Economic slowdowns, recessions, depressions will happen, not only to the U.S. but in other nations as well.



• Our standard of living will decrease significantly. We'll be back to the standard of the late 1800s, at least.



• Our national security will become a thing of the past. As more and more petrol dollars flow into terrorism-sponsoring states, our chances of an attack -- making 9/11 look like child's play -- will go up dramatically.

I hate to be pessimistic, but unless we take back our country from the mentally deranged left in this country, the United States of America will no longer exist as it has for 200-plus years.