Sunday, September 2, 2012
This year American motorists will burn through 14 billion gallons of
ethanol, the end product of 5 billion bushels of corn—a third of the
U.S. crop—grown on 33 million acres of farmland. It arguably cuts
pollution coming out of U.S. tailpipes, but at a huge cost. Since 2005,
when Congress required that ethanol be added to your gas tank, U.S. corn
prices have tripled.Steven Sterin thinks he has a better way. As president of the advanced fuels division at Dallas-based chemicals company Celanese, he’s supervising construction of two new plants—one in Texas, the other in China—to make ethanol. But you won’t see any vats fermenting corn here. Celanese makes its ethanol by tearing apart and recombining the hydrocarbons found in plentiful natural gas or coal. “We have the best gas-to-liquids and coal-to-liquids technology in the world,” he says. If it works, what Sterin is building will revolutionize the fuel industry. But that’s a very big if.
The problem isn’t science. It’s Washington. Thanks to the 2007 Renewable Fuel Standard law, gasoline refiners are mandated to blend so much plant-based or renewable ethanol into the gas supply that it prevents Celanese or any other fossil-fuel-based ethanols from even competing for the market. Though the RFS caps the blending of corn ethanol at 15 billion gallons a year, it calls for total biofuels blending to grow to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022.
Cellulosic ethanol is supposed to make up most of the difference. Maybe you recall President George W. Bush’s 2006 State of the Union address, in which he declared his goal that cellulosic ethanol made from “wood chips and stalks or switchgrass” would be “practical and competitive within six years.” RFS mandated 100 million gallons of cellulosic for 2010, 250 million for 2011 and 500 million this year.
But that hasn’t happened, even though the feds under both Bush and Barack Obama pumped $1.5 billion in grants and loan guarantees into upstart cellulosic producers. Most, like Range Fuels, Cello Energy and E3 BioFuels, have ended up bankrupt. Survivors like Abengoa Bioenergy produced fewer than 6 million gallons last year.
Amazingly, gasoline refiners are still on the hook. For failing to blend into their mix the mandated quantities of a fuel that does not exist, the refiners have gotten a $10 million bill from the Environmental Protection Agency to pay for their so-called waiver credits. They’re appealing.
The corn-dominated ethanol lobby is conflicted about making ethanol out of fossil fuels. On one hand, corn growers don’t want competition from cheap gas. On the other, it’s in the national interest to cut oil imports.
“We’re supportive of expanding all renewables and all alternative fuels,” says Matt Hartwig, spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association. Says Joe Cannon, president of the Fuel Freedom Foundation: “We need every option. There are 2 billion people moving from bicycles to mopeds to cars, and that’s just in India and China.”
Thirteen congressmen led by Pete Olson, whose district around Houston, Tex. encompasses dozens of chemical plants, including Celanese, have introduced a bill to add natgas-derived fuels to the RFS. Any change would face attack from the greens but is supported by animal farmers who want cheaper feed corn.
“We would prefer not to have the RFS at all,” says a spokeswoman for Olson, “but this is a step in the right direction.”
How did Celanese get into this business? For 30 years it has been perfecting the process of making acetic acid—more commonly known as vinegar—a chemical feedstock for plastics like vinyl acetate. The company makes a quarter of the world’s supply at giant complexes like those in Nanjing, China and Clear Lake, Tex.
The building blocks for these chemicals are cheap natural gas (Texas) and plentiful coal (China). Using steam and catalysts like nickel, Celanese breaks apart the hydrocarbons in these feedstocks and reforms them into acetic acid. When coal is used, the gasification process captures bad stuff like mercury and cadmium.
Vinegar and ethanol are closely related. Ethanol is the stuff in a bottle of wine that gets you drunk; vinegar is what the ethanol turns into when you leave the bottle undrunk for too long. Air oxidizes ethanol into vinegar by pulling off its hydrogen atoms. In simplest terms, what Celanese does is reverse the process, taking the acetic acid components it already makes and using metal-based catalysts to add hydrogen to it to form high-purity ethanol. Finding the right catalysts was the real breakthrough.
And while using fossil fuels means emitting carbon dioxide, it’s not clear that corn ethanol is more carbon-friendly. A 2010 study by researchers at Rice University found no reason to believe that the process of planting, tending, harvesting and processing corn into ethanol emits less carbon dioxide than does gasoline.
Sterin figures Celanese can make ethanol for a cash cost of only $1.50 a gallon. Capital costs, starting with $200 million for the two new plants, will add some 25 cents a gallon. While the diluted ethanol that’s blended into gasoline sells for $2.30 a gallon today, the concentrated industrial ethanol that Celanese will make goes for closer to $3. That paves the way for big profits selling to makers of paints, pharmaceuticals and textiles, says Hassan Ahmed, analyst with Alembic Global Advisors. He expects Celanese to be making 300 million gallons a year by 2016, building a $1 billion business with net income of $250 million. Last year it earned $600 million on $6.8 billion in revenues.
What if Washington doesn’t get aboard? No matter, says Sterin. China sees ethanol as a vital fuel, but with so many mouths to feed it can’t waste farmland growing it. Celanese initially planned to build a 60-million-gallon-per-year ethanol addition at its Nanjing complex, but when Beijing issued final permits in March it was for an 80-million-gallon plant. (The Texas plant, in contrast, will do fewer than 6 million gallons.) Even so, he’s hoping politicians will at least give Celanese a shot at competing in America. “We don’t need subsidies,” says Sterin. “We’re ready to go.”
Op-ed:
Obamacare...ugly to its core
By: Diane Sori
The personal side to ObamaCare is not pretty, not pretty at all.
While the Obama supporters, minions and flunkies hail ObamaCare as healthcare for all, it is anything but. And while we all know the basics of it...the true tax end of it...the human stories of its ramifications are sorely missing. I’ll fill you in on two personal ones so you know just what we’re really facing.
My best friend has cancer, stage 3C ovarian cancer to be exact...one step above terminal. Last year she was ‘gutted’ as they say to get as much of the cancer out as they could, but being that there was lymph node involvement who knows if they really did get it all. Her CA-125 blood test (the cancer indicator) at that time was through the roof, and so she has undergone a year of serious kick-ass chemo, which we all know is anything but fun.
In addition to the standard chemo, an experimental drug was added to the mix that did the trick...brought her blood tests down to normal and sent her into remission. Remission for now anyway, and while we celebrate that achievement there is a downside and a big one...the experimental drug she’s on will NO longer be covered under ObamaCare and the clinical trial she’s in that’s testing the drug’s effectiveness stands to be totally discontinued.
Will her remission last, I can only hope and pray that it does, but if it doesn’t the drug that saved her life will NO longer be available to help her and the other women like her. Under ObamaCare most experimental clinical trials, like the one my best friend is in, will be no more as ObamaCare doesn’t allow for those trials because the few lives saved or prolonged are deemed NOT worth the cost.
Or so says ObamaCare.
ObamaCare has set itself up as judge and jury over who lives and who dies...whose life is worth saving and whose is not and unfortunately under ObamaCare my best friend is NOT worthy of life, because the drug she needs to live is just too expensive to waste the money on to save her life.
Another person very close to me has Parkinson’s disease, and while this person’s case is NOT terminal in the same sense that a 3-C cancer diagnosis is, it still is a death sentence nevertheless, although that death might take years to happen.
With Parkinson’s we’re talking about quality of life...the ability to interact with the world. Parkinson’s takes many guises from the hand shaking we’re all familiar with to NO shaking but with an inability to walk or sometimes even losing the ability to swallow. The body fails slowly at first then the failing speeds up but all the while the person’s brain remains the same...alert, cognoscente and functioning, knowing all that is happening, yet no longer able to control the simple bodily movements we all take for granted.
There are drugs to treat Parkinson’s, many time honored and even some new promising breakthrough ones. After a period of time, the time honored ones no longer control the symptoms as tolerance is built up to them and the patient is moved on to the newer ones, but then again the newest of the new, the ones most successful at controlling the symptoms and stopping the progression of the disease, are in clinical trial and guess what...they’re drugs again targeted by ObamaCare to be discontinued.
And why...because Parkinson’s, while hitting younger people to some degree (like Michael J. Fox), is primarily a disease of seniors and the elderly, the very ones ObamaCare could care less about, the very ones targeted by the so-called ‘death panels’ and rationed medicine. The very ones felt to be a drain on society.
And under ObamaCare the one sentenced to die for having Parkinson’s, the one ObamaCare could care less about; the one whose life is deemed useless and a drain on society is that of my mother.
How I hate the abomination that is ObamaCare...how I hate the man whose name it bears.
ObamaCare should never have been, should never have been implemented, and in all that we hold dear as decent and moral, ObamaCare MUST be repealed.
ObamaCare is not about compassionate and equal healthcare for all, but is about middle-class hard working Americans who yet again are being forced to carry the burden for those draining the system... the ILLEGALS and the 47+% who pay NO taxes...the ones indebted to Obama for their free ride...the ones whose votes he knows he can always count on for no one bites the hand that feeds them as the saying goes.
ObamaCare works for these people as it feeds right into their ‘you owe me so g’me, g’me’ philosophy, but for ‘We the People’ ObamaCare is a financial burden that we can ill afford nor is it something we want as the cost in the lives of those we love is just too damn high a price to pay.
We all have a story to tell, some stories will break hearts and wound souls, but we all know this is our last chance to get it right so as always, November 6th just can’t come soon enough.
Saturday, September 1, 2012
Gore's 'popular vote' scheme to ensure Democrat rule?
Plan would see majority-Dem states decide presidency for all voters
Gore took to his Current TV to push for the abolishment of the Electoral College and its replacement with the so-called popular vote. He claimed that many voters who live outside the dozen or so battleground states are being cheated by the current system that allocates delegates from the state level, reported The Hill.
While some have proposed legislation and a constitutional amendment, Gore alluded to a “very interesting” movement to bypass the Electoral College.
“It is always tough to amend the Constitution and risky to do so, but there is a very interesting movement under way that takes it state by state that may really have a chance of succeeding,” he said.
That “interesting movement” is dissected in the recently released New York Times bestselling book, “Fool Me Twice: Obama’s Shocking Plans for Four More Years Exposed,” by Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott.
The book, which has climbed to No. 8 on the New York Times list , contains a bonus chapter on the subject of election fraud and documents about fair representation in future presidential elections.
National popular vote
The vote for president is the only one in which all Americans vote for a national leader. In framing the U.S. Constitution, Klein and Elliott write, the Founding Fathers displayed their characteristic wisdom and subtlety in firmly rejecting a purely popular vote to elect the president to balance the power of the larger states against the smaller.
The Electoral College was fashioned as a compromise between an election of the president by direct popular vote and election by Congress.
However, “Fool Me Twice” documents how a group backed by a who’s who of the progressive left, calling itself the National Popular Vote, or NPV, has already been successful in quietly pushing for abolishing the Electoral College in favor of a “popular vote.”
“Under the rubric of a ‘National Popular Vote,’ the plan would allow the 14 most populous American states, mostly majority-Democrat, to determine the outcome of future presidential elections. The voters of the 36 less populous states would then effectively be disenfranchised,” warn Klein and Elliott.
The plan is already gaining traction.
In 2007, Maryland became the first state to approve a “national popular vote” compact. As a result, in a theoretical winner-take-all contest, Maryland would allocate all of its 10 electoral votes to the candidate who won the most votes nationally – even if the same candidate did not win the most votes in Maryland.
By March 2012, eight states – California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Vermont and Washington, plus the District of Columbia – had enacted the “national popular vote” into law.
Two other states, Colorado and Rhode Island, had passed it in both houses, but it had not been enacted.
Ten more states had passed it in one house, and 10 others had passed it in a committee. Eleven states had held hearings on it, and nine more states had introduced bills.
While organizational support comes almost exclusively from left-leaning groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the League of Women Voters, the Soros-funded Common Cause and the Demos group, NPV’s army of lobbyists has also been pushing its plan to the Republican National Committee, the American Legislative Exchange Council and conservative think tanks such as the Heartland Institute and the Heritage Foundation.
There is, however, one hitch in the NPV plan: For a “national popular vote” to predominate, the full 270 electoral votes needed to win must be based on identical legislation (the “interstate compact”) passed by each state.
Arizona Congressional candidate caught in uproar for noting that Islamic jihadis want to enter the U.S. to harm Americans
From Jihad Watch / Posted by Robert Spencer
Obviously Mercer meant those
Middle Easterners who enter the country illegally from Mexico, not all
Middle Easterners who come to the United States. And so the uproar is
clearly a cynical orchestrated hit for political purposes, like
virtually all of the shock and outrage that the Left generates for
supposed "gaffes" by figures on the Right.
After all, why exactly are Middle Easterners sneaking in to the U.S. from Mexico? It isn't as if it's difficult in this Age of Obama for Muslims to get refugee status in the U.S. As Pamela Geller noted here: "Christians are in imminent danger across the world, and yet they are being refused refugee status, while Muslim refugee immigration goes on unimpeded. U.S. policy regarding refugee resettlement would shock most Americans if they only knew. The United Nations picks who gets to come to the U.S. as a refugee. The mandate of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is to determine which of the world’s huddled masses comes to the U.S. as humanitarian refugees. And predictably, this U.N. body is favoring Muslims. Christians from Muslim lands are being refused refugee status."
That being the case, it is more than passing strange that any Middle Easterners at all are crossing illegally into the U.S. from Mexico. And the fact that they do so does raise legitimate questions about their motives.
"Arizona Republican's 'Middle Easterners' comments spark debate," by Tim Gaynor for Reuters, August 29 (thanks to Trita Parsi):
After all, why exactly are Middle Easterners sneaking in to the U.S. from Mexico? It isn't as if it's difficult in this Age of Obama for Muslims to get refugee status in the U.S. As Pamela Geller noted here: "Christians are in imminent danger across the world, and yet they are being refused refugee status, while Muslim refugee immigration goes on unimpeded. U.S. policy regarding refugee resettlement would shock most Americans if they only knew. The United Nations picks who gets to come to the U.S. as a refugee. The mandate of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is to determine which of the world’s huddled masses comes to the U.S. as humanitarian refugees. And predictably, this U.N. body is favoring Muslims. Christians from Muslim lands are being refused refugee status."
That being the case, it is more than passing strange that any Middle Easterners at all are crossing illegally into the U.S. from Mexico. And the fact that they do so does raise legitimate questions about their motives.
"Arizona Republican's 'Middle Easterners' comments spark debate," by Tim Gaynor for Reuters, August 29 (thanks to Trita Parsi):
(Reuters) - Remarks by a conservative Arizona Republican Congressional candidate that Middle Easterners' "only goal in life is to cause harm to the United States" have landed her in the midst of a dispute over whether the comments amount to hate speech.
Tea Party-backed Gabriela Saucedo Mercer, who was born in Mexico and is a naturalized U.S. citizen, won the Republican primary on Tuesday to run in an Arizona Congressional district that flanks the border in southern Arizona. She faces Democrat Raul Grijalva, a five-term incumbent, in the November general election.
Grijalva sparked the debate Tuesday when he circulated a video in which the Republican tells an interviewer that authorities in the previous year nabbed 25,000 illegal immigrants who were other than Mexican nationals.
"That includes Chinese, Middle Easterners. If you know Middle Easterners, a lot of them they look Mexican or like a lot of people in South America - dark skin, dark hair, brown eyes, and they mix in," she said in the interview, recorded last year by WesternFreePress.com.
"And those people, their only goal in life is to cause harm to the United States, so why do we want them here, either legally or illegally?" she said....
Grijalva, a long-term opponent of the immigration crackdown, issued a news release on Tuesday denouncing what he called Mercer's "reckless hate speech" and urged everyone who endorsed Mercer to "withdraw their support immediately."
"This is not a he-said, she-said question of interpretation. Her comments are reprehensible and deserve condemnation from every quarter. Anyone who continues to support her campaign should be asked whether they want someone with her views in Congress," he said in a statement.
[Muslim Brotherhood-linked] Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim American elected to Congress, said he was "disappointed" in Mercer's "decision to inject division and fear" into the Congressional race.
The American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee, a non-sectarian civil rights and civil liberties group, also weighed into the debate, slamming Mercer's choice of words, which it said "once again exemplifies the bigotry and racism rampant within the Republican party, and politics as a whole."
The nonprofit group called on Republican party leaders, including presidential candidate Mitt Romney, to condemn her remarks and "move away from the politics of hate and fear."
A call to Mercer seeking comment was not immediately returned on Wednesday. In comments reported by the Arizona Daily Star newspaper, she said the video was edited to be misleading and took her comments out of context.
"He (Grijalva) must be scared or something," the newspaper reported Mercer saying at a primary-election night party on Tuesday. "The tactics he's using to smear me as a racist are unconscionable."
Caped Crusader Mitt Romney Fights to Save America from Obama the Empty Suit
By: Crystal Wright / Townhall.com
Romney will never be Obama, filling a room with flowery words, singing an Al Green tune erstwhile being void of leadership and “backbone.” But in his speech Thursday night to accept his party’s nomination, Romney proved to America his the “caped crusader” to lead the country out of its economic malaise to a “better future.” With a vigor and determination we haven’t seen before, Romney stood up against Obama’s failure of the past three and half years and told the American people, he will not back down from this fight to save our country.
One of the most illustrative moments of Romney’s speech, which defined the choice voters face in the two candidates, was when Romney asked if Americans were better off than they were four years ago.
“Hope and Change had a powerful appeal. But tonight I'd ask a simple question: If you felt that excitement when you voted for Barack Obama, shouldn’t you feel that way now that he’s President Obama? You know there’s something wrong with the kind of job he’s done as president when the best feeling you had was the day you voted for him!”
Throughout his speech, the Tampa Bay Forum erupted in thunderous applause and standing ovations. Romney not only laid out how bad the country has fared under Obama but also painted a portrait of ego driven President with no plan for America but saving his job. In response to media criticism Romney needs to “fill in the blanks” on his plan to get America working again, Romney announced if elected president he would create 12 million jobs. He said the jobs would be created through a five step plan: making America energy independent by 2020, strengthening education through school choice, forging new trade agreements, cutting our deficit and reducing taxes on businesses by repealing Obamacare.
While “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet,” said Romney. “MY promise...is to help you and your family. I will begin my presidency with a jobs tour. President Obama began with an apology tour.”
Neutering Obama’s attacks on his success as a businessman, Romney boldly heralded his work accomplishments at Bain Capital such as starting companies like Staples, Bright Horizons and The Sports Authority. Again Romney made Obama look like a president ill-prepared to lead, with virtually “no experience working in business, whose policies are bringing the country down rather than lifting them up.
“These are American success stories. And yet the centerpiece of the President’s entire re-election campaign is attacking success. Is it any wonder that someone who attacks success has led to the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression?”
Building upon Condoleezza Rice’s masterful Wednesday night speech condemning Obama’s foreign policy feebleness, Romney made the case to the American people President Obama hasn’t stood up for freedom abroad. From allowing Iran to become a nuclear threat to “throwing Israel under the bus” and giving Russia’s President Putin all the flexibility he desires, Romney declared Obama hasn’t made America a safer place by abdicating leadership in the world and talking with dictators.
What America saw from the Republican presidential nominee Thursday night was Romney ready to take on Obama’s failed record. A candidate eager to do something about America’s problems, finally take the fight to Obama and beat back his campaign of dishonesty!
In putting an empty chair on the Tampa stage to represent Obama during his remarks, actor Clint Eastwood reduced Obama the reality of his record, there’s nothing there.
“When somebody does not do the job, you gotta let em go,” said Clint. This election is about a choice in stark contrasts: leadership versus promises, responsibility versus blame. Romney stood in Tampa as a man with the answers, willing to lead, making Obama look like an empty suit, ready for his close up.
Freedom is the Only Issue Facing Americans
By: Star Parker / Townhall Daily
But the bottom line defining the choice facing Americans this year is stark and clear, and these conventions provide no new insights or information.
If you think we're struggling because we don't have enough government, then the Democrats are the party for you. If you think the point of government is to protect individual freedom, and the problem is it has gone way beyond that, then Republicans are the party for you.
No visual dominates the landscape of our nation's capital like the Washington Monument. Today, however, other than memorializing our first president, it also provides a message about the role and efficacy of government.
Last year on Aug. 23, a 5.8-magnitude earthquake hit Washington, D.C. The earthquake caused cracks in the monument, which stands at a height of almost two football fields, so the National Park Service shut it down.
Now, one year later, the monument remains in disrepair, closed to the 600,000 annual visitors it usually receives.
The Washington Post reported in January that the monument would be closed until sometime in 2013. According to that report, the contract to do the repairs would "probably not be awarded until late summer, with work starting sometime after that."
Now the latest report in The Washington Post indicates that repair of the monument may not be complete until sometime in 2014.
In January 1994, Los Angeles was hit with a massive 6.7-magnitude earthquake, knocking down two sections of the Santa Monica Freeway.
An initial estimate from the California Department of Transportation was that it would take 12 to 18 months for repairs.
Considering the massive potential costs to the local economy of shutting down sections of the world's busiest freeway, Caltrans officials decided to turn loose the time-tested formula for American success: market incentives and individual ingenuity.
They opened bidding to contractors who would accelerate the repair process, offering incentive bonuses for early completion.
The result: The repairs were completed in less than three months, with the contractor collecting a $14.5 million bonus for finishing 74 days ahead of schedule.
A rule of life is that we can always expect the unexpected.
Natural disasters deliver this truth in graphic and shocking ways. But the unexpected is with us constantly, natural disasters or not.
It's why an enduring society must be a free society. Only when free can individuals deal with life's endless surprises in creative and resilient ways.
Bureaucracy and government control are guarantees for failure.
Now, sadly, we watch those on Louisiana's Gulf Coast bear the brunt again of a brutal hurricane.
Think of the despair that followed Katrina. There was no shortage of opinions that New Orleans was done forever, that it could never recover.
But, human resilience, will, creativity and freedom have revived this city.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate in the New Orleans region is below the national average.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported on the surge of entrepreneurial activity that has occurred there. Tax incentives have given birth to a growing, nationally competitive film industry, with music and software design following suit.
A failed public school system has been revitalized, with 80 percent of the schools now charter schools.
Shouldn't it tell us something that Apple, the icon for innovation, once on the brink of failure, is now the most valuable company in history?
And that all the major areas where we are having problems are areas controlled or dominated by government?
Americans don't need to watch fancily produced political conventions to know that one question faces us this year: Do we want to be free?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)