My boss rented a Mercedes from Hertz(or was it Budget) in Los Angeles.
I was with him when he was returning it. We stopped by a no-name
gas station in Inglewood. Well, it had a name, but it was something like
QuickyMart or something... definitely not one of those major brand-name
gas stations like BP, 76, Shell, etc... Anyway, I volunteered to fill it up
and he told me to fill it with regular. Since I also own a Mercedes, I felt
wrong filling up the rental Mercedes with no-name regular gas that came
out of an extremely dirty nozzle. (all Mercedes require premium and it's
clearly labeled on the inside of the gas cap)

Every time I stop at a gas pump (and bear in mind that the gas at the "unbranded" convenience store and the gas at that fancy "big name" station across the street may come from the same batch at the same refinery piped to the same terminal, at best delivered by a different tanker truck). I'm angered to see that my fuel contains 10% ethanol. 85% would really raise my ire.

Do we not understand that for every gallon and for every mile traveled that ethanol requires substantial energy (burned hydrocarbons) to produce, costs more (if 'economic" at all, only due to a variety of subsidies involved in its production), and drives up the price of corn, not just the corn products used in your kitchen, but with a harsher toll, the price of the masa used in low income households to make the "staff of life" among the poor, tortillas.

We have been fed a "Grand Illusion", far more costly than a dozen Keystone Pipelines pumping that nasty, dark, thick (but quite refine-able, even into high octane AVGAS) Canadian sludge down to Gulf refineries.

Selfish? Of course I'm selfish, but then recently I drove by a piece of land where a combine was busily harvesting corn. Now, I "own" a little chunk of the mineral rights beneath that particular land, the geologists, often right, claim that oil and natural gas await down below, deep and expensive, but if the farmer and ADM, Cargill, etc., are going to use that corn to help fill their coffers and the tank on my gas-guzzling SUV, why shouldn't somebody drill for oil to replace the corn (so you can have sweet soda pop, those poor Mexican children an extra tortilla or 2, and I can receive a monthly royalty check)? I'll even agree to let'em use the natural gas to boil up corn mash to make alcohol, preferably drinkable ethyl, not burnable ethanol.

Oh, I agree this is silly. I'm not sure how many people realize it, but last year at this time, the USA produced 5.5 million barrels of a oil a day. Now we're producing more than 7.5 million. Given this reality, the idea that we should be using agricultural resources to produce a gasoline-substitute that reduces fuel efficiency by 25% seems nuts.

So my guess is that E85 is a product without much of a future. But, in the meantime -- thanks to the crazy way the government and Wall Street set fuel prices -- refilling your rental car with this stuff is certainly a (perhaps slimy) way to save a few bucks.

Guys, you're wasting your breath ranting about ethanol. Nothing is going to stop King Corn. It's grown in too many Congressional districts for anything to change. It's grown all over Iowa, a very politically-important state.

Corn comes from red states, blue states, and purple states. Anyone seen the all-powerful switchgrass lobby lately? Does one exist? How many politicians could they ever own and operate as compared to corn?

Although ethanol might be only the 2nd or 3rd real driver of corn prices. Global beef demand is rising rapidly, in large part thanks to a few hundred million middle-class Chinese who can newly afford it. Bigtime beef demand requires more bigtime industrial feedlots, and bigtime feedlots require tons and tons of corn.

It makes me wonder...for every American who stops buying Big Beef and instead buys a grass-fed cow from a local farmer who uses a smalltime slaughterhouse, how many *new* beef eaters are coming online in the developing world? Probably hundreds or thousands.

So between putting corn into cows, putting corn into our fuel tanks, and liquifying parts of it to inject into the rest of our food supply, if I want to actually buy a cob or two to eat...that's more expensive. But that's also good politics.

man, if the NRA is as powerful as the corn lobby, Congress will probably
pass laws require every adult US citizen to carry a sidearm 24-hour a day.
While that's a little too extreme, I wonder what the crime rate will loo
like if every adult is required to carry a gun. (on the ground and in the
air) Dismantle the TSA and require every passenger to carry a gun.
No sane terrorist will want to try anything.


or... if the beef industry manages to persuade Congress to outlaw
vegetarianism, pork, fish, poultry....