Stephen Kruiser writes at PJ Media:
erhaps the biggest offender is the government’s continued support for ethanol, particularly through the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which requires refiners to add increasing amounts of biofuels to gasoline.
After the RFS became law in 2006, ethanol production capacity — and demand for corn feedstock — exploded, thus creating a domino effect of price increases from corn to other staple crops to meat, poultry and dairy, and finally to Americans’ grocery bills.
Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office concluded in 2009 that U.S. ethanol policy was responsible for up to 15% of the total increase in domestic food prices, and benefited a small cabal of farmers and biofuel producers at the expense of American families and the economy more broadly.
Complying with Obamacare’s menu labeling rule alone will increase food costs $537 million just in the first year, according to the FDA. Then there’s the new Food Modernization Act, which will cost taxpayers over $1.3 billion in regulatory costs and increase food prices $701 the first year and $472 million annually, according to the FDA. The idea of reasoned cost-benefit analyses in governmental policy is nonexistent. Instead, we have ideologies and agendas and all of us pay the price.
W had several big mistakes.
His biggest mistake was ignoring pop culture.
Howdy Gamecock
I thought well of GW Bush as both an upright person and an effective president. This is an important area where I think he made a bad decision and there are others.
I’d take GW Bush on his worst day over Al Gore or the current occupant on their best days.
Yep. More proof that GW Bush wasn’t much of a President.
Yeah, I’d take him back in a heartbeat!
“Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office concluded in 2009 that U.S. ethanol policy was responsible for up to 15% of the total increase in domestic food prices, and benefited a small cabal of farmers and biofuel producers at the expense of American families and the economy more broadly.” And the poorest Americans — the poorest all over the world — are the ones who suffer the most of this kind of chicanery.
I am embarrased that GW Bush and Republicans, people I generally respect, have had a large hand in this nonsense.