Originally Posted By: TiredTrucker
Not sure the waiting for mass transit as opposed to moving about freely thing is an adequate analogy for my situation. Primarily because mass transit is not going to come 11 miles out of a town of 300 people to my rural property and give me a ride. I do appreciate vehicles for transportation, but have no love affair with them. They are tools to get something done. And what goes in the tank is just the cost of using them. And to that end, I focus on the lowest cost per mile. I don't care if it is E0, E10, E15, E20, E30, or E85. I don't care if it is made from corn, sugar cane, sugar beets, or cat urine. If the corn folks want to make ethanol, go for it. And to make it, at least we have not have to go to war and spend hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives to keep the ethanol spigots flowing like we have oil. No doubt there has been waste thrown at the ethanol folks in the past, and the emphasis is on "past" because ethanol subsidies ended in 2011, but it hardly even compares to the money we have spent all around the world playing games with keeping the oil flowing. Am not saying that doing that is necessarily a terrible thing, just that ethanol production has hardly cost anyone near as much as oil has. If we tacked on the price of all the military adventures, money transfers, military aid, etc, etc, etc, that this country has thrown around, to the price of gas at the pump, then many would have some serious reason to pitch a fit. It has been estimated by some economists that if we applied all those costs to fuel at the pump, the cost for a gallon of gasoline would exceed $10 a gallon. And that doesn't include the lives that have been ruined in keeping that oil flowing.
I have no problem for folks in IA to make ethanol, however, considering that people in IA hate Federal govt. it is "strange" how they like ethanol mandate.
I say, go away with mandate, and they can produce ethanol if they want.