Subsidies and Corruption

Opinion

Opinion by George McClellan:

I’ll tell you what I think. I think Ted Cruz is taking a lot of heat for his position on fazing out ethanol subsidies over five years, to Iowa’s corn farmers. Naturally, this is a slight blow to his campaign but a fight he needs to sustain for all taxpayers to understand.

First, I would like to know why are American taxpayers subsidizing an industry whose product is not cost effective for its intended purpose, demonstratively bad for some internal combustion engines and is directly responsible for the rise in world food costs? As an example, for a Mexican family who can no longer make their tortillas from affordable corn, as they once could, shows how the long arm of the unintended consequence of political corruption extends. That poor Mexican and his family have now had to come to America to live.

It sounds so nice to say that small farmers can supplement their incomes by growing corn to make automobile fuel. Well, there just aren’t any small farmers out there any more. Most of them, like our chicken producers here in Georgia, grow their products for the large conglomerates, like ADM, Monsanto and a few others, to whom the vast subsidies are paid.

Only a few short years ago, before big business started calling the shots, excess corn, that which would rot in a silo if not sold in time, was really good for making another salable product just like ethanol, that people did want: White lightening. And, it didn’t ruin any engines.

The Federal Government couldn’t have that so bootlegging was fought and that lead to prohibition, which brought us organized crime. It took a few hard years but the FBI finally got organized crime under some control and then re-organized all such enterprises in the capable hands of a Federal tax collector. So, except for the black market, free enterprise was crushed again. Can’t have any of that loose money slip through the cracks, can we?

If ethanol is such a great and viable product, then why does it need to be subsidized? Let the free market assume its role in commerce. If it’s good it will sell. If not, it won’t. Drink the damn stuff. That’s how Capitalism works best. Let free enterprise assume its rightful role in commerce, like it once was allowed to do, and get the Federal government out of the way.

The same argument can be applied to almost any product made or grown. Big Pharma is frequently in the headlines for the exorbitant cost of some of its medicines, but big money, from big Pharma, prohibits smaller manufactures from competing. Foreign drug makers face stiff tariffs for their products to such a point they can’t sell here at all.

Of course this is the crony capitalism so beloved by Democrat and Republican politicians. This is the juice that fuels the corruption engine and lubricates the individual slide into the cruel depravity experienced by so many of our politicians sent up there promising to fight corruption.

Alas, all is to no avail. The corrupting vapors of Potomac fever are as deadly to the honest mans soul and his good intentions as eating the apple in the garden of Eden was for Adam. We still have people of honor in DC. They are called FBI Special Agents. I have not read or seen where they have fallen off the wagon yet. We’ll probably have a good indication of that if the corrupt Hillary Rodham Clinton, skates from her crimes against our country.

Remember, freedom is the goal, the constitution is the way. Now, go get ‘em! (20 Jan 15)

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