I was watching an IPTV show called Market To Market this Friday evening, mostly because I only have an indoor digital antenna and there are only so many times you can watch the same B-Western on Grit. I’m actually glad I caught the show though as the host was providing details on these ethanol and diesel bills in the legislature. I didn’t catch the particular HR# and a quick search of E-15 on the Legislature site returned 212 hits. Evidently, there is much interest in the corn lobby given the number of bills out there.
Anyway, what I heard did not give me a very good feeling about what is going on with respect to these bills. I for one as a person with tillable farm ground and a corn/bean/hay rotation – do not want the government dictating to me as a consumer what I can buy and fuel my vehicles with. I go out of my way to not use ethanol if I can help it. I also do not use bio-diesel if I can help it. I understand that the bill the host was describing would limit gas station owners to providing only E-15 as opposed to the current E-10, and would limit the stations to only one pump that offered a no ethanol option. The bill also would set diesel to 30% biofuel mandated.
My first thought about all of this is – “JUST WHO IN THE HELL DO YOU PEOPLE THINK YOU ARE? GOD?”. I for one stand on the side of freedom in the market, not forced to buy something I don’t want and don’t want my tax money supporting. We have enough government-mandated crap going on in every other aspect of our lives and we don’t need the large corporate ag industry pushing their crappy product down our throats.
The Market to Market show interviewed a station owner about these new mandates and his response was not good. This change was going to cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars to revamp delivery systems in order to comply with these new mandates. Then they had the head of the Iowa Corn Lobby poo-pooing the station owner’s concerns because the bill included money for the owners to update their systems. REALLY?
Let me see if I get this straight? The state is going to make us use a product we don’t want and force business owners to incur significant costs in order to supply that product? Is that the gist of it? Thanks, but no thanks.
What was really funny was the corn lobby guy telling me it will save me money, it would make gas cheaper. I call BS on that. It’s wrong on so many levels I can’t even begin to lay out the argument against the subsidized ethanol industry here in this email.
I will be watching how my reps vote, that much I can assure you.
- Randall
