Funding the Myth
Krayton Kerns
4.2.08
Do you remember how disappointed you were to discover the truth about Santa Claus? When you think about it; do a few chores, don’t mouth off and in return some fat fairy in a red suit brings you toys made by pointy-ear dwarfs. It’s a pretty sweet deal. Then, around age seven, you master math and reading and your world unravels. Hiding in the hall closet with a flashlight you spot your father’s most recent 1040 Tax Form underneath a pile of National Geographics. As you study it an obvious truth leaps off page two…the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, and Santa Claus exist only because mom and dad are subsidizing them. The reality is crushing. You can fake belief and reap the benefits a few more years but parents will put you on medication and place you in counseling if you are still working the Tooth Fairy angle at age ten.
These childhood myths are harmless and parents play voluntarily. It is the mandated socialist myth of “clean and green” energy that draws my ire this week. Taxpayers have been scammed under the guise of saving the planet.
Years ago, the left actually perpetuated the myth that the release of carbon dioxide by human activity was warming the planet to catastrophic levels. Although they had no data to support such a preposterous theory, they hyped onward to convince all Americans to lessen their carbon footprint. Thus was born the low-carbon-emission ethanol industry. But, there is a problem…
Recent data indicates that because of deforestation and fuel inefficiency the production and use of bio-fuels actually releases more carbon than conventional fuels. (The left, and their propagandists in the media, realize this discovery makes them look foolish and they respectfully request we keep it “our little secret”.) Fortunately the earth is cooling independent of our rising carbon emissions so you needn’t lose sleep over that. Unfortunately the American taxpayer is stuck with the bill of subsidizing the feel-good, but economically unsound, bio-fuel industry.
In 2006 the wallets of taxpayers and unfortunate consumers were relieved of $7 billion dollars for 4.9 billion gallons of ethanol. By 2017, the year lawmakers mandated we must be at maximum bio-fuel production; we will be fermenting and consuming 12 billion gallons of ethanol at a cost of $17.4 billion. As less that half of this country’s population actually pays taxes, 125 million wage earners will cough up $140 per year to correct a problem that exists only in the imagination of pseudo-scientist Al Gore.
Guess who is receiving a majority of that $17.4 billion: Archer Daniels Midland and a truckload of other companies who are building an empire that collects “clean and green” subsidy payments. We are being scammed so the environmental leftists can have a positive self-esteem about saving the planet. It’s not “clean AND green”, it’s “clean THE green”…right out of your wallet. You are funding the myth.
