Daily Socotra

01 May 2006

Life Boat

It is May Day, the great unofficial labor holiday of the Left. I can't celebrate because I have to work. On mornings like this I am tempted to inventory the survival gear and prepare for the moment that we have to step off the deck of the great liner and into the life boats.

The troubles buzz like locusts, the sound so loud it makes it difficult to sleep. In no particular order, the Russians appear ready to sell an air defense system to the Iranians that will make inevitable some sort of military action, possibly before the end of the year. By whom it is not clear, but it is scary.

Thousands marched here on the National Mall to protest the rape of Darfur, in Western Sudan. That is awful, and just a close to home, Immigrants are supposed to stage a boycott of all economic activity today, and the bathrooms may not be cleaned at the Bus Station.

The Government is so far behind on security investigations that the cognizant officials have rolled up in balls like hedgehogs and are hiding under their desks.

The latter two issues have the prospect of actual personal inconvenience, at the strategic and tactical level. The first two are just scary.

For comic relief, the press is laughing at the Senate Republicans for their plan to issue $100 checks to cover some of the gas increases, and the junior Senator from Michigan, a visionary Democrat, has introduced a proposal to send a check five times that large.

Let's take a deep collective breath and triage the locusts. There are people we pay who need to go talk to the Russians and ask them not to sell the air defense missiles to Tehran. That may or may not work, since the Revolutionary government is flush with the cash we have sent them via the oil companies.

By all means, let's get on with improving the security at the borders, and deal with the migrants who are already here. And would someone in that disorganized White House tell the President pick up the phone and tell the idiots who manage the security system to adjust their policies and act like there is a war on.

OK. Now let's get back to the central problem, the one that makes it possible for wild eyed radicals to purchase sophisticated weapons and brandish them at their neighbors. The one that is changing the climate, The one that is piling debt on our children and grandchildren.

We are using too much imported oil. Stop me if you have heard this before, but this morning the media and the Congress are off with wild plans to drain the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve and drain the treasury with pre-election give-away cash to the electorate.

I heard a Congresswoman yesterday talking about getting things “back to normal.”

She has been drinking the same Kool-Aid that seems to be served in offices all over the Hill.

Why don't we stop the ship from sinking? How are we going to save Darfur if we cannot save America?

Here is the first step, an achievable, measured and non-hysterical step. It is unfortunate that it does not involve sending you a check.

Rather, it means investing in an existing fuel that will start to cure our unhappy addiction. Ethanol is a fuel that is produced from natural crops. We first heard of it as a corn product, and became a unique symbol of American Presidential politics, since the corn from which the first ethanol was made came fro Iowa, site of an important early primary election.

The natural fuel thus became an issue that everyone cared about for about fifteen minutes every four years, and was hostage to local agribusiness operators who profited from Federal subsidies.

What I am talking about is a thing called “cellulosic ethanol,” which can be made from a variety of crops, including naturally growing switchgrass. You may have heard the President mention it briefly in the State of the Union address as he rambled through the laundry list of pressing problems.

He said he was going to invest a whopping $150 million to investigate the possibilities. The supplemental legislation to fund the wars overseas amount to well over $300 billion thus far, more than that if you count the hidden costs embedded in the Department of Defense, which spends more than a trillion in its five year plan.

It is absurd. We could already have reduced the need for imported oil to the point where the Iranians would have to rely on the revenues of hand-knotted rugs and pistachios to export their revolution.

An ethanol blend fuel can run in the cars that are on the roads now. The infrastructure is already in place to handle and distribute it.

Ethanol became competitive with oil when the price hit $40 a barrel, which now seems like the good old days that everyone wants to get back to.

Of course this will require some investment in new technology, and public investment in production plants. But this is something we can do right now.

Or at least we could if there was some leadership. They apparently have stepped out to have some Kool-Aid and write some checks to the wrong people.

Rather than provision the life-boat, don't you think it might be time to go below and fix the hole in the hull of the great liner?

Before the water gets too deep?