David Online

“Most of the problems we face are caused by politicians creating solutions to problems they created in the first place,” wrote economist and author Walter Williams earlier this year.

On top of its regular taxpayer subsidies, the ethanol lobby is now seeking $1 billion in short-term credit from the U.S. Taxpayer to help ethanol plants stay in business and up to $50 billion in loan guarantees to finance expansion.

The energy inefficiencies of corn ethanol require high oil prices to be competitive. With plummeting oil prices and the recent bust in commodity prices, the price of ethanol at the pump has fallen nearly in half in recent months to $1.60 from $2.90 per gallon. This new lower price barely covers production costs even with federal subsidies. Three major ethanol producers are now in or near bankruptcy.

A December 24, 2008, editorial in the Wall Street Journal says the ethanol industry wouldn’t even exist without the more than $25 billion in taxpayer handouts over the last 20 years. “Congress only recently passed new energy and farm bills that further greased ethanol production with a 51 cent a gallon tax credit, corn subsidies, and increasingly stringent biofuel mandates. We were told, as usual, that profitability was just around the corner.” 

“The uglier realities of corn ethanol are at least becoming more widely recognized, even on the political left. The Environmental Working Group and five other environmental organizations said this week they oppose a bailout because subsidies "for corn-based ethanol have produced unintended, yet potentially catastrophic environmental consequences, with little or no return to taxpayers in energy security [or] protection from global warming."

As the WSJ says, ethanol may never be profitable in the real world, but in Washington its a lucrative business that provides jobs, and more importantly, votes.

Like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, ethanol is a business created by Congress that now has to be bailed out to save Congress from embarrassment.

A few years ago über-liberal Thomas Frank wrote What’s The Matter With Kansas?, a book that lamely asked and attempted to explain why people, particularly those of his home state of Kansas, supposedly voted “against their economic and social interests” by continually electing Republicans to office.

Star Parker with Townhall.com recently wondered why blacks actually do vote against their economic and social interests by casting their lot with the Democratic Party.

What does Caroline Kennedy have in common with black America, asks Ms. Parker? Not much she says, but Caroline and black America do have something in common. The Democratic Party.

Parker says that, ironically, despite Democratic rhetoric about economic inequities and wealth and income gaps in America, those gaps are more pronounced inside the Democratic tent than inside the Republican one.

Exit polls from the recent presidential election show that Barack Obama captured the vote of America’s richest and America’s poorest. Fifty-two percent of the wealthy voted for Obama and more than 60% of those earning under $30,000 a year.

The wealthiest senator in Congress is John Kerry, a Democrat, as is the wealthiest House member, Jane Harmon. The nation’s two wealthiest men, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are both Democrats.

So what political aspirations do black Americans whose income lags the nation share with the multi-millionaires and multi-billionaires?

Economically speaking; none. Nor do blacks share common ground with Democrat social values.

Church attendance correlates with party affiliation. Those who attend church regularly vote Republican. Those who don’t generally vote Democratic. Except blacks.

Polls show that blacks are more aligned with Republicans than Democrats on social issues such as gay marriage, abortion, and sexual promiscuity. California’s Proposition 8, the ban against gay marriage, passed in great part due to 70% of blacks voting for it.

Blacks poll more closely with Republicans and conservatives on energy and environmental issues than with liberals. Working blacks have little interest in paying higher taxes and bearing the higher costs that will result from chasing global warming windmills and other exotic government-subsidized alternatives.

What blacks do share with liberals and Democrats is income redistribution. A recent Zogby poll shows 80% of Democrats, 90 % of liberals and 76% of blacks supporting taxing the wealthy to give money to low-income Americans.

Democrats and liberals that if you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on the support of Paul.

Ms. Parker is right when she says Republicans and conservatives are wrong if they think they can win the black vote on social issues alone. Until Republicans help blacks understand that only low taxes and limited government provide the economic mobility and opportunity to succeed and that welfare and income redistribution do the opposite.

Winston Churchill may have said it best. “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

Caroline Glick reports that Hamas legislators marked this Christmas season by passing a Shari’a criminal code for the Palestinian Authority that among other things, legalizes crucifixion.

Hamas’ endorsement of nailing enemies of Islam to crosses came at the same time it renewed its jihad. Hamas wanted to make sure Christians didn’t feel neglected as its fighters launched missiles at Jewish day-care centers and schools. So, on Wednesday, Hamas lobbed a mortar shell at the Erez crossing point just as a group of Gazan citizens were standing in line waiting to travel to Bethlehem for Christmas.

While Hamas renewed its jihad against Jews and Christians, its overlords in Iran also basked in jihadist triumphalism. The source of Tehran’s ascendency this week was Britain’s Channel 4 network’s decision to request that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad give a special Christmas Day address to the British people. Ahmadinejad’s was supposed to be a response to Queen Elizabeth’s traditional Christmas Day address to her subjects. Channel 4 said it presented his message as a reasonable (!) counterpoint to the Christmas greetings of the head of the Church of England.

Channel 4 justified its move by proclaiming it was providing a public service (!). A spokesman for Channel 4 told the Jerusalem Post, “We’re offering [Ahmadinejad] the chance to speak for himself, which people in the West don’t often get the chance to see.”

What is it in Ahmadinejad’s words that Channel 4 doesn’t think people in the West understand? Does Channel 4 believe there was perhaps some misunderstanding when Ahmadinejad said he called for Israel to be “wiped off the map?” Was he perhaps misconstrued when he termed Zionists as “the most detested people in all humanity” and called the extermination of six million Jews during World War II “a myth?” Or maybe Channel 4 believes Ahmadinejad was only jesting when he called Israel “a stinking corpse” and declared that “Islam will become the dominating force in the world” and “is ready to rule the world.”