When you want oil, you ask a geologist. When you want ethanol, you ask a farmer. Helping Louisiana farmers balance their productive portfolios of crops for food and fuel is a good hedge for all of us. As in any industry, some incumbents will resist the development of a new emerging market on their embedded assets as a matter of course. The issues raised by the Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association are not mean-spirited in my view but instead are those that should be answered in the debate. They will be and if the bill is signed, I'm sure the commissioner and industry will figure out how to make it work.
If the bill is not signed, the demand and supply of ethanol will continue to grow. We need all the liquid fuels we can get our hands on. The President of the United States has recognized it. Those in the state who had a bad experience when the nearly faddish fuel gasohol market in the '80s rose and fell will cite a number of reasons why ethanol is not ready for prime time. In the 25 plus years since its introduction, with increased crop yields, market infrastructure, and industry efficiencies, acceptability has grown appreciably from a boutique fuel in the cornbelt Midwest to a real industry, spreading nationwide and supplying nearly 5 billion gallons this year. The oil industry has continually proved technological advances in the vertically integrated oil business; the renewable ethanol business is doing the same.
"Odom's Bill" is helping to educate our citizens about growing both the carbon and carbohydrate industries in Louisiana. Brazil, confronted with 80 percent of its oil imports being cut off in the first Arab embargo in 1973, began its march to produce ethanol and persevered with it through the second Iranian embargo in 1979 and now has weathered $70-a-barrel oil prices. Their miracle crop? Sugar cane.
We may never accomplish complete energy independence, but we can sure hedge our risks with all the renewable resources we can muster. Farming and oil industry men and women will figure it out. Our goal is to continue to do as Henry Ford once pondered ' how to now build the delivery structure so ethanol is readily available to the motoring public as seamlessly as gasoline.
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
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