Senator Shaheen has signed onto a letter to Senate Majority leader Reid and Minority leader McConnell, suggesting that the corn based ethanol mandates, and all the tariffs and protections associated with it, not be extended. Your initial reaction might be surprise, but this is not in and of itself surprising. Shaheen is on the record being against them since at least 2008 when she ran for the US Senate but not because she is against ethanol. Her problem is the kind of ethanol, and so we can assume her co-signers have similar issues.
On the surface they are claiming to be against the law (the mandate) that props up ethanol on three fronts and also gives 31 billion dollars to the oil companies to offset the cost of forcing them to add ethanol to fossil based motor fuels. I’m against corporate welfare so I can’t object to repeal even with ulterior motives, but this starts off as a calculated, backhanded poke in the eye, not just to the stupidity of the subsidy regime that liberals normally love, but to big oil. And we should expect oil to get screwed. We should simply accept that even with repeal of the ethanol mandate, we could still see the government use other means of legislative or bureaucratic force to keep ethanol in the fuel supply and pass those costs off to the oil companies. If they can screw oil and get what they really want along the way, that’s a dream come true to Progressives. But what do these signers really want?
As usual, nothing in Washington is quite what it seems.
Separation of powers is something of a throw-away phrase for the Socialist-Democrat-Progressives. They hand it out like a comfort object to the public, a sort of well-worn teddy bear for the masses. It is meant to remind you that no matter what they do (or did) that bear will be there to help you feel better.
[ UPDATED Senator McConnell has officially come out against earmarks:“Today, I am announcing that I will join the Republican leadership in the House in support of a moratorium on earmarks in the 112th Congress,” he said].
Democrats continue to insist that they created jobs. To do this they extracted trillions from our economic future in an effort to create jobs that did not yet exist–that perhaps were not needed yet. Looking at similar exercises, cash for clunkers–which moved car sales forward a few months but has since resulted in a collapse in the market; the home mortgage bail outs, supports, credits, and the "home affordable" programs which improved home sales briefly but which have since collapsed (also to historic lows); and then there’s the stimulus, several public sector employee bailouts, bank lending infusions, small business bills, and everything in between including health care reform–many trillions spent, all made with claims that they would create, save, or incentivize job creation.
Carol SEIU-Porter seems to think we need government. That the Tea Party and others do not want any government. That there is no role for government. And while there is a minority of people within the various facets of the movement who might agree, most of us do not because anarchy leads to oligarchy and totalitarianism. That’s just how people are wired.
A few months back I discovered that Paul Hodes had received a one time $10,000.00 donation from American Crystal Sugar (A major US Sugar conglomerate), at about the same time as the 288 billion dollar 2007/2008 Farm bill was being pushed through congress, and vetoes overrode. US Sugar is a protected industry with a good amount of political influence. American Crystal Sugar wanted to get into the ethanol industry but could not justify the up front costs. Hodes and the farm billed solved that problem with your money. 
I was watching the online web cast of Hillsdale College’s commemoration of the Kirby Center (on Constitution Day) in Washington DC, and Dr. Charles Kessler of Claremont McKenna College. Dr. Kessler is a constitutional scholar and early on in his speech he makes the following observation about the current clash between the government and the people, and the rise of the Tea Party
Yesterday Terie Norelli celebrated my Birthday by taking to the