The New America

I find these headlines emblematic of the disconnect in the New America. The first is synonymous of trying to force an unprofitable product on the marketplace:

Largest US Biodiesel Plant Is For Sale

The nation's largest biodiesel refinery went on the block this week for an undisclosed price after the owner shut down the $70 million facility in the face
of low demand...

Obviously current economic conditions have contributed to the decline of the bio-fuel industry, which is precisely what the economy is supposed to do-weed out the losers in the marketplace. So despite massive government subsidies and mandated usage, this product can not survive normal economic variables. Common sense and economic laws would say that the bio-fuel industry should scale way back or disappear until it is a viable product.

Well at least that is the way things used to work, but not in our Brave New Green World. Now biofuel has been mandated by powers on high (governments) as a necessity to modern life, for what they still have not explained. So we are left with our second headline:

Cornell opens new biofuels laboratory

Why of course we need to invest much more public research money into an energy source that can not survive despite massive infusion of other public monies which can not get it past being a loser. But why not throw good (public) money after bad as the articles first paragraph so proudly proclaims:

Cornell University is the proud new home to a state-of-the-art Biofuels Research Laboratory, lauded as a unique research, educational and economic development facility rolled into one....

I wonder how much government research money was given to Thomas Edison, Henry Ford or countless other inventive entrepreneurs of the past in order to develop products and markets for their inventions? But in this New America we invest our children's money to research products which must be subsidized with our grandchildren's money in order that we may increase our tax burden on products we do not really need.

Then of course there is one final headline in the sad saga of the New America;

Researchers Say Increased Biofuel Resources Production Could Harm Water

A new study by researchers at Rice University in Houston, Texas warns that expanded production of crops to produce biofuels could damage water resources. The researchers suggest policy makers take into account what they call the "water footprint" when encouraging biofuel development...

Oh well, welcome to the New America.
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