A message to Congress

President Obama was elected by a healthy margin because the promises he made struck a chord with voters. Democrats were given a healthy margin in Congress because voters knew Obama would need Congress to deliver on those promises.

So, dear Congress, what part of that message don’t you get? Meanwhile, you leave us with the impression that you were elected to serve private health-care interests, rather than we who elected you. You leave us with the perception that you’ve been bought and paid for by drug, health-insurance, and private hospital corporations. But your lame excuses for not being able to do this and that don’t wash.

Show us you care, for a change. There are reasonable ways to pay for (at the very least) a public option that would provide coverage for everyone. Appeal to the charitable nature of your devoutly Christian friends, who I’m sure would happily do what Jesus would do if you reminded them. What is so wrong with asking the wealthy to subsidize health care for the poor? Goodness knows much of their wealth results from one kind of subsidy or another, all gifts from you. Isn’t it time they gave a little back?

The new patriotism?

Ethanol is the “in” thing — so much so that the United Nations is worried that worldwide food production might suffer in the rush to produce fuel crops. But in the US at least, it’s become unwise to debunk the ethanol myth, and those who do risk being branded as anti-enviroment — or, worse, unpatriotic.

While biofuels may indeed have a role in the current crisis that can be characterized as both environmental and geopolitical, they are not the answer to the looming oil shortage. They will not provide us with the independence from foreign oil we seek. They will not guarantee our national security, something that’s already being trotted out in defense of agricultural fuels.

Yes, they are renewable, but there’s not enough arable land in the US to plant enough corn — or any other crop, for that matter — to replace all the petroleum we use. In addition, the process of converting corn to energy requires… energy, from fertilizers to transportation to the conversion process itself. In short, it winds up to be not very efficient.

What’s happening, though, with the encouragement of this administration — and, yes, this Congress — is that farmers are all excited about corn. They see it as the new oil. Without restriction, many farmers are switching to corn in hopes of the riches they will reap.

Okay, not all farmers are excited. Corn is being diverted from feed to ethanol production and ranchers, for example, are complaining that as the supply of feed crops diminishes, costs rise. And their costs, of course, are passed along to consumers.

In fact, in the end, all rising costs and other hardships created by this rush to ethanol will be passed along to consumers, who might even begin to see shortages of many foods in the not too distant future.

Yes we need energy, but we can’t eat it. Nor can those starving in third-world nations, many of whom find their only hope for survival in the surplus food produced by the United States. As we divert grains to fuel, there simply won’t be any surplus.

Once again, the solutions to the parallel problems of energy shortages, global warming and national security involve a comprehensive energy plan, one that leans heavily on solar, wind and other natural phenomena that can be tapped. Add public transit and sustainable communities to that mix, and come up with a way to sequester carbon emissions and perhaps even remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and we’re talking about a plan — with biofuels only a footnote.

Meanwhile, let’s not call someone unpatriotic just because they see the flaws in ethanol.