The World Starves For Leadership

The dark side, as we know, celebrates war, famine and pestilence. All carry the threat of death and death itself.

Men fear death. To put it off, they will give themselves into bondage.

Is that not the object of the dark side, to enslave men through fear of death?

Toward this end, deadly threats must be made.

The war method is well known. No day dawns without war or threat of war, preferably in locales that do not disturb our football games and cocktail parties.

Pestilence is equally well known but as yet underutilized. To keep the threat top of mind, we get periodic reports of Mad Cow, flus or E. coli, any of which are subject to manipulation.

Today, we consider the famine scheme, in which the president and Congress, masquerading as leaders, rob taxpayers and starve humanity at the same time.

Here is what they do.

They destroy food, specifically corn, by stealing taxpayer money to turn it into grain alcohol, known as ethanol. They execute this program by the usual government method, by instilling fear in the populace, in this case, of energy shortages and high gas prices.

Under our stunning political leadership, gas prices have tripled in six years. They blame supply shortages instead of the primary cause — their relentless and purposeful debasement of our currency through monetary inflation. Because of that, all prices are higher, not just gas.

To check high prices, politicians propose the standard federal fix: raise them even more.

Studies vary, but the most optimistic say that to get $1 worth of energy from ethanol we must burn 75 cents worth of energy from another source, such as oil, a fossil fuel. Other studies show it takes more energy to produce ethanol than the energy we get out of it.

But let's say we get a slight energy gain out of ethanol.

So what? The real costs, the criminal costs, lie elsewhere.

Because the government pays subsidies for corn and ethanol — averaging about $5.5 billion a year — farmers have converted land from other grains, such as wheat. Thus, supplies of those crops have fallen and prices have gone up.

Destruction of corn has swept like a tsunami over all grain crops and all the products derived from them: beef, chicken, pork, eggs, cheese, leather, farm-raised fish, milk, butter and thousands of other foods.

Prices of corn and wheat have doubled in six years. This has driven food prices up at a rate of about 4.5 percent this year. Americans spend more than $1 trillion a year on food, so the price increases have added at least $45 billion to our grocery bills.

So, both our tax bills and grocery bills are up, all told, more than $50 billion — at least.

We could start another war for that kind of money.

Our destruction of food affects the whole world. Grains are staple crops. They trade on world markets. If prices rise here, they rise everywhere.

Some Americans might think they can afford $5 loaves of bread, $6 gallons of milk and $15-a-pound ribeyes.

What about the poor? What about the poorest nations, to which rich nations send foreign aid?

If foreign aid remains the same, if, for example, America sends another $50 million to Africa, and Europe sends another $50 million to Palestine, and the prices of grains double, then what will that money buy?

Well, it will buy half as much food. It will buy famine.

Ethanol subsidies do not buy energy. They buy poverty. They buy death.

The ethanol scheme is too devious to be an accident, its final costs too devastating to be anything but planned.

A nation of virtue would stop it.

Phil Lucas is executive editor of The News Herald in Panama City, Fla. Contact him at plucas@pcnh.com. To find out more about Lucas and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.