USDA Back In Action

After the short shut down of the government the USDA is back in “business” and their web site is functioning once more.   I found the link on the sugar giveaway to bioethanol fuel producers.

http://www.apfo.usda.gov/Internet/FSA_File/sugar_purchasesale_inv4.pdf

In summary 272,051,214 pounds of crystalline beet sugar was sold to three ethanol producers for $12,607,542.49.  The USDA bought the sugar for $65,902,542.49 and therefore we the people lost $53,294,794.48 on the deal.    A third grader learning arithmetic could tell you they bought the sugar for 24.22 cents a pound, sold the sugar for 4.63 cents a pound, and lost 19.59 cents a pound in their grocery store selling the sugar.

The green machine plugged this data into his CO2 taxation model and it shows that the imputed carbon tax of this sweetheart transaction is $933.91 per ton of avoided CO2.  We avoided 57,066 tons of CO2 emissions.  This is kind of buying 57,066 stubby screwdrivers for $933.91 each.  The DOD bought one $600 hammer twenty years ago and got chastised by Al Gore in his “$600 hammer awards”.  Now the USDA buys 57,066 screwdrivers for $933.91 each and Al Gore says this is saving the planet.

http://www.govexec.com/federal-news/1998/12/the-myth-of-the-600-hammer/5271/

Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack will say he took 10,000 cars off the road for the year in doing the deal and his gift of $5,329 per car is less than the $40,000 a truck gift that Dr. Moniz made to Via Trucks.  Mr. Obama will thank his two secretaries at his next cabinet meeting for being so green.  Here is what Mr. Vilsack could have done instead of this crazy deal.   He could have mailed a 2 pound bag of sugar to each household in the USA using the USPS and attached a note to all Americans saying how much he cares about us.   We all could have saved a trip to local store to buy sugar and each saved a pint of gasoline.  This would have equaled 12,500,000 gallons of saved gasoline or 125,000 tons of avoided CO2 about twice the mass of CO2 as the ethanol will avoid.   We all would have been happy and Obama would have been remembered as the president who put the sugar in your coffee and bowl of cereal and saved twice as much CO2.

A two pound bag of sugar at my local Safeway costs about a buck.  Vilsack could have given us a buck of value for each 24.22 cents of our money he spent and Obama would have done something forward instead of backward for the people.  Instead Vilsack sold our sugar for 4.63 cents a pound and now has 57,066 stubby screwdrivers in his toolbox that are pretty useless.  Al Gore is now selling $993 screwdrivers and has over $100 million in his bank account.  Welcome to America and have a nice day.