3/11/07

The bunny loves it when the president takes trips. Thanks to television, it seems to the bunny that he goes along too.

This president, however, seems to have a fly in his suntan ointment. Said fly, is, of course, his oddball ethanol policy, which has Latins screaming and throwing things from Mexico City to Rio de Janeiro.

Corn is the flavor of the moment in Washington, and as a dedicated herbivore that suits the bunny just fine. It's just that politics is spoiling all the prime vacation spots. There's no way for him to check out all the hot beach bunnies and their Brazilians in Sao Paulo as long as the US maintains high duties on their ethanol to protect US ethanol makers. Nor can he munch mami's tortillas south of the border, since their price has jumped 40% to .35 a pound, in a country where the minimum wage is less than $5 a day. (See Elisabeth Malkin's article on Mexican protests and food prices in the NEW YORK TIMES, 2/1/07.) Poor President Calderon--his buddy the Texan has caused the price of corn, Mexico's staple grain, with ethanol embrace.

Massive US subsidies of ethanol producers are having all sorts of unintended consequences--the price of animal feed, for instance, which spiked thanks to the corraling of corn for ethanol, which took 20% of last year's corn crop and is expected to take 25% of this year's. Which means that the price of meat and poulty rises, natch. (See AP 3/9/07, or just read the latest report from the USDA, http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/Baseline/livestock.htm.)

The bunny is all for cleaner, more efficient technologies. But being a prey animal makes him an expert on cause and effect, and this one's shaping up to be a doozy. Screaming Brazilians, man, screaming Brazilians. These are the people who redefined languor, in Portugese no less! The bunny dreads what the politics attending the biofuel craze will lead to next. If somebody comes up with a way to run cars on semolina, the president better cross Italy off his list, for someone will surely take a shot at him.