Even a Stopped Clock . . .

As the old saying goes, even a stopped clock is right twice a day, but it behooves us to take note of the rare occasions when the Obama Administration gets something right.  I’m sure it is an accident or an oversight, or occurred when someone unaccountably blundered while O-bambi was out on the Back Nine, but still. . .

B52 copyFirst, props to the Pentagon for flying B-52s the other day through China’s newly claimed “coastal defense zone” in the Sea of Japan.  It’s a nice touch sending those huge old lumbering bombers instead of nimble stealthy fighter jets.  It is doubtful these flights could have gone off without White House knowledge and approval.

Second, we neglected to take note here a couple weeks back of the EPA’s decision to scale back the ethanol blending requirement for gasoline.  This is a major blow against the corn-ethanol rent-seekers, and ought to be the first step in ending the entire subsidy and mandate for this inferior fuel.

Remarkably, the media is starting to catch on to the ethanol scam.  A couple weeks back the Associated Press offered a scathing indictment of the whole scene. Let the record show that ethanol is a bipartisan fiasco:

[W]hen President George W. Bush signed a law [in 2007] requiring oil companies to add billions of gallons of ethanol to their gasoline each year, Bush predicted it would make the country “stronger, cleaner and more secure.”

But the ethanol era has proven far more damaging to the environment than politicians promised and much worse than the government admits today.

As farmers rushed to find new places to plant corn, they wiped out millions of acres of conservation land, destroyed habitat and polluted water supplies, an Associated Press investigation found.

Five million acres of land set aside for conservation — more than Yellowstone, Everglades and Yosemite National Parks combined — have vanished on Obama’s watch.

Landowners filled in wetlands. They plowed into pristine prairies, releasing carbon dioxide that had been locked in the soil.

Sprayers pumped out billions of pounds of fertilizer, some of which seeped into drinking water, contaminated rivers and worsened the huge dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico where marine life can’t survive.

There’s lots more at the link (including efforts to muzzle ethanol critics), but you get the idea.

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