Social Web Meets The Financial Fed

Republican lawmakers are raising concerns that ACORN, the low-income advocacy group under investigation for voter registration fraud, could be eligible for billions in aid from the economic stimulus proposal working its way through the House. House Republican Leader John Boehner issued a statement over the weekend noting that the stimulus bill wending its way through Congress provides $4.19 billion for "neighborhood stabilization activities." He said the money was previously limited to state and local governments, but that Democrats now want part of it to be available to non-profit entities. That means groups like ACORN would be eligible for a portion of the funds. Image Credit: FOX News

Social Web Meets The Financial Fed

In Carter’s Second Term (Barack Obama’s 44th Presidency), the citizens of the United States are faced with a very fast moving Federal Government that is being directed by the Barack Obama Administration to spend out our tax money at a record rate.

The sweeping spending and economic stimulus plan recently passed by the House of Representatives on a one-party vote (the Democrat Party) proposes massive spending transfers to recognized money wasting, non job producing, “”shovel-ready” pet projects rooted in liberal socialist political philosophy – that is, to pay people for votes and political allegiance.

Examples of the type of projects this Executive Branch and Democrat controlled Congress believes will stimulate the American economy includes $4.19 billion for "neighborhood stabilization activities." (read that ACORN), $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn't turned a profit in 40 years, $2 billion for child-care subsidies, $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts, $400 million for global-warming research, $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects, $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons, $150 million for Honey Bee Insurance, and there is more … much more.

So, how does one find out what is being discussed and potentially placed into law as it relates to ones tax dollars being spent and be a part of a social web process at the same time?

Enter the Daylight Network, on Monday, daylightnetwork.com, launched with a $5,000 Obama Prediction Market, and a suite of tools designed to help citizens (you and me) audit the federal government.

That’s right, just register and vote on what projects listed will pass, get bigger, fail, and possibly make money along the way through your prediction.

Home Page of Daylight Network - The more and more Americans learn about the stimulus package, the less they like it. Today, according to the Rasmussen poll, less than 37% of Americans are now in favor in the plan that now nears $1 trillion. We have dissected every major provision of the bill made it available for everyone to vote on every single line item. We are updating our results every few hours and blogging, phoning, faxing, e-mailing, and tweeting the results across the country. With enough momentum we can influence the Senate and cut the pork! Caption & Image Credit: Daylight Network

This excerpted and edited from MHT (Mass High Tech – the journal of New England technology) -

Federal gov’t audit website Daylight Networks launches
By Galen Moore, MHT - Monday, February 2, 2009

Amateur political pundits: Aaron Day has got $100 cash for you.

The CEO of Tangerine Wellness Inc., a Boston company that provides corporate weight management programs online, has co-founded Daylight Network. Its site, daylightnetwork.com, launches today with a $5,000 Obama Prediction Market, and a suite of tools designed to help citizens audit the federal government.

The Obama Prediction Market treats predictions about President Barack Obama’s first 100 days like publicly traded stocks. Each member gets $5,000 in online “currency” to invest in – or short sell against – predictions. Stocks rise in value as more people buy in, and at the end of the president’s first 100 days, the top 50 traders split a $5,000 pot.

The site is free.
----
“I’ve always been strongly interested in politics,” said Day. He came up with the idea for Daylight Network about two years ago, but left it alone because he didn’t think anyone would be interested. “Now, we’re in extremely difficult times and people are looking for answers.”

In addition to the prediction market, the site provides calculators that show how federal dollars are spent.

An individual taxpayer can find out exactly how the government is spending each dollar of his or her tax money. Home pages for each government organization give an overview, a news feed and a list of non-government alternatives.

“What I wanted to do is provide some transparency so that people can appreciate what the government does and audit the government independently,” he said.

His hope is that an online community will grow up around discussions of possible solutions.

To solve the country’s financial problems, “It is going to take not just government,” Day said. “It’s going to take the private sector, non-government organizations, everything is going to have to be motivated.”
Reference Here>>

Minimize the effects brought to us through the Jimmy Carter Presidency ("Stagflation" where recession and inflation existed hand in hand, and etc.) - We, at MAXINE suggest you please contact Senators Collins - Maine, Snowe - Maine, Gregg - NH, Murkowski - ALASKA, and Grassley - Iowa to Vote NO on the Spendulus/Stimulus Bill!

Cruising On Corn E85 – Not A Smooth Ride

Dan Kallal of rural Chesterfield in Macoupin County, who co-owns and operates Kallal Brothers Inc., where they raise grain and livestock, holds a 6-week-old crossbred pig. Image Credit: The Telegraph/MARGIE M. BARNES

Cruising On Corn E85 – Not A Smooth Ride

The average vehicle driving American would dearly love to be able to do their level best to reduce our dependence on oil and the geopolitical pressures its use presents our country.

It would be nice that ALL cars were FlexFuel capable (able to use both gasoline and E85 for ease of transition to the use of renewable biofuel) and every fuel station provided an E85 fuel pump.

The average city living American, however, may be uninformed as to how difficult a proposition this switch can be. Many believe that all we have to do is “just do it” and everything will be fine – but this pursuit of reduced dependence on fossil fuels has its domino effect on the infrastructures that are already dependent on the easy cellular-fiber sources that exist.

Further, it takes energy to convert fiber to fuel so the question has to be asked, is this move to E85 really economically feasible?

Excerpts from The Telegraph (Alton, Illinois), originally published in two parts -

1) Ethanol demands send farmers scrambling & 2) Ethanol push has livestock producers worried
Becoming less reliant on foreign oil has become the favorite sound bite for politicians.
By MAGGIE BORMAN - The Telegraph - 02/26/2007

From the president to the governor, leaders are putting taxpayer money where their mouths are, subsidizing production of ethanol from the heartland's golden corn crop.

Ethanol, the colorless, flammable liquid produced by the fermentation of sugars from corn and other plants, puts the kick in alcoholic beverages, the pop in popcorn and is used in foods from cereal to soda pop.

Most of the ethanol used as a gasoline additive in the U.S. comes from corn grown in a few Midwest states known as the Corn Belt. Illinois is the nation's No. 2 ethanol producer and the No. 2 biodiesel producer.

In 2007, Illinois' 10 ethanol plants will produce more than one billion gallons, and three biodiesel plants will produce more than 120 million gallons.

The governor has supported a rapid expansion of the E85 infrastructure.
----
The governor's plan, among other things, would invest $25 million to help build five biodiesel plants, boosting the state's production by 200 percent to 400 million gallons per year, or the equivalent of 25 percent of the state's annual diesel fuel needs by 2017.

Although his means of financing are far from clear, Blagojevich wants to invest $100 million over the next five years to build up to 20 ethanol plants across Illinois, with an additional $100 million over the next 10 years to build four plants in Downstate Illinois using new technology to create ethanol from plant waste materials such as corn husks and wood pulp.
----
Ethanol has many supposed benefits - weaning Americans off foreign oil, increasing local industry and jobs, reducing global warming and aiding grain producers, among them.

But many people question the validity of the rush to subsidize the ethanol industry. They want to know if America has the ability to produce enough ethanol to become totally foreign-oil free. Ethanol is placing, in particular, a lot of burden on corn supplies, which affects livestock producers, world food banks and corn food products.

Where will all the corn come from?

In December, Chuck Hartke, director of the Illinois Department of Agriculture, said Illinois produced about 1.7 billion bushels of corn last year. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's year-end statistics released last week estimated the 2006 corn production at 10.5 billion bushels, the third largest on record, but still a 5 percent decrease from 2005.

More than 70 million acres of corn were planted for grain production. Corn acres are expected to increase dramatically this year, due in large part to the rapid increase in fuel ethanol production capacity.

The U.S. ethanol industry has a capacity to produce about 5 billion gallons per year, but more than 4.5 billion gallons of capacity is under construction, according to Ethanol Producer Magazine. The USDA planting estimate for this year forecasts an increase in the range of seven million to 10 million acres of corn.

"Currently we are using about 400 million bushels of corn to produce ethanol in Illinois, and by the end of 2008 we should be consuming close to a billion bushels to produce ethanol," Hartke told the Chicago Tribune in December.
----
Here is an easy formula to remember: 1 ton of corn equals 39.4 bushels, which equals 110 gallons of ethanol.
----
All this would increase the corn needed for distilleries to 139 million tons, Brown said. This would yield nearly 15 billion gallons of ethanol, satisfying only 6 percent of U.S. auto fuel needs (this estimate does not include any plants started after June 30 that would come online in time to draw on the 2008 harvest).

At the end of January, the Illinois Farm Bureau said Illinois farmers might expand corn production acres by at least 9 percent over the 2006 levels, according to a survey conducted at the Corn and Soybean Classic meetings around the state. If realized, Illinois farmers would plant about 12.6 million acres in corn this spring - the highest corn acreage since records began in 1866.
----
Ethanol push has livestock producers worried

No one questions the need to reduce the nation’s reliance on foreign oil. But pushing ethanol as the solution has people like pig farmer Ken Doyle worried.

Doyle, who runs Hickory Grove Pork Farm between Carlinville and Gillespie, said production of ethanol stands to deplete the corn stock that livestock farmers count on to feed the animals that feed much of the world.

"Those of us that are well-fed and warm at night don’t consider the impact an increase in feed prices will have globally," Doyle said. "That is a rather sobering aspect of this that the press isn’t covering. Right now we have all these politicians beating on their chests speaking about how wonderful it is to have alternative energy, but there is a downside for the hungry of the world that is quite frightening."

Controversy remains over the use of America’s fertile cornfields as the best and most economical means to replace gasoline. The demands are having an impact on livestock producers, consumer food prices, exports and world food banks.

While ethanol-related industries and the National Corn Growers Association have asserted that corn-guzzling ethanol demands outlined under President George Bush’s energy plan can be done, even the president recognizes it may be difficult to meet his goal of 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol by 2012.

"Ethanol produced today comes from corn, and we’ve got hog growers and chicken growers that need corn to feed their animals," Bush said while speaking at a DuPont plant in Delaware last month. "Therefore it’s going to be kind of a strain at some point in time on the capacity for us to have enough ethanol to make us less dependent on oil."
----
Steve Ring, general manager of Hog Inc. in Greenfield, a Greene County-based cooperative composed of about 100 pork producers whose principal business is the manufacture of feed for hogs, said many pork producers were not counting on how quickly the market would respond to the ethanol boom.

"We are facing a new dilemma. In 2006, the country raised the third-largest corn crop in history. Because of the current and projected demand from the ethanol industry, corn prices are the highest they have been in 10 years," Ring said.

In October 2005, Ring said the average his cooperative paid for corn was $1.65 a bushel. In October 2006, the price averaged $2.85, and in December 2006, the average was $3.65. The price as of Jan. 26 was $3.78.

"So our price of corn has jumped 72.7 percent from October 2005 to October 2006. It jumped 121 percent from October 2005 to December 2006, and 129 percent (on Jan. 26)," Ring said. "That is one heck of a change in a short period of time."
----
It takes about 10 bushels of corn to raise and finish a hog to market. Utilizing the current price of corn, it represents an increase of $21.30 per hog, Ring said, noting that most other ingredients have also increased.
----
Ring said Hog Inc. has had a few hog producers that have already discussed dropping their hog operations and only raising grain. If hog producers have older buildings, for example, that need to be replaced within a few years, "it is difficult for them to pencil out a profit with current corn prices that may well increase."

"As the ethanol industry grows, it will require more corn," Ring said. "While there is talk out of Washington about cellulose crops (another means of ethanol production), the technology for corn and the tax incentives will keep pressure on to grow corn-based ethanol."

The ethanol industry has a 51-cent-per-gallon tax advantage while the livestock industry has no tax incentives.
----
"I have read several reports that estimate the ethanol industry can pay $4.05 per bushel for corn when crude oil is $50 per barrel. The higher crude oil goes, the more the ethanol industry can afford to pay," Ring said.

Ring supports the use of ethanol and less reliance on foreign oil. He owns a flex-fuel vehicle and purchases E85 on a regular basis.
----
Ring’s final concern is the impact corn-based ethanol would have on U.S. consumer food product costs and corn for export to the world’s hungry.

"My sincere hope is that legislators will have an open discussion on the positive and negative aspects of an aggressive expansion of the ethanol industry.
----
Dan Kallal, who lives in the rural area outside the Macoupin County town of Chesterfield, and his brother, Dave, own and operate Kallal Brothers Inc., where they raise grain and livestock.
----
"We are shifting to growing as much corn as we can, as price will be a factor if we have to buy corn," Dan Kallal said. "Feed costs are about 60 to 70 percent of our production cost so if we have to buy $4 corn, it will definitely affect us."

Kallal said the demand for corn-based ethanol production would have a global effect as well; there won’t be as much corn meal to donate to the World Food Bank for other countries, nor will there be enough corn for export.

"It is a global market, and if we are competitive we can export; if we aren’t, someone else will pick up the market."

Doyle, who along with his family runs the Hickory Grove Pork Farm, a farrow-to-finish swine facility that includes a breeding herd and a market herd, said his farm purchases all of its corn.

"Feed costs are about 60 percent of our operation and it takes about 10 bushels of corn to create a market weight," Doyle said. "With a dollar and a half increase on corn it equates to about $15 per pig increase."
----
"The outlook for our industry in 2007 is not positive. When you are dealing with a global economy, this doesn’t just affect our operation but every operation in the world," Doyle said. "In a world market, it is demand for feed grains -- not just corn -- that has gone up."

The price of feed grains in time will affect the cereal, dairy, eggs, beef and pork products Doyle said, as well as the World Food Program, which feeds more hungry people than any other agency.
References Here & Here>>