On Jan. 21, the Environmental Protection Agency said a fuel blend of 85 percent gasoline and 15 percent ethanol could be used in all cars and light trucks manufactured between 2001 and 2006.  This expanded an EPA ruling in October which permitted the use of E15 in vehicles manufactured since 2007. The EPA issued this ruling despite the fact its own research indicates expanded production of ethanol will hurt the environment. In the United States, ethanol (ethyl alcohol) is made mostly from corn.  Its supporters say ethanol reduces our dependence on foreign oil, and makes the air cleaner.  But a 2005 study by Dr. David Pimentel of Cornell University and Dr. Tad Patsek of the University of California-Berkeley indicated that it takes 29 percent more energy to produce a gallon of corn-ethanol than the ethanol itself contains. Since the energy required to produce ethanol comes chiefly from fossil fuels, ethanol increases, not reduces, our dependence on oil.  And, according to a study by Stanford University Prof. Mark Jacobson, it makes air pollution worse.

Today (2/02), Ralph Nader wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the government had ripped off the Fannie/Freddie stockholders, of which he was one. What delicious irony that the man who has been telling us for decades to trust the government instead of private business was abused by the government. I wonder if he has learned anything. Another no surprise last week was a report issued by the Congressional Budget Office that the budget deficit is even larger (a mere $1.5 trillion larger) than previously forecast and financial doomsday is getting closer. Again, having learned nothing, President Obama responded in his State of the Union address by proposing more government spending. He seems to be making a real effort to have the collapse occur in his first term. Meanwhile, more reports surfaced about the fact that many state and local governments have not been disclosing relevant information about their finances to their bondholders. Executives in private firms would be fined or sent to jail for similar lapses, but government officials are largely immune to rules that the rest of us must follow.

Wasn't that just the greatest State of the Union speech ever?  All that pent-up expectation that Zero was going to channel Bill Clinton as The Comeback Kid pivoting off the humiliation of facing a newly-elected Republican Majority to join them in declaring "The era of big government is over" - well, he certainly burst that balloon, didn't he? What a turkey of a talk - so bad it may be right up there with Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech.  It's being ridiculed as his Sputnik Speech for his stupid "Sputnik moment" shtick, and his WTF Speech for his witless "Winning The Future" slogan that deserved the acronym everyone knows has another meaning. The HFR prefers to entitle Zero's 2011 SOTU - in honor of his paean to "solar shingles" as an example of "tomorrow's energy" as opposed to "yesterday's energy" of filthy hydrocarbons - as his Solar On A Shingle Speech. Even better, he phoned it in.  It was a going-through-the-motions, desultory, listless performance with no fire.  "I struggled to keep my eyes open, Jack," one Congressman told me.  "He droned on and on, blathering about what he wants when he knows there's not the slightest chance we'll vote it.  He even said he wants us to revive the dead DREAM Act!  What a space cadet... we're all calling him President Sputnik now."

Assume your government job is to write regulations to require bicycle manufacturers to make safer bicycles. You know two things. The first is that if you say bicycles are being made about as safely as they can be, then you will no longer be needed; hence, no job. Second, you know there were no U.S. commercial airline fatalities in the U.S. in 2010 (an amazing and true fact) while about 1,000 people died in bicycle accidents in 2010. Thus, as long as you argue that riding a bicycle should be made as safe as flying in an airplane and that tougher regulations on bicycle manufacturers could make bike-riding safer, you can keep your job. President Obama jumped on the regulatory-reform bandwagon last week after two years of greatly expanding costly regulations and reducing personal liberty, particularly on health care and financial services. I confidently predict his new initiative will be a failure. History has shown that the vested interest of the regulators in job preservation and expansion almost always swamps efforts at regulatory reform.

The Obama administration has all but shut down drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and has cancelled four oil lease sales in Alaska.  There were fewer new wells drilled for oil on public lands in 2010 than in any other year in the past decade. This is costing thousands of Americans their jobs, costing the Treasury hundreds of millions of dollars from lease fees and in tax revenues, and is driving the price of oil higher. Wind and solar power, the president's favorites, are enormously expensive.  According to the Energy Information Administration, the cheapest way to generate a kilowatt hour of electricity is by burning natural gas in a combined cycle unit.  Wind is 88% more expensive; solar 399% more expensive.  They can compete only when government mandates their use, or provides massive subsidies. You could call all of this examples of Mr. Obama's anti-energy energy policy.