Unlike the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times doesn’t have a motto. But if it did, this would work: All the news that’s fit to print for people who don’t know any better, reported by those who don’t want you to.
Exhibit 7,593,648: A front-page story on how the drought is affecting food supplies and therefore restaurant prices—ergo, the entire (inflated) economy.
Smokin’ Jonny’s BBQ opened less than a year ago, but pricey corn on the cob has already disappeared from the menu.
Rising beef prices are causing owner Jon Sekiguchi headaches as well. His Gardena restaurant sells beef ribs only on the weekends, when customers are more willing to splurge. And he’s struggling to find affordable beef sausage for his $6.95 smoked sausage sandwich.
Scorching weather this summer in the Midwest left crops parched and livestock famished. Restaurants, already struggling with high fuel costs and a sluggish economy, are starting to feel the pinch of higher food costs.
And so it goes, for 900 words and several other sad examples. Yet not once in all that space does reporter Tiffany Hsu manage to use the word ethanol.
It’s hard to accept that no one at the Times is aware of the unintended consequences like escalating food prices that people who know such things warned about when the country decided to turn its cornfields into a social-engineering petri dish. But if so, why? Anguished synopses of the crisis have appeared in several publications that can’t be dismissed as Koch brothers house organs. For instance, the Washington Post:
The worst U.S. drought in half a century has hampered the country’s corn production and caused plenty of worry about the rising cost of food worldwide. But the spike also raises a policy question. Should the United States now suspend its rules that divert a hefty portion of the U.S. corn crop—40 percent, by some counts—into ethanol fuel for cars and trucks?
Of course, when you employ writers capable of describing Joe Biden a day after the vice presidential debate as having played the role of “kindly old ward healer” without mentioning the veep’s bullying and creepy laughter (“He interrupted Ryan a fair number of times”), you’re peddling a worldview from those who see what they believe, not a view of the world from those obliged to believe what they see.
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Comments
You are such a meanie, Joel!
Collectivists have trouble with that whole “cause/effect” thingy.
Math is HARD. As is sound economic thinking. When you confuse them with things “Green”, like ethanol…well, it just shuts down their whole cognitive cho-cho.
Burning food. Can you think of a better way to pull the rug out from under the economy? More expensive fuel that produces less efficiency, less food for cattle, driving up meat prices, less grain for corn based foods.
It ain’t math; it’s common sense! And another reason why pols should stay out of things they don’t understand, which is everything except graft and fraud. And incompetence (theirs).
In San Diego, it was only this week that anybody on the radio mentioned the California State Legislature’s role in the latest run-up in gasoline prices. (This has been a big topic ever since the prices took a big jump, due to the yearly “perfect storm,” much like the yearly wave of pink slips for teachers…..) It seem that Sen. Feinstein wants to have an investigation of the oil companies. Again.
The LA Times should come with a laugh track and a clothespin.
Bad weather , droughts , flooding , excuses ,etc. were one staple the Soviet Union was able to supply in abundance for the shortfalls in their latest 5 year plan. Barak the Red & his various czars et al learned well on the knees of their various mentors and Universities. They majored in Excuse Maklng.
This is a prime example of why top down central planning is a horrible way to allocate resources.
The ethanol subsidies were so politically unpopular that Congress finally repealed them, but they left in place the mandate that gasoline must be blended with ethanol. To comply with the blending mandate, refiners had to make big investments to refit the plants. So if Congress now were to repeal the ethanol mandate, the refiners would be forced to eat that big investment. It’s a government created mess.
It’s a predictable outcome that results when capital investment decisions are driven by government edicts rather than market based price signals.
No but it does make you look fat and juicy!!!
BTW: I’ve been proved wrong. The Daily News has pictures of Jesse Jackson Jr. out on his steps at his house in D.C.
Seems he was smoking a “cigar” after picking up his kids.
Damn, I thought for sure he’d pulled the trigger on his life due to the upcoming Fed investigation and being dragged through the mud he’s created for himself.
So I stand corrected; JJJr is alive and living in DC. He’s just not talking to anyone.
Must be nice to be a politician and not have to campaign.
Or tell the truth.
Such bad “journalism” is certainly due to deep bias.
But there is another factor at work: infotainment.
The reporters do not care about the substance, they make each piece easy to read (by leaving stuff out) and fluffy. Who care abiout ethanol? Not the day-to-day reader of the LA Times.
It’s hard to accept that no one at the Times is aware of the unintended consequences like escalating food prices that people who know such things warned about when the country decided to turn its cornfields into a social-engineering petri dish.
I don’t find it hard to accept at all. Even the best reporters seem to be incapable of doing simple arithmetic, much less understanding microeconomics.
And don’t forget the Delta Smelt.
I’ve been horrified at the stories in the LATimes. Across the board, this papers obfuscates, spins, and buries facts. Not just bias, but Ministry of Truth delusional.
“It’s hard to accept that no one at the Times is aware of the unintended consequences like escalating food prices …”
—Yes, it is hard to accept. It seems Ms. Hsu, herself, should know, when you consider:
“Hsu previously covered general assignment business news, as well as green and clean technology business topics for the Times.”
The state of journalism at the LA Times is akin to what Dennis Miller says about the NY Times:
“The New York Times is no longer the paper of record, but rather a building in Manhattan that foreign acrobats climb.”
He also told Bush one time that when it came to papers like the LA Times, that he found more factual information in the “Auto Trader.”
LukeHandCool (who saw Twitchy call out his old high school classmate at the LA Times about an hour after Luke alerted Twitchy to a tweet that the hack had sent out a couple of days previously, criticizing Fox and Brent Baier for not finding anyone to defend Obama in their Special Report look at the Benghazi scandal timeline. That’s journalism today: speaking “Aye Aye, Captain” to Power)
Maintaining a vibrant and well equipped manufacturing base for food production seems a rather vital national “defense” issue. Part of the reason farmers are getting rich now is they produce a commodity, and yellow #2 corn, like yellow #1 gold, is going up in price (corn much less than gold, but you can hide gold).
In times past, farmers overproduced, and struggled to break even. To maintain our food manufacturing base, we paid farmers to put land in CRP, to NOT produce. As ethanol came along, farmers started doing better, needed less subsidy.
If you subtract out the corn used for ethanol, the amount of corn produced has still risen steadily from pre-ethanol days. Increased production has more than covered for the corn used for ethanol.
This year was the worst drought many can remember. Ethanol production could be stopped if the situation was really severe. Oil goes up ten fold, corn has only tripled, and that just for this year. (fuel, fertilizer, chemicals … all WAY up) And ag exports are one of the few places we can offset our borrowing from China.
The 40% to ethanol number is not accurate … makes me think the guys using it are not interested in being honest. For one thing, after the corn is used for ethanol, the more valuable protein part is fed to cattle.
ALL subsidy for the various insurances and direct payments should be stopped, immediately for the millionaires. But using excess corn production for ethanol has been a cheaper way to maintain a well equipped food production base.
Corn is a pretty small part of the reason food prices are higher. All commodities are going up, largely because we are inflating our currency to pay off debt.
I live near Chicago. It’s not ward “healer”, it’s ward “heeler”, and there’s nothing kindly about it.
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