Hat tip: Bob Morgan 

The Senate today passed the compromise legislation to continue the Bush tax credits.  Within that legislation were production tax credits for bio-diesel and renewable diesel fuels, credits for steel industry fuel, alternative vehicle fuels, and an extension of the 45 cents per gallon tax credit for ethanol blending in gasoline.

This is not good policy, and conservatives who just booted this Congress to the curb should be outraged, and vocally so.  We just elected a conservative House and a less progressive Senate because we’re tired of this kind of governance, yet we’re sitting idly by while the lame ducks continue to push through their agenda!  This legislation should be voted down, and then taken up in the new Congress on a straight-up vote on extending, or making permanent, the Bush rates.  Our only hope now lies with Nancy Pelosi’s House.

Ethanol is good for only two things –

fraternity parties and corn farmers.  It is bad for automobiles, bad for the environment, bad for fuel economy, and bad for the Gulf of Mexico, where runoff from over-fertilized farms in the Midwest results in a dead zone that grows larger with each ethanol incentivized year.

Even Al Gore has admitted that the politics and promotions that supported ethanol utilization as a transportation fuel supplement are lies!

Why are conservatives sitting idly by and letting this happen?  Are we so enamored that Obama compromised on the tax deal that we don’t care what it includes?  Do we have so little confidence in the Congress we just elected that we’ll accept anything to get the tax credits extended?

It’s been said that “he who laughs last, laughs loudest.”  Terminated Representatives and Senators will be laughing all the way to their speaking engagements, book tours, guest spots on Letterman, and ambassadorships if we allow this excrement to go through.

Get mad, again!  The fight is not over, and our work is not done.  We can’t rest on our laurels to prepare for the 2012 election cycle.  The 2010 Congress has not gone home.