Senators Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski vote to continue ethanol subsidies that hurt the environment, raise food prices and warp energy policy

Here are their votes yesterday on Tom Coburn's amendment #436 to Senate bill S782, The Economic Development Revitalization Act of 2011.

Cardin and Mikulski talk the talk about cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay -- without accomplishing much -- but don't seem to care about the enormous nitrogen/nutrient damage that subsidized corn crops in the Midwest do to the Gulf of Mexico.

Not to mention the economic damage -- read harm to the poor -- caused by ethanol subsidies, including rising food prices.

A World Bank policy research working paper concluded that food prices have risen by 35 to 40 percent between 2002–2008, of which 70 to 75 percent is atributable to to biofuels [like corn-based ethanol].

Why Maryland wind power subsidies are a bad idea . . .

. . . and why legislative bodies -- inevitably ignorant of technology, business and markets -- should never try to pick energy technologies.

From Timothy P. Carney in the Washington Examiner:

Green-energy plant sucks up subsidies, then goes bust

To turn wood chips into ethanol fuel, George W. Bush's Department of Energy in February 2007 announced a $76 million grant to Range Fuels for a cutting-edge refinery. A few months later, the refinery opened in the piney woods of Treutlen County, Ga., as the taxpayers of Georgia piled on another $6 million. In 2008, the ethanol plant was the first beneficiary of the Biorefinery Assistance Program, pocketing a loan for $80 million guaranteed by the U.S. taxpayers.

Last month, the refinery closed down, having failed to squeeze even a drop of ethanol out of its pine chips.

The Soperton, Ga., ethanol plant is another blemish on ethanol's already tarnished image, but more broadly, it is cautionary tale about the elusive nature of "green jobs" and the folly of the government's efforts at "investing" -- as President Obama puts it -- in new technologies

Annual "free" parking subsidy in US is $127 billion/year ? Yikes

Tyler Cowen in the NY Times:

it’s a classic tale of how subsidies, use restrictions, and price controls can steer an economy in wrong directions. Car owners may not want to hear this, but we have way too much free parking.

... Donald C. Shoup, professor of urban planning at [UCLA] has made this idea a cause, as presented in his 733-page book, “The High Cost of Free Parking.”

... the presence of so many parking spaces is an artifact of regulation and serves as a powerful subsidy to cars and car trips. Legally mandated parking lowers the market price of parking spaces, often to zero. ...

... Yet the law is allocating this land rather than letting market prices adjudicate whether we need more parking, and whether that parking should be free. We end up overusing land for cars — and overusing cars too. ...

As Professor Shoup wrote, “Minimum parking requirements act like a fertility drug for cars.”

... 99 percent of all automobile trips in the United States end in a free parking space, rather than a parking space with a market price. In his book, Professor Shoup estimated that the value of the free-parking subsidy to cars was at least $127 billion in 2002, and possibly much more. ...

As Professor Shoup puts it: “Who pays for free parking? Everyone but the motorist.”