Read the full story

Doug Koplow of Earth Track, assisted by researchers with Friends of the Earth, has produced a new study, A Boon to Bad Biofuels, on the taxpayer cost of federal biofuel tax credits and mandates. The numbers are staggering.

In 2008, federal support for ethanol and biodiesel totalled more than $9.5 billion. The subsidy system has two main components:

The Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS), which mandates increased blending of biofuels into the national motor fuel supply, ramping up from 9 billion gallons in 2008 to…

Read the full story

My good friend and Bureaucrash ally Xaq Fixx recently altered me to an interesting story on the intersection of politics, technology and free speech. It seems that the state government of California, through the California Employment Training Panel, is paying contractors who train in-state workers in new skills - an effort to boost the Golden State’s notoriously sagging economy. Nothing too unusual there.

Enter SF Weekly’s Matt Smith, who noticed that the list of recipients of this state-subsidized training were employees of Cybernet…

Read the full story

Read the full story