The Corn Mandate - the feds do force you to buy a product from a private corp.

[underpants]

This article is actually about how Rick Perry's opposition to the Bush ethanol mandate might affect him in Iowa.

but at the end of the article some syrupy sweet truth


Until recently, the industry had zealously protected two federal government perks: a 45-cent federal tax credit for every gallon of ethanol blended into gasoline, and a tariff of 54 cents a gallon aimed at Brazilian sugar cane-based ethanol. But recession and deficits wore away political support, and both are set to expire at the end of the year.

What the industry still has, though, is far more valuable: the federal mandate that, this year alone, will effectively require almost 40 percent of American corn to be used to make ethanol for gasoline.

It is this law — the one Mr. Perry, at least until recently, excoriated — that “is now clearly the bedrock issue” for the ethanol industry, said Monte Shaw, executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association. Ethanol opponents also have this mandate in their sights, and have filed legislation to either eliminate it or suspend it when supplies of corn are running low.

The main reason to get rid of it, they say, is that it drives up food costs, and they cite the tripling of corn prices over the last half-dozen years.

One expert, C. Ford Runge, a professor of applied economics at the University of Minnesota, estimated that ethanol accounted for at least 25 percent of the rise in corn prices. In the current environment, the ethanol industry needs the mandate, if not the tax credit and tariff, he said.

“Without any of these supports,” Mr. Runge said, “the industry would die a rapid death.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/08/us/politics/in-iowa-ethanol-still-has-power-to-slip-up-a-candidate.html?src=recg