Breakfast Scramble (Friday)

Hell no to ethanol, from Matt Kibbe, Forbes:

[S]ubsidizing blending ethanol into gasoline is fiscally indefensible. If the current subsidy is extended for five years, the Federal Treasury would pay oil companies at least $31 billion to use 69 billion gallons of corn ethanol that the Federal Renewable Fuels Standard already requires them to use. We cannot afford to pay industry for following the law. Even Al Gore has admitted he was wrong to support ethanol subsidies.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration seems bent on carving out a special niche for ethanol, with the Environmental Protection Agency moving forward with an initiative to increase the amount of ethanol blended in fuels from 10% to 15%.

Corn liquor is for sipping, and not driving.  It is sheer criminal stupidity to use food stuffa for motor fuel.

Ripped from today’s headlines, Reuters:

The head of a New York taxi driver organization came under fire on Wednesday for suggesting that cab drivers should racially profile passengers before picking them up to help avoid getting attacked.

The controversial remarks by Fernando Mateo, president of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, came after livery cab driver Trevor Bell was shot and wounded by a passenger last week.

Police say they are seeking a suspect in the attack described as a Hispanic male wearing a hooded sweatshirt. The driver remains in critical condition at a New York hospital.

Racial profiling addresses “a controversial reality that the people committing most of the crimes against drivers are Hispanics and blacks,” said Mateo, who is of black and Hispanic origin.

The headlines of yesteryear, from the Washington Post, circa 1995:

As an African American, I am fed up with having to flag down five cabs before finding one that will take me home, fed up with feeling anger, embarrassment, and frustration when cabdrivers swear they are off-duty and then pick up a white customer before I can get around the corner. Taxidrivers, many of whom come from Africa, the Caribbean, and the Middle East, say they don’t want to pick up African-American passengers because they are afraid of being robbed, assaulted, or murdered. One Nigerian cabdriver told me he only picks up African Americans who are well dressed and look like businessmen. For African Americans, this discrimination can be inconvenient and downright humiliating.

From the Myth of the Racist Cabbie, by Dinesh D’Sousa, 1996:

Thousands of other store owners in major cities make similar decisions every day. So do countless women — black, white, Hispanic, and Asian — who come across black males in circumstances they consider not entirely safe. Regardless of their general attitudes about civil rights, they do what they feel is necessary in each particular case. Shopkeepers scurry to the front of the store where they can monitor the exit. Female pedestrians may clutch their purse more tightly or cross the street if approached by one or more young black men. Sometimes people snap the locks on their car doors as African-American youths walk by.

The psychological toll of such reactions is high. If you are black, columnist William Raspberry says, it is unusual to find yourself treated as an individual, and to receive the kind of consideration that whites expect. In The Rage of a Privileged Class, Ellis Cose describes a typical justification for black rage: “Why am I constantly treated as if I were a drug addict, a thief, or a thug?” Many who echo these sentiments also question the basis for group judgments about blacks. Legal scholar Charles Ogletree argues that “99 per cent of black people don’t commit crimes.”

Blacks make up approximately 12 per cent of the nation’s population. Yet according to Uniform Crime Reports, published annually by the FBI, blacks account for 39 per cent of those arrested for aggravated assault, 42 per cent of those arrested for weapons possession, 43 per cent of those arrested for rape, 55 per cent of those arrested for murder, and 61 per cent of those arrested for robbery. Even discounting for the possibility of some racial bias in criminal arrests, it seems clear that the average black person is between three and six times as likely to be arrested for a crime as the average white person.

Political correctness, holds that feelings should trump reality.  As political correctness never seems to solve anything, as nothing seems have changed over the fifteen years, I suggest we drop the PC is favor of some idea that actually works.  What say you?