On Wed, 02 Jul 2008 01:25:40 -0500, Richard J Kinch
wrote:

Steve W. writes:

Easy, it gets denatured by adding gasoline before it is loaded in the
tankers heading out of the plants.

I don't see how that's easy.

5 gallons of gasoline will "denature" thousands of (aprox 2000)
gallons of ethanol.

First of all, that is at least tripling
the cross-country shipping of gasoline that is already only movable
economically by pipeline, not by truck. And ethanol fuels can't be
piped, has to be trucked. Instead of refinery to market, gasoline is
moving from refinery to ethanol plant to pipeline hub to market. Three
hops instead of one. And of course the politicians have forced us all
use this stuff in the far corners of the nation, as far away as possible
from the production, even though the blasted midwesterners are the most
economical market, as well as the ones who should be forced to gag down
their own shoddy product that they make us corner states subsidize.

But my bootlegging point is, how can you expect to be producing
literally billions of gallons of pure ethanol, and not have a signifcant
amount being diverted into bootlegging. Either it will happen on a huge
scale, or we will have to hire 100,000 IRS agents to watch every man on
every shift of every day in every plant, or have some horrifically
complex metering lockup apparatus performing no useful economic work.
You're producing stuff that is worth $2/gallon if it goes to the
denaturing line and $50/gallon if it walks out in somebody's lunch box.
We're talking about oceans of this stuff that really can't be accounted
for in bulk. It is entirely different than beverage distilling
(although the same industrial process) in that nothing leaves the
beverage plant without beverage tax paid.

This "we'll denature it" argument is a hoax. Do you really believe the
guys at the plant are going to buy Absolut vodka at $160/gallon (per
gallon of ethanol, not 80 proof) to pour in the punchbowl in the
Christmas party when the spigot over on the ethanol line is right there?
Or not be selling out the back of the pickup for $10 or $20 per gallon?
And we have to, what, make criminals out of them for doing so?

You can't simply trust a technical production process that is this
hobbled by complex and fragile legal appratus. Every tendency is for
the enforcement system to break, or to become horrifically expensive.
We can hardly enforce the simple laws, now we are going to add a massive
anti-bootlegging program on the federal level? If you like the TSA at
the airport, you'll love this.

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