Peter Ferrara's Big $6.3 Million Payday For Bashing Ethanol

Open letter to a Big Oil floozy

By Marc J. Rauch
Exec. Vice President/Co-Publisher
THE AUTO CHANNEL

Marc J. Rauch

Hello Peter:

I just finished reading your June 15th article for Investor's Business Daily, "Republicans Can Pass Another Tax Cut...By Killing The Ethanol Mandate", and I want to congratulate you on getting such a fantastic payday of $6.3 million. WOW! Growing up, did you ever think you would get SIX MILLION DOLLARS for writing just one short article? And perhaps you didn't even have to write the article, you probably just signed your name to it. Man-O-man, that's like Hollywood movie star compensation numbers.

You did get $6.3 million to put your name on this story, didn't you?

I assume you did get paid a lot, and I assume it was $6.3 million because that's what Jack Gerard (president and CEO of American Petroleum Institute) gets paid every year. I can't imagine that a man with your background and credentials would get paid less than what Mr. Gerard gets paid. I realize that there's a difference between a year's salary and the writing of one article, but you're still putting your entire career and reputation on the line for the one story. I can see where $6.3 million is a fair price to pay to get you, an attorney, former Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States, former General Counsel of the American Civil Rights Union, professor at George Mason University School of Law and Director of its International Center for Law and Economics, to front for this Investor's Business Daily story. Even if it sullies your degrees as a Harvard and Harvard School of Law graduate, and even if it ultimately interferes with your affiliation with the Heritage and Cato Institutes, getting paid $6.3 million for one article was well worth it.

Peter...you did get paid $6.3 million, didn't you?

I just had this horrifying thought that you didn't get $6.3 million to throw away your entire career; maybe you did it for something like $100,000. A hundred grand is nothing to sneeze at, if that's what you got paid, but it can't be worth destroying your reputation as a scholar and professional author, can it?

Oh, no, Peter, don't tell me you did it for less than $100,000?

You did, didn't you, you wrote (or at least allowed your name to be used) for less than $100,000? Oh, for Pete's sake, Peter... (pun intended).

Well, at least you did it for a good cause; at least the article is truthful and righteous; at least the article didn't present any of the usual oil industry lies about ethanol - that has to salve your conscience for chucking out your integrity, right?

Hmmm, the problem is that the article contains some lies, some invented misinformation, and some out-dated and out-of-context data. Peter, Peter, Peter, what did you do?

Ya' know, Pete, if the article just stuck to criticizing the idiotic Renewable Identification Number system designed to protect the RFS from oil industry fraud, you could have gotten away with saying that it's "your opinion" as a tax-policy kind of guy. Then it would be just one needle-nosed tax analyst against another, if you were ever called on the carpet to explain your involvement. But why did you have to start the article with the preposterous food-versus-fuel argument? Didn't anyone tell you that there's nothing to this? Didn't anyone explain the numbers...how American farmers pretty much grow as much corn now for human consumption as they ever did, and that the great bulk of corn used for ethanol doesn't deprive anyone of their fair share of tortilla chips or movie popcorn?

Let's pretend for a moment that you wrote the article - or at least read the contents before agreeing to put your name on it - didn't anyone tell you that corn is not just used as a direct food source for cattle, pigs and fowl; but that dried distillers' grains - the protein part of the corn kernel left after distillation - is also used to feed the animals that we then eat? Therefore, in the opening sentence of the article when you (or they) wrote "... that roughly 40% of America's corn crop goes to manufacture ethanol added to gasoline...that is more than the second largest use of corn — as feed for cattle, pigs and chickens — which consumes 36% of the annual corn crop" that you could pretty much add together the 40% and the 36% to say that that's how much of the annual corn crop goes to feed the animals that we then eat? Did you take any math classes at Harvard?

Do you think that feeding people Fritos corn chips is better than feeding them beef, pork or chicken? And since when did you become a bleeding-heart activist worrying about feeding a hungry world? I found no paper ever authored by you that offers any sympathetic mindset; is this a new role for you, Peter?

Oh, and in the second paragraph, it mentions people rioting. People riot for all kinds of reasons: basketball fans sometimes riot when their team WINS a championship; people in third-world countries often riot because their dictator tells them to. You know this, or at least you should, so why even make it an issue?

And then the article makes two incorrect statements about prices. First you say that corn prices have risen because of its use for ethanol, and then you say that world prices for oil and (natural) gas have sunk. Corn prices haven't risen because of ethanol use, they rise because of commodity speculators and transportation costs related to oil prices. And world crude oil prices for 2018 are the highest they've been in four years.

As I said above, why did the article begin with such puerile and easy to refute statements? Don't get me wrong, I'm glad it did, but do you and whoever paid you have such little respect for the American public that you think you can get away with this nonsense?

You then launch into the real meat of the article, a contrived double-talk explanation of the RIN system that is worthy of Professor Irwin Corey. The RIN system itself is double talk contrivance to try and keep the oil industry honest - as if it was possible to keep it honest. And your article concludes that the RIN system is "killing" smaller refineries.

You know what kills, Peter? The oil industry kills. Their products kill. The dead includes hundreds of millions of humans and unfathomable numbers of animal wildlife. On top of that are the inestimable number of persons with respiratory illness, autism, and Alzheimer's disease. Now that's some kind of killing!

Your article ends with the sentence "The American people would welcome another pro-growth effective tax cut, further boosting the economy." It makes me laugh to think that you think you know what the American people want. I could agree that many or most Americans might want another pro-growth effective tax cut, but that's as simple of a postulation as saying that most American people would like to get paid $6.3 million for doing nothing more than writing a stupid magazine article.

However, I'll tell you what I think most Americans would like: We would like to not have to listen to windbags spout off on subjects that they know nothing about.

In doing some research on whatever else you may have written (or supposed to have written) that's related to fuels and energy, I noticed that you got snookered into co-authoring a piece with Joseph Bast (co-founder of Heartland Institute) titled, "THE SOCIAL BENEFITS OF FOSSIL FUELS." Bast did you no favor - if it was his idea to include you and your name in the story. The story stinks, and I mean New Jersey refinery-style stinks, of Alex Epstein's absurd contention that there's a moral case to be made for fossil fuels. You should take whatever it was that you were paid for writing the Investor's Business Daily story and stay far, far away from any issue dealing with fuels, energy, or transportation.

But I hope you've had a great Father's Day.

Patriotically yours,

Marc J. Rauch