Don’t Americans deserve a choice?

Set America Free chair Anne Korin writes in the Miami Herald:

the best way to address the oil price increases is to steer a course toward stripping OPEC of its hold on the world’s unmentionables by stripping oil of its strategic value, which derives from its domination of the transportation sector (contrary to beliefs mysteriously held by many politicians, we hardly use any oil to generate electricity these days).

Doing so requires choice at the pump. It costs less than $100 per car to make this choice possible. Flex fuel vehicles, that can run on any combination of gasoline and a variety of alcohol fuels (not just ethanol, and not just agriculture based) look and perform exactly like gasoline only cars, with the added benefit of letting drivers choose what to fill up with. Every new car sold in America should be a flex fuel vehicle.

What would be the impact of this?

More than 90 percent of new cars sold in Brazil this year are flex fuel, driving fuel competition at the pump to the point where the Brazilian oil industry has had to keep gasoline prices sufficiently low to compete with ethanol and not lose even more market share. So low that it actually just received a government subsidy to do so. Competition in Brazil is working so well that a big Brazillian sugar and ethanol firm just bought out the distribution assets of Exxon in Brazil. Think of it: in Brazil, farmers took on oil, and won. Don’t Americans deserve to have a choice too?

She’ll be testifying in front of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on the impact of increasing oil prices on national security on May 22.

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