There’s an apocryphal saying – it’s often incorrectly attributed to De Tocqueville – that goes “a free society can only survive until the people discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury”. 

Apocryphal or not, it’s coming to vivid, horrifying life all around us.

We’ve bailed out the negligent financial industry and the smug, complacent auto industry and unions. 

Now?  Nick Loris writes that some even more-useless industries are at the trough; now, the Ethanol industry wants some taxpayer love.  Or should we say, more of it:

If you want a slippery slope example, you’re witnessing it. An auto bailout would set a disturbing precedent, resulting in even more private companies clamoring for government sponsorships. A number of companies today could make the case that their respective industry is vital for the economy and begin requesting billions of dollars in bailout subsidies. And if an ethanol bailout follows an auto bailout, who knows who will be next in line.

Ethanol has been receiving preferential treatment for thirty years and has proven to be unsuccessful. Even after decades of special tax breaks and subsidies, ethanol still provides only a small fraction of America’s energy needs. The government’s initial goal to kick start the ethanol business has morphed into the government trying to pick winners and losers among energy sources and has ultimately created a dependence mentality for the ethanol industry. It’s time to let ethanol stand on its own two feet or die.

And to make matters worse, ethanol isn’t doing any of the things it intended to do – ethanol literally is making matters worse.

Raising food prices, contributing to the global grain crunch, polluting more, depleting the aquifers, and begging for handouts?

If it were a bum, we’d put it in treatment.