RALEIGH — Two principals of a failed ethanol production company each pleaded guilty in federal court on Monday to one count of conspiracy after a grand jury indicted them last year on charges also involving bribery, extortion, and perjury. They will return to court Aug. 31 for sentencing and could each receive up to five years in prison.
Hog farmers, faced with ever more expensive feed corn, are turning to cast-offs from human snack and junk food producers to feed their livestock. Increased demand from biofuels—ethanol from corn specifically—production is making corn significantly more scarce and driving up price. To preserve our personal and economic freedoms, it's far better to let Wall St. rather than Congress give the production signals.
This Free Market Minute is a carryover from the previous FMM, which discussed some of the issues surrounding a federal energy policy to increase the use and production of ethanol for fuel. Key ideas, missing in energy policies such as the new ethanol proposal, are that authentic market information as well as incentives matter in creating economic opportunity, wealth and prosperity throughout a nation. It's part of the mystery of capital and capitalism.
A Raleigh businessman withdrew a preliminary motion for a lawsuit he had filed against a group of businessmen in which he alleged they had interfered with his plans to build a fuel ethanol plant in Beaufort County. William Horton, in his initial filing in Wake County Superior Court on Feb. 10, said his complaint involved “a complex and intricate conspiracy involving extortion, corruption and racketeering by public and private individuals reaching the highest levels of state government.” “There is a definite reason why he did that,” said Horton’s lawyer, Scott Wilkinson. “We just can’t say why.”
RALEIGH — A member of the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission failed to disclose his interests in a fuel ethanol plant when he filed his 2003 Statement of Economic Interest with the State Board of Ethics on Feb. 25. A Feb. 18 Carolina Journal Online story reported that the commissioner, Thomas “Ricky” Wright, Jr., a Wake Forest businessman, apparently violated the state Board of Ethics conflict-of-interest code by pursuing plans to build an ethanol plant in eastern North Carolina.
RALEIGH — A Raleigh businessman is suing a consortium of interests, one of them linked to publicly funded Golden LEAF for allegedly conspiring to keep him from building an ethanol plant in Beaufort County. His accusations include racketeering, extortion, corruption, and conspiracy, which reach “the highest levels of state government.” The action was filed Feb. 10 in Wake County Superior Court by William Horton, president of The DFI Group, who alleges that a coalition of eastern North Carolina farmers and economic development officials used their political connections to state Senate President Pro Tempore Marc Basnight to pressure Horton to give up his business plans and site options for building the plant.
Don Carrington reports that a member of the state ABC Commission apparently violated the state Board of Ethics conflict-of-interest code by pursuing plans to build an ethanol plant in eastern North Carolina.
Don Carrington breaks a story about a businessman who has sought to build an ethanol plant in North Carolina for more than 20 years and is suing a consortium of interests including the North Carolina Grain Growers’ Cooperative, which is heavily financed by Golden LEAF.
