jawfish

Making Washington Productive
john posted in politics & culture on February 24th, 2006

Whether you think government is capable of providing important services ( Democrats ) or incapable ( neocon Republicans), taxpayers can all agree that we aren’t getting very much for our money right now. But for a change, here’s some good news:

Biomass energy projects are turning to hog waste as an energy resource. Pig manure energy generation also has the side benefit of reducing the powerful stink of a hog lagoon. Rather than burn it directly, researchers are working on schemes that turn hog manure into fuel oil. Since the President has discovered recently that we are “addicted to oil” – most of us had no idea – and with 100 million porkers processing feed into waste 24/7, there’s an opportunity for real energy production.

Mechanical Engineering Magazine reports on the current technology. As far as the staff of Jawfish can tell without actually doing research, Jawfish is the first to propose connecting the waste in Washington directly to the biomass fuel industry. Our reasoning goes like this:

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

1.	There’s a terrible stink all around a hog operation.
There’s a stink rising over Washington.
Hogs feed at the trough and produce pork and manure.
Congress feeds at the public trough and produces pork and manure.
This is too easy…
Hogs have lobbyists in Washington who bring money and take home pork.
Washington has hogs who take money and bring home pork.
The pork output of Washington is already connected to Agribusiness.
Sharing manure lagoons would proactively generate maximised synergies for the uptake of stakeholders in the bio-mass fuel conversion industry.
Who says we can’t do corp-speak?
Surrounding Washington with manure would keep out lawyers, lobbyists, and other terrorists.

With a closed-loop of pig manure lighting and heating Washington, and ready supplies of pork at hand, we’ll soon have the halls of Congress and the White House humming.

---

Thanks to The Straight Dope for research and uncovering the original story.