Marathon Pundit: Ethanol alert: Former Iowa Gov. Vilsack to be named ag secretary

Barack Obama has a been a big supporter of that Midwestern snake-oil solution to our energy problems--ethanol. And he's hiring a big ethanol backer to serve as his agriculture secretary, former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack.

Iowa has long been the giant of U.S. agriculture, not just in producing grain and livestock but also in collecting federal crop subsides.

Now with Tom Vilsack as agriculture secretary, the state will have one of its own at the helm of the department that dispenses those subsidies, controls nearly 2 million acres of Iowa land through a single conservation program and regulates the state's many meatpackers.

The Obama administration, meanwhile, will get an agriculture secretary who is sympathetic to big agribusiness that dominates Iowa and a believer in biofuels and agricultural biotechnology.