"George Z. Bush" wrote

Ethanol is a welfare program. It has nothing to do with future energy.

You don't know what you're talking about. When you pour a gallon of it into
your gas tank, that's one less gallon of gasoline that you're going to need,
because it's supposed to burn just about as good as gasoline does.

For every Gallon of Ethanol, you pay for it twice. Once for the subsidy to
farmers (in the form of welfare), and once again from the retail chain.

...why haven't they created greater
demand on vehicle manufacturers to produce engines capable of simultaneously
reducing fuel consumption and expanding the life of our petroleum reserves and
stocks while, at the same time, continuing to explore alternative sources?

It's called an unfunded mandate. Think about it this way. If we gave GM and
Ford the same amount of money we ****ed away on the Shuttle and Space Station,
we would be floating in biodiesel, and no one would know who the Bin Laden
family was.