Ethanol is being forced down the throat of American consumers as a feel-good alternative to foreign oil (God knows we can’t drill in Alaska or the Gulf to get our own oil!) and as a Republican vote-buying tactic as they kowtow to the increasingly smaller farm delegation.

Ethanol:

• Delivers less energy than gas, so you get fewer miles per gallon (and pay more at the pump).
• Attracts water, so it can’t be delivered economically via pipeline (and so you pay more at the pump).
• Can’t be manufactered domestically in enough quantity to meet politician-mandated demand, so the prices are artificially inflated (meaning you pay more at the pump).
• Can’t be economically imported, because our political servants have imposed an oppressive 54-cent-per-gallon tariff in order to “protect” said farmers (thus you pay more at the pump).
• Very likely increases pollution.

Now there’s one more thing: they think that it is so corrosive that destroys the pumps that we will use to stick it in our cars:

E85, a blend of 85 percent corn-based ethanol and 15 percent gasoline, could be eating away at metal and plastic parts in pumps being used to dispense the fuel at gasoline stations, Underwriters Laboratories, the private product-safety testing group, said this month.

BP, the British oil company, said on Thursday that it would delay the expansion of E85 at its American gasoline outlets until the laboratories certified an E85 dispensing system. “BP is tracking this issue very closely,” Valerie Corr, a company spokeswoman, said.

More corrosive than gasoline? It eats away at plastic and metal parts? And you want me to put this overpriced, underperforming syrup in my car?

If it wasn’t for the War on Islamofacism, I’d say it was time for a good old-fashioned revolution.