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Kernels of corn are dumped into the receiving mill at the biorefining ethanol plant in Caro in 2009.

(AP File Photo)

It'll be "Ethanol Night at the Races" at the Auto City Speedway in Clio on Sept. 7. Speaking to MLive, the Michigan Corn Growers' Association says it sponsors the annual event to "celebrate" the year's accomplishments, particularly those involving ethanol.

The accomplishments of ethanol - and in particular its taxpayer subsidies - are indeed breathtaking, but hardly worth celebrating. Its biggest success is mere survival, despite being a profoundly immoral waste of money. It’s so clearly wasteful and harmful that it puts big government zealot Paul Krugman and his fiercest free market critics (like me) on a barstool next to each other, nodding in agreement.

For the uninitiated, Krugman of the New York Times rarely meets a nickel of government spending he wants to cut (outside of a military budget.) He even argues that government blowing gazillions of dollars fending off an imaginary invasion from outer space would be good for the economy.

But while he may be fiendish enough to fight fake flying saucers with your tax dollars, even Earth's most crazed stimulus supporter isn't gullible enough to waste a nickel on biofuels. In 2008, he wrote that "Demon Ethanol" was bad for the economy, consumers and the planet.

He’s right in many ways.

Federal requirements force the blending of ethanol with the gasoline most of us buy. Automotive researchers at Edmunds.com ran a head-to-head comparison with unadulterated gasoline and found the ethanol blend made vehicles significantly slower and less fuel efficient. Auto-insurer AAA has warned that new requirements to increase the ethanol content could cause engine damage in cars made before 2012.



Related: Don't be fooled by claims of the 'evils of ethanol' (guest column)

The American poultry industry says it alone has absorbed $50 billion in higher feed costs since 2006, brought on in some measure by diverting so much corn into gas tanks. In addition to charging us all more for chickens and eggs, the industry says higher costs have driven a dozen big poultry companies to sell off assets or close up shop entirely.

Obviously, this drives up prices at grocery stores, and fast food restaurants are yelping as well. White Castle's CEO says beef costs have jumped 47 percent since the creation of a federal mandate requiring that more ethanol be blended with automotive fuel. The price of corn has tripled over the last decade and 40 percent of the U.S. crop goes to ethanol rather than food.

Tufts University estimates the cost of feeding Mexico each year is $250-$500 million higher because Americans turn so much food into fuel. We are the planet's (and Mexico's) supermarket, and the world's hungry are hungrier because of ethanol.

Ethanol's champions sometimes claim it weans us off foreign oil. Yet a Cornell University ecologist revealed in 2005 that corn ethanol needs 29 percent more fossil fuel energy than the biofuel it produces. Apparently left out of many ethanol PR offensives is that the corn doesn't grow itself and needs fossil-fueled machines to make the fertilizer, water the crop, take the corn to market, refine it into ethanol, etc …

A recent biofuel mandate imposed on the U.S. Department of Defense reportedly jacked the price of fuel up to $27 per gallon.

Pretty much the only people who support government help for Big Ethanol are those on the (ethanol fueled) gravy train. At the head of the line is agribusiness super-giant Archer Daniels Midland, the largest producer of ethanol. ADM spends more than $2 million a year on politics, and 3 of its 5 favorite politicians are from Michigan.

For some, there are indeed accomplishments to celebrate at Michigan's "Ethanol Night at the Races."



Ken Braun was a legislative aide for a Republican lawmaker in the Michigan House for six years and is currently the director of policy for a political consulting firm. His employer is not responsible for what he says here ... or in Spartan Stadium on game days.

