'tis the season

For reduced gas mileage.

Each year I notice a significant change in the number of miles I get out of my tank of gas. And each year I have to remind myself that E10 is the culprit, not some nocturnal siphoning gang.

After each fill, I note how many miles are on the trip odometer, and then hit the reset button. I can get up to 350 miles on the tank with about 12 gallons added back in - somewhere around 30 miles to the gallon. But during this magical time of the year, I'll only get something like 20 mpg.

I'm told that ethyl alcohol burns cleaner and is therefore better for the environment. I am told that it is cheaper than gasoline and should therefore lower the pump price. I am also told that my mpg should only be reduced by 2%. The way I figure it, I'm losing up to one third of my mileage, and the prices did not seem to go down 2%, let alone 33%.

I ask myself why are we forced to purchase more gallons of E10 than we would regular gasoline to go the same distance? What is the logic here? I must conclude that there are nefarious reasons.

Without doing any research (due to laziness) I am guessing there is one main reason for this deception. What else? Money. Someone has to be reaping a ton of money from this somehow. Here are a couple guesses: 1) the corn lobby and 2) governments at all levels.

First, if the government mandated that every hamburger bun in America was required to have sesame seeds, then the demand for sesame seeds would presumably go up as would the price of sesame seeds. So it goes with ethyl alcohol and corn. Yay for the corn farmers and their successful lobby.

Secondly, if everyone in America now has to buy more gallons of gasohol than before, they are now paying more in "gas" taxes. As far as I know, there is no prorated pricing schedule at the pump that takes into account the 10% deficiency of gasoline for every gallon of E10. You are paying that same gas tax per gallon, only getting 90% of the gas, and having to buy more of it because of mpg efficiency.

Your taxes just went up. Merry Christmas.