I used to really respect Sarah Steelman.

I thought her stand against the insurance company hornswoggle known as "tort reform" was a tremendous, courageous stand.

But unfortunately, her latest (and silliest) ad in her grab to be Missouri's next governor has unmasked her as another politician willing to trade sides for no reason at all, other than supporting the sentiment of the moment.

Sarah Steelman voted for Missouri to have an ethanol mandate, when that was politically comfortable for her. Now, we get this radio ad:

Two Missouri good-ol-boys are talking. Probably at a general store, sipping a co-cola, playing checkers and reading the Saturday Evening Post. Boy, Congressman Kenny Hulshoff sure is bad. They're sure of that. He's nothing like Sarah Steelman! She wants to repeal the ethanol mandate, which is making gas and food more expensive!

Making gas more expensive?!?!?

Whether ethanol really makes our food more expensive, as we have covered in previous blogs, is up for debate. But there is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that ethanol makes GAS more expensive! It's the opposite!

Simple economics: In states where there is no ethanol mandate, you need 100 gallons of gasoline. In Missouri, you have 90 gallons of gas and 10 gallons of ethanol. The demand is now for 90 units of gas instead of 100. Less demand equals lower prices.

Simple math: Ethanol is LESS EXPENSIVE than gas. You now have one-tenth of every gallon which is being purchased at lower cost. That translates to lower, not higher, gas prices. Ethanol is a big reason why Missouri's gas prices are the second-least expensive in the nation. We are $0.25 less than the national average. Some economists have speculated that removing ethanol and ethanol mandates from the marketplace would add an additional $1.10 to the price of gas.

You can argue whether ethanol subsidies work in a real-world setting. You can argue about the efficiencies of corn-based ethanol. But you cannot argue that introducing competition to the market has made it go up when clearly it has taken prices in the opposite direction. Knowing the reputation Sarah Steelman had before joining this gubernatorial race, I would strongly assume that she had a good reason for supporting the ethanol mandate in the first place: Investment in Missouri, local jobs, additional farming and increased energy independence would spring to mind. It's too bad she has chosen to abandon those reasons to appeal to voters faced with high gas prices.

We at BidForGreen have long indicated our belief that the entire ethanol industry has been hijacked by the corn lobby. They drank the high-fructose corn syrup Kool-Aid and overlooked other potential and less impactful ethanol feedstocks, including sorghum and wheat. We have always advocated biodiesel as a much more sustainable and long-term option. We are not ethanol hard-liners.

But we also know that if anything significant is going to change in this country's energy policies, politicians are going to have to stand behind their reasoning and see a measure through. That's what I had always thought Sarah Steelman would do. Too bad she proved me wrong.