Thanks to Washington’s fuel ethanol mandate, the price of a bushel of corn has jumped 46 percent to $3.66 over the past 12 months according to DTN, an agriculture information firm in Omaha.

Because corn is a building block for the country’s entire food supply, it is driving price inflation in the food sector towards 4.5 percent this year.

“The problem, according to food manufacturers and supermarket executives,” reports the LA Times, “is . . . the cost of grain, which has soared as an ever growing amount of corn is diverted to make ethanol to mix with gasoline.”

Like most global warming/oil independence legislation, the ethanol fix is a backdoor mandate causing outrage among grocery consumers with no idea who to blame.

Just as the pols like it.