If it's true that gas mileage is less with ethanol, why are we using corn to make ethanol when it's causing higher food prices because of increased corn costs for animal feed, bread etc.?

Because farmers are a powerful special interest group in Washington. It'd be much more cost-effective to use sugar cane rather than corn but sugar cane would mostly be imported.

I don't know about the other stuff, but I'm pretty sure we don't have a problem finding more corn or higher prices. Here in the states, we've got it coming out our ears.
HA ha! A pun!

A very good question indeed.

Because middlemen and refineries can make more money. They don't care about food shortages in other countries, and probably their own country. Oil or fuel prices, supply and demand are at the top of the 'food chain' and make the world go round.

There are energy and food security risks associated with importing rather than growing your own. Even if it was cheaper to import that wouldn't give us the massive food security buffer that ethanol from corn provides us. It also does provides jobs to Americans. Additionally, some believe that starting the industry here is a good idea because it may become more efficient as time passes. Such people consider the at least some of the additional cost an investment.

Supposed to burn cleaner, i think. Make the gas stretch further, over the m/billions of gallons a day the US consumes.

Ethanol is supposed to be very bad in every respect: for the environment, the economy, the vehicles and the pockets of the consumers

That's a good question for the President and Congress, considering that there is a federal mandate for all gasoline to be converted to include higher percentages of ethanol by 2012.

Because people tend to "jump onto" the "next best thing" without really knowing much about them. I think the next big mistake is going to be those compact florescent light bulbs that so many people are trying to force everyone to buy for "global warming". I'm not sure people are thinking this one through either. According to Scientific American magazine, these toxic lightbulbs are potentially dangerous and the toxicity caused by the breakage of simply 1 lightbulb is dangerous -- especially to children and fetuses. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=are-compact-fluorescent-lightbulbs-dangerous

Switchgrass is now known to be a good source of cheap ethanol, but not very good food. Switchgrass can grow nearly anywhere and needs little attention. Getting ethanol from corn has been done much longer, originally to make liquor. Most of us stick to what we know and not venture into the unknown.