Kirk oil proposals not real solutions

Mark Kirk is once again offering to put bandages on major problems in this country.

If you study his voting record back to 2001, you see a pattern in which there is no pattern.

He's still voting with his Republican buddies almost 90 percent of the time and he's moderate when it's politically expedient to do so.

He continuously votes for the conservative agenda of tax cuts for the wealthy, protection for corporations over individuals, liability caps on lawsuits, privatizing social security, under funding public education, and he has faithfully stood by the President for a war based on lies in which over 4,000 American soldiers have died needlessly.

Mr. Kirk is now accusing Dan Seals of doing a publicity stunt in terms of the oil crisis.

And yet that is exactly what Kirk has done time and time again. He's the master of the media circus.

Now he's proposed some solutions to stem the rise of our skyrocketing energy costs, none of which would diminish the influence of the oil and gas industries and lobbyists.

A summer moratorium on gas taxes? Tax credits for employers subsidizing mass transit for their employees? Bandages on the problems, but no real cures offered here.

I have never heard Mr. Kirk, being the free marketer that he is, ever talk about the responsibilities of our automobile industry to produce more energy-efficient cars.

Instead the onus is on the consumer to use "good common sense" when making purchases.

I have heard him speak to the need for new refineries in this country, but that and the hypothetical need for offshore drilling is just a ruse to support oil industry interests.

They certainly don't need financial incentives to improve the ones they have.

Mr. Kirk, before you criticize Dan Seals, how about looking in the mirror?

Sharon Sanders

Northbrook