Politician positions full of disconnects

Months ago, Henry Waxman said, "There's a complete disconnect with reality" referring to the corporate executives involved with the mortgage crisis.

He went further and stated, "You're in the middle of an enormous debacle and it seems like everyone is hurting except for you."

I was surprised those statements come from a politician. Complete disconnect from the people's reality basically describes all politicians lately.

Example: I wrote a letter a while back and asked two Illinois politicians if they could do something in Congress about the price of gasoline at the pumps.

Their response was to tell me to buy a new car (hybrid or one that uses E-85). If I can't afford the price of gas where am I going to get the money to buy a new car? Isn't that a disconnect?

A further disconnect is applying a windfall profits tax on the oil companies. Where do these people get off assuming any company or person is making too much profit?

More important to me is that the tax will come back to me in the form of higher prices at the pump. They just don't seem to understand.

In the news, one trader asked the outfits that drill for oil how long it would take to see a barrel of oil from their drilling.

According to this trader, it was one to six years depending where they drill and what they have to go through.

For all of the politicians' exotic oil substitutes to be marketable, it would take decades. Six years is a lot shorter than 20 years.

The longer Congress argues, the longer we will have oil shortages. We need something now, not in 20 years, and we need it before there is a crisis in the Middle East that disrupts the oil supply.

Can anyone answer why Congress wants to scrap this oil-related technology without having anything ready to replace it?

Why won't they allow drilling wherever there is oil in our country?

Every industry in the United States uses oil in some form to conduct business.

Cuba is allowing China to drill for oil just 60 miles off the Florida coast. I'm sure that reserve extends into our territory.

This is another disconnect that just doesn't make sense at this time. Our representatives see disconnects in others but never in themselves.

Wayne Oras Sr.

Schaumburg