Where should I direct my anger?

Where should I direct my anger?

I just filled up my tank and paid $4.20 a gallon. I am trying to decide who I should be angry with.

I saw Congress whip the oil executives recently about profits, but after checking the facts, I can't be mad at them. They make about a 9 percent profit on sales, which is slightly below the Fortune 500 average. They make between 10-20 cents of profit on that $4.20 a gallon price I paid. Plus they risk billions of dollars in exploring for oil and making gas for that profit. I will bet that those congressmen make better then 9 percent profit on their investments and Starbucks makes more profit on a cup of coffee then the oil companies do on a gallon of gas. And federal and state taxes on gas add far more to a gallon of gas then the profit the oil companies make.

Then I read recently that the US has 500 years of oil, gas, and coal resources within our country which we are not taking advantage of. I have read estimates that say if we could tap our own energy resources and announce a strategic goal to reduce our dependence on foreign oil from 70 percent today to 0 percent using our untapped oil and coal resources in five years, the cost of a barrel of oil could be cut in half as the oil countries suddenly had to get competitive to sell their oil.

But we can't do that because Congress has forbidden oil companies to get the oil that is under our ground and under our waters. So you and I are paying $4.20 a gallon because congress thinks it is more important to protect 1-10th of 1 percent of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska which nobody will ever see (I have been to the Arctic, there is nobody there!). Are you OK with that?

Bottom line, because of the taxes that they nail us with and their refusal to allow us to utilize the energy resources that we could control, Congress is the cause of $4.20 gas. No wonder they try to shift the blame to the oil companies on TV. Now I know who to be angry with!

Randall Rossi

Grayslake

Here's some ideas for state legislators

On May 31, our state legislature sent an unbalanced budget to our governor. He immediately whined it was an unconstitutional action. We can therefore expect him to call the legislature into special session.

I am not, however, writing this to discuss the upcoming childish arguments about who gets to be the first to gobble from the budget trough. I am more interested in asking the state legislature to set the following two actions as higher priorities than the budget.

To show their concern for us, the overburdened underpaid taxpayers, the highest priority should be for our Lake County state senators -- led by Terry Link, the second-most powerful person in the Senate, and joined by Mike Bond, Bill Peterson, and Susan Garrett -- to call to the Senate floor, and vote to reject the pay raise that the entire legislature will get unless the Senate votes against it. The House voted to reject it several weeks ago.

The second priority should be a straight-forward simple bill that Terry Link could quickly prepare and introduce that would require a positive vote to accept legislature pay raises rather than the current bill that requires a positive vote to reject the raises. Of course our other senators would push and push hard to get it passed.

Once the Senate passes the new bill, I am sure our Lake County state representatives -- Jo Ann Osmond, Sandy Cole, et al. -- would push and push hard for the vote and approval of the Senate bill without the need for any changes.

After those two items are taken care of to our benefit, i.e. taxpaying overburdened constituents, we can all watch the silliness our politicos have provided us in recent years.

Bob Druktanis Lindenhurst