Environmental mischief

If I understand Jan Metz-maker's recent letter to the Pilot correctly, she made the following points:

? The (bad) philanthropists are akin to cockroaches.

? The court action over councilor John Muhlfeld shacking up with his sweetie outside the city limits was frivolous and cost the city lost staff-time which might have been more profitably used doing other things.

? Philanthropists should direct their philanthropy to the noble causes Jan espouses and stay away from the courts.

OK, I can buy that. And since we are going to ban rich guys (mostly from out-of-state) from giving freely of their money to causes which waste the precious time of government staff, and clog Clinton-appointed kindly old Judge Molloy's calendar, can we apply this across the board? If so, let's put a muzzle on the "environmental" groups which have:

? Effectively shut down logging, even salvage logging, in the national forests, closing mills, putting loggers, truckers and mill employees out of work, while raising the cost of lumber and thereby construction for homeowners and businesses.

? Prevented any new oil exploration in the continental U.S., offshore and Alaska, thus causing our country to be at the mercy of our enemies, who control the oil reserves and means of production.

? Attempted with some success to shut down construction of new nuclear and coal energy plants throughout the country, thus driving energy costs through the roof.

I cannot help but think that there has been far more mischief done in the guise of saving the environment from man's depredations than in peeking into one candidate's locus of love.

Cy Appel

Whitefish