"Jay Honeck" wrote:

Jay, you simply have no idea.

Really?

I grew up in a city that hosted the largest tractor plant in the world
(JI Case's "Clausen Works"), right on the shores of Lake Michigan.
Ten thousand men worked there every day.

Racine was also host to Modine Manufacturing, Twin Disc, Walker
Manufacturing, and a hundred other smaller manufacturing plants. The
skies overhead were black with soot, and the lake water was very
polluted.

Throughout the '70s, as more and more environmental laws were enacted,
the air slowly cleared, and the water quality improved. And, one by
one, each of these plants closed.

The Clausen Works survived, at a much diminished capacity, until just
a couple of years ago. It's now a great, barren, concrete and asphalt
plain. Although a couple of those companies maintain a presence in
Racine, their production facilities are long gone.

Now, our Lake water is so clear, that the lake perch have been
devastated by the salmon -- the poor things simply have no place to
hide, because the water is actually *too* clean. And the boating is
great -- for those few who can afford it.

And all those jobs? All those families? All that infrastructure?
All gone.

Now, obviously, there's a lot more to the utter demise of the Rust
Belt than merely environmental lunacy. The unions got greedy, and
came to expect that a guy turning a nut with a wrench all day was
really worth $60K per year. And management got fat and lazy, thinking
that the gravy train would last forever.

But if you don't think that over-the-top, complex and expensive
environmental regulation played a major part in our economic collapse
(and that is truly what it was/is), you are either a fool or you just
haven't been paying attention. And now we're seeing it happen in the
oil industry -- the very heart and mainstay of our economic system.

We have seen the enemy, and it is us.

Incredible. You have actually argued that gross pollution of the Great
Lakes was acceptable.

As for who is a fool and who isn't, your recent posts haver settled that
matter for me.

--
Dan
C172RG at BFM