There are nearly 300 registered participants on this forum. There are maybe 5 or 6 non-liberals. I have a tendency to get into these discussions because I find them fun.

Without my participation...you'd all have a great time agreeing with each other...where's the fucking fun with that???

Pick the right subject and you might very well be surprised to see that I am decidedly ANTI big business in those areas. Microsoft for one. If I was all for big biz...I would be hanging out with the Ayn Rand folks telling stories and asking "Who is John Gault?"

This issue is beyond big bizness...although it involves big bizness. READ...where it involves reclassifying WASTE..I am NOT in favor. Where it is dealing with overburden (dirt) I am in favor. So on this issue I both fall in favor and out of favor with the bizness.

The real issue is the economy of my home state...which has pretty much nothing else to rely on. Especially deep in Appalachia where the mines are. Take away the mines and these people starve. In that case...you better have a very good reason to shut them down. Shut them down and electricty, heating oil and gas costs rise for everyone from South Carolina to Maine. Steel production in northern WV and Pennsylvania also close for good. Again, to do that you had better have a damned good reason.

Keeping sulphuric acid out of the water table is a good reason. Protecting a temporary stream in the mountains of WV is not. In order to understand that you really need to know the land. As a description...this is what you get for about 800 miles...hilltop, stream, hilltop, stream, hilltop, stream, hilltop, stream. These are not full time streams either...just runoff...so EVERY VALLEY has one. There are alot of valleys there.

If you listen to the knee-jerk folks quoting their numbers...you picture this wide-spread devastaion of miles and miles of land. This is, quite frankly, bullshit. If you ever get over here I'll show you.

The real issue is this. A Judge and an Action Group are using the CWA to try and accomplish an objective. That is to stop this type of mining. >Technically< they have put forward an argument. Their objective has little to nothing to do with Clean Water.

As for the >conservative< misonomer all you really need to do is answer the question I posed to Brandioch. Who signed those 4 monumental pieces of environmental legislation?

And how does pro-bizness magically become anti-environment? Unless we all decide that communal living is the way to go...the 2 are going to >have< to co-exist. There are "radicals" on both sides. There is inconsistency on the positions of both sides. I don't know where the "commie pinko scum" thing came from...but where industry is concerned I CERTAINLY want to do it better than the former Soviet states, who have an environmental record that would make the worst US offenders seem like Mr Clean. If it is just a way of proclaiming me anti-government...then you get a B+, for I'm worse than most...but not as bad as some.