Ravalli County Commissioner Deploys See-Through Smokescreen

According to an email that just surfaced yesterday (posted below), our extremist Ravalli County commission has decided that the American Lung Association is simply too radical to be dealt with other than in the most condescending, insulting and inscrutably bizarre manner. How ironic it is that this is exactly how progressives such as us garden-variety environmentalists have been treated by those in power for decades. But more on that in a minute.

First off, let’s reminisce about how these same commissioners accused all of us to the left of them (or Attila the Hun) of being U.N. Agenda 21 dupes trying to send all true patriots in Montana off to labor camps in Seattle. www.RCWatchdog.org/. Never forget the mindset of those displaying inscrutable behavior when trying to divine the motives behind that behavior. It saves time, if nothing else.

More to the point: I’ve often wondered what magical formula these Inscrutable Ones use when they complain so bitterly about natural disasters like forest fire smoke but then attempt to extricate themselves from reality when confronted with evidence that pollution from their own diesel pickups and their own burn piles—things that they can all actually do something about--are just as deadly. My casual observation is that those who complain the loudest about smoke from forest fires are often the first to light their piles of green slash upwind from communites-full of kids’ lung while their piles typically smolder unattended for days and weeks. They are also, like as not,  smokers who don’t believe in either second hand smoke or Santa Claus.  Obviously these observations of mine are unscientific and can be readily refuted by someone who can shout with a louder, angrier voice than myself.

And indeed our local extremists, including the Fosses, have been shouting mad. In fact, they’ve been making loud, angry noises lately that they intend to sue the Forest Service over smoke from summer fires. In the real world, such a lawsuit would squander the wealth of whoever was foolish enough to stake the lawyer fees to attempt it, and if Suzie succeeds in dipping into your tax money to attempt such a foolish project, hold onto your wallet.

But hold off on the real world as we peel back the delusional onion a bit. How about a quasi-real world, where the Fosses et al. actually find a secessionist-minded judge to side with them?  In such a wonderful world, this unleashed precident would  free us all to sue any one of our neighbors at any time over smoke wafting our way from their slash piles, from their unnecessarily-muscular diesel pickups and from the very woodstoves to which many Bitterrooters ascribe the metaphor "Family Hearth". Suing the government over natural disasters starts sounding rather un-American when you follow it to its natural angle of repose, doesn’t it? But never mind. In the quasi-real world of selective hypocracy, the sky would literally be the limit for all of us who desire litiginous relationships with our neighbors, which in statistically-significant cases has been shown to be a contributor to unwanted pregnancies(*).

But wait! Let’s peel the onion back one more layer, to the fantasy-world of irascible extremism where many of these folks apparently reside, a world where everybody knows that the Forest Service is aiding in the U.N.’s  Agenda 21 plan to kill off all “patriots” in the Bitterroot with their communistic, premeditated conflagerations. In this wonderful world, the reason that smoke coming off of public lands is “Big and Bad” while smoke coming off of their slash piles or out of their diesel pipes is “Good and Wholesome” is because (grab your hats, the wind’s picking up!) the smoke coming off of public lands is Big Bad Gubmint smoke (!!) while the smoke coming off of their slash pile is God-Given, “patriot” smoke.

This, folks,  is the best that I can do with the hateful, grammer-challenged email commissioner Foss sent to the American Lung Association last Tuesday in response to their request that the commissioners sign onto a letter urging President Obama to support the tightening  of regulations governing small-particulate pollution from such sources as coal and diesel. I’ve long believed that the longer these out-of-control wingnuts beat up on righteous, mainstream people like the American Lung Association, using the same uglystick the Wise Use movement has been using on environmentalists for decades, the sooner mainstream America will realize that those “radicals” they’ve been sacrificing through neglect for all these years didn’t deserve the beatings. And also that it hurts. And when that empathetic revelation hits home, evolution will begin. Maybe...

 How’s that for hope?

Here’s the full text

From: Suzy Foss
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2012 1:19 PM
To: 'jfirehammer@mrss.com'
Subject: RE: Still hope you can sign Montana elected officials letter for Lung Association

 I am sorry but until the EPA recognizes the impact of particulate matter from Forest and Grassland Fires I cannot go along with this letter.  Montana has clean top quality coal that not only produces hundreds of jobs, it heats our communities inexpensively and efficiently.  Our farmers, ranchers and trucking industry depend upon diesel fuel for their jobs.  The tons of dangerous material that hovers over the west and in the case of north to south valleys like our and Salt Lake City, not to mention that the smog from the fires eventually hits the east coast and beyond, this issue is going to kill our western citizens far sooner than the impact you talk about.  Wildfires at the intensity we experience today are new to our environment due to the totally misguided management by the Federal Government.  Overgrown forests, thick under stories of fuel and a let it burn policy has destroyed the health, economies, culture and ability to safely live our lives.  The soot you worry about does not even begin to drive us from our homes and way of
life (**).

Thank you, 

Suzy Foss

Ravalli County Commissioner

Ravalli County Commissioners Office

215 South 4th Street, Suite A

Hamilton, MT 59840

406-375-6510 phone 406-375-6507 fax

(*) Just kidding.

(**) What a wonderful, wonderful world these people live in. Praise the lord and pass the Thorazine, please