Editor, Manteca Bulletin,

David Limbaugh’s column defending Scott Pruitt in Monday’s Bulletin is troubling to say the least. Is he related to Rush Limbaugh by chance?  Anyway, I wonder if anyone else is getting tired of the name calling between conservatives and liberals.  I am starting to gag every time I see either edge of the political spectrum calling everyone who they disagree with a leftist Alinskyite or a wingnut conservative.  Not every liberal is a socialist just as not every conservative is a Nazi.  Name calling like that has no place in a reasonable discussion.  Let’s call a truce on the name calling, myself included.

My greatest concern with David Limbaugh’s column and Pruitt’s policies is that, like Trump, they advocate for removing protections of the environment.  They attack the environmental policies of the Obama Administration using arguments that they were unwise and untested.  He says that they have been “choking our individual liberties and wreaking havoc on our economy; the left has bullied its way into imposing administrative regulations that are disastrous for business and our economy.”  He praises Pruitt, saying that he has “led the Trump Administration’s efforts to dismantle Obama’s “expensive and ineffective climate legacy piece by piece.”   The problem with any such logic is that protecting the environment from catastrophic destruction is something that will be determined in the long run, not in the term of a single presidency.  Significant destruction of the environment can, however, can occur in a single presidential term such as the one we are witnessing.  

Limbaugh and Pruitt seem to think that pillaging the environment for financial gain is good policy for the long term health of the bank accounts of corporations as well as consumers.  Legitimate scientists and science have presented a strong case to the contrary.  Those who prefer political expediency to long term consequences do not in my mind give comfort to future generations.  We will leave this fragile planet either healthy enough to satisfactorily inhabit it or unhealthy enough to have to abandon it.  The question in my mind is, which political theory and practices will give us the preferable results?  That is what each of us must decide in the choices we make in our elections.

Mike Killingsworth

Manteca