Don't you live in the Los Angeles area? I used to visit there when I was a child, back in those glorious days when businesses had few restrictions on them and within a day of being in that valley, had major respiratory problems. Today, although they have their occasional smog days, the place is actually livable.

Ever visit Pittsburg or Detroit as a child Tom? It wasn't a pretty picture. A black cloud perpetually hung over both of those cities from the smoke pouring out of those factories. People there told of the paint peeling off their homes because of the acid in the air.

Did you travel around the country a few decades ago driving through some of our great forests with huge swaths of areas where the trees had been completely wiped out because of unregulated logging?

Ever get to see what a major oil spill does to a coastline?

Ever had your drinking water supply contaminated with industrial waste?

I'm not saying that environmentalists don't overreach from time to time but I've seen huge improvements in our environment in the past few decades much of which can be attributed to those very regulations you rail against.

So which ones are you willing to give up in exchange for your respirator?

Art