Vote Against People’s Interests

Congratulations to Assemblywoman Doris Allen on passage of Proposition 132, the ban on gill nets. Maybe this will be the beginning of a new direction for the environmental movement.

It is unfortunate, mostly for the environment, that the ecology and conservation advocacy groups have been taken over by left-wing political forces.

Maybe Allen, and Pete Wilson if he is so inclined, can help the ecology-minded conservatives--and we are many--find a way to express our concerns without being manipulated by radicals such as Tom Hayden and Ralph Nader, who have their own agenda.

There is no liberal or conservative side to matters like the rape of the Tongass National Forest. There, stupidity and local pork-barrel politics have combined to waste millions of dollars subsidizing the cutting of irreplaceable rain forest in Alaska. We don’t need a bond issue to save that forest, just common sense.

There are “green” conservative issues, like widespread clear-cutting of National Forest trees because the Forest Service doesn’t charge market value for the timber rights or calculate that value based upon replacement. How about topsoil erosion caused by farm subsidies which bring marginal land under cultivation?

How about more practical thinking in the environmental movement and less politics?

MICHAEL T. KENNEDY

Mission Viejo