More opposition to Bush's "sneaker" public lands sale

GOP Senators Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina have added their voices to the rising tide opposed to the Bush administration's plan to sell off hundreds of thousands of acres of public land this year to temporarily fill a budget gap.

Yesterday, Alexander said, "I think the administration, with all respect, needs to go back to the drawing board and come up with a better idea." He added, "It kind of reminds me of selling off the 'back 40' to pay the rent. It's short-term thinking."  Dole wrote a letter to the leadership of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources saying "I do not believe it is a wise investment to sell our public lands in return for short-term funding of a program that deserves full funding on its own — especially when the lands have been selected without the input of local communities and park rangers."

In this opinion, Alexander and Dole join numerous Democrats and a significant number of Republicans, including at least three other GOP Senators—Conrad Burns of Montana, Larry Craig of Idaho, and John Thune of South Dakota.  Meanwhile, the congressional GOP leadership, in the person of Alexander's fellow Tennessee Senator, Bill Frist, stands with its collective finger in the wind—balancing their instinct to join the Bushies in privatizing public interests against vocal criticism from the voters who put them in office.

Advocates for the privatization agenda are thus forced to rely on their mercenaries—the think-tanks funded by numerous right-wing foundations. Think-tanks such as the Property and Environment Research Center, whose Holly Fretwell writes in the online Wall Street Journal today:

[T]he idea [for the sale of these public lands] is closer to holding a federal yard sale to clear out some of the junk that has accumulated over the years.

Note that this 300,000 acres of "junk" is so junky that the feds think they can get $800 million dollars for it.

Let's hear more about what Fretwell has to say about this surprisingly valuable junk:

At least one-quarter of the lands proposed for sale in the Gallatin National Forest near Bozeman, Mont., are inaccessible to the public. Other acreage is near metropolitan areas and has lost its Forest Service character: A small Forest Service parcel in Oregon is in the middle of a parking lot; another is being used to grow crops. Finally, some of these lands were previously designated for land exchange (trades with other agencies or private owners).

Left unasked—if we can trust Fretwell's descriptions—is how in the world did someone get away with paving a parking lot over an entire parcel of public land?

According to Fretwell, land exchange—the traditional, widely supported, way for the Forest Service to get rid of isolated parcels while improving public access to other parcels—is just too troublesome to bother with.  She gives only the barest of justifications for this novel opinion.

Fretwell throws out several deceptive comments in this piece, leading me to conclude that it is not a serious attempt to convince a wary public, but simply a pile of PR baloney—typical of Wall Street Journal op-eds and all-too common from administration supporters these days.

For instance, she misleads her readers by saying, "To ensure there are no 'sneakers' in there, as [Deputy Undersecretary of Agriculture David Tenny] calls them, the public will have a chance to comment on all acres proposed for sale."

This is true in words, but false in spirit. The public comment period is a mere 30 days long, is already 22 days old, and the feds did not even release the maps of the parcels to be sold until several days into this brief comment period. How are interested citizens to be expected to gather sufficient information on 300,000 acres worth of land spread over the entire country? The original list was reportedly compiled hurriedly in the few weeks prior to the program's announcement last month, with little critical thought about the nature of the parcels in question. Many "sneakers" are likely to slip through these gaping holes.

Fretwell also furthers the deception, originally thrown out by Mark Rey, Undersecretary of Agriculture and Bush's point man on this public lands sale, that the lands to be sold are worthless to the public. Fretwell writes, "Unlike Forest Service lands that contain important watersheds and wildlife habitat, these lands are a costly burden that all taxpayers are paying for. Let's stop the wastage."

With how quickly the list was thrown together and the ever-so-brief amount of time the public is being given to examine it, no one knows the true value of most of these lands. Declaring that they are a "costly burden" and "wastage" is a load of horse manure.

Listen to Missouri Governor Matt Blunt, who wrote to Mark Rey last week:

"While the Forest Service has indicated that these lands were selected because they are isolated, in actuality many of the tracts appear to be accessible, utilized and valuable."

Also from Missouri,

Jim Scheff of Missouri Forest Alliance said the Mark Twain [National Forest] list was compiled without thorough environmental analysis of the parcels and surveys of wildlife species and activities on the land. He said he "has no doubt" that there are parcels that provide important wildlife habitat.

This entire land sale is a "sneaker"—an old, worn out one with no further use.

Comments

[LoB]

There are several obvious reasons why we are short of cash in the first place, but one of them never ceases to rub me the wrong way. $800 million is a lot of money, but it's much less than the projected total for Bush's tax cut for the wealthy, isn't it? Everytime this Administration proposes to cut back on public services or to sell public property, I always see the image of middle-aged, white, male executives sitting at their beautiful hardwood desks signing over yet another startlingly large amount of money to their savings accounts - money from tax savings that they will never personally have a need to use in their own lifetimes. What image do you see when you think of "We the people" or "community spirit" in terms of the Bush Administration policies?

[Anne]

4/4/06
The proposed sale of Mark Twain Forest lands in Missouri is an ill-conceived idea. Missouri stands to gain very little from this proposal, but would lose an irreplaceable asset. Other funding sources need to be found - higher taxes, increased user fees, etc. NO portion of the Mark Twain Forest should be sold.