[From the diaries by susanhu with minor formatting changes. Excellent — concise, and terrifying. With action suggestions.]
“The Bush administration will unveil a proposal Friday to sell up to 200,000 acres of national forest land in “isolated parcels” ranging from a quarter of an acre to 200 acres, much of it in California.” KnightRidder
Bush will do anything to make his financial ruin of this country look good, including selling off huge tracts of our National Forest Land for next to nothing. And of course he uses bogus logic, claiming this will help fund Rural Schools.
This is just Budgetary legerdemain to disguise the Tax Gifts to the Rich, cover the immense build up of the Military, and probably gift cheap land to his buddies!
A lot of this selloff is California Lands, but it is also affecting plenty of land everywhere in the Country, including over TEN THOUSAND ACRES here in North Carolina.
Check this chart for Land near You!
WRITE YOUR CONGRESS, CRITTER!
It was with this article when I read it earlier today but now it doesn’t come up. Is it me? Or has it been removed?
still comes up for me sjct…
there is a script that runs first..just kill the script
me or susanhu mixed the links…I’ll fix it. gimme five
Thanks! What I saw this morning was a US map in shades of green indicating the impact of these sales. But, your chart is much more informative. Have you sat down yet and added up exactly how much of the Nantahala they intend to sell?
These are areas where logging has been restricted so, fuck us, they’ll just sell it to logging companies so they can cut it all down without public oversight. Have they said how these sales will go down? Will there be auctions open to all bidders or will these lands just be handed off to Georgia Pacific?
Have I mentioned lately how much I hate these people?
Bush’s budget. Not having an editorial staff, I don’t have any of the actual plans for this sale yet. But the story is spreading, if you’ll pardon the expression “like wildfire”.
This is basically a way for Bush to cut into the “Roadless” Rules, of course, not to mention the benefits each state receives.
Here’s a few more links…
dkos
sltrib
a wronger state to fuck with its National Forests! Don’t mess with California!!! Everything is greener in California! Come on California, it is time to throw a ginormous California hissy fit from hell! When the National Forests go away they don’t come back. We can’t replace these and they won’t be making anymore ever again and Jesus isn’t fucking coming!!!!!!!!!!
Heaven help us, there is no end to the disatrous and short-sighted idiocy of the Bush administration.
Looks like it’s time for another push back.
Hard.
It is indeed idiotic and disastrous, but not in the least short sighted. This is part of a longrange campaign to destroy everything under public ownership, from forests to schools to the airwaves to air and water, and turn them into profit centers for the oligarchs Bush answers to.
It is no accident that this is being proposed in small parcels. You can do a lot more destruction this way. The new “owners” can then limit access to the rest of the public land, and of course will need more roads and right-of-way to put their parcels to their “highest and best use” — meaning suck them dry and throw away the dead husks. Open land is not open when it’s dotted with No Trespassing signs and toxic runoff. If Bush gets his way, he’ll have accomplished yet another step in the campaign to degrade the public lands until nobody any longer thinks they’re worth keeping. This move is part of a very long-term and far-reaching goal.
And lets not forget this quote from Grover N.
“Our goal is to shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.”
They’ll sell Mount Rushmore to a private company who adds Bush’s smirking face to the right of Lincoln’s.
That’s 307,000 Ac. Link in a previous comment to a Scripps-Howard article Here.
California hardest hit…85,465 Ac.
Idaho next…26,194 Ac.
Colorado third…21,572 Ac. Needless to say, people here are PISSED!
Classic Friday News Dump from the admin. hoping it gets lost in the Olympics coverage.
As I said elsewhere: these people are fucking crazy.
Peace
Do these assholes take even five minutes off from ruining this country? They must dream about new ways to do it.
this will help fund Rural Schools.
This makes absolutely no damn sense! The town that I live in was once rural–cornfields down one of the main roads. No more–any empty parcel is sold for another subdivision or a strip mall. And the schools claim they are hurting, due to an increase in the poputlation, which means an increase in students.
What did this country ever do to deserve this??????
I live in Conecuh county Alabama, which has 2 parcels on the list. Land in this area averages $2200 an acre, and I know several local people who are buying up every acre they can find. If someone can post a follow-up story when the parcels are sold, we can see how much of a giveaway this proposal is.