... the Admin made it known how they were going to sell off around 200K acres of public National Forest land. I made a post about the announcement and tried tracking down any major newspapers that would carry the story that weekend. I was amazed at how many didn't pick it up, not even the AP story. Also included is the USDA site link for the supposed explantion/rationale for the sale of land and the list of land in each state of that is up for sale.

Most of the articles described the land for sale as "scrub land" or "unusable" or as plots that weren't adjacent to the major portion of the parks. 200K acres of land and it's ALL crap? You can find my original Agonist entry here.

With that said, it sadly doesn't surprise me to hear that National Park land is up for sale. Healthy Forest Initiative and the proposed harvesting of timber post-wildfires... hell, cut out the middle man and just sell the land. Even sadder, with modern devloping methods, most land is just clear cut and the wood shredded or sent to land fills. Public park land is an asset to the greater community for a plethora of reasons, not a one-time public fund to be sold off.

It's not about selling for immediate money. It's about a deep-seated repulsion that some conservatives have for anything being held by the public when it could well be held by private interests. These are people who want to have control, who want to have exclusivity, either to develop the land for money or to hoard the land as an estate under their control. It goes back to that old repulsive bumper sticker "He who has the gold rules."
A good example of the mentality is a wealthy person who purchased the entire contents of a brewery that was going out of business, in Milwaukee, WI, I believe, and there was great interest in the contents that included a rich collection of artworks and interior architectural items. So this person bought it all and reporters came to see him. They inquired if he planned to put it all in a museum or what because of the publicity about the stuff and the public being anxious to be able to view it.
The buyer's response was, essentially, "I bought it, it's mine. Why would I want a bunch of strangers coming in to look at stuff that's mine." And that was the end of the story. No one has seen any of the stuff since that day, to best of my knowledge.
Some people believe they are the equivalent of royalty. "In the public interest" is something they simply cannot comprehend. Maybe it's the result of very bad parenting or a genetic defect.

Channing
Ventura CA USA