Recently, I got into a debate about the Feds selling about 300,000 acres of forested land to private entities. Part of the gov't's rationale was that the parcels weren't contiguous, so it made enconomic sense to get rid of it. Oh, selling it was such a bad idea. Those private developers were going take those chunks and rape and pillage at will.
Well, how about just giving it away instead? This from Dr. Ronald Utt, the 'privatization czar' under Reagan, that has a pretty good handle on how government wastes money. This scheme here is an especially insidious type of 'earmark' that cheats the taxpayer by giving away land, rather than selling it.
According to Utt:
"Despite near consistent opposition to land sale proposals that would benefit the broad public, Congress sometimes votes to give valuable parcels away to politically influential developers or to communities in their state or district that, in turn, sell or transfer the land to for-profit developers. Although federal spending remains unaffected by these transfers, the government loses valuable assets and the opportunity to raise more revenues for programs, tax relief and/or deficit reduction."
Tsk.
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