Congress to vote on Massive Public Land Grab

Republicans are proposing a massive sale of public lands, ostensibly to fix our antiquated mining law and fund Katrina relief.

Former top lawyer for the U.S. Dept. of Interior John Leshy said, "It could be the largest privatization of federal land in the last 100 years." Leshy called the proposal "a real estate deal that has nothing to do with mining…a huge change in national policy."

One House bill would privatize 15 percent of our public land. Another would put 15 of our national parks up for sale. The basic aim of those first two bills appears to have been to float the idea and get the notion in the air. Now, such a privatizing measure is seriously in the works, as part of the currently infamous Budget Bill (HR 4241). This week the House will vote on a change in U.S. mining law which allows for the sale of several million acres of public land, including national forest and even park land.

Death Valley and Yellowstone are among the national parks likely to be opened to mining under the new law.

US mining law was enacted in 1872, when Grant was president, and it hasn't changed much since. It allows for the sale of land at 1872 prices--$5 an acre. Public concern and hard work eventually effected a curb on these sales in 1994. Mining law does need some major fixes. Retired senator Dale Bumpers of Arizona said a couple of years ago, “This archaic, 132-year-old law permits mining companies to gouge billions of dollars worth of minerals from public lands, without paying one red cent to the real owners, the American people. And, these same companies often leave the unsuspecting taxpayers with the bill for the billions of dollars required to clean up the environmental mess left behind.”

However, the current plan in Congress is not to fix the mining law, but rather to expand the giveaway. It's being presented as a way to bring in money to our financially starved government. (Starved by whom?) The land would be sold at $1000 per acre, and the money could be spent on mining cleanups, rebuilding of Katrina damage and other useful things. As one of the privatizers, Rep. Tom Tancredo, (R-CO), put it, "The federal government may be cash-poor, but it is land-rich." Supposedly, by selling off a huge amount of land, the U.S. Treasury will get rich. The National Mining Association estimates that their industry will pay $151 million over the next five years.

Actually, since the war in Iraq is reportedly costing $177 million a day, this deal could perhaps fund the war for about 20 hours. Great! Sounds wonderful, doesn't it? But perhaps our Congressional privatizers should be driving a slightly harder bargain. These lands are part of our heritage, natural and cultural, a national treasure; so if we really need to sell these lands, I think we should at the very least hope to get a full day's worth of war out of this deal. More war for our land!

The congressman who introduced the proposal is Rep. Richard Pombo, a Republican from Tracy, California. Pombo is co-author of the book "This Land is Our Land." It came out in 1996, the same year the Sierra Club honored Pombo with their "Eco-Thug" award -- something he doesn't include in his website biography. Nor does Pombo mention his relationship with indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

How did this situation come to pass? Well, you remember good old Grover Norquist, the guy we were talking about the other day. "Starve the beast!" is his famous slogan. Norquist and his bunch advocated defunding the government with tax cuts to the point where we'd have to abandon social programs and sell the commons out of sheer necessity. Bush's tax cuts were intended to work this way. They were partly to save the wealthy from having to pay their fair share. But they were also for the purpose of creating this situation where the wealthy could eventually use their money to buy public assets, land, etc. The tax cuts were heart of the privatization program.

This scheme that's now before Congress, bad as it is, is really only the beginning. If this is allowed to run its whole course, they will eventually enact legislation to sell every square inch of public land, including national parks. That's the ultimate logic of unchecked privatization. Unless we can stop it. I'm an optimist, and I think we can.

Please write to and call your Congresspeople now. Even if they already oppose this particular feature of the budget bill, (as Senator Feinstein, for example has so far said she does), they need massive public pressure to counteract the bucks and pressures on the other side. And it will come up in the Senate at some point, so now's the time to contact that bunch, too.


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News articles about the proposed mining law
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20051110/news_1n10land.html
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/111105S.shtml
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9839098/

The General Mining Law of 1872
http://www.greatbasinminewatch.org/generalmininglaw.html

A fairly short criticism of the 1872 Mining Law
http://www.earthworksaction.org/1872.cfm

"Starve the Beast" & the Bush strategy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve-the-beast