Re “It shouldn’t be taboo to sell federal land” (July 9): I read the authors’ arguments with a sense of déjà vu. We went through this “sell off federal lands” debacle in the 1950s. Behind the scenes, the corporations wishing to buy up the lands made available wanted them for clear-cutting forested areas, strip mining, and unchecked oil drilling and pipelines. The track record of those companies on leased properties had shown devastating treatment of the lands previously accessed followed by bankruptcy of the companies to avoid cleanup of the messes created. it is totally naive to assume corporations will perform better today in an atmosphere of total federal government lunacy.
Citing the Base Realignment and Closure commission example is pure illusion. Those bases that closed already had infrastructure and all the new owners had to do was move in.
We beat the “sell off” scheme once and we can do it again.
— Douglas Schanzenbach, Lake Isabella