Robbing the Environment to Pay for Schools

How do the Bushies propose to pay for the federal programs for rural schools? No, no, the tax cuts to the rich are safe.

The answer is to sell off federal forests in states from North Carolina to California--that will do it:

A recent U.S. Forest Service study predicted that more than 44 million acres of private forest land, an area twice the size of Maine, will be sold over the next 25 years. The consulting firm U.S. Forest Capital estimates that half of all U.S. timberland has changed hands in the past decade. The Bush administration also wants to sell off forest land, by auctioning more than 300,000 acres of national forest to fund a rural school program.

Are the states upset? You bet they are.

What are they going to do? They are going to buy up the forests to keep them out of the hands of loggers.

For the Administration, it is win either way. If the loggers end up with the forests, their lobbyists are happy. If the states end up with the forests, then the cost of national civic commitment will have been further choked down the throats of the states.

A Rove/Norquist solution of the first order.