Utah Sen. Mike Lee’s proposal has united the left and right – against him.
Last week, the Lee-led Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee released a draft proposal, intended for inclusion in the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill,” that would mandate the sale of between 2.2 million and 3.3 million acres of public land owned by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service in the American West.
Lee has framed the proposal as a means to increase affordable housing, and emphasized that it excludes national parks, national monuments, and designated wilderness areas from being sold.
Critics have expressed skepticism that the bill would do much to mitigate the housing crisis, contending that it would only result in the public being barred from land they now enjoy.
The land will get sold by the thousand acre parcel to oil, mineral, and lumber interests to be ruined. “Affordable housing” my ass.
If this was about affordable housing you could easily utilize limited parcels of land adjacent to towns and build a few high density apartments with priority housing for federal workers, since these land management agencies typically already do have employee housing. Allow HUD to manage it for non-employees.
Done, no need to sell anything and they’ll likely make money.
This could be done using very little acreage and have a huge impact on affordability in rural communities. Even adding 100 new apartments could be a big help and have such a small footprint.
There are solutions, but these people just want more fossil fuels
But think of the CEO who could use a vacation house in Jackson Hole.
Who’s to say there won’t be crappy houses built on whatever’s left after those companies are done destroying it?
See, it’ll be perfect. First we clear cut the forests. We sell the rights to strip mine what we can, drill for oil and gas, then frack out what we can’t drill. Then we hire lowest bidder construction to build low quality, rental-only subdivisions and repurpose the frack wells to drinking water wells! When it’s found the water is contaminated, we charge a purification surcharge. It’s all one big, beautiful cycle to maximize wealth extraction!
-Shithead private equity firms, probably
Oh thank god. Please let this actually get cut from the bill (not to say there isn’t plenty more that’s fucked in there.) Also fuck his characterization of what we wouldn’t sell. Makes it sound like no big deal but he conveniently left national forests off that list.
Agreed. There’s lots of shit in this bill that is awful and will take decades of work to undo, but this is one of those terrible things that can’t be undone. Once the genie is out of the bottle, that’s it, goodbye public lands.
It won’t be cut.
Doomer bullshit.
So what do you call someone who actually thinks that it will get cut in the current politics of today?
A dumbass?
An idiot?
A big ol’ dork?
So you think it will be cut?
Wonder where that idea came from? Sounds like some oligarchs want to buy up some of that sweet, isolated BLM acreage to construct their own personal towns on and bring in servants and a personal army to live there and take care of them, safe from revolting peasants.
I just power watches Yellow Stone. I suggest we treat this guy the same was a Dutton would…
The Duttons are the kinds of people who would buy up this land and brandish guns to keep people off of it. Just cause there’s bigger fish doesn’t mean they don’t eat smaller fish.
Haven’t watched the last season but all land grabs so far have been portrayed as defensive. If they had been left alone they wouldn’t be lashing out. As a politician John did illegal things specifically to stop a corporation from developing open land.
