This hasn’t made headlines in most places, but seems to effect most of the country. It’s one of those tell-tale signs that we are about to enter into an inevitable recession, despite Bush’s vain attempts to make everything seem rosy in our country. One of the areas slated for sale is right down the street in the Great Smokys Nat’l Park.

The Bush administration on Friday detailed its proposal to sell more than 300,000 acres of national forests and other public land to help pay for rural schools in 41 states.
The land sales, ranging from less than an acre to more than 1,000 acres, could total more than $1 billion and would be the largest sale of forest land in decades.
Western lawmakers immediately objected, saying the short-term gains would be offset by the permanent loss of public lands. Congress would have to approve the sales, and has rejected similar proposals in recent years.
Forest Service officials say the sales are needed to raise $800 million over the next five years to pay for schools and roads in rural counties hurt by logging cutbacks on federal land. The Bureau of Land Management has said it also plans to sell federal lands to raise an estimated $250 million over five years.
Dave Alberswerth, a public lands expert with the The Wilderness Society environmental group called the plan a billion-dollar boondoggle to privatize treasured public lands to pay for “tax cuts to the rich.”

“This is not going to be politically acceptable to most people,” Alberswerth said.

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