XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.republicans, alt.politics.democrats
Lee wrote this post while blinking in Morse code:
Conservatives Turn On GOP Senator Over Plan To Sell Off Millions
Of Acres Of Public Land Jun 19, 2025
People across the political spectrum hope Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah)
makes like a tree and leaves national forests -- and other
federally owned land -- alone.
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.
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.
"I don't think it's clear that we would even get substantial
housing as a result of this," Sen. Martin Heinrich (N.M.), the
energy committee's ranking Democrat, told the Associated Press.
"What I know would happen is people would lose access to places
they know and care about and that drive our Western economies."
Meanwhile, Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke (Mont.) has also spoken
out against the plan.
"I have said from day one I would not support a bill that sells
public lands," he wrote Wednesday on X. "I am still a no on the
senate reconciliation bill that sells public lands."
Public backlash really began to grow this week, after The
Wilderness Society, a conservation organization, published a map
it said showed the areas that could potentially be up for grabs.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mike-lee-public-lands_n_6854744de4b0e5115b42115b
<
https://jacobin.com/2025/06/chile-mining-trump-luksic-environment>
Trump’s Budget Includes a Giveaway to a Chilean Billionaire
Mining was banned in northeastern Minnesota due to the
irreversible damage it would do to the state’s fresh water. A
last-minute provision to the Republican budget bill will allow
a Chilean magnate with ties to the Trump family to mine the
protected lands.
A last-minute provision inserted into President Donald Trump’s
“Big, Beautiful” budget reconciliation bill would allow
Chile’s wealthiest business magnate — and former landlord to
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump — to begin mining operations on
protected federal lands. Mining at the proposed Minnesota site
poses irreversible environmental risks to nearby bodies of
freshwater, according to a federal environmental review.
The mining company that stands to benefit, Antofagasta, is
owned by the Chilean billionaire Andrónico Luksic, whose
family-run conglomerate, the Luksic Group, is the largest
business empire in Chile. The parent company operates
everything from food processing businesses and banking
companies to energy and mining operations.
--
Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who
will get the blame.
-- Laurence J. Peter
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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