Obama to put government property up for sale

[YumYum]

Is this is the beginning of privatization?

By JULIE PACE
The Associated Press
Wednesday, March 2, 2011; 8:43 AM

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama is putting government property up for sale to help save taxpayers billions of dollars.

An administration official says Obama will propose the creation of an independent board of private and public sector leaders Wednesday to review real estate owned by the federal government that could be sold or consolidated.

The administration says at least 14,000 structures are no longer needed and thousands more aren't fully used. The official says the board would send its recommendations to Congress for approval and could deliver $15 billion in savings within its first three years in operation.

full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/02/AR2011030202231.html

[eduardo89]

There's a lot more to sell off:

http://maydamedia.com/Images/Chapter16/Map16.5.jpg

[April1775]

At the same time he's grabbing more private land and making it government land.

[Pericles]

How about something useful like this:

http://www.defencetalk.com/pictures/data/3290/abram-DT-03.jpg

[AZKing]

There's a lot more to sell off:



Don't think there's much of a demand to buy that land; not in AZ anyway. It's mostly desert land in highly underdeveloped areas :<

[eduardo89]

Don't think there's much of a demand to buy that land; not in AZ anyway. It's mostly desert land in highly underdeveloped areas :<

Doesn't mean the federal government should own it

[hugolp]

Its a good move, but the sad part is that is going to be a corporate festival.

[MN Patriot]

Would we able to avoid national bankruptcy and financial collapse by selling off government assets? It so, this should be top priority. Sell off the oil, coal, oil shale land. And government agencies, etc.

Maybe this would be an agrarian revolution, people will move away from cities and repopulate rural areas on their self sufficient small farms (but kind of doubt it would happen).

[sevin]

The official says the board would send its recommendations to Congress for approval and could deliver $15 billion in savings within its first three years in operation.

That's it?! I'm so tired of hearing about things that only make a few billion dollars difference. It'd be like me telling my friends, "Yeah, I'm having some money problems so I sold my Jackass Number Two DVD. Made me $5!"

[Mark37snj]

The Federal goverment is about to lose alot of that land it supposededly owns. So Obama is premeptivly trying to use it to say they are trying to balance the budget by selling state property back to the state. It's akin to your boss confiscating your ipod because it was on you desk at work and then selling it back to you to balance his budget.

[Stary Hickory]

Ok it's cool selling off property...I agree let's do it. But if this is being done as a way to keep governmetn spending at it's insane levels then it's just pointless. Selling off everything to "temporarily" find a means to fund a bloated federal government is not any kind of solution. We have to reduce the size of government....that being said selling off federally owned land would be part of reducing government. But somehow I don't see this being the driving motivation for this proposed self off...its more like trying to keep the bloated government on life support a little longer.

[specsaregood]

Don't think there's much of a demand to buy that land; not in AZ anyway. It's mostly desert land in highly underdeveloped areas :<

I wouldn't be so sure, there was some land my dad wanted to mine for minerals around the AZ/NV border but the BLM got in the way and made it undoable. Just because is desert land doesn't mean it is worthless :)

[oyarde]

The Federal goverment is about to lose alot of that land it supposededly owns. So Obama is premeptivly trying to use it to say they are trying to balance the budget by selling state property back to the state. It's akin to your boss confiscating you ipod because it was on you deck at work then selling it back to you to balance his budget.

Interesting. Thank goodness I have no i pod.

[angelatc]

Interesting. Thank goodness I have no i pod.

I actually worked with a guy that lost a clock in a deal that started out like this. His clock disappeared, and showed up in the bosses wife's office. He took it back, and she had a fit.

[Sentient Void]

I don't believe the federal government gets property taxes from public property as well - but I'm not 100% sure. Selling off / privatizing a lot of this land will not only bring in some revenue from the sale - but also property taxes over time to the states to lower a potential state bailout that would ultimately be on the shoulders of the federal government.

Especially since any oroperty that has to be maintained in some way also costs them money.

Not saying I support increasing federal or state revenues - just from the perspective of the statists it is a good solution considering much of that property is just sitting there or is generally unproductive and costing them money.

Walter Williams also suggested a short term fix to social security (not that I care about 'fixing it' so much as getting rid of it one way or another), being to allow those who are 'entitled' to social security benefits to opt for some of that land instead. Was an interesting idea.

[ItsTime]

Obamanomics, sell low borrow high.