Lee's bill

Currently a bill is pending in the US Senate, driven by Mike Lee of Utah, to sell off a parcel of Federal land. Richard Hanania, a contrarian troll since he was Richard Hoste, is for it. Lyman Stone is generally for it as well, arguing Lee's sale would not even meet 1% of the Feds' vast holdings via "Land Management" or national-park. Most of X is agin' it; Lomez wants to see circles on the map. Contrarians are usually wrong but not always.

When the western Territories were made States, much of the land was lately spoils-of-war and/or wasteland, taken not by local colonials but by the US Army. Texas was the exception... until Texas too became a spoil-of-war when it foolishly joined the CSA, which lost its war. So land-ownership devolved to the new States (or to Reconstructed Texas) only weakly. Theodore Roosevelt then seized vast swathes of said land. This included most of the Black Hills (taken from the Lakota, who'd taken them not too long earlier) and pretty much all the Basin (taken from the desert).

Non-Native settlement tended to the mining, transRockies. Those mines, and the rails and roads to/from, came under the States. So South Dakota and Nevada as States have remained Federal-owned rurally and offroad. Some Native "reservations" exist. Feh.

I never liked the implicit "haha, backsies!" in Roosevelt's move. In my view, either a State is sovereign over land or a "First" Nation is sovereign. Much Federal territory may as well go to either. The main exception I'd allow would be watershed. Or nuclear-waste repo. Or I suppose if the nearest viable State be in arrears. The exception I would not allow would be fire control - counties and States should do this task, if in coördination with the Feds. The Feds simply aren't good stewards of forestry.

Back to the great wild wide West, I am not averse to opening some of that to development of this or that sort. Not all of it will be much seen by the casual city-based tourist. Parts of the West which have mining or recreational potential should be means-tested against other impacts. Maybe then some of it can then be sold to the State or to some First-Nation; or even given them, if the Feds are feeling generous.

But - isn't that already the system we got now?

Also, what guarantees exist the sale won't go to a Chinese Revolutionary Army standin? or to money launderers? human traffickers? (I don't mind solar-farms.)