Info On Land Swap and How to Protest It

[Ulysses]

Wondering what ever happened on this issue. I haven't seen anything in the news lately. Was the land swap consummated?

[Wildhorse]

No action so far.

Corrupt land deals in Palm Springs continue.

[cynthia23]

It's supposed to be released sometime this fall. It sounds as if Section 36 will be removed from the deal, but I get a sense they're still including Skyline in the giveaway. We'll see. Wildhorse brings up an interesting point---wonder if the current scandals in Palm Springs re the Mayor's cozy relationship with a developer, will have some kind of political impact here? The LA times covered the scandal the other day; maybe this means they might turn their attention to this shady deal as well.

[Hikin_Jim]

Couldn't hurt to drop the reporter(s) that wrote about the Mayor's misbehavior a little email about the land swap... Just saying.

HJ

[Wildhorse]

Hiking Jim is right. Surely, it could not hurt.

Unfortunately, the land exchange controversy has been framed as hikers vs the exchange. That originally happened because the Desert Trails Coalition, which first stirred the public controversy, wanted to frame it that way to avoid offending the Tribe and to hold its own coalition of trail user groups together. Among those groups were some with alliances with the Tribe. The major environmental groups stayed out because of a belief among some in their leaders that one of the land sections the public receives in the exchange has a high development potential if it remains under Tribal ownership, and some of them also have alliances with the Tribe that they want to protect. Whenever the local media has covered this story, they interview a few people who hike, a couple of people from the environmental organizations, the Tribe and the BLM. Only the people who hike are saying anything negative for the sake of the alliances. It is also safest for the local press and media to stay with the hiker vs exchange story. They also don't dare challenge the Tribe, and challenging the BLM and the legitimacy of the land exchange amounts to challenging the Tribe in this case. Another unfortunate contributing factor is that newsrooms have shrunken because traditional media is failing. They just don't have the muscle or the interest in tangling with the Tribe.

The media can tell the mayor's land deal story because the FBI has become involved. It is now safe to attack the mayor. In fact, it has become the prudent thing to do.

But certainly, the land exchange is a tale of back room dealings and of skirting laws, at least. It is analogous to the mayor's dealings in that it involves real estate and individuals using the governmental power to benefit themselves at the expense of the public, but the land exchange is much more sophisticated than what the mayor has been involved in. It has involved elected and appointed officials at the highest levels of the federal government, up to the cabinet level at least, as well as the BLM bureaucracy. It involves other parties with major political clout and much money. By comparison, the mayor's stuff is petty.

The land exchange also involves potential effects on the land that are far greater than effect of the mayor's dealings.

This would be a hard and dangerous story for a small town paper to tell on a limited budget. It would help if we could get law enforcement officials involved at the federal level. But that will be hard too because elected, appointed, and career bureaucrats all have dirty hands to hide and they will do everything they can to hide them.