Selling Boardwalk and Park Place to pay the rent on Baltic

I played a lot of Monopoly when I was a kid. The worst part of losing in that game is the accelerating piecemeal process of having to sell all your good properties to pay the rent when you've landed on someone else's developed property. The rich get richer because they develop their land quicker, and the poor lose their land to the rich, so they can develop more.

Here in Missouri, taxpayers are being told we must sell off our assets because the Republicans have landed us in a bad spot. Bush and his Republican cohorts have come up with a plan to sell off 273 square miles of Mark Twain National Forest to developers.

This is a terrible, short-sighted idea, and, in my ever-humble opinion, is motivated more to get valuable land into the hands of corporations and Republican donors than to raise money. Even if you believe that selling precious forestland to settle a short-term debt is a good idea, why would you believe that Bush is capable of doing so without screwing it up?

Teddy Roosevelt anticipated the Bush administration when he wrote, "Shortsighted men...in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things."

Why aren't Jim Talent and Kit Bond leading a fight to protect Missouri?