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[quote user="JSGreen"]"Personally, I prefer land grants to States such as Montana, Idaho, and Washington e.g. states that have significant (and property tax exempt) holdings of federally owned land within their borders.  Those land grants themselves would more than pay for the assessed value of railroad ROW." So, are you advocating that the FEDS reimburse the states' cost of creating a new RR by giving them National Forest and BLM land?  Are they supposed to then turn around and sell that land to developers to raise the money?  [8] No, thanks.  That is a one dimensional solution to a preceived problem -- and I think I can relax, because not enough people perceive this to be a problem, so there will not be a grass roots effort to make it happen. [/quote] Most of the Western States use their state land holdings to fund schools, etc. using practical, environmentally sustainable resource utilization.  It is only the federal government that seems to lose money with it's land holdings, and not coincidently it is the federal lands that have the worst environmental record.  Since many Western States have more than 25% of the land within their borders under federal control, it makes sense - both environmentally and economically - if a large portion of these mismanaged federal lands were turned over to the states for more localized control. And you are wrong regarding the problem of federal land ownership in States such as Idaho and Nevada - there is a large and growing grass roots effort to get the management of these lands away from the dunderheads back East and return more managerial control of public lands over to States and localities.  Most reasoned people will acknowledge that localized control makes sense, and only the extreme partisans think otherwise.
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