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From: PL436000@BROWNVM.BITNET (Jamie)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.politics
Subject: Apology
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Date: 8 Feb 90 15:07:36 GMT
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In reply to my diatribe, McKee writes:

> but I'll calculate it for myself, if that'll cool you.

> And I do not disdain relevant figures.

Yuck, I should not have said that. The accusation was uncalled for,
I apologize.
As McKee surmised, I was in a bad mood when I made the accusation,
having just emerged from a long, awful meeting. In the future, when
I have a quarrel with someone's figures, I will simply post my own
and leave it at that.

Here is my source. The Statistical Abstract of the US is widely
available and useful. In Table 1, you will find that there are
3,539,289 square miles of land in the U.S. (or were in 1980, I
don't know why the figure changes from year to year but it seems to).
The U.S. government owned 719.5 million acres, Table 523. Parks
accounted for 92.6 million, the Department of Defense owns 26 million.
(Again, for purposes of comparison, this is 1980.)

I guess the real point is whether this is a good or a bad thing.
I think it is a good thing. 2/3 of existing land exploited for
private use ought to be quite enough. Preserving the rest, for
public use, for environmental reasons, for natural beauty, or
just to have it around in the future, seems to me very wise.

Jamie