PLAYGROUND BULLIES

Bush slips buddies $155 million worth of land for bargain $875

In April, Bush quietly gave a mining conglomerate larded with his top contributors a little gift: $155 million worth of federal land, the Denver Post reports. Invoking an obscure 1872 law designed to help frontier prospectors gain title to their small mining claims, Bush turned over a swathe of prime Colorado mountaintop property to the firm of Dodge Phelps, whose board is packed with oil men, military contractors and official Bush "Pioneers": corporate fat cats who've strongarmed at least $100,000 from their friends -- and employees -- for Bush campaign coffers.
Because the never-updated 1872 law requires that federal mining land be sold for $5 per acre, Bush's bagmen only had to pony up $875 for the whole spread -- in an area where land is worth a staggering $1 million per acre. The idea is to build an elite ski playground on the looted public property -- even though the law requires that such land sales be used for actual mining.