So far, no auctioneers have been hired to begin selling off Dulles International Airport, the George Washington Memorial Parkway or dozens of other federal assets identified by the Trump administration earlier this month to help cover the cost of its $1.5 trillion infrastructure initiative.
The premise of the plan was to sell federal properties to state or private bidders who can operate them better or at least more efficiently than the federal government, while the feds use income from the sales to launch new infrastructure projects.
But it will take unique, deep-pocketed buyers with vivid imaginations to buy and make profitable some of the federal sale items mentioned by the president. I mean, is there anyone out there who can buy and “flip” the Bonneville Power Administration or Tennessee Valley Authority? How many toll booths do you need to make the Baltimore-Washington Parkway turn a profit?
Why not sell naming rights to federal assets for promotional purposes? What harm would it do to rake in hefty “branding” fees for a Coors Rocky Mountain National Park or a Koch Brothers Washington Monument?
Candidate Donald Trump said two years ago that he would be a better president than any of the four depicted on Mount Rushmore, with the exception of Abraham Lincoln, whom he had apparently only recently discovered was a Republican. Why not have the National Rifle Association pay big bucks to tear down the likenesses of Washington and Jefferson, leaving big-game hunter Teddy Roosevelt and Lincoln in place? Then, for a 10-figure fee, add likenesses of the true leaders of contemporary America — Trump and NRA frontman Wayne LaPierre — to the monument, equipping the president with disproportionately large hands.
Having written that, I should point out that it would be quicker and easier to simply put Puerto Rico, Trump’s least favorite tropical paradise, on the auction block, followed by some of the more obscure U.S. possessions in the South Pacific. Among them are Howland, Baker, Jarvis and Johnston Islands, all claimed by the U.S. in the 1800s for their rich deposits of guano — the dried manure of seabirds or bats that was once mined on the islands for use as fertilizer.
Come to think of it, that scheme may be a bit too outrageous — maybe even guano crazy.
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For the past two months, I have been receiving emails from the travel service Expedia advising me to check out and take advantage of the bonus air fares I have accumulated from years of using the service to book flights out of Charleston. Curious at how much I could save, I opened the emails and discovered some remarkably cheap fares to places like Atlanta, Orlando, Wilmington, North Carolina, plus a cheap non-stop flight to New York, which I had no idea was available.It wasn’t. It turned out all the flights originated in the Other Charleston, CHS instead of CRW. I’m going to have to go there one day to see what it’s like — as soon as a cheap fare is available.
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