Environmentalists and Land Values

Your reporter almost stumbled over his own feet when he had the opportunity to report the “success” of the Coastal Commission in trashing private land. He “forgot” to mention that this was a vendetta of the commission for enforcing our rights to use private property . . . and if the government wants it, the Fifth Amendment requires it to pay compensation--rather than stealing it. This is America, not Stalin’s Soviet Union.

Hope you will give the second court proceeding, which condemned the Coastals’ underhanded activities, some space as news from a higher authority than the self-serving Coastals.

Are our media going to stand by while the neo-Bolshevik environmentalists trash our land into a Third World mess? Isn’t it bad enough that government agents shot Donald Scott to death after he refused to “donate” 200 Malibu acres? They pretended he hid marijuana on his ranch--but, of course, there wasn’t any grass.

Isn’t it bad enough when more than 5,800 year-round jobs were taken from our depressed economy when the Coastals and the conservancy trashed Bob Hope’s canyon project of $350 million? Or when the conservancy accepts “donations” of land and allows the “donors” to deduct a multiple of the land value from income taxes . . . so we all have to pay for these “donations”?

Wake up--time may be running out.

PETER BOGARD

Hollywood