The U.S. Forest Service plans to have a garage sale.

There won't be any lava lamps.

It's land that the Forest Service wants to unload - between 175,000 and 300,000 acres total, up to 2,930 parcels in national forests and national grasslands in 34 states, many of them less than one acre, the largest parcel being 900 acres of Virginia forest.

The Forest Service hopes to raise $800 million so as to be able to turn the money over to rural school districts and to counties to maintain roads.

That sounds good, but it's not.

The big idea is that rural schools and rural counties have been hurt by logging cutbacks on federal land. Most of the money raised by the land sale is earmarked for states where logging is done, more than half of the $800 million to go to schools and counties in Oregon.

It should be pointed out that no North Dakota land will be for sale. So it isn't as if we have an ax to grind. But 14,000 acres of the Black Hills and national grasslands in South Dakota are listed. Parts of Minnesota and many acres of Montana will be on the auction block.

Newspaper editorials in affected states are declaring what a dumb idea this is. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch says it's "a mistake economically and environmentally and philosophically" to sell 22,000 acres of the Mark Twain National Forest in the Ozarks. Even the Portland Oregonian, in the state that stands the most to gain, editorially calls it "a one-time grab of cash … to throw at rural counties."

The trouble is, the law that allows it has such a fine title: The Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act.

If we're bound and determined to give federal aid without paying for it with taxes, why not make it a humdinger of a one-time-only garage sale? Auction off other national goodies as well. Naming rights always fetch a bundle of cash - how about the Exxon Mobil U.S. Supreme Court Building? For sale, cheap: the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

There is logic in the Forest Service's selling off some of the parcels, for instance, a couple of acres surrounded on three sides by privately owned land. Some of the land is simply a pain in the Forest Service's neck to manage. Fine, unload the useless bits.

It also should be acknowledged that the Forest Service's ability to swap or judiciously sell land may enable it to make a marvelous acquisition of 5,100 acres of the Eberts Ranch land in the Badlands without making a net gain in acreage, which is important because the property tax base in western North Dakota will not be diminished. The public will benefit.

But the large scale land disposal, done simply to avoid having to use tax money to give federal aid to education, benefits few.

The American people will never get those acres back.