Posted on 07/18/2012 6:53:07 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
California is our Greece, the most fiscally irresponsible of U.S. states – and now it has another fiscal fiasco on its hands. A recent report about the state-sponsored “bullet train to nowhere” calculates $68 billion as the total sum to be spent on a high-speed rail line to run between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Passengers are supposed to be able to travel up to 220 miles per hour in two-and-a-half hours.
A plane flight is less than an hour – not counting drives to and from the airports. Voters approved the rail project by a 53-47% margin, in a statewide referendum, back in 2008. Based on that vote, California issued $10 billion in bonds and then got $3.5 billion from the rest of us taxpayers (“stimulus” money from the Obama administration).
But why should this even be a public project? Why should it be subject to public vote? What of the 47% who didn’t support it? Why should they have anything to do with it? If the project were commercially viable – and the greens were kept at bay – it would be built by the private sector. Only politically is it viable – which means it entails lots of payoffs, bribes and graft for the politically-connected in the state. Construction is supposed to begin later this year, in the Central Valley, near Merced, with 300 miles of track to be laid from there, over 10 years, to the northern outskirts of Los Angeles.
Thereafter a northern link is to be built to San Francisco, but it wouldn’t be finished until 2028. Why would it take a whole decade to lay that initial track? I count 300 miles over 3650 days, which is less than 500 feet per day.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
-—wonder how that construction schedule compares to the one that culminated in the driving of the “golden spike”??
This is such a farse. The state has been run and destroyed by the tax and spend DemoRats and their “envirowhacko” supporters. Over taxation and regulation are running revenue and job generating companies out of the state to business-friendly states.
Once the model state for America, when it was run by conservatives over thirty years ago. Now, a liberal-destroyed dung heap of debt, illegals, and taxation madness driven by an electorate that keeps voting them back in.
Rest in peace Taxifornia.
Let's buy land on the east bank of the Colorado...
Then pull the linch-pins out of the San Andreas fault...
Stand by your bowline, Mr. Smee!
(DisneyLand reference -- courtesy of Gov. Moonbeam)
********
Pardon mixed cartoon-movie metaphors...
Oh, California, California, we hardly knew ye...
—wonder how that construction schedule compares to the one that culminated in the driving of the “golden spike”?
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Well considering that Chinese labor just might be used, might even be on schedule, barring discovery of some mythic skank lizard.
China to bid on California bridge work?
Do it just west of Fresno - JimRob will be the proud owner of beachfront property :-)
Not quite the same... Greece hasn’t shot its wad on spectacular public works, but on more mundane bumming.
Got to be fair to California, this thing did go through a referendum. I’m not sure what the 53% slim majority thought would be gained by this, but they voted for it and they got it. Unless they want to anti-referendum it now.
My folks and i sailed into SF in 1961 after living in Asia for a decade.
The city looked damned good back then.
“...The Greens also fight efficient big-ticket power-plants...”
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We should have had ample nuke electric power by now, but the DemoRats need the money and votes of the “greens” to stay in power so they do any damage to the state and its people necessary to make that happen. The state is toast due to the Hispanic vote which grows faster than anyone imagines combined with the welfare class which the state supports without question.
Yes, the CARB (Calif Air Resources Board) is a cancer that feeds off the liberites and excessive regulation it keeps putting out. Thank them for 2-cycle engines disappearing in record numbers along with ridiculous EXPENSIVE botique gasolines (heavily taxed) at the pumps. It is total liberal insanity all for DemoRat empowerment.
Nice skateboard by the way :-)
The article says the Transcontinental Railroad was completed in six years.
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