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Posted on 07/26/2025 11:00:04 AM PDT by John Semmens
In 2008, California voters approved a $9.95 billion bond measure to construct a high-speed rail system between Los Angeles and San Francisco by the year 2020. Seventeen years later and 1300% over budget, Gov. Gavin Newsom claims that "the project has met every obligation and we are now fast approaching the track-laying phase."
President Trump questioned "whether a project that was supposed to be completed by 2020 can honestly be said to have met every obligation' seems dubious. The original promise made to voters was that the trains would've been carrying passengers for the last five years. Now Gov. Newsom is shamelessly heralding an approaching start of construction when the only sensible course of action would be to cancel the project."
"High speed rail is not a worthwhile investment of taxpayer money," Trump argued. "It will never carry enough paying passengers to cover the cost of constructing and operating the rail line. It cannot match the speed nor the efficiency of air travel. It will needlessly scar the landscape. For these reasons I'm discontinuing the federal subsidies required to keep this colossal waste going."
Newsom accused Trump of "surrendering the future to China. They are pressing ahead with investments in high-speed rail. Instead of allowing wasteful personal automobile ownership to dominate their economy they wisely discourage it. We need to do the same. Letting people decide where they want to go and how they are going to get there caters to selfishness. Good government needs to stifle this anarchic individualism in order to promote the welfare of the collective whole. This is the change the World Economic Forum is trying to implement to save the planet. Democrats are in step with this way of thinking. Trump and his neanderthal MAGA minions are not. Voters need to appreciate this and choose wisely in the next few election cycles if the world is to avert calamity."
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HSR is not, necessarily, a “colossal waste”.
Sending billions to California and getting NOTHING except for paid-off RAT bottom feeders is a colossal waste.
China has built 12,000 miles of HSR in the time that California politicians and their pets have consumed all that money. There are parts of the US where HSR would be a good thing to have - California is even one of them.
But before we are spending ten cents on anything in California, they need a functional government.
It is a waste, but there is no rail. Not even one mile of rail. How does this work? They should call it “High Speed Fever Dreams”.
This is the problem with all gov’t controlled projects: there is no incentive to be efficient. 2021, Congress allocated $7billion for 500,000 EV charging stations across the US. While most of the money has been spent, so far there are 8 new charging stations.
California taxpayers got railed. Good and hard and at a high speed.
World’s longest bicycle path.
High-speed rail (HSR) has been proposed between Dallas and Houston. I live 65 miles south of Dallas, and the drive up there typically takes about 90 minutes. The estimated travel time by HSR from Dallas to Houston is also 90 minutes. If the time required to get to the train station and get underway is anything like what it is with air travel, that could easily add another two hours.
I can typically drive from my home to Houston in about three hours—and I’d have my own transportation once I get there.
Somehow the USA was able to build the worlds first, largest and best national rail system 150 years ago.
How did they do it? There was zero government involvement, besides right-of-way permitting.
Since when did rail transport become the sole domain of the Left?
Sir, do you own this date farm?
Well, we have to cut a 200-yard-wide swath directly through the middle of it and build a 7-mile detour so you can manage the other half of your farm...
Oh yes, we forgot to mention that the water canals feeding your farm have to be rerouted and slimmed down for efficiency...
Finally, we have improved the roads north of your farm, so your drives into town will have to be increased by several miles...
Every obligation refers to a colossal job program for union workers. These workers know if project is finished they’re out of a job. It’s also a great money machine for contractors, real estate speculators, etc.
There’s no satire to the waste of this project.
There’s no satire to the waste of this project.
There’s no satire to the waste of this project.
There’s no satire to the waste of this project.
There’s no satire to the waste of this project.
I can’t deny the truth of Newsome’s claim.
My expectation from Day One: Billion$ wasted and stolen, major delays, budget explosion, nothing useful to show for it. Yep, he’s met every expectation.
Gov. Gavin Newsom. Sounds like Boss Tweed has been reincarnated in California.
The homeless industrial complex has spent far more then the train to nowhere. Newsom and the democrats are a criminal enterprise.
Newsom spent $24 billion on the homeless. The homeless population went from over 40,000 in Los Angeles to over 70,000.
He says he does not know where the money went...
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