Posted on 02/18/2012 11:02:29 AM PST by SmithL
Critics have called it the train to nowhere and a $98 billion boondoggle. As concerns mount over the practicality and affordability of California's plan to build a high-speed rail system, even many former supporters are beginning to sound skeptical.
Not so Gov. Jerry Brown. He has emerged as the most vocal cheerleader of a project that is as risky as it is ambitious.
Building a first-in-the-nation project would provide a lasting legacy for the 73-year-old Democratic governor as he moves into the twilight of a long political career. His father is revered for promoting the construction of California's comprehensive water system and expanding the state's higher education system into a national model.
The stakes are high for Brown as he champions a massive public works project that other governors, notably in Florida and Ohio, have shunned. Many critics, even some fellow Democrats, worry that the rail line will never be self-sustainable and that the financially struggling state will be saddled with huge operational costs.
Yet Brown has expressed little patience for those whose ambitions for the nation's most populous state are lower than his own, dismissing them as "declinists."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Jerry was born via the union womb, his power and life’s work in Liberalism and Union pandersing, he will die in the union tomb.
He is a national disgrace.
“Declinists” - kind of like “climate change skeptics” and Alinksky technique of personalizing the target, isolating it and then ridiculing it.
Train to nowhere
Billions in union coffers that come back to Dems
No one will ride
Moron.
Browns legacy is to take money from china like his Dad took from Indonesia.
There can be only one reason he is supporting this train, and that is to give tax money to China so he can increase his own wealth through kickbacks and ‘private holding companies’.
Given his history and the history of his family, he is not to be trusted when foreign money is involved.
In 1980 Jerry Brown countered a push for national health care and said “You smoke, you don’t exercise, you eat junk food, and you want me to pay for your medical bills?”
Now he says, “You buy a car, you pay for gas, you pay for roads, and I want you to buy a train that doesn’t go anywhere you want to go.”
Its billions to China. Globalist corruption. That is Browns legacy.
We in California do not need political dazzle dazzle. We need reality, and a Republican government in D.C. That tells California no mas. No federal support until you end the union stranglehold.
The corporatist stranglehold as well.
Oh for God’s sake. He’s stark raving mad.
The funds raised in these FReepathons go to pay our current quarter expenses. But we're also going to try to replace some of our older servers and failing equipment this year so we're going to add a little extra to our FReepathon goals. John is estimating ten to fifteen thousand to do this and I'd like to get it all in place and working before the election cycle is fully heated up, so we'll try to bring in a little extra now, if we can, and the rest next quarter.
Jim Robinson
somebody get the tar and feathers,, we already got the high-speed rail to run him out of the state on.. or should I say high speed rail job? That’s all this high-speed rail fantasy was about from the gitgo.
Brown has to know that this high speed rail for California will NEVER be built. The projected $95 billion is grossly understated. However, even at $95 billion it would be a colossal looser. Our freeways are falling apart for lack of maintenance, and this jerk is fantasizing about a several hundred miles high speed rail line.
Last weekend on the Interstate 10 freeway through the main pass into the Coachella Valley (Palm Springs and other resort cities), his Cal Trans road workers had three of the four westbound freeway lanes closed for nearly 24 hours for roadway concrete repairs. The backup ran for 25 miles with hundreds of thousands of completely stopped cars and trucks with no alternative roadway to use. Drivers were urinating and defecating on the side of the roadway as it was taking 4 hours to move a handful of miles. And this is the leader who wants to build a high speed rail line while his constituents are being forced to pee and poop by the roadside in full view of hundreds.
In New Mexico, Bill Richardson’s legacy the Rail Runner is a known big money loser year after year. that is propped up by government subsidies, but there is no political will to scrap it.
High speed rail is quite simple. If it could be profitable, private interests would build it an run it at a profit.
For high speed rail to be viable in this country, government needs to get out of it.
Screw Brown and his backwards priorities. We’re still waiting for the fix to the SF/Oakland Bay Bridge after the 1989 earthquake damage. Fix our broken roads first! We don’t need a stinkin’ train most people won’t use but have to pay for.
I drove down to the Bay Area back in late 2010, and couldn't believe the condition of I-80. I had to get out of the right lane because it was beating me and my car up - I've been on dirt roads that were better.
We took the train from San Jose to San Luis Obispo once. (Final destination- Cambria.) We thought it would be a fun trip for the kids and help us avoid holiday weekend traffic. It’s normally a 3.5 hr drive door-to-door including a rest stop or two.
It took about 20 minutes to get to downtown San Jose, park and get on the train. We ended up in a dark, smelly car filled with numerous questionable characters. My younger son was fiddling behind a seat and came out with an empty whiskey bottle (we considered ourselves lucky he didn’t find a used hypodermic needle)
It took 8.5 hrs to get to San Luis, we then rented a car and drove 40 minutes to Cambria, our destination.
So we paid for parking in San Jose, 4 train tickets, a rental car for the weekend and it took a total of 10 hours one-way from start to finish. Does this make one bit of sense economically or time-wise??? NO!!
Today, if you plan ahead, you can purchase an $89 plane ticket to go from 5 different airports in No. Cal to ~9 different airports in So. Cal in less than 1 hr 15 mins, plus planes leave ~ every 30 minutes.
Only in screwed up California would anyone think that spending billions and billions of $$$ to replace plane travel with train travel makes sense. Of course these are the same stupid people who run empty light rail cars and buses all over the county so they can pat themselves on the back for saving the planet!!
“Stupid people are ruining this country.”
When the price is finally demanded for such liberal idiocy, I really, strongly, forcefully submit that we should reconsider the death penalty for politicians who knowingly engaged in impoverishing us.
Think about it.
“Only in screwed up California would anyone think that spending billions and billions of $$$ to replace plane travel with train travel makes sense.”
Liberals are smarter than conservatives. They know FULL WELL that building train lines is a disaster, in nearly all cases. Conservatives are generally TOO STUPID to put up an effective defense against this crap, so we lose.
Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the MOU with China to purchase the trains for the project from them.
When will people realize that it is globalists, like Schwarzenegger and Brown that are destroying us? We waste time dithering about liberalism or republicans when they are all globalists and are acting from the same playbook.
Chinese bribes and ‘investments’ are worth too much money to politicians for them to give a crap about acting like they are elected to work for a state and its citizens.
When we had the rule of law, taking money from communist china would have destroyed a man or woman’s political career and possibly put them in jail.
Reagan actually scandalized everyone with his million dollar ‘speaking fee’ from Japan after he retired. But constant erosion of principles followed and then Clinton broke the mold when he let Bernard Schwartz of Loral Space & Communications Ltd sell china working multiple head missile capability after receiving large donations from the traitor and Chinese national Norman Hsu.
It’s been a free for all from China on our politicians ever since.
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