Posted on 02/13/2019 7:06:18 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Gov. Gavin Newsom told the California Legislature the bullet train was so over budget that he would kill 73 percent of the track and still spend 100 percent of the taxes.
Facing another cost spike, Gov. Gavin Newsom stunned a joint session of the Democrat-controlled Legislature by proposing to slash the 520-mile voter-approved and taxpayer-funded system that would have stretched from Anaheim through the Central Valley to San Francisco, while keeping the 119-mile stretch from Bakersfield to Merced.
In his formal appearance as governor in front of lawmakers, Newsom claimed that his priorities are combating the state's homelessness crisis and improving care for California's rapidly aging population. Newsom told lawmakers, "Let's be real" — there "simply isn't a path" to build a high-speed rail system to connect Northern California to Southern California, because cost over the decade rose from $33 billion to at least $77 billion.
Newsom knows that the California High-Speed Rail Authority's new chief program officer, Roy Hill, cautioned last March in a 114-page "2018 Draft Budget," that the likely "High Case" cost to build the 520-mile bullet train had almost tripled from $33 billion in when voters approved the effort in 2008 to $98.1 billion or about $189 million per mile.
Newsom's speech humiliated Democrat Assembly members Todd Gloria (San Diego), Ash Kalra (San Jose), Marc Berman (Palo Alto), Rob Bonta (Alameda), Wendy Carrillo (Los Angeles), David Chiu (San Francisco), Laura Friedman (Glendale), Eduardo Garcia (Coachella), Reginald Jones-Sawyer (Los Angeles), Robert Rivas (Salinas), and Mark Stone(Scotts Valley), who pushed through Assembly Joint Resolution 7 last week to back the "Green New Deal" introduced by 29-year-old Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
When you think about it in terms of what Democrats like to do it makes perfect sense.
First it is a public works project.
Second it cost lots of money, money that they get to take from people in way of taxes.
Construction firms will be seeking to have said project funded and will be sending lobbyist to politicians with open check books ready to write checks to reelection funds.
Such projects take a long time and generate a lot of profits to the firms building them. They also require that politicians continue to support them. So those campaign contributions will continue for a long time.
It appears only the God of the New Testament will free men of permanent subjugation to the whims of other men. Only the power greater than any man can free man kind.
Rail is supposedly mass transportation and good for the environment. It is also supposed to be good for the low income people who can’t afford cars or air fare. This may be true for inner city rail but anyone who has ever looked in to the cost of a trip on Amtrak can tell you, you won’t find any low income folk on those trains.
So, there you have it. All of the Democrats favorite things. Tax the people, spend the money, put money in the pockets of your buds, look like a hero for doing things you aren’t really doing.
All while doing absolutely nothing useful.
Well if that doesn’t work, the Secretary of State and Attorney General will conspire to invalidate valid signatures on the petition. If that doesn’t work then they’ll slap a misleading title and summary on it like they did with the vast tax repeal. But let us never forget that this entire debacle was foreseeable and my idiot fellow Californians voted for it. Libs love them some choo choos, they do.
OMG. Life imitates art. We have, again
The Great Train Robbery (1963).
How many BILLIONS have already been spent-—that could have been spent to build the barrier at the border???
How many dollars of what has already been spent/allocated are FEDERAL dollars.???
It would fund another 140 miles at the $25 M per mile that calculate the $1.375 B in the current Dem bill.
Better idea—high speed trains from Vegas to LA and San Francisco to Reno. That would make money.
The New Great Train Robbery.
An elevated bike and jogging path?
Something big for latin grafitti artists?
Robbery is what democrats master in before entering office.
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