Free Republic

A Florida man has been arrested after stealing a lot more than burgers from a McDonald’s location, according to deputies On September 4, 2022, Escambia County Sheriff’s Office investigators arrested Jon Jon Smith, 38, for stealing nearly $200,000 from a local McDonald’s. Investigators say these thefts occurred between September 2021 and June 2022, while Smith was employed as the store manager. On June 30, 2022, deputies said they were told that Smith committed the crime by change orders. Smith would request a change order and when he received it, he would put the money in his pocket and not into...

The California bullet train is facing at least another billion dollars of proposed cost increases from its contractors... The state’s High-Speed Rail Authority has mostly approved such increases in the past, and if it does so again, contractors could proceed with one of the biggest price escalations since bullet train construction began in the San Joaquin Valley. The state has budgeted $22.8 billion to build a partial segment from Bakersfield to Merced. Originally, construction of the Los Angeles to San Francisco system was pegged at $33 billion. But the surging costs will probably force the state to dig deeper into...

A major construction team on the California bullet train project notified the state rail authority this month that it will not complete a 65-mile section of the future route in Kings County until at least April 14, 2025 — nearly two years after the date that the state included in a business plan adopted Thursday. The additional delay could again boost costs and jeopardize the state’s funding plan to complete a partial operating system between Bakersfield and Merced by 2030. The project’s rising price tag has forced the state to repeatedly scale it back and delay indefinitely a goal to...