Free Republic

Billions of dollars in alleged fraudulent healthcare spending is being investigated in California, specifically probing foreign nationals operating illegal hospice facilities — officials announced Friday in a bombshell press conference. “We have witnessed a sevenfold increase in hospice in LA County, sevenfold. That doesn’t happen naturally,” Dr Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services told The Post during at the press conference. “There is not seven times more deaths in LA County than there were five years ago. These are fraudsters, and these do tend to be foreign influences, either Russian and Armenian gangs, mafia,...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom claims he was “physically in the midst” of firefighting efforts during 2025’s Los Angeles wildfires — months after claiming his hair “literally burst” during the inferno. snip “And I was there just a few hours after the fire, and was there physically in the midst of the firefighting as I went up into the foothills and experienced firsthand what our first responders were dealing with.” The governor previously told podcaster Shawn Ryan he was so close to the fires after they ignited on Jan. 7, 2025 that his famous slicked-back mane “literally burst” after a smoldering...

The High Speed Rail Authority shared an update on the Fresno River Viaduct .. They were widely mocked with Elon Musk and Billy Markus piling in .. California has been mercilessly mocked for boasting about completing the 'world's most pointless crossing' to nowhere at a cost of $11billion. The California High Speed Rail Authority shared an update on the Fresno River Viaduct in Madera County last week, proudly saying it was one of the 'first completed high-speed rail structures'. The Tweet did not get the reaction officials were hoping for with Elon Musk and Dogecoin creator Billy Markus piling in...

California hasn’t created a railroad to the future but a warning to the rest of the country to avoid its delusion and folly. California progressives tried to build a European-style high-speed rail network and alienated the French in the process. A big New York Times piece on the rail project reports that the French, who wanted to work with California, decided the state was simply too dysfunctional and departed to help complete a high-speed line in Morocco instead. The ongoing unraveling of California’s rail plan is an object lesson in how infrastructure as eschatology is a bad idea. If transportation...

It's time to stop throwing money at an obsolete form of travel and focus on the transportation system that is already moving more than 80 percent of passenger travel in the U.S. When most of the nation’s governors shut down nonessential businesses and directed people to stay at home, they made the mistake of keeping urban transit systems running despite a 2018 study showing that mass public transportation systems expedite the spread of infectious diseases in communities. Further, a 2011 study found that people who ride urban transit are nearly six times more likely to suffer from upper respiratory infections...

Ready or not, Californians - and America - here it comes. After a two year delay, during which the cost nearly doubled, California's high speed rail system will break ground this week. The project - said to cost $68 billion - will link Los Angeles to San Francisco by 2028. There's only one teentsy, tiny problem: They have no idea how they are going to fund it. ... What of that 200 MPH boast? The original design of the project called for railroad tracks totally dedicated to the high speed rail system. But that proved even more ruinously expensive than...

The truth is that high-speed rail doesn’t work in Europe or Asia either. Japan and France have both spent about as much on high-speed rail as they have on their intercity freeway systems, yet the average residents of those countries travel by car 10 to 20 times as much as they travel by high-speed rail. They also fly domestically more than they take high-speed rail. While the highways and airlines pay for themselves out of gas taxes and other user fees, high-speed rail is heavily subsidized and serves only a tiny urban elite. Obama uses the fact that France, Japan,...