[blackjack21]

In Halting Calif. Rail Funds, Trump Sends Multiple Messages

Politically, Trump has hit a 2020 messaging trifecta with the move. First, he escalated his ongoing war of words with lefty California, which launched a 16-state lawsuit challenging the president’s national-emergency declaration for the border wall. Second, he used the state’s admitted failure on the $77 billion rail project against new Democratic governor – and harsh Trump critic -- Gavin Newsom. To round out his ticket, Trump has cast Green New Dealers as fringy socialist spendthrifts whose most vaunted pet projects are so unrealistic and costly they can never get off the ground.

I think the bolded bit is the bigger point. Democrats virtually control California and drove it into the ground. The Republican party is basically spineless and useless. They do nothing to stop the massive voter fraud here. Democrats sometimes get sick of it and will recall a politician like Gray Davis and vote for Schwarzenegger--who also proved to be useless. Even Schwarzenegger signed up for all the global warming enviro fraud. The irony of this situation is this:

Particularly troubling for Newsom, who is believed to harbor future presibdential ambitions, is Trump’s capitalizing on the newly minted governor’s admission that the eight-year-old train project, with its tens of billions of dollars in cost overruns and endless environmental lawsuits and red tape, had long ago gone off the rails.

Basically, left wing government makes left wing dreams unachievable. That's why I am never bullish on leftist bullshit. They are their own worst enemies.

Instead of getting behind the full rail line, a pet project of his predecessor Jerry Brown, the governor decided to build only a single segment from Bakersfield to Merced in the Central Valley. In doing so, he transformed the plan into one the Trump administration could easily cast as a having a radically different purpose from the original, federally funded award. Moreover, it’s not exactly what liberals who supported the project had in mind. Bakersfield and Merced, noted the New York magazine puckishly, are “two small cities that, it’s fair to say, most coastal metropolitan Californians happily visit rarely or never.”

I've been a little more pointed. It's a high speed train from the middle of fucking nowhere to the edge of fucking nowhere. Nobody is going to ride it when finished, because nobody commutes between Bakersfield and Merced. If they had listened to me, it would have started between viable routes, like San Diego to LA; San Francisco to San Jose; or Sacramento to Oakland. Instead, we're going to get Merced to Bakersfield at a cost of 10s of billions of dollars that could have been used to just pave the fucking road. Fucking Democrats.

Former Rep. Jeff Denham, a Central Valley California Republican who lost a hard-fought contest to Rep. Josh Harder in November, had chaired the House rail subcommittee that for years tried to find a way to quash the bullet-train project. He ultimately determined it couldn’t be done through an act of Congress.

Yep. And to top it off, they elect even more retards to blow what was the world's greatest inheritance. Edmund G. Brown modernized California. His son, Moonbeam, tore it to shreds. It's like Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. A complete tragedy.

Newsom vowed late Tuesday to go to federal court to try to halt the administration’s move, arguing that Trump was taking action as retribution for Monday’s announcement that California is leading a 16-state legal battle against the president’s national-emergency declaration to authorize funding of his border wall.

Another idiot Democrat move that's wasting tax payer dollars for a much needed project to undo the damage of Democratic party government.

“As long as California thinks they can continue to defy federal immigration law and harbor sanctuary cities we shouldn’t fund their stupid, wasteful and horrific high-speed rail project, which is billions over budget and way behind,” Kirk tweeted. “Cancel the funding, bravo @realDonaldTrump!”

Absolutely. That's why, as fucked as it is for me living in California, limiting SALT deductions to make Democrats pay for their own boondoggles is a wise policy. This is another point of vulnerability for Trump though, as the fucking spineless utterly fucking useless Republicans here were cool with SALT. Maybe finally we can get some pissed off people to get into politics and burn Sacramento Democrats to the ground too.

[Drlee]

I think the bolded bit is the bigger point. Democrats virtually control California and drove it into the ground. The Republican party is basically spineless and useless. They do nothing to stop the massive voter fraud here. Democrats sometimes get sick of it and will recall a politician like Gray Davis and vote for Schwarzenegger--who also proved to be useless. Even Schwarzenegger signed up for all the global warming enviro fraud. The irony of this situation is this:

Not one bit of this is true. Where do you go beyond this?

[Hong Wu]

Someone has driven California into the ground and it would be strange to blame people who aren't in power for that. When I was young and growing up in California, it was still ranked #1 out of 50 in quality of life I think. Now it's ranked 50 out of 50.

Schwarzenegger was stymied by the state legislature because he was a Republican. He tried to appeal to them with things like a more environmentalist tack but it didn't really work. There didn't appear to be anything that he could do.

The reality is that California's downwards trend is related to how rich the state is, we see this quite often in history. People who are often referred to as "new money" lack the qualities and sometimes, the techniques to avoid degenerating once they become rich and this is grossly true of Americans who mostly lack for developed traditions (in a way, almost every rich American being a "new money" kind of person).

Regarding the train, it's funny. California's governor cancels the project, Trump wants the money for the project back, they don't want to give it back. Like, kudos to the governor for actually cancelling it (it was not working out) but you presumably have to engage in the project before you can keep the money for that project.

[blackjack21]

Not one bit of this is true. Where do you go beyond this?

For one who fashions himself a blindingly brilliant intellect, that's a pretty anemic and uncertain response. The Democrats do control all branches of the California government--at least in the California I'm living in.

Someone has driven California into the ground and it would be strange to blame people who aren't in power for that.

Who knows what @drlee means here. Maybe he's defending the Republican party as something other than utterly useless?

People who are often referred to as "new money" lack the qualities and sometimes, the techniques to avoid degenerating once they become rich and this is grossly true of Americans who mostly lack for developed traditions (in a way, almost every rich American being a "new money" kind of person).

That's an interesting insight. New money does know how to conserve it, which is why most new money families are broke within three generations. That also translates into how they govern.

There's already some haggling over it. Kern supervisors approve total abandonment of the high-speed rail

Other members of the public sided with Scrivner. One man sited the lack of promised private funding and possible disruption to local communities and farms during construction in his public comment.

Abandoning the project would mean California might be required pay back $3.5 billion in federal grant money, something scrivener accepts as the cost of a bad investment.

"It's time to abandon this project all together once and for all,” Scrivner said at today’s meeting.

From a project management perspective, it's amazing to me that they went with the lowest value segment of the project first in spite of the costs. A high speed train between San Diego and Los Angeles, or San Francisco to San Jose, or Oakland to Sacramento/San Jose would have made infinitely more sense.


California politicians at odds over what should happen to high-speed rail money

While Newsom has said for now the line between Los Angeles and San Francisco won't get built, he wants to finish construction from Bakersfield to Merced.

That still blows me away. A high speed rail line between Bakersfield and Merced. I guess migrant farm workers can work more of the Central Valley?

[Hong Wu]

If I'm going to try and elaborate, I don't want to bash "new money" people (of which I might be considered a part, depending on how you define it) it's just that I know I have struggled a bit with what wealth I have and I have seen people with less than me completely self-destruct. People have faculties that trend towards strange things once their original purpose can no longer be fulfilled. This causes not only social but probably also genetic "degeneration" and if we take this as a truism, it should be no surprise that all of the rich entertainment-oriented people in California have ruined their state. The Greeks and others have done a somewhat better job in a similar clime as California but they are also much older civilizations than the American civilization, which is pretty nominally European, especially today and in a place like Cali.

[AFAIK]

"Our infrastructure is like that of a 3rd world country," says Trump before cancelling infrastructure spending.

MAGA