A few weeks ago, a friend phoned and asked me if I’d move back (and offered me a good job at a good salary …and at my age, that’s a big deal btw).

No. Never.

…and it’s not like I escaped living in a blue state (moved to Washington: if you want to stay in the West, it’s a given the state will be at least cyan, and prob’ly azure lol), but the people and the local culture here are at least way, way less crazy than what passes for normal in California.

Now that it’s no longer a “bullet train” between San Diego and San Francisco (phase one: Madera and Bakersfield??), ridership projections are down 30%, and even those projections are questioned. Who is going to ride this Central Valley Express? Migrant farm workers?

de rigueur on July 7, 2012 at 4:14 PM

Maybe it’s the Alta California Express for migrant farm workers from Tijuana to Madera.

If there are lots of empty seats, they can fill them with solar panels from Mexicali bought with Obama-bux in the Chu-box.

So now California will ignore the reports from their own auditor and the project’s own California High-Speed Rail Peer Review Group to throw money into a “fundamentally flaw[ed]” boondoggle that will add $100 billion in costs just for construction alone to California taxpayers, in a state that already can’t pay its bills, all to produce a fixed-rail transport system that is slower than the robust air transit between its Points A and B, which will straddle the state’s worst geographic fault system, and whose first stage will connect two cities that have no need for high-speed travel between them. Unfortunately, that’s not satire.

An excellent metaphor for the entire Obama administration.

This project in ten or twenty years is going to be looked at as one of the most monumental government “fails” of all time. I suspect that patterns of travel and business (videoconferencing, wireless, telecommuting, offshoring, etc.) will have changed so substantially by then that the idea that someone once thought it advisable to spend $100 billion to lay tracks through farm fields in California’s Central Valley will be viewed as about as practical and relevant to the infrastructure needs of the state as the Terra Cotta warriors in China probably were in their time.

Please. I read fairy tales to my kids, but even they don’t actually believe them.

Big talk here about Arizona boycotts, and anti-AZ stop and check law, but no talk about removing the fence. None at all.

de rigueur on July 7, 2012 at 3:38 PM

Maybe when the new Mexican President empties his jails and mental institutions and sends them to Arizona now that the State can’t stop it and the Obama administration won’t, the Arizonians can forward to California the captured people that ICE won’t deport to Mexico. (Don’t laugh, dumping all his criminals and mental patients on the USA was what Castro did and Jimmy Carter let him get away with it.)

Jerry Brown and the California voters-DUMB AND DUMBER.

Eventually there will be no more money to redistribute….at which point the DUMBER of the voters won’t be very happy and the consequences of their unhappines won’t be very pretty to experience.

Now would be a very good time for those who aren’t identified and DUMB or DUMBER to leave the state.

It’s going to take a messy fight to save any part of it.

This should prove to be an interesting study of how the left thinks, the excuses, the faults and the proof of socialism failure. They never learn.

Actually, socialism is successful for those on top running things and their favorite cronies to which substantial taxpayer funds are redistributed, along with just enough crumbs redistributed to select voting blocs among the masses to ensure a certain party remains in majority power. After all, how much personal suffering did we witness of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro,et al. Its for the people to suffer the consequences of the failures of socialism. Socialism, marxism, communism all have their 1% who have far less concern about the economic conditions of their 99% then our 1% care about ours.

I am never going to use the high speed rail and neither are most of the rest of the Californians. $100 billion (and probably a lot more) is too much for any state to absorb. Yeah, yeah I know that it passed by a vote from the Southern Cal folk; but, who really needs it? The California state senate and state representatives have apparently put a lot of work into making sure California has a high speed rail. Why?

If it’s so important to our elected officials then have them pay for it themselves. I know they don’t have $100 billion dollars of their own to throw around; however, they have their salaries and retirement.

Tie this high speed boondoggle to their future. They are, in my opinion, spending California’s money unwisely. If they believe this is a good idea have them invest all they have, current salary, their entire financial portfolio, and their retirement in the high speed rail; they’re asking all Californians to do this. Have them put their money where their mouth is. If they truly believe this to be a good investment they should do this without question. If not, then leave us the #$^% alone.

BlaxPac on July 7, 2012 at 7:30 PM

There’s been a few CA journalists on this beat. Dan Walters of the Sac Bee has probably been the most critical. He’s been drowned out by the editorial pages of his own paper, the SF Chron, and LA Times.

It’s fun watching my lefty CA friends squirm watching their leftist utopia turn into Tijuana. Most are still in denial.

When the populace says, emphatically ‘NO’, that’s code for “we just
didn’t explain it well enough, yet”. So, full speed ahead (haha — speed)
and damn the torpedoes. Hoping you brought your good sense to wherever you landed.
Leave home without it, ‘dumbass insanity’. CO has it.

Don’t dare have the temerity to step foot in TX with that. You’ll not find a friend, ‘cepting
in Austin which needs a good de-lousing every early morning along 6th street. That’s a fact.

Music capital of the world. Keep it classy, Austinites.

If I have offended some Austin folks, tough. Deal with it.

Wow…I’m sure glad my husband and I ski-daddled out of that state eight years ago, leaving skid marks on the border as we left…

Sacramento has a $16 Billion dollar deficit, but somehow are convinced that instead of trying to get that much to just …oh I don’t know, zero out that debt maybe?…they want to spend and go into the satchel for over 7 times that amount?

I think i did bring this up before, but for Pete’s sake, is there *no* “Investigative Reporter” (snort) willing to show the stones to blare this blatant theft of critical funds from the Treasury?

Sigh. John Stossell, please pick up the Emergency phone…