Not Just ObamaCare Taking The Hits: Now The Obama Train Dying In California
Not sure how many of my good readers have heard about the Obama Train…at least not many outside of California, I would venture to guess. I think this is also kind of a funny story that is simply another example of the greed, wastefulness, and stupidity of the government at nearly all levels today.
In addition to ObamaCare, the current community organizer in chief decided to give California his signature transportation project—a new bullet train. This was intended to be a high speed passenger train that would zoom up and down the California coast, helping passengers to save lots of time when traveling between various cities in the state. Certainly nothing wrong with that in and of itself.
The problem is that being a state on the verge of bankruptcy, California has really no way of paying for any of this. Sure, they received a $3 billion grant from Obama’s failed stimulus bill, but this will only cover a very tiny portion of the currently $68 billion project.
In fact, when it was first proposed this was meant to be only a $40 billion project. By the way, don’t you just love how we now throw around numbers like 40 billion dollars with the qualifier of “only” as if this is such a small amount of money? But, we digress. This project was sold to the California voters as being a $40 billion project and was approved by the voters. After approval, the estimated costs quickly shot up to over $100 billion. Isn’t that quite typical? So, maybe some members of the government were lying about how much the thing would really cost, but still want to promise that the people would keep—er, have—their Obama Train? Yep, it sounds like a scam to me for sure.
Although it is exactly unclear as to why, it looks like some of the government planners did get together and have a meeting of the minds. Now there is a scary thought, right? At any rate, they correctly decided that there was no reason to have a train going over 100 miles an hour through metro San Francisco and Los Angeles, so a fair amount of the train’s high speed capacity was taken away right there. This ended up trimming the project to a more reasonable $68 billion level, which is where it stands today.
California Governor Jerry Brown has been a big proponent of this project right from the beginning. He even pushed hard for the state to sell $10 billion worth of bonds in order to begin funding and start work on the project. But now, a California court has ruled that he cannot spend any of that bond money until the state is able to identify how it will fund the entire $68 billion project!
We finally have a court that not only takes its job seriously, but does a good one. Bravo. This decision will most likely mean the end to the Obama Train project, since the state has no way of getting the extra $55 billion or so…at least not in a manner that would be politically acceptable to the majority of the voters.
Back in August, Superior Court Judge Michael Kenny ruled that the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) had overstepped its boundaries and that approving this project which did not have a funding plan compliant with the law. I guess the Obama Train much like ObamaCare, is also a big, nightmarish disaster.
What do YOU think? Is this a fitting end to something called the Obama Bullet Train? Glad to see a court making a sensible decision for once?
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