It’s not true that Cal HSR has accomplished nothing. It has enabled the placement of lot of expensive foreign cars, private school tuition, and nice vacations into the hands of many deserving lawyers, consultants, “experts,” and “community activists,” with an appropriate amount being recycled to deserving Dem politicians in the form of campaign contributions. It’s a virtuous circle, don’t you see? I mean, all those billions didn’t just evaporate, now did they?
That's the "hole" point of a Keynesian hole. You dig it, then fill it in. Makes "work." Stimulates "economy." Creates dependence on the powers that shouldn't be.
I hate your state, too. I hate the propaganda about what a success it is, when, quite obviously, it's a money sinkhole that pays garbage like Newscum to exist.
"California is so successful compared to red states!"
Yeah, so why are there so many poor people there and why do so many working-class and middle-class people move out of the state? And why is the K-12 system rocking a ranking that puts it in the bottom ten with all those southeastern states?
I also hate Kommiefornia for the fact that all other states follow the educational system that they promote. It's that crappy state's fault that all others states have dumbed down their students.
Yes!! Expose this shit, Chris! This high speed joke needs a stake through its useless heart. And please, whatever you do, don’t climb on top of the very dangerous structure. For the love of God.
Everytime I read Chris's stuff, I'm just left wondering: is there anything real in the political world anymore? Anything that's not performative lies and nonsense?
Local politics, etc. do not feature discussions and debates about real issues and initiatives where I live. New Mexico has been slavishly following in CA's footsteps as much as it can. NM is last in education and has been for 8 years. NM is a Dem dominated state. Once a US senator is elected, it's a lifetime appointment. Maybe that has something with being last in education?
By NM standards some of the politicos are rich. Also the people who have second homes here and are from CA, NY, and (strangely enough) TX are rich enough to ignore the squalor. Their kids have already grown so they don't have to worry about the 50 th place in education. Health care? They go back to their home states.
Good points. New Mexico is beautiful so it's a popular place for wealthy people to build vacation homes they visit a few times per year so they can make posts about "Reconnecting with nature and getting away from it all."
Here I am a contrarian. NM used to be beautiful. Now the geoengineering programs have decimated trees in the North. Dead and dying trees in Santa Fe. I know some people notice, but they like to blame it on climate change rather than climate manipulation. The planes leaving stripes in the skies are undeniable. The weather is weird. I've lived here for 58 years. This has been the hottest August in memory. The nighttime desert cooling almost never happens. It can be 90 at 8:00 PM. Of course, Phoenix is worse, but then it always was. ha. The dead and dying spruce trees along the Rio Hondo in Taos are heartbreaking. Here's an article about 406,000 acres of dead and dying trees in the last couple years since the SAI and SRM spraying became more prevalent. Of course, it would go against the narrative to blame the spraying. https://www.ruidosonews.com/new-mexico-tree-deaths-double-in-2024/
In 2008, back when I lived in Cacafornia, I voted "NO" on the "high speed rail" initiative. It was obviously a fantasy; the math and the physics didn't work, and never COULD have worked. And it was clear that the finances would never work, either. Too many expensive "consultants" who contributed only graft and greed, without a single foot of rail - or rail car.
In 2020, we abandoned Cacafornia, sold our home in Sacramento, and moved to San Antonio, TEXAS. And we'll never go back.
We're actually not IN the city of San Antonio, but on the far western edge, and not quite IN "Hill Country" either. But it's a short drive when we decide to go.
You know, Gavin could bring in even more dough if he sold location rights to Hollywood for a post-apocalyptic location thriller based on a runaway bullet train... no wait, hold on a minute. Based on zombie homeless infesting an unfinished bullet train track... no wait... thinking... Based on blatant government corruption by a two-century-old vampire living off the blood of homeless on an unfinished bullet train track. That's it. Call it Grewsome. There could be spin-offs. The Grewsome universe. Crumbling unfinished construction across rural California ruining the landscape, dead bodies, feces, trash, graffiti, you know, like how it is now.
Reminds me of dialogue from the great 1992 Robert Altman film The Player. "No stars, no happy endings." Newsom could have starred in that one. Or in the real-life "Snakes on a Bullet Train."
You are so right. Born there and I’m committed to never going back, even for family or friends. That in itself is a step down into hell, but I’m committed to never spending another penny there.
Either cost was under estimated to get the project going and the idea was that once it was started the train would be too big to stop or…….. somebody was REALLY bad at estimating or…… the money is going to the mafia because it’s such a massive amount of slush who would notice that most was missing before it was all gone?
If Kamala would have been elected it would probably have gotten a Federal bailout.
A great model for under estimating a public building project and then being too far along to abandon it: see the Willie Brown Bridge section connecting San Francisco to Oakland. No one would have agreed to the design at its final cost, so the first approved project budget was far under estimated. It public money and no one is accountable. Hence, no consequences, no change in the practice.
Are they claiming inflation caused the gap in estimated cost to build it? That’s what they do in Oregon and then proceed to raise the fuel taxes which in itself is inflationary.
Some Californians like to brag they are the "world's fourth biggest economy," yet they can't build anything. Is it all intangible ephemera like entertainment, software, and vibes? They have 40 million people...what are they actually doing there? And just to add, while people always point out China, the UAE is completing its own rail line.
At some point they--and the US as a whole--need to ask why we can't build anything anywhere, and if we even have the skills to. And, no, illegals are not the answer.
The 'Worlds 4th Biggest Ecomony!!!!!!' makes no numerical sense when you think about it calmly. Pure Local Boosterism Fantasy. We might have the Worlds Largest Turnip!!!!!! in Visalia. Or might not.
You just count everything under the sun. Cancer treatments? Sikhs crashing trucks into busloads of hockey kids? BLM burning down a city? IT'S ALL GDP!!!!!
I'll bet somewhere on a spreadsheet in Sacto are cells for calculating the economic activity of cleaning poo off the streets of San Francisco, and reconstruction of arson-obliterated parts of LA.
China has their own share of Potemkin villages in the form of impressive looking skyscrapers that are nothing but hollow shells. They were built to provide jobs to workers and dupe investors out of $Billions. I saw this firsthand when visiting Macau a few years ago before Evergrande failed.
This “rail project” has very similar earmarks, except on the taxpayers dime.
Rule number 6 of government spending: if 90% or more of the jobs created by an initiative are for lawyers, consultants, and new bureaucrats, it's fraud.
Actually, for having been built in the span of two years back in 1874-1876, it’s a pretty impressive stretch. That was when American know how (actually Chinese laborers) DID, rather than spend money and talk about it like we do now.
BTW, thanks for helping bring back memories of when my grandfather took me there to see it back when I was a kid. He was a historical railroad buff. 👴🏻👦
Tehachapi Loop is quite the sight from Hwy 58. Csn also be viewed from a two lane road a little higher up on the opposite side if the tracks.
I grew up 3 blocks from the Southern Pacific yard in East Bakersfield where the switching engines assembled the Tehachapi bound trains in the middle of the night.
In New Mexico we have the same thing. A train that they didn't extend enough track to get to the airport in Albuquerque from Santa Fe. So the train lumbers from Albuquerque to Santa Fe with very few people riding it. Had they gone to the airport, many people from the north would probably have used it.
This boondoggle along with other common modern California problems like pothole-riddled streets and expensive gas makes me think the elite here are doing everything in their power to be sure that most of us are reduced to riding bicycles like Chinese peasants in our 20-minute cities.
Here, they place roundabouts everywhere, for safety-reasons.
It's weird.
Crossings, the problem is the people who don't slow down so they can check for oncoming traffic. Roundabouts, the problem is people not respecting the right-of-way rules governing them.
Hm. Seems the common factor is the attitude and behaviour of the driver, not the actual construction as such.
In some places here in Sweden, we even have two-tiered roundabout-carousels. "Spot the tourist" made easy, you might say.
Try navigating them in the snow with hundreds of new Californian transplants that can't stop sliding off the road in the summer. Dreading this winter season
There's a very good Australian TV comedy series called Utopia about a National Building Authority. It perfectly captures the essence of a stupid, inefficient government bureaucracy that never achieves anything, yet relentlessly celebrates its 'wins'. It's well worth watching if you can find it online.
Next to our building in Long Beach, two projects started at the same time: a 33-floor high rise residence with private money and a 2-floor beach restaurant built with public funding. The private high rise was finished in a year, the public restaurant took two. All because of crushing California building rules.
It’s not true that Cal HSR has accomplished nothing. It has enabled the placement of lot of expensive foreign cars, private school tuition, and nice vacations into the hands of many deserving lawyers, consultants, “experts,” and “community activists,” with an appropriate amount being recycled to deserving Dem politicians in the form of campaign contributions. It’s a virtuous circle, don’t you see? I mean, all those billions didn’t just evaporate, now did they?
Don't forget the Pelosis, who bought and sold the land for the rail several times over
Using federal grants.
^^This!^^
That's the "hole" point of a Keynesian hole. You dig it, then fill it in. Makes "work." Stimulates "economy." Creates dependence on the powers that shouldn't be.
🙌👍
I hate my state. And thank you, Chris, for doing something that used to be called “investigative journalism”. You’re awesome. 👏🏼
I hate your state, too. I hate the propaganda about what a success it is, when, quite obviously, it's a money sinkhole that pays garbage like Newscum to exist.
"California is so successful compared to red states!"
Yeah, so why are there so many poor people there and why do so many working-class and middle-class people move out of the state? And why is the K-12 system rocking a ranking that puts it in the bottom ten with all those southeastern states?
I also hate Kommiefornia for the fact that all other states follow the educational system that they promote. It's that crappy state's fault that all others states have dumbed down their students.
All shit comes from Kommiefornia.
Let’s not forget the state with the highest level of homelessness…because we keep feeding the pigeons.
Everyone who has been paying attention knew it was a joke long ago.
Yes!! Expose this shit, Chris! This high speed joke needs a stake through its useless heart. And please, whatever you do, don’t climb on top of the very dangerous structure. For the love of God.
I hate your state for allowing people up here in WA to use the excuse that at least we're not CA.
But we're a close second.
Investigative journalism with snark.
He keeps me laughing.🤣🤣🤣
Everytime I read Chris's stuff, I'm just left wondering: is there anything real in the political world anymore? Anything that's not performative lies and nonsense?
It's a spectrum. At one end, there is precious little. At the other, we have nothing whatsoever.
Ted - yep. Not much of a spectrum, actually. Ugh.
Good one 😂
California's pols have taken cognitive dissonance to a whole nother level.
Local politics, county politics, and occasionally state politics feature discussions and debates about real issues and real initiatives.
Just not in California, and certainly not in D.C., where everything is fake and gay.
Local politics, etc. do not feature discussions and debates about real issues and initiatives where I live. New Mexico has been slavishly following in CA's footsteps as much as it can. NM is last in education and has been for 8 years. NM is a Dem dominated state. Once a US senator is elected, it's a lifetime appointment. Maybe that has something with being last in education?
New Mexico hasn’t figured out that you have to be really fucking rich to fail as hard as California and still pretend everything is fine.
By NM standards some of the politicos are rich. Also the people who have second homes here and are from CA, NY, and (strangely enough) TX are rich enough to ignore the squalor. Their kids have already grown so they don't have to worry about the 50 th place in education. Health care? They go back to their home states.
Good points. New Mexico is beautiful so it's a popular place for wealthy people to build vacation homes they visit a few times per year so they can make posts about "Reconnecting with nature and getting away from it all."
Here I am a contrarian. NM used to be beautiful. Now the geoengineering programs have decimated trees in the North. Dead and dying trees in Santa Fe. I know some people notice, but they like to blame it on climate change rather than climate manipulation. The planes leaving stripes in the skies are undeniable. The weather is weird. I've lived here for 58 years. This has been the hottest August in memory. The nighttime desert cooling almost never happens. It can be 90 at 8:00 PM. Of course, Phoenix is worse, but then it always was. ha. The dead and dying spruce trees along the Rio Hondo in Taos are heartbreaking. Here's an article about 406,000 acres of dead and dying trees in the last couple years since the SAI and SRM spraying became more prevalent. Of course, it would go against the narrative to blame the spraying. https://www.ruidosonews.com/new-mexico-tree-deaths-double-in-2024/
Mr. Bray, I don't think anyone truly appreciates just how critically important it is, to get from Bakersfield to Fresno in twenty-eight minutes.
To get on the train to either Bakersfield or Fresno, I have to drive 25 minutes to the west.
You mean the imaginary train? You can just take your fake rocket ship to the nonexistant station, that should cut down the commute.
True, it is still an imaginary train that won't be completed in my lifetime.
But the point is that I have drive 25 miles in the wrong direction for either destination to (not) take the (not) train.
🤣
In 2008, back when I lived in Cacafornia, I voted "NO" on the "high speed rail" initiative. It was obviously a fantasy; the math and the physics didn't work, and never COULD have worked. And it was clear that the finances would never work, either. Too many expensive "consultants" who contributed only graft and greed, without a single foot of rail - or rail car.
In 2020, we abandoned Cacafornia, sold our home in Sacramento, and moved to San Antonio, TEXAS. And we'll never go back.
The hill country around San Antonio is like a much cheaper version of Austin. Love it.
We're actually not IN the city of San Antonio, but on the far western edge, and not quite IN "Hill Country" either. But it's a short drive when we decide to go.
Shhhhh
That’s fantastic. Remember it when you go to the voting booth. We don’t want this place to turn into that place.
You know, Gavin could bring in even more dough if he sold location rights to Hollywood for a post-apocalyptic location thriller based on a runaway bullet train... no wait, hold on a minute. Based on zombie homeless infesting an unfinished bullet train track... no wait... thinking... Based on blatant government corruption by a two-century-old vampire living off the blood of homeless on an unfinished bullet train track. That's it. Call it Grewsome. There could be spin-offs. The Grewsome universe. Crumbling unfinished construction across rural California ruining the landscape, dead bodies, feces, trash, graffiti, you know, like how it is now.
I’d buy that for a dollar!
"Dick, you're fired!"
“Nice shootin’ son. What’s your name?”
LOVE the old movie call backs! Thank-you!
Reminds me of dialogue from the great 1992 Robert Altman film The Player. "No stars, no happy endings." Newsom could have starred in that one. Or in the real-life "Snakes on a Bullet Train."
👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻🤣🤣🤣
Let's write the script!
California was paradise, now it’s purgatory.
Hotel California: "This could be heaven or this could be hell."
I hear ya!
You are so right. Born there and I’m committed to never going back, even for family or friends. That in itself is a step down into hell, but I’m committed to never spending another penny there.
It’s everything bad about CA rolled into one spectacle of government misrule and overreach. And they/Dems steal the elections too.
Either cost was under estimated to get the project going and the idea was that once it was started the train would be too big to stop or…….. somebody was REALLY bad at estimating or…… the money is going to the mafia because it’s such a massive amount of slush who would notice that most was missing before it was all gone?
If Kamala would have been elected it would probably have gotten a Federal bailout.
Badly estimated? Too big to fail? Graft? Try "ALL OF THE ABOVE!"
The cost to build was deliberately under-estimated. But trains were popular then. I 'may' have voted for this. It was a long time ago.
No doubt in my mind. She'd want a bigger piece of that pie.
Por que no los dos?
A great model for under estimating a public building project and then being too far along to abandon it: see the Willie Brown Bridge section connecting San Francisco to Oakland. No one would have agreed to the design at its final cost, so the first approved project budget was far under estimated. It public money and no one is accountable. Hence, no consequences, no change in the practice.
A system with no consequences for bad behavior guarantees bad behavior. By design it would seem to attract bad actors.
Are they claiming inflation caused the gap in estimated cost to build it? That’s what they do in Oregon and then proceed to raise the fuel taxes which in itself is inflationary.
Oh the clever webs that must be woven to save the stupid plebes from themselves.
Some Californians like to brag they are the "world's fourth biggest economy," yet they can't build anything. Is it all intangible ephemera like entertainment, software, and vibes? They have 40 million people...what are they actually doing there? And just to add, while people always point out China, the UAE is completing its own rail line.
At some point they--and the US as a whole--need to ask why we can't build anything anywhere, and if we even have the skills to. And, no, illegals are not the answer.
The 'Worlds 4th Biggest Ecomony!!!!!!' makes no numerical sense when you think about it calmly. Pure Local Boosterism Fantasy. We might have the Worlds Largest Turnip!!!!!! in Visalia. Or might not.
Plus the Great Garlic Festival in Gilroy.
No, it's more like the way they measure GDP.
You just count everything under the sun. Cancer treatments? Sikhs crashing trucks into busloads of hockey kids? BLM burning down a city? IT'S ALL GDP!!!!!
I'll bet somewhere on a spreadsheet in Sacto are cells for calculating the economic activity of cleaning poo off the streets of San Francisco, and reconstruction of arson-obliterated parts of LA.
In no real sense is California the 4th largest economy in the world.
They are the leaders in child trafficking, porn, homelessness and drug abuse.
Whew, good thing your... drone did not slipc😉 Meanwhile CHIna (Trump pronunciation) built 2000+ miles of high speed rail with incredible stations... 🤷
Yes, exactly, my drone
And here's me thinking, Wow, Chris must be fit shinning up there...
What’s that running up wall shit? Parque? 😁
Parkour. A crazy French invention, naturally.
Yep, Drone drone dro… aaaaargh! 🤸
China has their own share of Potemkin villages in the form of impressive looking skyscrapers that are nothing but hollow shells. They were built to provide jobs to workers and dupe investors out of $Billions. I saw this firsthand when visiting Macau a few years ago before Evergrande failed.
This “rail project” has very similar earmarks, except on the taxpayers dime.
Correction: hollow shells that fall down.
:^>
The federal government needs to investigate this and prosecute. It’s disgusting that whomever is involved in this scheme is getting away with this.
It sure smells like fraud to me.
But it’s a huge success because of all the JOBS it’s created. One of the greatest “make work” schemes ever invented. The Mob would be proud.
Rule number 6 of government spending: if 90% or more of the jobs created by an initiative are for lawyers, consultants, and new bureaucrats, it's fraud.
The final route through the Tehachapi Mountains has not even been selected.
Are you saying that a bullet train might not be able to parallel the existing Tehachapi loop? 🤔😉😁
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehachapi_Loop
Actually, for having been built in the span of two years back in 1874-1876, it’s a pretty impressive stretch. That was when American know how (actually Chinese laborers) DID, rather than spend money and talk about it like we do now.
BTW, thanks for helping bring back memories of when my grandfather took me there to see it back when I was a kid. He was a historical railroad buff. 👴🏻👦
Tehachapi Loop is quite the sight from Hwy 58. Csn also be viewed from a two lane road a little higher up on the opposite side if the tracks.
I grew up 3 blocks from the Southern Pacific yard in East Bakersfield where the switching engines assembled the Tehachapi bound trains in the middle of the night.
Trains.
Your Question: No expert, nut pretty sure No.
Because there is no such route, at least in the realm of reality. The project should have been buried by that fact from the beginning.
If ever built, I suspect it will be largely a long tunnel.
Which, luckily, will collapse and kill a few people, the first earthquake that comes about. 🙄
Eh, it won't kill any real people. Just train commuters that don't matter to the rich Democrats who will never, ever ride that train.
Let's hope the politicians don't start monkeying with the power grid and generation, oh wait.
Exactly. But you can’t tunnel into the most dangerous earthquake fault in America. Ridiculous.
Details
It does, because it is.
“The Government investígate”? That’s an oxymoron of if I ever heard one!
We have ‘light rail’ in Tacoma. Usually 2 drug addicts in a car that stops street traffic as it meanders through the middle of the street.
2025 and Tacoma/Washington state opted for technology that was in SF before the earthquake/fire of 1905…and they call themselves progressive.
I’m not sure you understand the meaning of that word…
bsn
In New Mexico we have the same thing. A train that they didn't extend enough track to get to the airport in Albuquerque from Santa Fe. So the train lumbers from Albuquerque to Santa Fe with very few people riding it. Had they gone to the airport, many people from the north would probably have used it.
And, ZERO CONSEQUENCE for the clowns who were in charge. Probably elected to another higher office.
bsn
Some retired, yay. But, yeah, 0 consequence, as usual.
This boondoggle along with other common modern California problems like pothole-riddled streets and expensive gas makes me think the elite here are doing everything in their power to be sure that most of us are reduced to riding bicycles like Chinese peasants in our 20-minute cities.
You’re lucky. In Canada we are aiming at 15 minute cities. Must be the foreign exchange rate 😵💫
LOL, I should have said 15-minute cities.
You have only to attend city hall and county supervisor meetings, Ringmaster, to discover just how true that is.
Round-Abouts! I hate round-abouts!
They may (or may not) work in France, but in California we do not know how to drive them.
Most of the near accidents I have had on these mushrooming round-abouts.
Here, they place roundabouts everywhere, for safety-reasons.
It's weird.
Crossings, the problem is the people who don't slow down so they can check for oncoming traffic. Roundabouts, the problem is people not respecting the right-of-way rules governing them.
Hm. Seems the common factor is the attitude and behaviour of the driver, not the actual construction as such.
In some places here in Sweden, we even have two-tiered roundabout-carousels. "Spot the tourist" made easy, you might say.
YMMV
Try navigating them in the snow with hundreds of new Californian transplants that can't stop sliding off the road in the summer. Dreading this winter season
Where are you located?
Roundabouts and speed bumps are used in the PNW because they hate people who own cars.
Haha. We have a few roundabouts, but hell, people here don't even know how to merge if there's a lane blocked.
There's a very good Australian TV comedy series called Utopia about a National Building Authority. It perfectly captures the essence of a stupid, inefficient government bureaucracy that never achieves anything, yet relentlessly celebrates its 'wins'. It's well worth watching if you can find it online.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3163562/
The original "Yes, Minister" in the UK was superb for this kind of thing.
Next to our building in Long Beach, two projects started at the same time: a 33-floor high rise residence with private money and a 2-floor beach restaurant built with public funding. The private high rise was finished in a year, the public restaurant took two. All because of crushing California building rules.