Here's the latest from the Golden State:
California’s state budget, already poised to be flush with higher-than-expected tax revenues, will receive an additional cash infusion of $26 billion under the COVID-19 relief bill that President Biden is expected to sign this week, sparking demands for a wide array of new efforts to help those hit hardest by the pandemic.
I predict that this will spark at least a week's worth of outrage on Fox News. And who knows? Maybe it's justified.
As for me, I guess I'll be happy as long as none of this money is used to fund the bullet train to nowhere. My fingers are crossed.
Bullet trains should be built - whatever the cost - . That's always been my position.
This is the comment that I came here to make. Bravo!
Wow, I'm going to switch to a bus going 70 mph to get from LA to SF, except for the last 30 or 40 miles at each end where it, or might not, slow down to 10 mph. So maybe six hours if you're really, really lucky or don't mind riding all night in a bus when traffic is light, or maybe 9 or 10 hours if you're not or do mind.
That's competitive? Time to retire this suggestion, which always pops up here when Kevin goes on one of his Troglodyte tirades. It totally sucks.
Absolutely! It's a 500-year investment. We're talking about peanuts. So use the $26 billion to turn it into what it is supposed to be, a train from somewhere to somewhere: specifically, from the second largest metropolitan area in the country to the the fifth largest -- with ultimate extensions to two other major metro areas, and intermediate stops in significant Central Valley cities that might be offended by being described as "nowhere."
Yeah, I'm filing this under who cares. It's a tiny amount of money, relatively speaking, and who knows - maybe they'll end up needing it.
I believe California sends about $20 billion or so per year to the Fed gov via taxes we don't get back, and this has been the case since the 1970s or 1980s.
So forgive me if I don't agree that its money "we don't need."
Cuomo mentioned this, astonishingly only once, last year in one of his long form press conferences about whether there ought to be aid to New York.
I mean, it makes perfect sense. The low population, low economic activity red states cannot possibly pay for their proportionate share of infrastructure and especially military spending. That's why there are so many military basis in red states, its one way money if funneled from Cali and New York to Missouri and Mississippi. I remember when Trent Lott was getting Mississippi billions more per year in military spending and was doing victory laps about it.
Its the price California and New York pay for being part of the US. Only fair to get some back.
Amen.
Where should the money go? To another state? To some dumb war half-way around the world? Do we not have problems in California that take money to fix?
We've been waiting more than 20 years for the City of L.A. to repair the sidewalk on our block. My wife, a public school teacher, spends hundreds of dollars per year out of pocket for supplies for her classroom. After decades of cutting to the bone, we could use a change of regime in which government actually has the money it needs to do the jobs it's supposed to do.
I still think Haley Barbour getting Katrina Relief Dollars to fund repairs to the Jefferson Davis Presidential Library was worse.
And there's MS Sen. Wicker taking a victory lap yesterday for the $29 BILLION in restaurant aid in the rescue package that he voted against.
And what is Kevin upset about? The $26 BILLION that goes to the state with 40 million people.
Kevin writes about California like a true Mississippian. There are days I wonder what the eff is wrong with him.
Clearly, another Wicker man who deserves THE BEES!
Keynes famously said: ""The government should pay people to dig holes in the ground and then fill them up." Building high speed rail (like in any other country, Japan, Europe, China...) is even better than digging holes! It has some usefulness (if only for a few), reduce carbon emission (vs planes) and will provide a bunch of construction jobs.
So count me as one who would appreciate the extra $$$ going to more valuable goal in the long term, but who would not object to building a TGV/Shinkansen in California.
True, but he added "it would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like."
Now building high speed rail like any other country might be good idea, but we don't build high speed rail like any other country. We spend gobs more to get less. At least with the dig holes and fill them up plan, the useless holes do get filled up. With our high speed rail plan, we still have to deal with the holes.
If California's legislature regains their wits on the Bullet Train initiative, $26 billion could go a long ways towards paying for a fleet of electric buses and a dedicated HST lane for them.
I feel like if California is going to blow colossal money on a bullet train, they should just go all in nuts and have the whole thing be buried in earthquake-proof chambers.
In your face, Richter!
Buses? What is this, 1935?
You scoff, but the 30s-50s era SFMuni F-Market line PCC cars while not buses, are easily the most comfortable vehicles for passengers in the entire Muni fleet. Unfortunately, passenger comfort isn't part of Muni's "mission statement" so the service was reduced even before the pandemic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCC_streetcar
Wow, I'm going to switch to a bus going 70 mph to get from LA to SF, except for the last 30 or 40 miles at each end where it, or might not, slow down to 10 mph. So maybe six hours if you're really, really lucky or don't mind riding all night in a bus when traffic is light, or maybe 9 or 10 hours if you're not or do mind.
That's competitive? Time to retire this suggestion, which always pops up here when Kevin goes on one of his Troglodyte tirades. It totally sucks.
If some of the money went to speed up the glacially slow pace of electrifying the Caltrain line, which is part of the HSR plan, I wouldn't object at all.
Maybe Cali should use it to clean up their power lines. So everyone isn't running there to fight fires every year.
And, now California can pay to have their forests raked.
Yes, I get pretty tired of all the CA succession talk and California leading the way etc. Okay, well how about you deal with your own fires since half the state burns down every damn year.
It seems most (barely) of the wild fires are on Federal land.
Thanks for your support! We in northern California really appreciate it! We'll just dig a little deeper into our pockets and finance fire mitigation on the adjacent federal lands left unattended to over the past 100 years.
And we aren't talking succession, either. We are too busy trying to survive like everyone else in the country.
Bullet train...psssshah...
Trebuchet's. A whole series of them. Just have to work on the people catcher--or outfit everyone with a flying squirrel jacket.
"As for me, I guess I'll be happy as long as none of this money is used to fund the bullet train to nowhere."
I don't understand the logic here. The bullet train we don't need (in Kevin's opinion) would be the best use for money we don't need (again, in his opinion).
California's state government may not need the money, but what about municipalities and transit authorities? Anyway, the amount in question is about 1 percent of gross state product, so, I have a feeling uses could be found for it.
So California has solved its homeless problem, then? Water supply for SoCal isn’t an issue anymore? Great!
JFC Kevin the train will help CA for centuries. And the climate! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China -- WAKE UP!
Even the Chinese have limits on the amount of economic insanity or lack of financial justification they'll put up with in their build-out of the HSR network.
The problem isn't that HSR isn't great. The problem for the California project, in the main, is that the geography complicating the challenge of connecting Los Angeles and the Bay Area renders the cost utterly astronomical. At least with current technology, it just doesn't make sense to build it there.
We'll build it in Nevada. Thanks for the tip.
I was about to suggest: high speed rail lines to Phoenix & Las Vegas, with former connecting to Alburquerque & Dallas, & latter connecting to Salt Lake City & Boise.
Bullet trains ... sheesh.
How about a little work on electrical grid and forest fire safety programs so we can stop burning the entire state to the ground every October?
I'm happy to wait a little longer for my 220 mph ride to LA if I can continue to breathe thru the height of summer. We can turn this around, climate change or no climate change.