The Train to Nowhere

Image from ALIVE East Bay Magazine

I've lived in California for several decades, but I've never adjusted to the state's profligate spending. Of course, the liberals are in the majority in the state assembly and senate, which perfectly explains the lack of common sense, but let's leave that aside for the moment. California flings money at a multitude of useless projects ranging from the highly impractical to the absolutely ridiculous.

The state's stalled "bullet train" is one financial disaster that fits both descriptions. Despite the complete waste of $77 billion on a project that is now eleven years behind schedule, Jerry "Governor Moonbeam" Brown still insists that California's bullet train is the future of transportation and environmental nirvana.

Just between us, I think he's still high from his last Linda Ronstadt concert.

Think about $77 billion dollars frittered away over the course of more than a decade by the government, with nothing to show the taxpayers for it. The "bullet train to nowhere," as it's called in polite circles, has an imaginative variety of alternate nicknames among the state's residents. I've heard it called the "crazy train," the "cuckoo choo-choo," and the "scam tram," among other monikers not suitable for this blog's editorial standards.

Consider what $77 billion dollars could do if it had been in vested in a real necessity, such as firefighting and drought mitigation. For far less than that mind-boggling sum, there could be more water treatment and desalinization plants built, more firefighting airplanes and helicopters bought, more firefighters hired, trained, and deployed to knock down the recent monster fires that California has been suffering in recent years.

I heard one conservative commentator declare that "drought is a choice." It's an interesting perspective, one that would have benefited California immensely had it been adopted by the state politicians even a few years ago. But, like it or move, California's politicians have us all traveling on the train to nowhere. If they only had a brain.