This farce is far from having played out. The $70Billion+ borrowed, plus accruing interest, still has to be repaid. A state could move a lot of miles of power lines in forests to underground cables that won’t spark and cause major fires for that kind of money. A lot of tax relief for middle class families and small businesses could be done, so they aren’t forced to leave. When political leaders don’t worry about spending other people’s money, projects that are motivated by their egos become the norm.

Don't worry. For some reason, no matter how much debt -one trillion dollars and counting- the State of California never seems to run out of money.

We'll take yours.

It was kinda charming how Trump said he was coming after Sacramento for the money already spent on the train. In a righteous world, he'd get it.

We'll take yours.

It was kinda charming how Trump said he was coming after Sacramento for the money already spent on the train. In a righteous world, he'd get it.

It was kinda charming how Trump said he was coming after Sacramento for the money already spent on the train. In a righteous world, he'd get it.

Crid at February 21, 2019 6:24 AM

He needs it for the wall.

And we have asshat transplanted cali progs to thank for our useless light rail. It serves maybe 3 neighborhoods in central TX, going in to downtown. Brilliant.

There should be a 5 year waiting period after one moves into a state, before one is allowed to vote in state or local elections.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, who is dimmer than my dying thrift-store nightstand lamp and/or is being blackmailed by some Central California lobbyist, said efforts will be focused on finishing train construction in California Central Valley (only). ~ Amy

As I understand it, the construction is being continued to keep the federal funds rolling in. As long as they are building something tranportation-related on that section of the train, the federal government's already-committed funds will continue to pour in. Trump may put a stop to that.

Newsom's trying to keep the Dems' pro-train base off his back. Jerry still has powerful friends who will watch over his legacy. And there are still powerful politicians in Sacramento who voted for the train and don't want to admit the train is a boondoggle, thereby handing their opponents a club with which to beat them.

Gavin Newsom is as big a populist as Trump; it's his pandering to various power blocs in the Democratic party that makes him seem a dim-witted lunatic. His city hall gay marriages (while it was still illegal in the US and in California) were pandering to a powerful bloc in his city's political base.

Like another former San Francisco mayor, Dianne Feinstein, he does occasionally show flashes of common sense (that get overshadowed by his loonier antics):

• telling California lawmakers their high-tax, high-regulation policies were destroying California's business climate when he was Lt. Governor
• his "Care Not Cash" homeless program as mayor of San Francisco that stopped the city paying homeless people up to $700 a month in cash

I've driven I-5 (and Highway 99) from Merced to Bakersfield, many times. It's a daft place to put a high-tech bullet train. It's at least another hour and a half by car to get to a major city from either of those places. No one will ride that train.

The Obama administration encouraged states to put in bullet trains with wheelbarrow-loads of matching federal funds. This did not encourage state governments to think logically, but to rush forward with ill-planned projects that did little more than feed the egos of the politicians promoting them and syphon off funds that could have been used for far more worthy infrastructure projects (like repaving that strip of sun-baked and pitted asphalt the state euphemistically calls Highway 99).

> He needs it for the wall.

Again, Isab, ours is not righteous world.

> Gavin Newsom is as big a
> populist as Trump

Mebbee. He's very popular with idiot lefties and there are a lot of them here now, which is not the same thing as being populist. In the Dot Parker sense of the question, How can you tell?

Trump & Bernie & Sextoy AOC are populists. Gavin has been ascendant for many years, certainly before the foam of this hour moistened us.

Sorry about the metaphor but you know what I mean.

If, twenty seconds after you'd first read of Newsom, some had told you Trump would be President, you'd have passed 'im a drink and picked his pocket, because why not?

Laws are for little people.

For most of the past three years, the FBI has tried to portray its top leadership as united behind ex-Director James Comey’s decision not to pursue criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for transmitting classified information over her insecure, private email server.

Although in the end that may have been the case, we now are learning that Comey’s top lawyer, then-FBI General Counsel James Baker, initially believed Clinton deserved to face criminal charges, but was talked out of it “pretty late in the process.”

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/430881-fbis-top-lawyer-believed-hillary-clinton-should-face-charges-but-was

"1. We're not all that far from having flying cars;..."

Nah. Not gonna happen because of the realities of flight, even though some are quite fun to see and fly. Destinations are restricted. You also don't want anybody puttering around up there, do you.
The automation isn't good enough to put a million people in the air. Better that they should work from home, not needing to leave the house at all.

Imagine how little work you'd get done, and how much money you'd have to squander if you had to commute somewhere to work - at fixed hours.

"And we have asshat transplanted cali progs to thank"

Stetson: the original asshat.