California promised its voters a train that would run nearly the length of the state on its own special tracks in 2 hours and 40 minutes at a rate of 220 mph. This would be a big step up from having to fly up and down the state for many as the cost of such a ground trip would be half or less of airfare, and without TSA groping, massive lines, etc. Getting an aircraft loaded and ready to fly eats 30+ minutes all by itself at the very least, and can actually be more like an hour.
So voters voted for this and allowed themselves to be taxed for this but instead they got scammed. The LA Times reports that "Ten years after voters approved it, the project is $44 billion over budget and 13 years behind schedule. A state audit in November blamed flawed decision-making, organizational faults and poor contract management by the California High-Speed Rail Authority.
Now many experts don’t believe it would make the trip from L.A. to San Francisco in the two hours and 40 minutes mandated in the bond measure....Now planners call for the trains to share commuter tracks, moving at much slower speeds and being subjected to delays.".
"Organizational faults"??? "Poor contract management"?? The entire thing was supposed to cost $77 billion and they are $44 billion over budget!! That is not a fault or mismanagement. That is criminal corruption with intent and only a flaming fool would think otherwise. I mean come on, at 10% overbudget someone should have been ringing the alarm bell and pushing the emergency stop button. But this is more than 50% over budget without even a small amount of the work being complete. This is a total scam. And now to say that the new trains will have to share old tracks, well, it looks like someone is paying many billions of dollars for the same train service as before.
This is criminal. Someone should be going to jail. But no, the sleepy idiot people just act like its business as usual, no big deal. I'm telling you, all of this is being done on debt and someone will eventually have to pay the bill with Austerity. There is no endless well of flowing money for California. When a project is done on debt, which really should be an emergency and not the normal way things are done, that project must be treated with massive scrutiny. Why? Because when nobody is paying for the meal in real time, they think its OK to order double Macallan18s like they were water. Escargot for appetizers! Order enough food for 3 meals and then take it home in a doggy bag.
Yes, this is the kind of fucked up bullshit that happens when big government is given a blank check. And debt based projects are like a blank check because when nobody is being asked for the money up front then there is no feedback control loop.
What do I mean by feedback control loop? Well, the population (man woman and child) of CA is about 39 million. IF the government had to ask every single person there to pay for the $44 billion overrun before it could be committed to the work, that would come to $1128 per person no matter their age or working status. Let's say that 40% of the population is either young, old, stay at home mom, disabled, students (all good reasons not to be able to pay the tax) or useless nonworking liberal of good health and working age. That leaves those who are working there with a bill of $1913 per person. If government had to collect that before moving forward, do you think that the project would have gone forward or just been halted in its tracks?
Just because you are working does not mean you can afford another ~$2k to make up for the fuck ups of some project that you might not even personally need. So the answer is that no, the project would not have gone forward because way too many people would balk at having to pony the cash. That's a feedback loop that is completely avoided by doing shit based on debt. Paygo is a feedback loop of honesty. Debt based consumption has no feedback loop until the debt blows up and then all of the suckers who were willing patsies to it get the bill in one fell swoop.
I challenge anyone who thinks they know more about this than I do to step up and refute me. The comments are wide open and I never screen out opposing views.
"Organizational faults"??? "Poor contract management"?? The entire thing was supposed to cost $77 billion and they are $44 billion over budget!! That is not a fault or mismanagement. That is criminal corruption with intent and only a flaming fool would think otherwise. I mean come on, at 10% overbudget someone should have been ringing the alarm bell and pushing the emergency stop button. But this is more than 50% over budget without even a small amount of the work being complete. This is a total scam. And now to say that the new trains will have to share old tracks, well, it looks like someone is paying many billions of dollars for the same train service as before.
This is criminal. Someone should be going to jail. But no, the sleepy idiot people just act like its business as usual, no big deal. I'm telling you, all of this is being done on debt and someone will eventually have to pay the bill with Austerity. There is no endless well of flowing money for California. When a project is done on debt, which really should be an emergency and not the normal way things are done, that project must be treated with massive scrutiny. Why? Because when nobody is paying for the meal in real time, they think its OK to order double Macallan18s like they were water. Escargot for appetizers! Order enough food for 3 meals and then take it home in a doggy bag.
Yes, this is the kind of fucked up bullshit that happens when big government is given a blank check. And debt based projects are like a blank check because when nobody is being asked for the money up front then there is no feedback control loop.
What do I mean by feedback control loop? Well, the population (man woman and child) of CA is about 39 million. IF the government had to ask every single person there to pay for the $44 billion overrun before it could be committed to the work, that would come to $1128 per person no matter their age or working status. Let's say that 40% of the population is either young, old, stay at home mom, disabled, students (all good reasons not to be able to pay the tax) or useless nonworking liberal of good health and working age. That leaves those who are working there with a bill of $1913 per person. If government had to collect that before moving forward, do you think that the project would have gone forward or just been halted in its tracks?
Just because you are working does not mean you can afford another ~$2k to make up for the fuck ups of some project that you might not even personally need. So the answer is that no, the project would not have gone forward because way too many people would balk at having to pony the cash. That's a feedback loop that is completely avoided by doing shit based on debt. Paygo is a feedback loop of honesty. Debt based consumption has no feedback loop until the debt blows up and then all of the suckers who were willing patsies to it get the bill in one fell swoop.
I challenge anyone who thinks they know more about this than I do to step up and refute me. The comments are wide open and I never screen out opposing views.
1 comment:
Yet, Californians in particular and Americans in general swear that this is just mismanagement, that, if they vote for the right politicians, it could just work, rather than the typical banana republic graft.
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