Posted on 01/27/2010 4:18:21 AM PST by Cindy
California doesn’t have enough funds to maintain their existing state highway and county road system, but the Feds can come in and drop billions to build a Bullet train to Casinos in Nevada for Harry Reid.
Pelosi and Boxer show their hatred for jobs on California when they support this endeavor/debaucle. (Debacle + Debauchery = Debaucle)
I used to think the plan to make the great lakes basin a world heritage site under the UN’s Agenda 21 was just a crazy conspiracy theory. These days I’m not so sure. The economic oppression seems to be pretty effective at evacuating the state.
The unions, GE and some other corporations and a myriad of environmental consultants and NGOs will profit like there’s no tomorrow on the cost overruns.
Another fat payoff, and another big “bend over, America” moment. Meanwhile, roads will go unrepaired.
I guess after two days his proposed spending freeze didn’t generate the poll numbers he wanted.
Mebbe we can git some of them thar gubmint jobs checking the air pressure on the new train tires.
ahahaha! this is getting comical! I almost spilled my lemonade! high speed rail to hell! lol
If we tried we couldn’t make up some of these headlines.This is nuts.
GE will likely be the sole vendor for all the electrical components, assuming this thing ever gets built. If it's anything like TVA and the nuke plants they built, three or four times as much material will be purchased than is needed. The excess, unused materials will be either stolen and sold for scrap or sold later for pennies on the dollar at auction.
cue the springfield monorail song.
High speed rail = con man.
Same thing between Atlanta and Chattanooga. The powers that be have been pushing for a high speed train between Atlanta and Chattanooga for years. It's been studied to death at the cost of untold millions of taxpayer dollars. There isn't anywhere near the demand for it that would be necessary to support such a hefty "investment". When you look at what they are really trying to accomplish you quickly realize that the corridor of land seized to build it would also be used for a water pipeline from the Tennessee River to a thirsty Atlanta, along with a return line for treated sewage to replace what is taken. I'm sure everyone down stream of Chattanooga is going to love drawing their drinking water from a source where Atlanta dumps it's turds.....
Anyone old enough and familiar with Detroit and the Coleman Young fiasco of the People Mover knows this will end very poorly.
Does anyone else remember the Big Dig? Once they start these projects they will have to continue them, and I have NEVER seen a project like these come in on time or on budget.
$8 billion? Mark my word, they do this and the end cost will be so far over that it will make you sick when all is finished. Will they demand only union workers be allowed on the jobsite, and all materials be produced by union workers also? If so you can add damn near 40% right off the bat to the cost.
This is PERFECT!
Proclaim a spending freeze during the SOTU and then announce plans for an $8B rail nobody wants.
This will only confirm him as a liar and insincere about reining in spending.
The Irish built the railroads out of the east, The chinese built the railroads out of the west.
The illegal immigrants Hispanics will probably build the railroads across Florida.
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!
We have a winner!
Only if they pay their union dues while they do it...
I worked a project with a guy that had come from TVA. He matter-of-factly told stories of purchasing everything and anything simply to ‘make budget’ (essentially turning that phrase on its head). The material was dutifully paid for and delivered and sat to collect dust in some yard or warehouse. It’s probably still there.
Just making an observation. I live in the Tampa Bay area...it takes about a little over an hour to drive from Tampa to Orlando.
The high speed train itself may be faster than a car, BUT, just like air travel, if you count the time it takes to get to the terminal, park your car, and get through security, it adds hours to the travel time. Why will the high speed train be any different? I’m sure the transportation authority will have security for the train, and it will be faster, and less expensive, in the long run to just drive from Tampa to Orlando, or vice versa. As someone mentioned before, they’ve spent years and lots of $$$ widening the I4 corridor to accommodate traffic, so now they decide to go with a train.
It's probably either been stolen or auctioned off by now. A friend of mine, former TVA engineer, got in on some of the stuff that was auctioned after TVA Sequoyah and TVA Watts Bar nuke plants were finished. They were auctioning off pallets full of computers, 55 gallon drums of oil, thousands of reels of wire and electrical components, you name it. It was all excess materials. It all went for pennies on the dollar.
I did a lot of project management when I was a roving cellular engineer. If I'd have run a project with that kind of waste I would have found myself flipping burgers before the first project was finished. No one but our bloated Federal gubmint could sustain that kind of waste. No one in the private sector would last two minutes with that sort of business philosophy....but Uncle Sugar thinks he can!
The Detroit people mover wouldn’t be bad if it serviced more than a handfull of inhabited buildings. The rest of the buildings along the route are empty and have windows painted on the plywood that covers the actual windows.
It also doesn’t go to Comerica park and Ford field where it needs to go most.
We’re going to have hi-speed trains with no passengers, just the crew on board. Poor crews, we don’t have hi-speed tracks tho.
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