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Oooh, A Shiny Object. Let's Buy It
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Costs have tripled to at least $98 billion. It won't be finished for over 20 years. Even its proponents admit that there really hasn't been much of a need for it. It'll rip communities apart and take people's land and homes. And, even if it's ultimately finished, ticket prices will have to be very, very expensive -- more than flying would cost, and it'd take longer than a 45 minute flight, and wouldn't even reach downtown San Francisco directly anyway. So why the hell are California Governor Jerry Brown and other state leaders pushing forward with the ultimate boondoggle, a high speed train from Los Angeles to San Fr... er, Oakland at a time when we can't afford it? And by "we," I mean YOU, too -- there's federal tax money being poured into this along with state tax money. It's about as outrageous a waste of money as you can imagine, yet the politicians are just not listening. They say it's an infrastructure project, but it's 19th century infrastructure. And the first phase, over half of which will be paid for by $3.5 billion of federal tax money, will go from Bakersfield to Chowchilla -- in other words, to nowhere close to anyplace anyone wants to go. And they're doing this because they figure that once that useless stretch is done, we'll feel compelled to keep building -- in other words, we'll be knee-deep in the quagmire, pushing on because we've already wasted that much money. Unbelievable. (New York Times)
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