Written by Nathaniel Manor
Everyone knows that the government lies, but it’s astonishing when they directly guarantee you one thing but offer a watered-down version and expect the citizens to go quietly. The latest example comes in the form of a California railway system a decade in the making.
In 2008 voters approved an initial $10 billion spending bill to begin a high-speed railway system spanning San Francisco to LA. The comprehensive plan required $45 billion to complete, allowing Californians to travel 800 miles in just two hours. Sounds great, so what’s the catch?
Reason Foundation and Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Foundation estimated that the cost of this project clocked in around $95 billion rather than the original $10 billion promised. Former Governor Jerry Brown stated that private corporations would pay most of the bill even though none had signed on, causing outrage. Therefore, the railway project was delayed until the dictator-in-chief proposed a new solution.
Governor Gavin Newsom attempted to solve this issue with a blended method. What is a blended method, you ask? Rather than transport people across the state in record time, our “genius” of a governor proposed a conventional railway system from the Bay area to Merced, the high-speed rail connecting Merced and Bakersfield, and finally a bus from Bakersfield to LA. The problem here is that everyone from Bakersfield to Merced drives, making the high-speed rail there obsolete.
Worst of all, the government believes this is what Californians signed onto over ten years ago, adding more fuel to the fire of delays to this measure. We were promised a high-speed rail system of only $10 billion. We were told that private investors would cover most of the costs, but this is another example of the Democrats’ Big Lie that the government is the be-all-end-all of society.
