12 thoughts on “The Sad State Of California”

  1. It’s mindboggling how slow and wasteful this is. ~$15 billion just to connect a line of some small cities in the southern Central Valley around Fresno from Merced to Bakersfield and it won’t complete before 2030 (current claimed completion range is 2030-2033). This is by far the easiest part with the overall route from LA to San Francisco (“Phase One”) likely to cost north of $100 billion, assuming they ever find this much money to fund it.

  2. At this point, I think that Sturgeon’s Law needs a corollary or two–

    “90% of government services are crap.”

    Except,where it’s “90% of social services are fraud.”

  4. Tonight’s Gutfeld! featured a Governor Newsom mandated highway overpass for animals, designed to cut down of road kill and attendant injury/fatalities of drivers. The bridge was gigantic, spanning the highway, and about as wide as six lanes. Its surface was sculpted as a “nature park”, with fake ponds (and no water) and natural soil rather than pavement. There were no ramps at either end of the bridge, and thus no way for any animals to use it. They probably wouldn’t, anyway, because, as many of the panel pointed out, the bridge would immediately be filled with homeless people who would be happy to actually pretend to be camping for a change. I forget whether the bridge had cost $10 million or $100 million so far, but it was one of those two – and it wasn’t complete because it was so far over budget that they were trying to raise money from the public to finish it. The Democrat party has established a gigantic crime machine in the United States, and are willing to kill to keep in power.

    1. Cloak of Anarchy
      by Larry Niven

      Square in the middle of what used to be the San Diego Freeway, I leaned back against a huge, twisted oak. The old bark was rough and powdery against my bare back. There was dark green shade shot with tight parallel beams of white gold. Long grass tickled my legs.

      Forty yards away across a wide strip of lawn was a clump of elms, and a small grandmotherly woman sitting on a green towel. She looked like she’d grown there. A stalk of grass protruded between her teeth. I felt we were kindred spirits, and once when I caught her eye I wiggled a forefinger at her, and she waved back.

      In a minute now I’d have to be getting up, Jill was meeting me at the Wiltshire exits in half an hour. But I’d started walking at the Sunset Boulevard ramps, and I was tired. A minute more…

      http://www.larryniven.net/?q=cloak-of-anarchy

    2. Wikipedia says $90 million, 60% of which supposedly came from public funds and 40% from donations. Groundbreaking was on Earth Day in April 2022 with construction expected to take 2 years, but completion is now anticipated later in 2026.

  5. Pingback: In The Mailbox: 03.19.26 : The Other McCain

  6. I disagree with the premise that 99% don’t realize this. We simply see it as what it is. It doesn’t cost $200/hr labor to do any of those things, except in California as a way to launder money. What is being stated is how California attempts to legitimize the expense, but it isn’t.

    I came into the oil and gas industry late in my career, as I was aerospace like many who read this blog. The first thing I learned about the industry is that it is less about producing oil and gas than it is about land management. That’s why the most famous representation of the industry in media is “Landman”. The show poorly represents what a Landman actually does, but if you know, it is about obtaining rights to utilize land, so that you can produce the oil and gas underneath. It often includes surface access.

    This is what California rail is trying to do. However, no oil and gas company would spend that much money, for that long, without a functioning plan to recover those costs within 10 years. It isn’t that the oil and gas industry is heartless. The landowners often get very rich for mineral and access rights. Workers in the industry are paid extremely well. However, none of it happens unless the company makes money too. The only people in this scheme making money in California are the politicians and bureaucrats.

      1. And “non-government organizations” who get to stay out of the way and not cause too much trouble. (Or cause trouble for the competition.)

        1. Agree with both of you. All are the beneficiaries of the laundered money.

          The high-speed rail program can collapse tomorrow, billions will be lost from taxpayers, and those that ended up with the money will have a legitimate claim to keeping the money. In fact, they’ll just push for the next money grab: reclamation of the land by tearing down the partially built infrastructure and returning the land to grade. But, figuring out how to do it will cost more than actually doing it.

    2. The late, great Scott Adams concluded that whenever there is a situation where a great deal of money is being spent with no oversight, most of it will ultimately be stolen. When government is involved, it becomes a highly organized criminal enterprise. I’m certain, for example, that that is why Obama was so hell-bent on imposing high-speed rail on a country where it made absolutely no sense (California is 78% the area of France, but has only 57% the population), for which his sole rationale was the creation of millions of “well-paying union jobs.” Whenever he or Biden spoke of jobs creation, the word “union” always accompanied it. And of course unions are the way that Democrats wrest money involuntarily from lower income people without taxing them, through union dues – money which goes almost exclusively to finance the campaigns of Democrats.

      It’s discouraging.

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