The California Bullet Train, the Biggest Boondoggle in History?

It still amazes me that anyone with a brain still lives in California. The Los Angeles Times

The California bullet train project has cost state taxpayers an average $3.1 million a day over the last year — a construction spending rate higher than that for the Bay Bridge, Boston’s Big Dig or any U.S. transportation project in recent history

Gary Aminoff looks at this and says in part:

This was never about providing a service to California residents. This was, from the start, a payoff to the unions and contractors who donate heavily to Democrats. Nothing works better than using State taxpayer funds for payoffs so that the unions and big contractors continue to fund Democrat Party candidates so they can continue to get payoffs. It is a mafia-type game played at the expense of taxpayers. They don’t care if the train is successful. They will have succeeded in making sure that the funders of the Democrats get $100 Billion so they will continue to fund Democrats in California.

..

Also, the taxpayers of California will be subsidizing the train for generations. It is estimated that the actual cost of a trip from LA to SF on the high-speed rail will be in the range of $700-$800 per person, if you amortize the cost of the train. The tickets will be about $40. The California taxpayers will pay the difference.

The sad part is, no they won’t. The rest of us in the remainder of the states will be paying that price. California, you see, will be considered to be too big to fail.

And of course keeping Democrats in power isn’t the only thing that’s driving this. The Democrat politicians out there are lining their pockets.

For example, Dianne Feinstein

To the surprise of absolutely no one familiar with the ways of Corruptifornia, the one-party state completely in the hands of the Democrats, a consortium whose lead firm is controlled by Richard Blum, husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, was awarded a nearly billion-dollar contract for the construction of the first phase of the so-called high-speed rail line to link San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Oh, and here’s the kicker:

Crazifornia.com writes:

The Perini-Zachary-Parsons bid was the lowest received from the five consortia participating in the bidding process, but “low” is a relative term. The firms bid $985,142,530 to build the wildly anticipated first section of high speed rail track that will tie the megopolis of Madera to the global finance center of Fresno. Do the division, and you find that the low bid came in at a mere $35 million per mile.

And that doesn’t include the cost of rolling stock (that’s engines and cars to the normal among us). Nor does it include the cost of electrifying the route. Does it at least include the cost of land acquisition? No, it does not.

As this fiasco progress, remember that this $35 million per mile represents the best California can do on the section of track the High on Crack Speed Rail Authority selected to go first because it will be the cheapest.

According to reports I’m seeing most California voters don’t want this boondoggle. but since when have actual voters mattered to Democrats looking to line their pockets and retain their power?

In reality that’s what all this comes down to.

And just remember kids, the Democrats on a national scale want the rest of us to be just like California