It’s likely the biggest financial debacle in the history of the USA: Communist California’s high speed rail to nowhere. I’ve been covering this for nearly two decades and write about it in my book, Climate Cult. Here’s a link to the interview I just did on the topic with my friends from the awesome anti-communist group, Epoch Times. Here’s a link to the (at times mind-numbingly hilarious) interview: The Epoch Times. Please watch and share.
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Gavin Newsom’s Bullet Train to Nowhere
The bullet train to nowhere. It’s a legislative pipedream created entirely by leftist democrats, serving us as a shining example of liberal stupidity. For more than a few years, this train scheme provided me with hours of compelling content on my incredibly popular San Francisco morning radio show.
The story begins way back in 1996. Golden State democrats established the California High Speed Rail Authority, declaring that a high-speed rail system would be environmentally, economically, and socially profitable. Their goal was to construct a bullet train, traveling at times close to 200-miles per hour, connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles. Never mind that those cities are already connected by two excellent freeways (I-5 and the 101). No, the democrats insisted we needed nearly four hundred miles of high-speed rail. In 2008, they conducted a study and swore to us they could build it in eight to eleven years, at a cost of $33 billion.
Upon sharing news of their “study” with my radio audience, my sidekick (the beautiful, talented, and hilarious) Katie Green quickly dubbed the plan, “The Bullet Train to nowhere.”
All these years later, the nickname rings truth as the proposed train line ranks up there as possibly the biggest single bureaucratic financial mess in the history of the United States.
I write about this boondoggle extensively in my most recent book, Climate Cult. But allow me to share just a few staggering tidbits of information the democrats don’t want you to know about their choo-choo train.
In 2008, California voters approved a Proposition providing $10 billion to fund a 380-mile high-speed rail line connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles. It was to be completed by 2020 with a total cost estimate of $33 million. Eventually, other connections would be constructed around the state. In 2012, federal taxpayers forked over $3.3 billion in Stimulus funding for the Bullet Train project.
Finally, in 2015, with Jerry Brown as governor, a groundbreaking ceremony was held, not in L.A. or San Francisco—but in Fresno. In case you are unaware, Fresno is over two hundred miles away from the originally proposed north-south rail corridor.
Governor Jerry Brown opened his remarks with a proclamation that was every bit as strange as the starting point location for this massive public works project: “…the high-speed rail links us from the past to the future, from the south to Fresno and north; this is truly a California project bringing us together today.”[1]
By the way, no one in the mainstream media asked why the starting point for this fiasco had been moved to Fresno.
Three years later (2018), state Republican legislators pushed for an audit which concluded that flawed decision-making and poor contract management left the rail system 15 years away from completion, with expected costs expected to be $77 billion.
Then, in 2019, newly elected Governor Gavin Newsom (a vocal proponent of the rail line) revealed that the 171-mile section of track planned for the Fresno corridor was now projected to cost $22.8 billion with a completion date of 2030.[2] Newsom said nothing about the original plan to link San Francisco and L.A.
In February 2023, unintentionally illustrating how this entire train project was fast becoming a communist style public works disaster, with great bravado the California High-Speed Rail Authority claimed to have reached a milestone. Their press release stated,
FRESNO, Calif. – The California High-Speed Rail Authority celebrated a historic milestone today, announcing the creation of more than 10,000 construction jobs since the start of high-speed rail construction. Most of these jobs have gone to Central Valley residents and men and women from disadvantaged communities.
…Today is an opportunity to celebrate jobs and what these jobs are creating. High-speed rail will revolutionize travel in California and contribute to a greener future, resulting in less congestion on our roads and at our airports.”[3]
Keep in mind, at the time of that press release not a single mile of track had been constructed, anywhere. Even more astoundingly, as of this writing, there remains no track laid!
Meantime, two months later an update from the High Speed Rail Authority quietly reported that the cost of the 171-mile segment (serving Fresno, Bakersfield, and Chowchilla) had shot up to $35 billion. That, of course, is even more expensive than the original proposed rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco. But even worse, the Authority stated the entire project—including the line from San Francisco to L.A.—was now estimated at $128 billion. As such, a new sucker had to be brought in to fund all these thousands of jobs. Enter Joe Biden, congressional democrats, and the federal taxpayer, who coughed up billions.
Several weeks ago, President Donald Trump stepped in to essentially say, “You’re fired,” as he cut off the federal money pipeline for train to nowhere. Democrats immediately threw a temper tantrum. As if to save face and appear fiscally responsible, Newsome has just signed a bill (AB 377) requiring the state’s High-Speed Rail Authority to create a funding plan which will update cost estimates, risk assessments and service initiation options.
Trust me. AB 377 is like putting lipstick on a pig’s snout. And the pig’s snout is California’s bullet train to nowhere.
[1]“California High-Speed Rail Authority Hosts Groundbreaking Ceremony,” Metropolitan Transportation Committee, January 27, 2015, (Governor Brown’s quote is verbatim), https://mtc.ca.gov/news/california-high-speed-rail-authority-hosts-official-groundbreaking-ceremony.
[2]Ralph Vartabedian, “New cost estimate for high-speed rail puts California bullet train $100 billion in the red,” Cal Matters, March 7, 2023, https://calmatters.org/economy/2023/03/california-high-speed-rail/.
[3]California High-Speed Rail Authority, “PHOTO RELEASE: California High-Speed Rail Celebrates Creating 10,000 Construction Jobs,” February 14, 2023, https://hsr.ca.gov/2023/02/14/photo-release-california-high-speed-rail-celebrates-creating-10000-construction-jobs/.
California’s Water Woes: More Dangerous Than Trump Realizes
No one can survive for more than four days without water, but California doesn’t seem to care.
You can’t grow food without water either and rainfall alone isn’t reliable enough to sustain major food production. That’s why irrigation, an ancient form of human intervention, is necessary to prevent food shortages and starvation—even in the United States.
In a recent interview with Sean Hannity, President Donald expressed his concern for the intentional water shortages in California. Keep in mind, Big Tech and Hollywood are not the Golden State’s largest industries; that title belongs to Agriculture. California’s farms and ranches do $60 Billion in annual revenue. California’s Central Valley yields more crops and farm-based goods than any other state.
This can’t be done without water.
And yet, the environmentalists and their puppets in government, like Governor Gavin Newsom, are willing to flush the water required to feed the nation into the Pacific Ocean.
President Trump gets it. Now here’s the rest of the story…
I’ve written extensively about this dangerous water situation in my books, Climategate, Eco-Tyranny, and my latest book, Climate Cult. The following is from Eco-Tyranny, which was published back in 2012, exposing what the eco-freaks are up to:
If we are to meet the fundamental needs for survival as a nation, especially as our population increases by 100 million residents by the year 2050, then we need significantly more water, and we need to begin expanding our water supply immediately. We need more water for drinking, farming, ranching, and manufacturing.
We also need more dams, which can create inexpensive, emission-free electricity.
The problem is that environmentalists are determined to maintain a limited water supply as an effective tool to restrict development, devalue private property, and therefore, better control our lives. They despise dams and find reservoirs repugnant; in fact, they are using the same tactics they’ve used against the oil and nuclear industries: junk science, ad hominem arguments, and throwing hissy fits to prevent new dams and reservoirs from being constructed. Worse yet, they are on a tear to deconstruct as many dams and reservoirs as possible in the name of “restoring the environment.”
Thus far the radicals are winning this water war. According to federal estimates, at least 36 states are on the verge of experiencing critical water shortages. Each time a city, county, state or a member of Congress proposes a new water storage plan, the environmentalists leap into battle mode and almost always win.
Add to this discussion something I expand on in Climate Cult: the term ‘ecosystem’ was coined by a disciple of Karl Marx.
A loyal friend of Marx, Edwin Lankester, was a professor at University College, London. Lankester, an ardent communist, described mankind as the “insurgent son” of nature. He, like Marx, believed capitalism was incompatible with the environment. Lankester’s star pupil was Arthur Tansley, an imminent botanist, who stated “the destructive activities of the modern world” could be crushed by employing ecology. “Ecology,” he said, “must be applied to conditions brought about by human activity.” To do this, he coined the term ‘ecosystem,’ which could describe anything from a puddle to an ocean.
Marx, Lankester, and Tansley birthed the junk-science philosophy that influences the modern environmental movement. Everything can be blamed on free market capitalism.
Now back to California, a state being ruined in the name of ecosystems. The last dam to be constructed in the state was the New Melones Reservoir in 1980. That year the population in California was 28 million. There are now 40 million residents. Since 1980 over 150 dams of all sizes have been torn down in California, always in the name of protecting an ecosystem. California desperately needs water.
The most significant destruction of dams has been in the northern part of the state in the Trinity and Klamath River basins.
The Trinity River dams in Northern California, provide invaluable water—and electricity—to the agricultural community in California’s Great Valley. The dams in question, the Trinity and Lewiston, were completed in 1963, creating one of the largest bodies of water in California. With 90 percent of the Trinity River basin’s runoff able to be stored and diverted for use in other parts of the state, these dams became a key component of the Central Valley [Water] Project (CVP). Through a brilliant series of dams, tunnels, canals, and reservoirs, the CVP harnesses waters from the Trinity, Sacramento, and San Joaquin River watersheds to irrigate farmland throughout California’s enormous Great Central Valley. Besides irrigation, the vast system supplies drinking water to 30 million people and generates hydroelectricity at nine power stations.
However, for years environmentalists, ever scheming to retard development, destroy the agriculture, and reduce population growth in California, sought ways to cut off the flow of water from those dams. Finally, in 1984, their incessant lobbying began to pay off as they convinced a Democratic-led House and a moderate Republican Senate to send a bill to President Ronald Reagan, which he signed, mandating $35.4 million be used supposedly to “restore fish and wildlife” and save the salmon along the 112-mile-long Trinity River. The “Trinity River Basin Fish and Wildlife Restoration Act” was the first slip down the proverbial slippery slope. The Act decreased the amount of water supplied to the CVP from 90 percent of the basin’s runoff to 75 percent.
Next came the Clinton-Gore White House and their Interior Secretary, Bruce Babbit who conducted what he called a “Sledgehammer Tour” of California’s dams; he actually visited the dams in his crosshairs with a sledgehammer in his hands.
“America overshot the mark in our dam building frenzy,” he said in a 1998 speech to the Ecological Society of America. “For most of this century, politicians have eagerly rushed in, amidst cheering crowds, to claim credit for the construction of 75,000 dams all across America. Think about that number. That means we have been building, on average, one large dam a day, every single day, since the Declaration of Independence. Many of these dams have become monuments, expected to last forever. You could say forever just got a lot shorter.”
Immediately Babbitt unilaterally instituted a plan to further decrease the water flowing into the CVP to 52 percent, with the goal if eventually reducing the discharge to 25 percent.
Babbit’s mission was eventually handed over to Governor Newsom in 2019. A year before, plans to destroy the Klamath River dam system were released by American Rivers, a radical non-profit which claimed, “up to 85% of the dams in this country are unnecessary, harmful and even dangerous.” The removal of seven dams, built over 100-years ago, was sold as necessary to “save the salmon.” $250 Million was provided by a water bond approved by voters in 2015 to drain the reservoirs, even though the initiative was aimed at “increasing the supply of clean, safe, and reliable water and restoring habitat”—not the destruction of dams and the draining of giant reservoirs, which has now finally occurred.
The result is a monumental human-caused environmental disaster.
In January 2024, the Klamath River dams were unplugged, allowing millions of tons of polluted sediments formerly deposited on the lake bottoms to spew forth, killing virtually all life in its path. The massive samples of sediment contain high levels of heavy metals including chromium, aluminum, arsenic and lead. Adding to this tragedy is the fact that this sediment was supposed to have been removed before the floodgates were opened. Somewhere along the line, the $450 million set aside to remove the toxic sediment was deemed either too expensive or not crucial.
You see, when sediments are disturbed, concentrated pollutants can form a deadly cocktail for all forms of life.
The very idiots who claimed the salmon were endangered virtually killed all the salmon in the Klamath River.
President Trump is moving in the proper direction. Eco-tyranny is ruining California and too many other states. Finally, we have a White House administration that sees this as a major plank in Making America Great Again.
Another Climate Scam Exposed, But Will California Fall For It?
This article was posted at American Thinker:
This past weekend, a news article in the San Francisco Bay Area’s Mercury News warned, “As summer approaches and temperatures soar, one of the most dangerous places for Bay Area students might actually be the playground.”
The reporter wasn’t concerned about school kids being confronted by criminal elements while on their summer break. Instead, the column served as a promotional pitch for the climate change agenda. A national non-profit is seeking $1 billion from the California legislature to construct “green playgrounds” on school campuses. The remodeled play areas are described as being essential in the fight against climate change, while simultaneously improving student achievement in the classroom. This appeal for government funding comes from the Trust for Public Land, even though California is broke. Governor Gavin Newsom has gone from boasting of a $97 billion budget surplus two years ago, to confessing that his state now has a deficit of some $45 billion.
However, the Trust is not dissuaded by the financial shortfall. They know the Democrats who run the Golden State are beholden to a cause that defies logic, fiscal or otherwise: climate change. The California legislature has over $40 billion to spend on climate initiatives in the coming budgetary year and they are always on the hunt to support their green comrades.
One of the Trust’s specialties is retrofitting school playgrounds. Their literature claims doing so helps bridge the “nationwide gap in academic achievement between white and black students.” They also contend their work reduces the effects of “heat islands” on inner city schools.
I investigate unfounded claims like these in my new book, Climate Cult: Exposing and Defeating Their War on Life, Liberty, and Property. Besides planting flowers, trees, and often sod on the school grounds (all of which require costly and extensive ongoing maintenance), these play area transformations include pricy brightly colored rubber surfaces and artificial turf, which may not get quite as quite as hot as the asphalt and old thick dark rubber play surfaces but still significantly warms when exposed to direct sunlight. In addition, new playground structures are also constructed. Never mind that the slides, ramps, and steeples consist of dense plastic made from petrochemicals derived from fossil fuels.
Then there are the “heat islands” the Trust implies are somehow harmful to learning. It’s too bad these climate activists don’t care that a significant percentage of the earth’s temperature readings are recorded on comparable heat islands associated with airport tarmacs, firehouse parking lots, and other heat absorbing infrastructure. These anthropogenic microclimates produce wildly inflated temperature readings that are all thrown into the daily mix, causing Earth’s weather to appear hotter than ever.
You see, environmental non-profits like the Trust for Public Land really aren’t concerned about the climate. Instead, their first priority is taking care of their own, and very well I might add. For example, the Trust’s 2023 annual financial statement reported total revenues of $294 million, while operating expenses (salaries, rent, insurance, etc.) totaled nearly $293 million. Meantime, they sit on a stock portfolio worth over $151 million. The Trust even provides a retirement plan available to employees who work more than 20-hours per week. Who knew that a degree in Social and Environmental Justice could pan out so well?
Second, these groups make sure construction work for their various projects is carried out by organized labor whenever possible; unions serve the climate agenda as key stakeholders to better secure government funding and thus redistribute wealth.
Third, these orgs appease individuals who have been drawn into the climate cult by providing a method to atone for their sinful carbon footprints with very green donations. Cash, real estate, and endowments are all eagerly accepted.