high-speed-rail - Page 3

Even the most energetic free-trade enthusiast can find a few things to be queasy about in Bloomberg Businessweek’s announcement of a major joint venture to build a Chinese bullet train connecting Los Angeles with Las Vegas.

This is an “incredibly historic moment for all of us. Next year, after 20 years of our agony, Barbara Boxer is going to retire,” U.S. Senate candidate Tom Del Beccaro told the San Diego County Republican Party June meeting last week.

U.S. Rep. Jeff Denham (R-CA), chairman of the House rail subcommittee, has proposed an amendment that could cripple plans for the construction of California’s high-speed rail project. Denham’s amendment would eliminate a 2012 agreement between California and the Obama administration that permitted the state to obtain federal grant money without matching those funds with money from state coffers.

Unlike the bullet train from San Francisco to Los Angeles championed by California Governor Jerry Brown, a proposed bullet train from Southern California to Las Vegas approved by the Nevada legislature last week would not rely on state funds. According to

“Dam [thumbs up]… Train [thumbs down]… Governor, put our water before your train,” reads a billboard message erected by Fresno City Councilman Steve Brandau, revealed this week in California’s Central Valley.

But why bother waiting for the accident professionals to tell us why an Amtrak train derailed? Plenty of political professionals already know the solution: Spend more on Amtrak.

On the most basic level, Israel seems to have the formula of statecraft right, prioritizing national security and economic growth above all else.

On Monday, Democrats in the California State Assembly’s Transportation Committee steamrolled their Republican opposition and killed a bill that would have restricted high-speed rail proponents from using eminent domain laws to commence condemnation actions against properties standing in the way of California Governor Jerry Brown’s pet project, the so-called “bullet train” from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

San Diego residents will feel the squeeze to comply with government mandated water restrictions under new declarations from the city’s Mayor Kevin Faulconer and councilmembers who joined California Governor Jerry Brown’s unprecedented decree to reduce water usage 25% statewide.

Instead of building dams, reservoirs and fighting to preserve every drop of water he can for Californians, Jerry Brown has chosen to waste his political capital on a train that no one wants, which California can’t afford–and he’s stealing people’s land and closing down businesses in order to do it. And now, finally in his fifth year as governor, he finally decides to act on the drought—and, in quintessential Jerry Brown style, he blames those who have nothing to do with creating the crisis and threatens to penalize them if they don’t comply.

California farmers are now suing the state over the high-speed rail project, refusing to have their land sold for pennies-on-the-dollar. And with a 12-year estimated project delay, the contractor is threatening to sue the bullet train for delay penalties.

Questions are being raised about the safety of the prospective high-speed rail train in California, after a fatal accident on Tuesday morning near Davis in Yolo County where an Amtrak train killed a female pedestrian on the tracks.

German engineering company Siemens is assembling a 50-foot, life-size model of California’s as-yet-unbuilt high-speed train on the steps of the state Capitol in Sacramento.

Orange County’s new transportation center, ARTIC, located on the 5 freeway near the Honda Center, has drawn fewer than 800 boardings a month since it opened December 8–far fewer than the roughly 3,000 Anaheim officials projected when they hawked the center to the city’s citizens, according to the Orange County Register.

Breitbart reported in November that in the six years since California legislature approved the High-Speed Rail Authority (HSRA), just 7% of the 1,100 pieces of land needed for the first leg to travel 130 miles across farm country had been acquired.

California’s project bullet train hit a speed bump last week as the federal government’s Fish and Wildlife Service nailed the California High-Speed Rail Authority for violating federal protections for the endangered San Joaquin kit fox.

California Republican gubernatorial candidate Neel Kaskari outspent his rival, Gov. Jerry Brown, in last year’s unsuccessful bid for the state’s top job.

At a symbolic event designed to extol the merits of his exorbitant $68 billion bullet train that would run from San Francisco to Los Angeles, California Governor Jerry Brown stood in a vacant lot in Fresno and excoriated his critics as cowards, calling them “pusillanimous.”

Tuesday groundbreaking will begin in Fresno for Governor Jerry Brown’s mass transportation project known as the ‘”bullet train.”

The Great California Train Robbery is moving into full gear after nine foreign bidders responded with “expressions of interest” in building a fleet of electric trains for a proposed high-speed rail system. Perhaps best for California politicians is that there