California’s High-Speed Rail (CAHSR) was initiated and legislated in 2008, and was to provide a 500-mile rail passenger route between San Francisco and Los Angeles, with a second phase linking Sacramento and San Diego. What started as an 800-mile trek for California passengers was reduced to 500 miles, then 171 miles, and currently just 119 miles. To date, taxpayers have funded CAHSR for a total of $4 billion, yet not a single mile of track has been laid.
Both China and Japan, with less technological expertise and aptitude, have fully functional, long-established, high-speed rail systems.
Public transit in and between major centers is done in support of climate change by eliminating or avoiding individual vehicle traffic. Recently, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy gave California 30 days to present a new plan or squander the $4 billion in federal funding. This request is the result of all the construction delays, mismanagement, and spiraling budgets.
When it comes to any and all mitigation plans and activities for California’s continued advocacy of climate change, they have failed or shirked responsibility at every turn. Wildfires have devastated the state on numerous occasions, but the state continues to practice extremely irresponsible forestry management. Most California politicians believe in climate change, yet wildfires generate a double-whammy. Carbon dioxide goes up in wildfire flames, while dead and missing trees no longer absorb CO2 during the photosynthesis process.
Governor Newsom has repeatedly accused oil and gas companies of price gouging. He recently stated, "They've been fleecing you for decades and decades" Yet, in the linked story on the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) titled “Gavin Newsom Faces a Climate Revolt—From Democrats”, “Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris asked: “If California companies were raking it in, why did we have two refineries announce their intent to close?” Petrie-Norris is a shrewd Democrat.
Assemblyman David Alvarez, another Democrat, said, “We have a crisis on our hands that may have been self-created by the actions perhaps taken by the state, by regulators.” As Newsom cried that the Legislature needed to give his regulators more power to punish refineries for price-gouging Alvarez added, “I don’t hear today any evidence of such gouging”.
The WSJ also states, “A study last month by a University of Southern California business school professor projected that gasoline prices could rise to more than $8 a gallon because of the constricted supply“ yet, the California Air Resources Board Chairman, and Newsome appointed, Liane Randolph said of the situation “We don’t analyze a retail cost of gasoline or specific costs to specific consumers.
This all points to the climate craziness of California and the politically insensitive victimization it creates on its taxpayers. No one needs to contemplate at any length why Californians are exiting the state en masse in pursuit of livelihoods elsewhere.
