Libertarian Party Of Santa Cruz
contact:
Bill Anderson
Email: Patrick.Dugan@lpsantacruz.com
4310 Capitola Road
Capitola, CA 95010
Phone:  831.476.9753

City Journal
Chris Reed
Solyndra Times Seven
Why California's high-speed rail project is an even greater waste of federal tax dollars. 21 March 2012
Source: http://www.city-journal.org/2012/cjc0321cr.html

The national media have devoted plenty of skeptical attention to California's bullet-train boondogglefrom the ballooning cost of the California High-Speed Rail Authority project to its shoddy management to the baffling decision to build the first segment in the lightly populated Central Valley. But the press has yet to focus on a crucial fact: the bullet train isn't just some quirky Left Coast fiasco; it's also a grotesque waste of federal money. The project serves as a powerful reminder of the Obama administration's mishandling of the $787 billion stimulus that Congress passed in February 2009 with solemn assurances of prudence and accountability. The bullet-train project, in fact, can be thought of as Solyndra times seven that's how far its costs outstrip those of the much-touted Bay Area solar panel manufacturer that burned through $528 million in federal loans before declaring bankruptcy and folding last September.

In California, the federal government is committed to spending $3.5 billion with most of those dollars coming from the 2009 stimulus for a project whose problems are glaring. State officials are trying to remake the bullet train on the fly, promising at a legislative hearing in Silicon Valley to implement changes that would bring down the cost and speed up construction. But none of those changes alters the fact that the bullet-train project appears clearly to violate federal regulations governing stimulus spending on transportation. The rules, published in the Federal Register on June 23, 2009, require that applications for stimulus funds to build high-speed rail projects would be approved only after rigorous analysis, factoring in a careful examination of the proposed project's financial plan (capital and operating), reasonableness of financial estimates, and quality of planning process. Grant recipients would make regular progress reports, corroborated by Federal Railroad Administration audits. Even the most cursory analysis shows that the California bullet train falls far short of compliance with the rules.

State auditors, the University of California's Institute for Transportation, and an ad hoc peer-review committee appointed by the legislature all lambasted the project's financial plan as incomplete, overly ambitious, and based on unverifiable numbers. In January, the peer-review group issued its assessment: We cannot overemphasize the fact that moving ahead on the HSR project without credible sources of adequate funding, without a definitive business model, without a strategy to maximize the independent utility and value to the state, and without the appropriate management resources, represents an immense financial risk on the part of the state of California. The peer review followed a damning analysis published in November by the state's nonpartisan Legislative Analysts Office, perhaps the most respected agency in Sacramento, which concluded that rail officials had yet to address how to fund the (at least) $98-billion-system linking Los Angeles and San Francisco.

California has about $13 billion on hand to begin the first phase of the project. The rail authority and its boosters claim that the federal government and private investors will supply the remaining $85 billion. Those additional federal dollars are almost certainly not coming. Congressional budget cutters have targeted discretionary domestic spending, and the $260 billion transportation bill currently winding through Congress expressly prohibits California from diverting any highway funds for high-speed rail. Meanwhile, Wall Street isn't enamored with the project, and private investment funds have shown zero interest in partnering with California unless they receive revenue or ridership guarantees. But guaranteeing a certain return on investment would amount to promising subsidies if the rail authority's immense ridership forecasts don't pan out taxpayers would be making up the difference. And Proposition 1Athe 2008 state ballot measure providing $9.95 billion in bond money for the project explicitly bans taxpayer-funded operating subsidies.

Rail authority executives and prominent California Democrats, including Governor Jerry Brown, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, and former HSRA chairman Quentin Kopp, continue to talk up the chances for substantial private investment. But the record of the last two governors, both ardent champions of the project, suggests the obstacles to such investment are larger than they first appear. Arnold Schwarzenegger explored outsourcing the construction and operation of the train to the Chinese. He failed. And in January, Brown suggested that the tens of billions of dollars that companies will pay for pollution rights in coming years under the state's nascent cap-and-trade program could fund the project assuming, of course, he can find a way to pry those dollars from the clutches of the California Air Resources Board, which already has plans for the uncollected funds.

The bullet train's reasonableness of financial estimates is questionable, beginning with the project's revenue forecasts. The LAO noted a projection of 44 million riders a year when the L.A.-Bay Area line is complete. That's down from the hallucinatory claim of 117 million passengers that proponents of Prop. 1A offered in 2008, but it's still ridiculous. In reality, 44 million passengers would be 50 percent higher than the number of people Amtrak carries to and from more than 500 stations in 46 states and three Canadian provinces each year.

How was the estimate derived? Elizabeth Alexis, a Palo Alto finance expert and co-founder of Californians Advocating Responsible Rail Design, delved into the methodology and discovered, among other things, that the rail authority assumed that the future cost of gasoline would top $40 a gallon. Alexis also noted that the public-opinion polls that bullet-train backers crafted to gauge potential passenger interest were heavily biased. For example, 96 percent of commuters surveyed were already train riders. But unlike commuters in other states, only a tiny percentage of Californians rides the train.

Which brings us to the last element that a rigorous analysis must confirm before federal funds can flow: the quality of planning process. More than three years after voters approved the $9.95 billion bond measure, the HSRA still hasn't determined who will operate the train once it's built. A contractor? An existing state agency? A private-public partnership? Nobody knows. Adding to the chaos is a lack of leadership. Until Brown purged the rail authority's management earlier this year, bullet-train officials assumed they were doing a great job, and that their public-relations firm was to blame for the project's sinking support.

This ugly story could soon take a welcome turn. The U.S. Government Accountability Office confirmed on March 8 that it plans to launch its own audit of the California High Speed Rail Authority. The GAO would do well to begin its inquiry with Volume 174, number 19 of the Federal Register, specifically Federal Railroad Administration Docket 2009-0045. If those federal regulations truly have the force of law, then Solyndra times seven must die.

Chris Reed is an editorial writer for U-T San Diego (formerly the San Diego Union-Tribune) and proprietor of calwhine.com.

Patrick Dugan Speaks Out

First the Cal Legislature passes AB889, which penalizes those who would hire a babysitter, then they pass ABX1 24 & SBX1 7 the Fire Protection Fee, further taxing the rural California landowner to backfill the general fund, and now they are sending legislation to the Governor that forces business to adopt Agenda 21 or die.

I believe these psychopaths are not only self destructive they are sociopaths determined to destroy the California economy.

Are you ready to throw the sickos out of office? Contact the Governor right away and express your outrage at the legislative actions bent on destroying California.

God Save The Republic, Patrick

P.S. If you have not already done so, please join the Libertarian Party. We are the only political party dedicated to free markets, civil liberties, and peace. You can also renew your membership. Or, you can make a contribution separate from membership.

Charlie Daniels' View of the Obama Presidency

After being in the music business for 52 years it's just about all I know anything at all about--and in keeping with my admittedly narrow knowledge--I would like to draw an analogy concerning the Obama administration, viewing things from my vantage point.

Ok, let's say you pick out the finest symphony conductor in the world, add the greatest singer and seven or so of the finest classical musicians on the planet.

You get them together backstage and say, "Alright, there are twenty thousand fans out front, standing room only, expectations are off the charts, they are looking for the best show they've ever seen.

Now the curtain goes up in five minutes, the sound has been checked out, the lights set and everything is perfect, the stage is set for the greatest show the world has ever seen.

Now get there and knock 'em out guys! They're a all with you; you're all superstars in their eyes. Go show 'em how it's done.

Oh, there's only been one change... Tonight you have to do your show playing songs you've never played and you'll have to improvise. There's no sheet music. You'll just have to jam."

Can you imagine the panic backstage?

You see, some of the very finest musicians on earth can't jam a lick. I remember a few years ago when I had a couple of young fiddle players come on stage with me and play "The South's Gonna Do It Again."

They had learned the parts I'd played on the record, arrangement, lead lines and all and played it perfectly note for note.

Everything was going swimmingly until I decided to leave the arrangement and jam for a while. When I turned to one of them and told them to take a solo the kid was as lost as a baby sheep in a hail storm.

They had no more idea about improvising than they did about how to build a spaceship.

"The South's Gonna Do It Again" is a simple twelve bar blues song that any musician from any garage band would be able to take a solo on, but even though these kids were extremely talented and played what they knew perfectly, when it came to jammin, they were totally lost. They had just never learned to do it.

To me the presidency is kind of like jammin'. You have to roll with the flow, improvise, adapt to the moment, pick up on what's going on and deal with it.

Our president has never had to jam, he's always had the sheet music in front of him and he's never had to play a note somebody else had not written for him.

One of the biggest mistakes President Obama made when he came in office was to surround himself with a bunch of players who had never jammed either. None of them have ever had any practical experience in the real world.

In essence, they are a bunch of paper tigers, they do an incredible job of spending other people's money and sneaking legislation through the back door, but out in the real world, where there are no scripts,down where the rubber meets the road there is probably not a person in the bunch who could change a flat tire, much less deal with the complex problems America faces.

The only thing Obama has done with any problem that has arisen is to throw money at it, and in truth, that's sadly all he knows how to do. When it comes to dealing with things that money alone won't fix like busted oil pipes at the bottom of the ocean or solving the problems on our southern borders he's lost and all those around him are lost.

The Obama cabinet is the most inept bunch imaginable. When people have only viewed the world from the top of an ivory tower they don't react very well when it's time to get their hands dirty.

Obama 's people can't even accept real world concepts of the dangerous situations we're dealing with. Eric Holder wanting to try terrorists in civilian courts, in New York City of all places is nothing less than naive arrogance.

Janet Napolitano's gross inexperience in dealing with security matters is going to end up costing this country dearly.

Putting an unqualified person who has never even been a judge on the bench of the highest court in the land, for nothing more than her political leanings is insanity.

Everywhere you look you see eggheads with nothing more than a college degree to qualify them for the sensitive jobs they hold.

I'm just wondering how long it will take for a majority of the people in this country to realize that the wheel that steers the direction of this nation is in the hands of people who have no idea how to get from point a to point b without a roadmap and that roadmap just doesn't exist. Every trip is different.

I see disaster looming on the not too distant horizon, financial disaster, increasing danger from terrorist attack, unabated violence in the streets and an arrogant and unmanageable illegal alien population.

It's coming folks and Obama and his band are still in the dressing room looking for the sheet music.

They just can't jam.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops, and for our country.

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels
Copyright ©  The Charlie Daniels Band

posted by Gayle Noble
reference http://www.charliedaniels.com/soapbox-2010/soapbox-2010-0531.htm

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