California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been frantically trying to restart a presidential campaign that appears moribund, with polls showing him losing in some states to figures such as Pete Buttigieg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In his absence, his multibillion-dollar high-speed train also seems to be going nowhere fast. A new report from the state inspector general revealed that the train will be delayed again and that the public is being kept in the dark about ongoing problems with Newsom’s signature project. Oh, and one more thing: the project will run out of money by December 2027.
Benjamin Belnap’s report revealed the project is again running out of money. It found missing details in the project’s 2026 business plan, and concluded that the project will again be out of money by next year.
The state has already spent $18 billion, but it will need at least another $18 billion to finish the first segment. It could take roughly $200 billion more actually to complete the original San Francisco-to-Los Angeles line.
Even with billions more, the current segment will not be completed until 2034.
Voters approved a $9.95 billion bond issue in 2008 under Newsom’s predecessor after absurdly low cost estimates. Newsom has been a champion of the project. Influential figures and companies stood to make a fortune, and the key was to secure a “buy-in” worth billions, so that it would become increasingly difficult to abandon the project as overruns and delays sent costs soaring.
Now the official estimate of future ridership has dropped by 25%, and it demands billions more to complete a project delayed by decades. Remember that this entire project was meant to create a rail line of only 171 miles.
One would think that the California voters would be marching to the capital with pitchforks and torches over such breathtaking incompetence and waste. However, they appear to have been conditioned to accept the lowest level of performance from their public officials.
The response of Democratic leaders is crushingly predictable: they are pledging to seek a federal bailout to cover their own incompetence. The Democratic nominee for governor, Xavier Becerra, is promising to fight to get back federal funds that were cut off by the Trump Administration. While promising to seriously review any problems in the project (as if they are not obvious), no one has been held accountable for this financial train wreck. Instead, all Democrats can do is demand that citizens around the country help bail out their boondoogle.
Yet, the Inspector General is describing a failure of leadership where no one is making any real decisions:
“Exploration of specific financing mechanisms is a positive step, but because the Authority might run out of funding as soon as December 2027, and the financing strategy the Authority uses has the potential to significantly affect the amount of interest it will need to repay, the Authority and state lawmakers have little time for delay in deciding upon a strategy and implementing it.”
Belknap indicated that those in control are simply shrugging off the problem, noting that “[b]ecause the Authority has thus far not demonstrated a willingness to establish and reinforce a process that ensures accuracy and transparency in project reporting, we have directed our report recommendations to the Board.”
In the meantime, the state will continue to creep along with a project that is sucking billions into a project that has become a national disgrace. Beccera’s pledge to seek bailouts shows that the problem remains the political culture in California. There is little accountability left in a one-party state where companies and individuals have made fortunes off this debacle. The only people being taken for a ride are Californian citizens and it is not the ride that they bargained for.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
High-speed rail? More like slow-speed economic collapse.
The result and destination is not the object, the journey where they get to spend your tax dollars on their ‘ideas’ is the object.
If I was a California Central Valley landowner compelled to sell my land to the state for the rail line, I would have tried to write into the contract that if no construction took place on the land I sold within 15 years, I could buy the land back at the original sale price. At that time, the state officials would be full of so much hubris that they might have chuckled and signed such an agreement.
“Affordability”
The products were so affordable, people bought them all up.
What the “affordability” movement is all about is parasites wanting “free stuff” and “free status.”
If you want “affordability,” start a business or get a job.
There’s your “affordability.”
It’s all your responsibility.
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“It’s the [responsibility], stupid!”
– James Carville
#. What is the schema for this train fraud. It has a known scaffold or architecture known by con-men. The train is an open wound that continues to bleed? We need more money for additional treatment? Donate now our blood supply is low?
What’s the architecture of this boondoggle. We know it involves placing many empty headed women is strategic positions and telling them they’re smart, the future, and beautiful. Let’s analyze it. Putting Becerra in place insures the bleed but how does this con game work.
^^^ Seriously, you folks know con games. Dissect it. What are the necessary components? Take a dissection of the California legislature and 53(?) 54 reps to the House, 2 more Senators? Just as the constitution has a not fewer than clause for reps it needs a nit mire than clause? It’s become absurd.
They saw the Simpson’s episode and misunderstood the ‘lesson’.
The federal government is $40 trillion in debt, and it pays over $1.1 trillion just in interest each year. The instinct to seek a federal bailout amounts to looting the American taxpayers. It worked for major banks, auto companies, and insurance giants after the market crash in 2008 when the debt was $10 trillion. But it is unlikely to work going forward. Daddy federal government is going to have to tell California, sorry son but I don’t have any more money to spare, you’ll have to figure this one out yourself.
Federal aid to states is the boondoggle. If a state cannot take care of what needs caring for within their borders, they they are a failed state.
This is something I have discovered from a family member who does work in third world countries a lot and lives in California. They have been so inculcated to this stuff, that they think, in their adult lives, what constitutes a ‘city’, is actually what anyone else would call a slum.
They expect it, want it, are comfortable with it, think it’s how it’s supposed to be, and have no idea how much better things are in other places, because they only travel blue, even within the U.S., and this is the world to them (cue the astonishment of European tourists during the World Cup, celebrating places like the Midwest with astonishment. That said, they wouldn’t like the floods or the tornadoes on that flatland, or the working hard, which they did not get to see and seem to be clueless about when it is what has built people’s stalwart and kindly attitudes upon). Good luck bursting that bubble, no matter how bad things get. Globally. Some people really prefer being shepherded.
Western Europe is falling into this, too. In West LA, which granted has always been freewheeling, but formerly in a fun way, they now think public spaces covered in graffiti, trash, mobile STD stations, and public nudity are perfectly normal these days. Used to just be Castro, but no, you couldn’t take a young kid to even Los Angeles anymore.
Didn’t used to be that way, even there. Bottom of the barrel, people, bottom of the barrel. And really: if this is what ‘young people’ are fighting for, where, pray tell, are their families who surely know better? It isn’t as though they just randomly sprang from the ground like corn or tomatoes.
The train is a metaphor, and one people should pay attention to. They won’t, not there. That is a pipe dream, even though there are a whole lotta pipes in LA, even at the airport. Enjoy the contact high, California. It’s the only thing keeping you from seeing your state is a very wealthy dumpster.
The younger generations are concerning. It could be retrograde evolution genetically. They aren’t capable of creating a functional culture.
Talent in STEM is being imported because it’s necessary. They’re coming from India to do that work. The indigenous youth will be put by the wayside. The bottom half may be relegated off into crime and welfare but not as kindly as what was?
Serious problem…
Precient movie: “Idiocracy”
The Chinese propaganda bot is working overtime again today.
Aaaaahh — Socialism!
Communism for slow learners…
“The goal of socialism is communism.”
– Vladimir Lenin
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Note to SCOTUS:
Communism is unconstitutional.
Start with the 5th Amendment right to private property, which is unqualified and, therefore, absolute.
Only the owner has the power to “claim and exercise” dominion in all aspects and facets and to every degree.
Commies hate this one trick
As an engineering student at Cornell, in the chemistry lab we learned how to create water:: Two hydrogen and one oxygen atom. They’re readily available and basically free or very cheap
That was back in 1965.
60 years later, why is no one doing it?
Valid question
If you had actually succeeded in creating water, you would have obtained unimaginable wealth in California and the Southwest.
Clearly, you did not.
The issue is volume. The amount of water being used by people, farms, and industry in that region is staggering. Building that amount of water molecule by molecule is simply absurd. Even desalination of ocean water, which is the most reasonably path, is not yet economical.
Like almost everything at scale, the problem is water, food, and so much else is not a problem of chemistry, but a problem of economics.
Don’t worry Californians, Newsom and his socialist compatriots have all been well compensated with the funds to finish the railway. Toot-toot!
This is Jerry Brown’s train. Newsom’s mistake is not pulling the plug on the project.
But that would require admission that it was a boondoggle and then some may want their money back. Works better as a example of their proposed ‘glorious future’
The Left live in fantasy. Gavin Newsom, George Soros, Democrats in general today, DSA, and frauds like Jason Arday who appears to have committed suicide. The BBC is reporting the Metropolitan Police has stated: “At this time his death is being treated as unexpected, but is not believed to be suspicious.”
In other words, Jason was busted with his lies, his fantasy life was shattered, and he took his life. This is what happens when folks live detached from reality: they hurt others and hurt themselves. Now the Left is blaming the Right for the “unexpected” death of a 41 year old. “unexpected” = euphemism. The Left did this. Just like Newsom blaming everyone for his fantasies not becoming authentic, this is what they do – blame others.
Life is hard. There is no free ride.
Who’s really to blame for Jason Arday’s death? This unspeakable tragedy demands a reckoning with the cult of DEI
This is what we mean by the cult of DEI – the racial elite ideology that has left a trail of injustice, and now tragedy, in its wake. There are the brilliant black academics who have been reduced to tokens, or dismissed as ‘coconuts’ when they utter the ‘wrong’ opinions. There are the students and academics who don’t belong to a ‘protected’ group, passed over for opportunities and promotion. And now there is the late Jason Arday, a man who became trapped in his own fantasy land, indulged by those who should have known better.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/08/15/whos-really-to-blame-for-jason-ardays-death/
I had never heard of Jason Arday. He appears to have been an academic fraud of sorts…..
Suicide requires some form of mental illness.
The Ultimate Boondoggle:
Trump’s Golden Fleet
Last week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published an estimate of the potential cost of constructing the Navy’s newly proposed, nuclear-powered battleship class, known as the BBGN or the “Trump Class.” CBO estimates the first ship of the class would cost $23 billion, while all 15 ships that would be produced between 2028 and 2056 under the Navy’s 2027 shipbuilding plan would average slightly more than $18 billion each, for a total cost of $275 billion over the next 30 years, in 2026 dollars.
This estimate is considerably higher than the Navy’s estimate of $15 billion for the first ship and $10 billion each for the next two.1
Building the Trump Class would require increasing construction of large surface combatants – such as battleships, cruisers, and destroyers – by roughly 60% over the coming 30 years.2 Such a significant increase in large surface combatant construction would require more than twice the amount of annual funding, from $6.9 billion per year under the Navy’s 2025 shipbuilding plan to $15.2 billion per year under the 2027 plan.3
https://www.crfb.org/blogs/cbo-estimates-trump-class-battleships-cost-275-billion-over-30-years
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The wars in Ukraine and Iran keep demonstrating that the future of warfare is cheap drones. So Trump’s scheme to build absurdly expensive battleships is highly dubious. No wonder Hegseth wants $1.5 trillion for Defense! Less bang for the buck.
War Games:
U.S. Troops Helpless Against Ukrainian Drones
U.S. Army troops faced off against Ukrainian drone operators at a military exercise in Germany earlier this year. It didn’t go well for the Americans.
During the exercise, called Combined Resolve, Ukrainian drone units easily spotted and defeated U.S. troops and armored vehicles on rotation from Fort Hood in Texas, according to people familiar with the events.
The exercise, coupled with U.S. casualties in Iran, shows American vulnerabilities to drones—years after the U.S. made uncrewed systems an essential part of warfare. America pioneered using long-range drones in war. The Pentagon has recently spent billions acquiring new drone and counterdrone technology and formed special units to operate it.
Still, in the Middle East this year, the U.S. has struggled to defend against Iran’s long-range drones, which have killed and injured soldiers and destroyed aircraft.
The drubbing in Germany conveyed lessons from Ukraine focused on short-range battlefield drones. The exercise, held in April and May, tested visiting troops’ ability to operate and defend against the proliferation of smaller, front-line drones that have dominated the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
https://on.wsj.com/3SvJ88F
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Trump wants to spend hundreds of billions on a useless fleet of battleships. But the future of warfare is obviously drones.
AI Overview
The total final cost for Phase 1 of the California High-Speed Rail (CA HSR) system—connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles/Anaheim—ranges between $126.2 billion and $231.3 billion, according to the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s 2026 Business Plan.
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AI Overview
California voters will decide on Proposition 40 in November 2026, which proposes a historic one-time 5% wealth tax on state residents with a net worth over $1 billion as of January 1, 2026. Sponsored by healthcare unions, the tax aims to raise roughly $100 billion to backfill federal healthcare and social program cuts.
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“A high-end ballpark estimate is that Elon Musk’s companies and the economic activity they generated have ultimately created or supported roughly 5 million direct, indirect, and induced jobs over his entrepreneurial career. This is not a precise census figure, but an estimate based on his companies’ cumulative employment and economic multiplier effects.”
– ChatGPT
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Billionaires MUST be thanked by Congress and exempted from any and all taxation.
Yes! And no one is stopping any American from working toward or becoming a Billionaire. Wealth has no limits as demonstrated by our current way of life. The land of opportunity calls to all of humanity to emulate it. Only a fool is not taking advantage of these opportunities. American Greatness.
Trump Calls For More Redesigns
The U.S. Navy is reportedly evaluating a major, costly redesign for its newest class of aircraft carriers to align with President Donald Trump’s aesthetic preferences.
Seven current and former U.S. officials familiar with the matter told The Washington Post that the service was reviewing whether it could relocate the multistory command center — known as the “island” — farther forward toward the middle of the ship. In modern ships, the island is typically at the rear, however, in World War II it was more in the middle.
The review comes in response to concerns raised by Trump regarding the appearance of the Ford-class carriers, where the tower is currently positioned closer to the stern.
Officials cautioned that the assessment remained in its early stages, noting that such a shift would require substantial time and financial resources. A former senior official told The Washington Post that a similar study conducted during Trump’s first term concluded that moving the island would cost billions of dollars and cause major program delays.
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-navy-warship-redesign-wwii-b3033634.html
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As a teenager, Trump watched the WWII documentary series “Victory At Sea” and became enamored with the designs of WWII ships. So he wants to bring those designs back whether they make any sense or not. In fact, Trump’s dream of building a ‘golden fleet’ of battleships is linked to “Victory At Sea”.
MOOT
The U.S. Navy is toast.
AI Overview
China’s “carrier killer” missiles are advanced anti-ship ballistic and hypersonic weapons designed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Missile Threat Project to track, evade, and strike high-value moving warships like U.S. aircraft carriers at extreme ranges.Key “Carrier Killer” SystemsDF-21D: Widely known as the world’s first operational anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM). It features a road-mobile launcher, an estimated range of 1,500 to 2,150 kilometers, and a maneuverable re-entry warhead designed to strike vessels from space.DF-26B: An intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) with a dual conventional and nuclear capability, often called a “Guam killer” or deeper-reach anti-ship variant, extending well past 3,000+ kilometers.YJ-21 / YJ-20: Advanced hypersonic anti-ship missiles capable of traveling at speeds exceeding Mach 5 to Mach 10, leaving target ship defense systems only seconds to react.Strategic ImpactA2/AD Strategy: Built for Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) to keep foreign carrier strike groups far away from Chinese coastal waters, Taiwan, and the South China Sea.Evasion Capabilities: Uses high terminal speeds, unpredictable hypersonic glide paths, and onboard guidance updates to bypass traditional naval defense networks.
Sorry commie! we have the best and your nitpicking isn’t going to change America’s support for a superior defense that our enemies cannot afford.
Same talking points as the CCP! just sayin
It’s already $200 billion over budget. All they have is a bridge to nowhere. A bridge that doesn’t even have rails!
Trump’s Demands Could Ruin Navy
Just as the Lincoln concerns reached fever pitch, Trump released an order directing new Ford-class aircraft carriers to go back to using steam propulsion systems to launch and recover aircraft, an older technology that has been replaced by electromagnetic systems.
The modifications demanded by Trump “is highly unusual and disruptive for the Navy — especially since these are changes the Navy did not request,” said Todd Harrison, an Air Force veteran and longtime defense budget analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
General Atomics, the company that makes electronic catapults, said in a statement that work on the catapults was halfway complete and that changing course now “would introduce significant cost, schedule, and integration risks.”
And the price tag for Turmp’s requests keeps expanding.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that the first battleship in Trump’s “Golden Fleet” would cost more than $23 billion, which is $1 billion more than the next nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
It’s also not clear where the Navy will build these battleships, if they aren’t canceled by a subsequent administration.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/14/trump-navy-lincoln-concerns-01038360
While calling them “Trump Class” is just Trump marketting. The actual need is real and the planning predates Trump.
These are NOT traditional battleships, they are just scaling up of the current state of the art non-carrier warships.
This results is significantly increased capacity.
One of the huge problems today is that in any engagement the warships exhaust their supply of missles and must return to port to reload.
These new “battle ships” are just superscaled versions of existing warships with small crews and very large numbers of weapons.
To the extent there is much significant beyond scaling it is that like modern Aircraft carriers they include 2 nuclear reactors making them ready for energy particle weapons and rail guns.
Rail guns are a huge deal as they have a very low cost per projectile and are near infinitely reloadable without returning to port.
But railguns still have engineering problems – though the Japanse solved many of these when the US mothballed the program a decade+ ago.
No the demand will not ruin the navy – we have modern carriers with steam catapults.
That said I am not sure of the rationale here. The eletromagnetic catapults though having some teething problems are still as I understand it superior. There have a faster sortie rate and are more adjustable to the aircraft being launched and stress the airframes being launched substantially less leading to longer airframe life.
They’re not really battleships as they lack the big-guns of battleships. They’re, basically, very large guided missile platforms similar to the Russian KIROV CLASS BATTLECRUISER (only actually mission capable instead of crappy). Something that we need as the Ticonderoga-class cruisers are ending their service life.
This wasn’t really a Trump thing, either. The Navy has been working on replacing those cruisers for a while. They explored the DDG(X) program in 2021, but came to the conclusion that guided missile destroyers weren’t capable of meeting the navy’s needs. As for the cost of the new tech, despite your uninformed hand-wringing, the War Department said the BBG(X) program will incorporate technology from the DDG(X) program and replace it.
As a person who once in the military and worked in defense contract, I know enough about how the development process works. This is just one study group proposal, there will be OTHER COMPETING PROPOSALS for alternate PLATFORMS before one is finally chosen.
Also, FWIW, Hegseth fired the guy who came up with the plan. Just because Trump liked it, doesn’t mean the military wants it or will the US will build it. After all, t the ships have not been funded and come November, Trump is a lame-duck with no more real political clout in the electoral process
Also, China doesn’t want us to build them! They are probably very concerned for our economic situation and don’t want us to spend all this money unnecessarily. They’re so nice!
“The average daily volume of HSR passenger trips would equal about one-fifth of one percent (0.20%) of California’s population.”
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HSR rider demographic:
1. Low income 30%
2. Middle/higher income 70%
– ChatGPT
“Goofy Gavin” could have built a water (i.e. the one thing CA needs) pipeline from the Columbia River or Canada for less money.
100% of the CA population needs water, including the illegal aliens past and present.
Drain Lake Tahoe
Please don’t give CA any more ideas, they’ll end up with a costly, unbuilt, high-speed water aqueduct.