California high-speed-rail groundbreaking pushed back

"Corruptus in Extremis"

The corrupt political hacks are lining their pockets with billions in bullet train money and construction costs have doubled.

 

Corruption  -  The hacks have spent billions of dollars on the so-called "high-speed" rail and not one inch of track has been built.  They promise that somewhere around 2029 or later the rail system will be finished.  Sure it will.

 

All year, the state billed the summer of 2013 as the season when California's biggest-ever public works project -- a $69 billion high-speed rail line -- would finally leave the station with a groundbreaking that has been decades in the making.

 

But with autumn arriving this weekend and no bulldozers in sight, rail officials for the first time have acknowledged it will be another "few months" before construction, which has already been delayed a year, begins.

The state still needs to buy more land and equipment, finish designs and hire workers, while a pair of lawsuits set to be decided in the coming months could even force more delays reports the San Jose Mercury News.

A date still hasn't been set for the formal ceremony marking the first shovel in the ground -- the moment when the project should finally seem more real for many dubious Californians, as billions of tax dollars begin flowing and steel starts going up.

Critics say Californians won't see hammer-wielding workers in the field unless the state wins two civil cases -- one to be heard next week, the other in November.

"The future of this plan is in doubt," said former longtime project Chairman Quentin Kopp, a former state legislator and judge who now opposes the bullet train. "I don't know how (the state) could even mention starting construction with pending litigation. It's irresponsible."

the "starting gun" really went off 14 months ago, when the Legislature and Brown approved the $6 billion bill authorizing construction on the first 130 miles of tracks between Merced and Bakersfield.

Since then, officials have more than tripled the rail authority staff to 80 employees, signed the first construction contract with developer consortium Tutor Perini, obtained various government approvals, and reached key deals with private companies such as Union Pacific and PG&E. The state has also reached agreements to buy 50 of the 375 rural properties it needs along the first route.

But they've also been unable to swat away a 2011 lawsuit brought by Kings County and Bay Area opponents who want to invalidate the bond funds, arguing that construction costs have doubled and service delayed a decade since voters approved the train line in 2008.

A Sacramento judge last month ruled that the rail authority had violated two aspects of the ballot measure but set a November court date for both sides to argue over whether any punishment should be doled out. The plaintiffs formally filed a motion in court this week seeking to block construction, but the judge has repeatedly denied such attempts in various civil cases against the bullet train over the past half-decade.

California High Speed Rail is a SCAM!!!! 

John and Ken Show KFI 640AM

Amtrak rail lines in California.
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Nothing to Steal
An intelligent person would simply connect the Amtrak line that dead ends in San Luis Obispo with the Amtrak line at San Jose.  For a tiny fraction of the cost of the insane "high speed" rail fraud most of the state from Mexico to Sacramento would be connected by rail.
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Instead countless billions will be pissed away as payback to the businesses and unions that fund the campaigns of the Sacramento hacks.  All the special interests have their snouts in the trough of corruption. 

Amtrak Pacific Surfliner at Del Mar, CA
Simply connect San Jose and San Luis Obispo and you have a statewide rail system.  But easy and cheap are words the liar politicians have never heard.