Less than five years ago, President Obama and his supporters were positively taunting three Republican governors who chose to forfeit federal stimulus money that had been earmarked for high-speed rail lines in their states. Rick Scott of Florida, John Kasich of Ohio and Scott Walker of Wisconsin were supposedly costing their states needed jobs and, shockingly, giving away free money.

The Los Angeles Times went so far as to mock the voters of Wisconsin and Ohio in 2010 for electing Walker and Kasich, who had both promised to scrap the high-speed lines that their Democratic predecessors had approved. The Times’ editorialists smugly celebrated the fact that California would be getting the biggest share of that cash instead for its own high-speed rail project.