California’s high-speed rail is doomed. This isn’t news, and it wasn’t doomed by President Trump’s recent decision to pull federal support for the project.
The multibillion-dollar high-speed rail project — massively over budget and behind schedule — is a massive boondoggle enriching the politically connected while not helping Californians at all.
Again, despite the recent displays of shock and chagrin by the liberal journalists and politicians who earlier cheered this New Deal-like public works project and cursed its doubters, there’s nothing new going on here. California high-speed rail was never anything more than massive corporate welfare ripoff. Anyone who said otherwise was either a dupe or a shill.
Former California Gov. Jerry Brown didn’t initiate the San Francisco to Los Angeles high-speed rail, but he made it the centerpiece of his latest stint in Sacramento. It was going to be his monument to what government can accomplish.
Brown called criticism of the undertaking “bulls–t.” He declared, “we can do it if we have the imagination, if we have the will, and we don’t let these small-minded people intimidate us into lowering our expectations.”
But cost estimates soared as high as $77 billion (more than twice the original price tag), and as of last month, it was running 13 years behind schedule.
The California Democratic Party and the Los Angeles Times have found the culprit: contractors! It’s not that a massive, unneeded, and costly government infrastructure project modeled off the Communist Chinese was a bad idea, they critics explained. It’s that the government let the private sector handle too much of it.
“Gov. Gavin Newsom recently told The Times that he would be taking aim at the consultants,” the newspaper reported. “I’m getting rid of a lot of consultants,” Newsom told the Times.
Gee, who could have guessed that a huge public-works project would turn into a boondoggle for politically connected consultants?
This is, of course, the tale of nearly all major government undertakings. Every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich. It’s a tough pill to swallow for the Left and for the press, both of whom see government as the noble counterweight to evil Big Business. But the truth is that Big Government is always a home game for the guys who can hire the lobbyists.
Every time these progressive projects turn into corporatist boondoggles, the media reacts with shock. Somehow Obamacare became a boon to the big hospitals. Somehow tobacco regulation benefited Philip Morris. Somehow the permanent war machine became a military-industrial complex.
The L.A. Times laments that the consultants “captured” the rail authority. But “capture” isn’t the right word here. This isn’t an abduction. It’s a paternity case.
The purpose of the high-speed rail project was always to generate profits for the well-connected consultants. The firms making bank off the project are the same firms that bankrolled the 2008 ballot initiative that made it possible.
The progressive posturing over the environmental benefits of rail was a cover story — as it so often is — for a corporatist heist.
The ballot initiative that created this boondoggle was funded overwhelmingly by the companies that stood to profit from it and the labor unions that saw jobs in the project. It wasn’t about helping people get from L.A. to San Francisco. It was about getting paid.
The campaign supporting the 2008 initiative was run by a group called “Californians for High-Speed Rail: A Coalition of Taxpayer, Business, Environmental and Labor Groups and People from Across California Tired of Being Stuck In Traffic.” Californians for High-Speed Rail was mostly funded by a handful of labor unions and a handful of developers.
The committees donors in 2008 were the very contractors whom the L.A. Times absurdly accuses of “capturing” their own project later. Parsons Brinckerhoff gave more than $100,000 to “Californians for High-Speed Rail” and then landed a $700 million contract to build the rail. Contractor STV contributed $45,000, HNTB gave $63,000, Arup was good for $40,000. The California American Council of Engineering Companies also contributed.
These companies got their contracts and got paid, by taxpayers in California and nationwide. Californians aren’t getting their trains, though.
So while high-speed rail may look like a failure to the folks who wanted to ride a train from L.A. to San Francisco, it has already fulfilled its real purpose: enriching the unions and companies whose idea it was.
Congratulations, California voters. You are the victims of the great train robbery that you voted for.
