California high speed rail

[ndbprr]

Read an article yesterday that stated Jerry Browns challenger cleaned his clock in the debate this week including attacking Brown for the increased gasoline tax to pay for high speed rail that he called," the crazy train". Apparently most people agreed with that opinion.

[BaltACD]

Yes - that Nicola Tessla was crazy to propose AC current as the standard for electric transmission, at the time he proposed it.

One thing about large projects - the sheeple all laugh at their need - until they are built and used and then the sheeple wonder why it took so long to bring them about.

Vision is a strange thing - especially when applied to a population.  Large projects present a vision that the common man generally fails to see and/or understand.

[schlimm]

ndbprr

Read an article yesterday that stated Jerry Browns challenger cleaned his clock in the debate this week including attacking Brown for the increased gasoline tax to pay for high speed rail that he called," the crazy train". Apparently most people agreed with that opinion.

You posted the same thing on the General forum.  Most people did not agree except a right wing blogger.

http://www.mercurynews.com/scott-herhold/ci_26481693/herhold-how-score-california-gubernatorial-debate

http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2014/09/05/brown-slammed-over-tesla-in-california-debate

http://www.latimes.com/local/politics/la-me-pol-brown-kashkari-20140906-story.html

http://www.sacbee.com/2014/09/04/6680229/neel-kashkari-opens-debate-with.html

As you can see, they regarded it as at the most a narrow win for Kashkari. Brown countered Kashkari's "crazy train" remark by quipping, “I think he’s more familiar with the gravy train,” taking the opportunity to criticize Kashkari for his role running the federal government bank bailout known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

[Note: Brown now has an 18 point lead in post-debate polling.  Hardly a "clock cleaning"]

[Paul Milenkovic]

schlimm

As you can see, they regarded it as at the most a narrow win for Kashkari. Brown countered Kashkari's "crazy train" remark by quipping, “I think he’s more familiar with the gravy train,” taking the opportunity to criticize Kashkari for his role running the federal government bank bailout known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

[Note: Brown now has an 18 point lead in post-debate polling.  Hardly a "clock cleaning"]

This thread is a politically provocative no-no from the get-go, so I probably have an opportunity for one remark.

"Winning" a political debate is one of those stupid things in our culture like beauty pageants and TV buying channels.  But that an incumbent Governor without any obvious scandal has an 18-point polling lead is also equally meaningless as a point refuting whether the challenger "won" the debate.

The "crazy train" remark might be stupid, but Governor Brown criticizing his opponent for opposing the TARP "bank bailout" is even stupider yet -- the only people "scoring" political points with opposition to TARP are arguably on the fringe of the Libertarian-Right.  So the pro-high-speed train Brown is so far right-wing that he is against the TARP?  Or is the man once characterized as Governor Moonbeam or Governor Medfly (I love to wake up to the smell of Malathion sprayed from helicopters . . . it is the smell of farm prosperity!) is now so left-wing that he has circled around the political watch dial and become ultra-right?

But as for any positive response to the Crazy Train remark among who another commenter here derisively and dismissively referred to as the "sheeple", I guess the voters are the "sheeple" when they don't support what we as train enthusiasts or train advocates want but become the elightened electorate standing up to special interests when they do agree with us.  You either believe in Democracy or you don't, and given Democracy looks to be with us for a long time, contrary to some alarm (from the political fringes), if you want trains, if you want to advocate for trains, you have to, got to, pay some attention to the reaction from the public at large, even if the news is passed on in a politically provocative fashion.

The California High-Speed Rail (HSR) initiative is in trouble.  It was "sold" to the voters with unrealistically optimistic ridership, travel times, and cost estimates.  It may be salvagable, and already changes have been proposed (making it a lot less high-speed, giving up on the single-seat downtown-to-downtown ride) that may make it affordable and one hopes workable.

"Crazy train" may be one of those glib, annoying, sound-bitey epitaths that opponents of trains of any kind will hang on it (CAHSR) and us (persons who like trains).  But this does not change the facts on the ground that this project has "issues", as they say.  And the existence of "sheeple" voters swayed by such glib sound bites or the probable reelection of Governor Brown does not change the facts on the ground that the CAHSR will end up being a close thing.

And maybe if it doesn't live up to its over-promise, it may become a thing that we, here, will come to regret, in that it could block other such projects from moving forward.