California, the Great Destroyer

The current disaster has many parents 

 By Victor Davis Hanson October 2, 2023

In 1996, the California legislature created the high speed rail authority. In 2008, voters passed an initial nearly $10 billion bond to build an envisioned 800 mile, $33 billion project eventually to link Sacramento with San Diego. Fifteen years later, a scaled-down plan from Bakersfield to Merced remains not even half finished.............Total costs for the entire project are now estimated at nearly $130 billion. Many expect that figure to double in the next quarter-century...............

Nine years ago voters amid drought and water shortages also passed a state water bond, authorizing $7.5 billion in new water projects and initiatives..............So far not a single dam or new reservoir has been built..................

In 2017, a $15 billion bond authorized a complete remodeling of Los Angeles International Airport—recognized as one of the more congested, disorganized, and unpleasant airports in America. Now the cost to complete the project has grown to an estimated $30 billion, with a proposed finish date of 2028—11 years after the project was authorized.........

.In 2002, California began construction on the eastern span replacement of the iconic San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge..........The job in fact took 11 years. And it cost $6.5 billion—a 2,500 percent increase over the estimate. In contrast, original construction of the entire Bay Bridge began in 1933, at the height of the Great Depression. Yet the job was completed in a little  more than three years.....................There is one thing, however, that California does quite well: demolition. 

And what is next? We await the 2024 national elections, when a few California politicians may run for our highest offices, no doubt with the campaign promise, “I can do to America what I did to California.”..............To Read More....