Why Jerry Will Kill High-Speed Rail

by CalWatchdog Staff | January 10, 2012 9:40 am

[1]John Seiler:

It’s High-Speed Rail fanatic Jerry Brown who himself will kill the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

The reason: His first priority this year is passing his $7 billion tax increase ( which might only bring in $4.8 billion[2], according to the Legislative Analyst). Or some equivalent tax increase he works out with others proposing tax increases.

To pass a tax increase, he’s going to have to convince voters to approve a tax-increase initiative in November.

But so long as the High-Speed Rail is in existence, tax opponents will point to it as the Poster Boondoggle for government waste. They’ll take aim at its price tag of at least $98 billion[3]. Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and others will have a field day.

You can write the attack ads yourself: “Gov Jerry Brown wants to increase your taxes $7 billion. Yet he keeps pushing the $98 billion bullet train that everyone says is a boondoggle.” Follow that with quotes from the analyses by the Peer Review group, the Legislative Analyst and others.

So Brown will kill the bullet train. He’ll probably do it in his May Revise to his budget. By then a strategy will be set among himself, the powerful government-worker unions and the tax-increase billionaires on what tax increase will be pushed before voters. The mercy killing will be accompanied by a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth, by the governor and others, but it will happen.

They’re not going to want any distractions.

The bullet train will be pushed off a cliff.

You read it first here on CalWatchDog.com

Jan. 10, 2012

Source URL: https://calwatchdog.com/2012/01/10/why-jerry-will-kill-high-speed-rail/

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