Obama Backs High-Speed Boondoggle

John Seiler:

Presidents live in a cocoon. Inside the cocoon are a few advisers and Secret Service agents. The cocoon gets smaller and tighter the longer a president is in office.

It happened to President Bush, who was totally clueless at the end of his second term when the financial crisis struck in September 2008.

It also has struck President Obama. His administation just came out for continued federal backing of the California High-Speed Rail Authority. Aside from the president and Gov. Jerry Brown and the companies and workers would get checks from its construction, everbody else recognizes this as a boondoggle.

Less than nine months before the election, the president and his staff don’t see that the boondoggle will be used against them by the Republican nominee. Obama easily will win California, so he gains nothing by wasting the taxpayers’ money here on the project.

But it will be held up as the epitome of waste by the Obama administration and those nutty Californians. What next? Will they want subsidies to attach propellers to their surf boards?

It’s true that an aide to Mitt Romney, Ron Kaufman, was a lobbyist for the boondoggle. But if Romney is the nominee, that won’t stop attacks on Obama for actually providing the funding.

All those notorious Super Pacs also will not hesitate to use the train scam against Obama.

Maybe California will bring down Obama by backing him.

Feb. 10, 2012