I’m glad that the idiotic project is dead, but it should have died for sensible reasons, instead of being strangled by California’s (and the federal government’s) own red tape:
Our legal systems are increasingly so cumbersome, so slow and so expensive that they are a serious drag on productivity and growth. Just as teachers unions oppose reforming public schools that cost too much and do too little, professors and administrators fight to preserve a dysfunctional university system, and a multitude of vested interests drive up costs in the health system, the “legal system lobby” is more interested in the financial health and social power of its members than in the public good.
The whole system, both in California and in DC, needs an overhaul.
While you probably are correct, I’m not seeing proper disposal of the corpse to keep it from shambling along for a few more decades.
Isn’t “shambling” the whole point. To be “for” this eco-friendly thing without having to “get ‘er done”?
Rand, don’t you see a kind of karmic principle working here?
First of all, this law-suit happiness — was that Ralph Nader’s thing , empowering the common man against the big bad corporate interests (and government, think of that Robert Moses guy paving over much of New York)? Not-in-my-back-yard was always something people wanted to protect their property interests, but Nader gave it moral legitimacy and legal muscle?
You would think than an electric-powered (i.e., powered by unicorn “biofuel” in a state where electric power is a kind of iffy proposition) high-speed train is something that Ralph Nader and his followers would want.
Yep, big government public works building meets big government regulation ism with accompanying law suits. It’s the real reason we can’t build things like the Hoover Dam any more. While the gods of irony are certainly smiling on this one, me thinks the progressives involved will miss the lesson here.
… but it should have died for sensible reasons, instead of being strangled by California’s (and the federal government’s) own red tape …
That’s a sensible reason! Red tape is what California’s politicians and bureaucrats wanted and inflicted on the state, and now they have to live with it. Sweet, sweet karma …