One dreamy afternoon last summer, the well-intentioned state Sen. Curren Price of Culver City convened an assemblage on the USC campus that was a study in esoteria.
He wanted to make sure a proportionate number of California minorities would be hired, as contractors and workers, whenever his fellow dreamers begin to organize the second-worst idea in California history, the high-speed bullet train.
A bullet train is something two liberal drunks in a Skid Row bar think up at closing time.
This is an amorphous fairy tale that only a Democrat could coddle.
The Mother Goose high- speed bullet train intersects with the most crucial Democrat party criteria for manipulating our society:
Just Say Yes
• Conceived and birthed by left-wing schemers, the initial cost four years ago was pegged at a modest (?) $36 billion. It was scheduled to be completed by the time first-grade boys and girls graduated high school.
• It would be funded by — well, partially by Washington but mostly by California taxpayers. No problem. The sticky-fingered thieves and liars of Sacramento already confiscate more money from our paychecks and savings than anywhere else in America.
• The California model has failed everywhere it has been tried. Picky, picky.
• Three years after voters approved initial funding of $9 billion (and you wonder why voter ID is necessary?), the cost nearly has tripled, from$36 billion to $98 billion. Completion date for the fairy tale has been pushed 14 years farther into the future, 2034.
• As recently as last week, a Sacramento-appointed committee of experts, the haughty sounding California High-Speed Rail Peer Review Group, said the crackpot plan is not financially feasible. They said the state should not authorize $2.7 billion in bonds to build the opening section, from popular Fresno to popular Bakersfield. Further, it seems the German genius imported to preside over the native geniuses has, um, neglected to say where he or anyone else will find the $30 billion needed to continue after the initial tracks are laid. Piffle. Merely an ephemeral hiccup.
• As the Angry Left’s favorite West Coast mouthpiece, the Los Angeles Titanic, noted, the only people opposed to this fruitcake notion are all officials who have studied the plans and the general public. Otherwise, it is wildly popular.
Praytell, where are we going?
• Following lofty and meticulous left-wing logic, the Titanic, our intellectual daddy, brilliantly concluded in Saturday morning’s edition — better sit down — that, yes, dear friends, the bullet train makes sense and should be industriously pursued.
Democrats remind me of an abusive parent. They hate to be asked why they approve of certain actions, preferring “just because.”
Here was the Titanic’s answer to the why question.
While acknowledging that every normal American business and transportation maven over the age of 18 believes it is wrongheaded, the newspaper said “feh”:
“The trouble with this kind of expert analysis, though, is that it seldom takes politics into account…No source of future funding, such as a higher gasoline tax, has been proposed because the economy is rotten and voters would be unlikely to approve it right now.”
Oh, that’s all?
Just because we can’t afford it, there is uniform opposition and the concept has failed everywhere attempted, says the Angry Left, why let such trivialities stymie a dandy idea?
Wrong Direction
Now that we understand the concept better, let us return to Sen. Price’s afternoon with several likeminded legislators and a roster of high-speed rail executives, who swore on their lattes they would hire great numbers of people who don’t look like them.
Sen. Price’s assembly was a discouraging moment for those of us who have been injured by quotas. We realize they are an odious concept, and I suspect that Sen. Price does, too. This is no way to engineer morality.
Inevitably and understandably, quotas spawn societal resentment. They feed the odious notion of class warfare that Swish Obama delights in promoting.
Quotas are a historic weapon of the Democrat party, Swishy’s favorite re-election trail gimmick.
Divide and conquer, baby.
Set the peasants off against each other.
