Commentary
Socialists and Communists love trains for the masses. They go where they are told, and Citizens do not have the freedom to change their mind and go somewhere else. Cars and Freeways allow too much freedom. The utopia of passenger trains in America was supposed to be the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) project to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles with over 800 miles of tracks. From 1981 to 2008 plans were made and a vote to proceed was approved by Californians with funding via a state bond plus Federal Funding. In 2015 the initial construction commenced.
Fortunately, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy and President Trump brought an end to this insanity and announced on July 16 that the Federal Railroad Administration was terminating and clawing back approximately $4 billion in unspent federal funding for California’s High-Speed Rail debacle.
Secretary Duffy’s announcement said, “After 16 years and roughly $15 billion spent, not one high speed track has been laid by the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA). The $135 billion projected total cost of the project could buy every San Francisco and LA resident nearly 200 roundtrip flights between the cities.
Secretary Duffy went on, “This is California’s fault. Governor Newsom and the complicit Democrats have enabled this waste for years. Federal dollars are not a blank check – they come with a promise to deliver results. After over a decade of failures, CHSRA’s mismanagement and incompetence has proven it cannot build its train to nowhere on time or on budget. It’s time for this boondoggle to die.” Governor Newsom recently appeared on the Shawn Ryan show and lied about all the progress on the CHSRA project.
Great Civilizations were not built by Environmental Impact Statements
What did California and the American people get for $15 billion? A useless stretch of rail track in the middle of the Central Valley. But what was really delivered was a jobs program of Environmental Impact Statements and Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion drivel for state employees, contractors, and environmental non-profit organizations. Nothing tangible or useful was created. This is what Blue, incompetent Government delivers. Ideology, virtue signaling and an illusion of utopia. Along with Brennan and Comey there needs to be criminal accountability for this fraud in California.
A clean environment is important, no one questions that. However, environmental impact statements should be the enabling mechanism to ensure that infrastructure projects are completed in a timely, efficient, and environmentally sound manner. An environmental impact statement serves no purpose without a project to deliver a new airport, bridge, or seaport. These projects can exist without an environmental impact statement. The environmental impact statement has become a cult to stall, block, and prevent projects. Activists learned this tradecraft in the 1970s in Washington State to block the new series of nuclear plants to provide increased energy capacity over and above the dams on the Columbia River. In one of the first cases of environmental lawfare, in the 1970s, “The Washington Environmental Council filed suit to require City Light to produce an environmental impact statement on the nuclear plants which would have delayed the process five years.” From then until May 28, 2025, a 50 year, “Silent Spring” brought building, construction, and manufacturing to a slow grind in America. Wherever possible, the work was sent overseas, it was just too difficult to do it in the U.S. On May 28, 2025, a Liberation Day occurred as the Supreme Court struck down the cult of overreaching environmental impact statements with a common sense reining in of the National Environmental Policy Act, a foundational law for environmental impact statements.
America became great through successfully delivering on big projects
America became great because America could build things. The Panama Canal, the greatest civil engineering project ever, was completed by the United States in record time. The American steel and manufacturing industries converted to war production in World Wars One and Two and out produced the rest of the world combined. The Space Program from the 1950s to 1960s, created a vast new infrastructure of space research, development, production, and launch facilities. The American Interstate Highway system was a massive step forward after the Second World War. The American nuclear laboratories of the Cold War created the deterrence of a safe, reliable, and trustworthy nuclear enterprise that stared down the Soviets. And then suddenly, things started moving in slow motion in the 1970s
With the power of the environmental impact statement, Blue Government learned how to create and fund a perpetual constituency of non-profits. Blue Government bureaucracy at the Federal, State, and local level colluded with the non-profits to create a stifling oversight regime that ensured nothing could be created and built in a timely, efficient, and affordable manner. Re-capitalizing American factories was just too difficult and expensive, companies found it far more profitable to move the jobs overseas. Freeway construction greatly slowed after the 1970s, leaving regions such as Washington D.C. with an undersized freeway system because of the mass transit illusion pushed by the environmental lobbyists and their environmental impact statements. The lies of “Green Energy”, “15 Minute Cities”, recycling, and transgenderism became the buzz words to pacify the population and condition them to accept a lower standard of living with fewer options.
MAGA means re-connecting with our Building DNA and Building Culture
The decaying Blue Cities are poster children of what Blue Government and their culture of environmental impact statements deliver: decay, despair, and drug dependency. However, the Supreme Court victory on May 28, 2025, promises to unleash American energy, production, and innovation.
Rachel Carson was right about a “Silent Spring”. Environmental impact statements brought silence to American productive activity. Americans are now free to re-learn and re-discover the building DNA that made America great.
All viewpoints are personal and do not reflect the viewpoints of any organization.
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