California Bad Dreaming

Michael Boskin reports:

Brown has committed California to a San Francisco-to-Los Angeles high-speed rail boondoggle. To get the cost projections down to $68 billion from a $100 billion estimate, some existing low-speed rail will be used, likely doubling the time it takes to travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco to 5-6 hours. California will most likely be unable to pay for the entire project, leaving little use for the first segment in the sparsely populated Central Valley. And, if the project somehow is completed, it will be a not-so-high-speed rail that will drain badly needed resources from other essential government services for many decades.

CommentsThese sorry episodes reveal some important lessons. One-party government weakens accountability and breeds hubris. The California legislature has been controlled by the Democratic Party for decades, and it takes its cue from its party’s most powerful special interests: public-employee unions, environmentalists, trial lawyers, and teachers’ unions.

CommentsThey have concocted an extremely progressive social experiment: with 12% of the US population, California has more than 30% of its welfare dependents. From the mid-1980’s to 2005, California's population grew by 10 million, while Medicaid recipients soared by seven million; tax filers paying income taxes rose by just 150,000; and the prison population swelled by 115,000.

Great moments of Blue America.