And in real news....

"ImmoralMinority" (araimondo) 07/24/2019 at 10:48 • Filed to: None

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This is what high speed rail looks like in southern Fresno County. A guy I know shot this from acrop duster. The government forcibly took people’s land, and they haven’t been paid yet. These are my friends and neighbors.

They are building a train slower than Amtrak that will run from  Merced to Bakersfield. You non-Californians may be asking, yourselves why it will link two cities that you have only vaguely heard of. Well, kids, the answer is that there is absolutely no reason at all to do this except to make friends and donors of California Democrats rich, and expand political corruption.

The San Joaquin Valley is the Appalachia of the west, and this money that is being burned for this damn train could actually help struggling, immigrant dominated communities - especially regional transportation projects. But they don’t care. SF and LA could give a shit if we wither away and die. (A D from a rich Bay Area community is pushing a bill that will prohibit cities from giving tax incentives attract jobs, which has been a key to Fresno’s escape from chronic double digits unemployment) They won’t help us, and they want to strip us of the tools we have used to help ourselves).

To my LA and SF friends, if you look inside yourself you know it’s true. We are seen as the hot, shitty center of California filled with a bunch of retrograde rednecks who deserve to be abandoned by California’s prosperity. We don’t do much here; we just feed you. Those Amazon jobs we got look pretty fucking good when the alternative is picking fucking tomatoes in the summer and citrus in the winter.

This is why I fucking hate the Democratic Party. I don’t agree with all that the Republicans are about, but these fucking Democrats need to be thwarted. Maybe if I lived in Alabama where the Rs are the ones who fucked everything up, I’d feel differently. But all the villiany and corruption here is from the Ds.

Rant over. Sorry. A client told me he doesn’t want me to do the meanest thing I have ever had the opportunity to do to another attorney, and I am bitter about it. But I work for them. They are better people than I am.

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > ImmoralMinority 07/24/2019 at 11:00

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I thought that general description applied to the stretch of California from, say, roughly Bakersfield to Barstow and down through Victorville to Yucca valley as the retrograde rednecks undeserving of prosperity, although I’ve never really been through your part of the state.

facw > ImmoralMinority 07/24/2019 at 11:01

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The train would ultimately be much faster than Amtrak . The problem is that the people who planned this route came up with the terrible idea of building the lowest value section first under the assumption that people would be annoyed enough at “wasting” all that money if they didn’t continue to build the sections that made it useful. This was clearly a not a good approach, because you spend a bunch of money now, but it would be decades before there was any significant benefit, and predictably it has backfired badly.

They needed to push to get the line functional in less than a decade, and if they couldn’t do that they shouldn’t have bothered.

benjrblant > ImmoralMinority 07/24/2019 at 11:02

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On paper, I really like the thought of high speed rail. It works so well in France, Germany, and Japan among other countries and it seems like the US would be an ideal application with its cities being so far apart.

In reality, I hate the ways that we’re forcing it through. It could be so much better.

E90M3 > ImmoralMinority 07/24/2019 at 11:03

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I had a phone interview with Halliburton back in January 2017, when I was unemployed. The job was to go frac in California. I would have taken the job knowing that I could wake up with a warm fuzzy feeling every morning that I was deeply pissing off a lot of that state. I didn’t get offered that job; w hen I eventually got a job offer with Halliburton, I turned it down.

Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > ImmoralMinority 07/24/2019 at 11:04

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I was wondering where the whole huge water tunnel went. That’s another huge waste of money and quite bad for the environment. 

WilliamsSW > ImmoralMinority 07/24/2019 at 11:04

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I think you’re a bit like me, in that you’re predisposed to opposing whoever has the power —- because invariably those in power (especially the entrenched) abuse it. As they are doing in your example.

Fight the power !

razorbeamteam > ImmoralMinority 07/24/2019 at 11:05

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You should see what the Democratic Party has done to Chicago and the state of Illinois. 

McMike > ImmoralMinority 07/24/2019 at 11:07

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This is why I fucking hate the Democratic Party. I don’t agree with all that the Republicans are about, but these fucking Democrats need to be thwarted

All D emocrats or just your D emocrats?

Textured Soy Protein > ImmoralMinority 07/24/2019 at 11:12

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I’m physically incapable of voting for someone with an R next to their name but I feel you. The problem is anywhere that is too heavily dominated by one party becomes overrun by that party’s bad instincts, because there’s no check on the party.

I live in Montgomery County, MD which is a very very blue county, in a very blue state, directly northwest of DC. It’s a rich area that’s seen a lot of economic development since the DC area as a whole has been blowing up for the past 15-20 years, but at the same time growth here lags way behind Arlington, Fairfax & Loudon counties across the river in Virginia.

A lot of this comes down to the fact that the entire state of Maryland is ridiculously over-regulated in every possible way. If there’s a way to make a rulebook, procedure or form more complicated than necessary, Maryland will find a way to do it, and add 5 more for good measure. Montgomery County adds its own stuff on top of it.

My wife is a massage therapist, which she recently got back into after 10 years as a substance abuse & mental health therapist. The process for getting her massage license took a good few months, with multiple tests in multiple locations, a 10 page application form, fingerprinting, background checks, CPR class , appeals, and almost $1000 spent by us. It was way more difficult for her to do this than her two counseling licenses she got when we lived in Wisconsin.

On top of that, Montgomery County very tightly regulates zoning approvals for building out commercial properties, and is too focused on building more and more residential and retail. What ends up happening is we get more and more people who live in Montgomery County, but work in VA or DC because there are more jobs in those places, but they want to live in MD for various (good, in my mind!) reasons.

I feel like either side of the aisle is sorely lacking in pragmatism, and it’s easy for a party that can do whatever it wants to not pay attention to doing things that actually make sense. But the other side is so abominable to me that I can’t change my voting habits. I’d rather my team run amok than the alternative.

Thomas Donohue > ImmoralMinority 07/24/2019 at 11:15

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I was told this would all be built underground.

user314 > ImmoralMinority 07/24/2019 at 11:15

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It both amazes and terrifies me at how shit America has gotten, at all levels from locals on up to the FedGov, at building and infrastructure.

There’s a new series on The Science Channel about how modern construction would handle different projects from history. This past Sunday they tackled the Brooklyn Bridge, and adding two new spans. For those that don’t know, the Brooklyn Bridge was built by John A Roebling for $15 million ($ 404 mil today) and construction took 14 years from start to finish, opening in 1883.

A modern version, the show determines, would require a much smaller workforce (and kill a lot fewer of them) , cost somewhere between 2 and 4 Billion dollars and take... 14 years start to finish.

Sigh...

WilliamsSW > razorbeamteam 07/24/2019 at 11:16

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The other party has had a hand in our statewide corruption problem too- though the debt overhang is mostly created by criminals  like Madigan.

punkgoose17 > ImmoralMinority 07/24/2019 at 11:20

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This pisses me off, and I feel even worse because I have no power to stop it.

Azrek > Textured Soy Protein 07/24/2019 at 11:22

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Ahh...you are right on Maryland. I about had a meltdown in a Beer store over basic math and volumes.
I walked into the growler fill station and had 4 growlers from different microbreweries from my beloved St. Pete, FL. The beer guy looked at me and said, “I can’t fill those. You didn’t buy them here and I am not sure if they are actually 32oz.”
Now granted, they are the SAME model as the ones his place sold. Same size, style and cap. I asked him to just fill up one of the growlers behind him and then pour it into my growler so math is ok.
He refused....it was against the law to fill Growlers that didn’t originate from the store or brewery you were trying to get beer from.
I quoted Howard County laws on how they have to recycle more and growlers were encouraged. Buying a growler from each place I wanted beer wasn’t fesable. 
Nope...
Later on, they finally changed the law. HOWEVER...they now slapped a SUPER FUCKING STICKY branded name of where I bought the beer, usually over the hand painted artwork on m growlers. I was pissed...
I am pretty sure Maryland was described as a layer of Hell in the Divine Comedy. 

BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. > ImmoralMinority 07/24/2019 at 11:23

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This is an example of a government big enough to give people everything they want, being big enough to take everything they have.

I loathe big-government mentality, both the governing and the governed, who think that government should be the entity that acts in every arena to solve every problem. Government isn’t the solution, government is more often than not the problem, which serves their re-election to solve the problems they create, as a self-sustaining, value and resource sucking vortex.

I am not fond of government regulated morality for the sake of some over others , although good morals make good conscience, which informs good lawmaking, and truly good conscience limits lawmaking to that minimum.

I am more and more a proponent of the elusive balance between proper law and order and fundamental national security, in balance with social libertarianism otherwise.

That makes me a Federalist. Not a proponent of federal government in it’s current form, but the concept under which federalism instituted a limited government meant to serve it’s constituents, not a national government meant to subjugate them. That institution defined and limited by the US Constitution makes me a constitutionalist.

That is Jefferson and Adams type federalism, limited government accountable to the governed . I imagine they are spinning in their graves so fast now that they could be connected to a power plant and be generating electricity.

Textured Soy Protein > Azrek 07/24/2019 at 11:30

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Here in MoCo, there are some breweries like that, but otherwise the county gave itself a monopoly on alcohol distribution. The only alcohol distributor in MoCo is MoCo, and they of course charge way more, struggle to keep up with bar & restaurant needs, and restrict the hell out of where you can buy alcohol.

There are 2 kinds of stores that sell alcohol: privately owned beer & wine stores, and county-owned liquor & wine stores, none of which have refrigerators. If you want a cold 6-pack of beer and a bottle of liquor you have to hit a beer & wine for the beer and then a county store for the liquor.

I grew up here but lived in Madison, WI for 18 years. There, you could buy alcohol everywhere. Gas stations, grocery stores, liquor stores, convenience stores, Costco, everywhere. Every grocery store had a liquor store there that even the plain old regular nothing fancy grocery stores had better liquor stores than the best beer & wine or county stores here.

The only silly restriction there was that within the city of Madison, alcohol sales outside of bars had to stop at 9 pm. But that law had absolutely nothing to do with safety or reducing drinking—it came from lobbying by the Tavern League of WI, who wanted more people to go to bars!

Sovande > Azrek 07/24/2019 at 11:32

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Maryland is the worst.

Sovande > Textured Soy Protein 07/24/2019 at 11:33

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Who cares about beer when you can walk into a dispensary and get legal weed?

ADabOfOppo; Gone Plaid (Instructables Can Be Confusable) > Textured Soy Protein 07/24/2019 at 11:34

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It’s almost as if corruption is the problem and not specifically a party affiliation.

Both ‘sides’ are guilty of some level of corruption. But in the current political landscape it is blatantly obvious one side is far, far worse than the other.

Does that mean we have to passively accept political misdeeds from either ‘party’? Absolutely not. I am forever infuriated by anyone who gets huffy about ‘Both parties are the same.’ then does nothing to try and correct them when they fuck up.

Taking monetary influence out of politics would go a long way toward correcting things. But until that can happen;  VOTE like you life depends on it - and most importantly- HOLD YOUR REPS ACCOUNTABLE. Don’t just vote then give up.

nermal > ImmoralMinority 07/24/2019 at 11:38

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I’m in favor of high speed rail..... as long as I don’t have to use it but everybody else does.

Also, I would like a small citrus orchard in my backyard like is common in CA. Maybe an  avocado tree as well for good measure. 

Textured Soy Protein > Sovande 07/24/2019 at 11:43

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There are tons of dispensaries here in Rockville . But you need to get a medical card to patronize them. It’s only slightly less convenient to order from a DC delivery service, take Connecticut Ave down to Chevy Chase during a non-rush hour time, and meet them on a ritzy residential side street. Not that I would know from experience, of course.

razorbeamteam > WilliamsSW 07/24/2019 at 11:45

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No doubt. And to be clear, I hate both parties and politics in general, but the one-party system has been horrible for this state.   

WilliamsSW > razorbeamteam 07/24/2019 at 11:51

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We are really like 2 different states, each with its own corrupt 1 party system.

It just so happens that Chicago and some of its surrounding suburbs (looking at you, Rosemont, Cicero, Di xmoor, Chicago Heights...) are corrupt D, most of the rest of the state is corrupt R. It all sucks.

We have had six governors charged with crimes.  3 from each party.  

Nothing > ImmoralMinority 07/24/2019 at 11:57

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Rs ruled the roost in CO until very recently. It’s why, just in my county, within 1/2 mile of densely populated neighborhoods, 126 fracking wells have been approved. If you add neighboring Weld county,  which my neighborhood backs up to, you can multiple that number by 10. And you can be damn sure that O&G and Rs forced as many as possible through before a lot of O&G regulations were put on the ballot last November. Most of these wells got approved due to forced pooling, it doesn’t take a majority, or even a minority, it takes 1 mineral rights owner to allow that to happen. Sometimes, it doesn’t require any consent.

I moved into this neighborhood three years ago. I’ve not got 84 wells under construction within 2 miles of my house.

Both parties suck. I can look up what politicians, even on my stupid city council, have had their pockets lined with O&G money and see how they voted on MOUs.

SPAMBot - Horse Doctor > ImmoralMinority 07/24/2019 at 12:05

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Just follow the money to see why any project was started. It typically goes back to whoever tried to start the project, especially in politics. I hate political parties full stop. They are like the bad unions. Use their immense power to help themselves all while telling everyone they are helping the supporters they claim to represent. I guess the Republicans are better at supporting some of their followers, as long as they are rich and ideally white. I can’t get behind them either, though. Their alignment with religion and anti social justice is ridiculous to me. I just want a freaking balanced budget, and maybe lets not discriminate against everyone who isn’t affluent/white/straight/jesus loving. Is that too much to ask?

In theory, I like the idea of a maglev connecting two major populations. But this entire thing is such a shit show. If they spent all this money on local transit, this would be hugely beneficial even in LA/Bay area. But that would mean transit being in the rich white people’s neighborhood and we can’t have that. Helping transportation for all the farm workers would be fucking huge too. But, the rich people and tech bros can’t see that struggle from the giant marble island in their giant square new construction home. There are signs all around Redondo against the expansion of metro deeper into the south bay. We can’t have the riff raff being able to jump on a train and easily be in your neighborhood. Why would anyone want public access to the downtown or industrial areas? They should just drive their Range Rover and park in the $30 flat fee structure like everyone else.

Rant over. I’m just upset about the place I consider home. The south bay is such a wonderful place that has been ruined by money. I know I’m not from their and I really do not know how it used to be, but between moving 7 years ago and now, shit has changed a lot.

RallyWrench > facw 07/24/2019 at 12:13

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They also just...didn’t come up with any plan for getting the line over/under the Tehachapis. It was promised, implied by the grand LA-SF route, but I read a story recently in which a project engineer flat out said they couldn’t do it.

Sovande > Textured Soy Protein 07/24/2019 at 12:25

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Get a medical card. I have a friend who has one and i t’s very convenient for everyone. I work in DC and it is very convenient.  I’d love to be able to have a card though.

facw > RallyWrench 07/24/2019 at 13:41

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Yeah, that’s a problem. There are certainly longer tunnels and higher viaducts though perhaps not in such a geographically active region (and I don’t know about the ground composition etc.) I suspect it could have been done, but no reason to suspect it would be easy or cheap, and it was a bad call just say “we’ll figure that out later”. It would certainly take a lot of shine off the route if you ended up having to go up hairpins or switchbacks at <30mph.

CompactLuxuryFan > ImmoralMinority 07/24/2019 at 14:29

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To my LA and SF friends, if you look inside yourself you know it’s true. We are seen as the hot, shitty center of California filled with a bunch of retrograde rednecks who deserve to be abandoned by California’s prosperity.

As far as I’ve experienced, the main people pushing that description are people who got out of there to come to the coast. Even though I see the whole thing as the exact same urban/rural divide everywhere in the US, p eople from the central valley don’t seem to have nearly the same fondness for where they came from as people from Redding or something.

RallyWrench > facw 07/24/2019 at 14:42

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There are definitely longer solutions elsewhere in the world , the Japanese in particular have mastered high speed rail in geologically active terrain, and how many tunnels are there under the Alps? The exception here is that this line would quite literally involve crossing the San Andreas Fault and its “tributaries” in a really complex area, through a fairly long series of obstacles . Not too far from Ridgecrest, where the recent big quakes were, in fact. Taking a train line a mile underground or over it across a famously active tectonic plate boundary is ruinously complicated, expensive and time consuming, or Amtrak would have done it decades ago for freight lines . A s you said, the other alternative is big, slow switchbacks like they already have on other lines over the Sierras and coast ranges, and which negate the purpose of spiffy 200mph trains . The HSR project sounded cool on paper, but what was promised is now obviously a complete pipe dream and has boned a lot of people in the hardest working part of the state.