I fired a client I've had for 20 yrs this week ( a 1%er)

[Tsiyu]

76. Good for you

I am so confused, though.

Your scum employer wants high speed rail so badly, he doesn't care who gets hurt. He needs to talk to the Koch Brothers, as they are the ones who DON'T want it and are blocking it everywhere:
http://www.attn.com/stories/295/monopoly-men-how-two-billionaires-are-destroying-high-speed-rail-america

"It turns out that the high speed rail debate is anything but dry, but if you spend ten minutes- or even a few hours- googling the topic, you’re bound to think otherwise. I began with California, given the sheer longevity of the project, and there’s plenty of discussion about the progress and setbacks of CHSR. The total cost of the project is estimated at $68 billion, and funding has unsurprisingly been the primary source of partisan contention. In 2008, voters approved Proposition 1A, which allocated $9.95 billion in funding and requires federal matching funds. Over the next few years, plans continued to progress; you can find a more detailed and accurate summary than the one I could give here.

In July 2012, Governor Jerry Brown signed an initial funding bill, which included the issuance of $2.2 billion in state bonds, unlocking $3.6 billion in federal funds for construction. But since then, U.S. Representative Jeff Denham of Modesto has worked to unravel funding plans in Washington. Denham introduced an amendment to the 2015 Transportation, Housing & Urban Development (THUD) funding bill, approved by House Republicans over the summer, which specifically prohibits any funding from being used for high speed rail in California. After blocking federal money for the bullet train, Denham then characterized high speed rail as a pipe dream to the media, citing the funding gap but neglecting to mention his own role in creating the shortfall. Still, that’s politics; I was beginning to get bored. Some people want to build the train, some people say the train is too expensive. This all sounded like a big boondoggle and a bigger headache.

But as I continued to research CHSR funding, attempting to make sense of all the numbers and propositions and amendments, a claim on a site called California High Speed Rail Blog caught my eye. In a post titled, “Don’t Let the Reason Foundation Railroad California,” from 2009, the author states, “One of the most persistent HSR deniers and opponents of the California HSR project has been the Reason Foundation. Funded in part by oil and auto companies, they were behind the notorious Cox-Vranich report released last year in an effort to defeat Prop 1A.” The Reason Foundation- I’d heard the name mentioned in connection with a few experts in a few articles, but what was it? How was Reason influencing the debate surrounding high speed rail? And did it have some sort of vested interest in doing so?

reason foundation

Like most think tanks, the Reason Foundation describes itself in the sort of generic terms it’s difficult to find fault with. The name alone suggests a decidedly non-biased group of stoic scholars, quietly pursuing truth from behind half-moon glasses and distinguished facial hair. The Reasonable Foundation of People Who Always Consider Information Carefully. The Foundation of Being Extremely Logical Like Basically Vulcans on Earth. The Seriously What Even is Partisanship We’re Just Doing Research Over Here Foundation. The page marked “About Reason” on their site gives a similar impression, stating, “Reason Foundation's nonpartisan public policy research promotes choice, competition, and a dynamic market economy as the foundation for human dignity and progress. Reason produces rigorous, peer reviewed research and directly engages the policy process, seeking strategies that emphasize cooperation, flexibility, local knowledge, transparency, accountability and results.” Choice? Competition? Rigorous? Research? Those all sound okay. And so it should come as absolutely no surprise that, one click away, on a page titled “Trustees & Officers”, I came across an all-too-familiar name."


Your rich dude needs to get with these other rich dudes and they need to get their shit together. It appears our overlords are at odds with each other...

And, fuck all of them, by the way