[dragonwriter]

> The CA high speed train started as a ten billion dollar promise.

No, it didn’t.

System cost estimate referenced in the ballot booklet for Prop 1A was $45 billion. $9.95 billion was the Prop 1A bond issue, which was explicitly never intended to represent full funding.

[Gunax]

I am reading prop1A, and it seems to propose that 9.95 billion is enough for a 800-mile railway.

http://vigarchive.sos.ca.gov/2008/general/argu-rebut/argu-re...

[dragonwriter]

> I am reading prop1A, and it seems to propose that 9.95 billion is enough for a 800-mile railway.

What you linked to is the “argument and rebuttal”, which has…very little information, one way or another (though even there, both the argument for and the argument against clearly indicate that the bond issue is not the whole cost, the former noting “Matching private and federal funding to be identified BEFORE state bond funds are spent”, the latter indicating a potential $90 billion system cost.) The “analysis” has, as one might expect, the actual analysis, including this:

“The authority estimated in 2006 that the total cost to develop and construct the entire high-speed train system would be about $45 billion. While the authority plans to fund the construction of the proposed system with a combination of federal, private, local, and state monies, no funding has yet been provided.”

[robomartin]

Exactly. It's amazing how uninformed people are. And then they go and vote.

People are lied to by politicians with agendas, they vote out of ignorance and then we all end-up paying for it. No state in the US is immune to this, but CA seems particularly good at it. This is why moving out of CA (personal and business) is a high priority for me. It just isn't as easy as one would wish it to be. When the time is right, we are gone and I'll take all the jobs we created with us.

[ZeroGravitas]

> Matching private and federal funding to be identified BEFORE state bond funds are spent

I think that line suggests it's at least 3x the Bond value.

[robomartin]

It was sold as a ten billion dollar project. That what politicians drove into people's minds with their ads.

Find me one mainstream media political add, just one, that discloses anything other than ten billion and I'll retract my statement.

Voters don't read ballots in detail at all. They vote based and what got pounded into their heads during the election cycle. Politicians know this well.