Greg Abbott: Bullet-train bimbo with a party of hypocrites

I argued directly with Brains, long ago, and indirectly with Kuff more recently, about the virtues vs. the vices of the Texas Central Railroad. This piece from about 15 months ago is the latest on that.

That's until now, with the help of a new Texas Monthly piece about Gov. Strangebbott pulling yet another of his Jesuitical flip-flops, this on the train. He first wrote a letter in support of it, to make sure the Japanese government still had a yen for it, then, allegably spurred by some of his staff, who wrote the Snooze to say he was agin it, he's .... agin it!

First of all, there's some bad framing in the middle of the piece, as I told Morgan O'Hanlon. It's not all wingnuts or gummint officials who oppose it. Per my link, Schutze has long looked at the Dallas station terminus as a focus of grift. From my part, having lived in Navasota, I'm smelled the hog crap of a station in Roans Prairie ever since the line was first announced. The claims that this was to try to serve both College Station and Huntsville are itself bullshit, as I said in a previous piece which also noted the whole fricking line was wrong for following I-45 instead of Texas 6. "Bullet" stops are at College Station and Waco where you hit 35 and that's that. Maybe on a non-express, you drop a stop at Hillsboro, and one at Katy. I discuss stop-gaps (no pun intended!) on a bullet train route, based on French trains, in this old post.

And, as I predicted there? Just like in California (there's Texas wingnuts being hoist by their own petard), the price is going up WAY over the original. Cost estimates have doubled. Oh, no, I'm sorry, they've TRIPLED. And, no, contra that piece, work won't start in the first half of 2021. It's not just that the Lege may monkey-wrench it further. They still don't have all their federal permits. And COVID will still be an issue on supply chain. And, will the Japanese government money remain firm in the face of all of the above?

In any case, no, it's not starting before fall 2021 at the earliest.

That said, back to the Monthly's piece? It IS "fun" to watch the wingnuts not in the gov's mansion blather about "Green New Deal." I think they forgot "Agenda 21" and "the bullet train will take over our golf courses."

And, back to that Snooze piece. "Incomplete information"? The train's been on the drawing board for almost a full decade now, right? Lying sacks of shit.

The only "incomplete information" Abbott had was the degree of vociferousness of opposition that could contribute to him being primaried in 2022. In August, I saw that as more unlikely than yes, offering 2-1 odds against. Now? Especially if Shelley Luther tops Drew Springer? I'd cut those odds to 3-2. Still 3-2 against, but narrowing.

That said, Abbott's staffers aren't the only liars here. TCR's foreign partners claiming the coronavirus was "the" cause of 28 layoffs in March? Maybe A cause, but THE cause? No.

Finally, there's Texas Central Railroad being hypocrites. 

Remember they originally said that this would all be private money? Guess that only applied to inside the US of A. Foreign gummint money spends just fine in their quicksilver fingers, apparently.