High speed rail in Texas? #HSR before California?

Jeff Turretine says that the Pointy Abandoned Object State could zip past the Leaden State (California, y'all) on high speed rail. A Texas consortium is organized to back HSR to connect the Texas Triangle.

I've long said that Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio/Austin are perfectly situated for HSR. There's cities of big enough size to justify it, cities that are connected to each other for business reasons (or politics, with Austin), and just the right distance apart that HSR can easily compete with planes, especially with airport parking and boarding times, etc., on travel time.

The Texas group is also pitching this as a totally private issue, no "gummint" involved.

Flip side? Beyond the eminent domain Perry mentions (he'll have an update tonight or tomorrow) as part of his take, along with the conservative politics of the no "gummint," will be related issues. Among them, I'm sure, will be attempts to railroad through (I see what I did there) all the environmental parts of the permitting process. We've already seen that if it's oil vs. lizards, or water vs. cranes, we know who wins, damn the paperwork and damn the feds who are part of that "gummint."

Anyway, since the biggest push right now is coming from H-town, go back to Perry's website and look for updates. Or click this link; it's a fairly detailed update from him, linked to one from another Houston blogger.

California politicos DID spend beyond inflation

Yes, Prop. 13, and the two-thirds vote to pass a budget, are both California pains in the butt, but, adjusted for inflation, the recent budget deal just cuts per-person spending to where it was 11 years ago.

And, while much of the spending was Democratic-driven, the California GOP has enough blame to accept on the issue.

Ten percent of California mortgages in default

Wow. And, if the problem is spreading to commercial real estate as well, as the story says, recovery is far away from the Leaden State. With unemployment so high there, homeowners have no money to refinance, and there’s no new buyers on the market, so plenty of defaults.

State budgets by referendum? Uhh, no thanks

On paper, Chris Elmendorf and Ethan Leib have a great idea – let citizens vote on a budget — in this case, California’s — by referendum amongst a citizens’ caucus.

In reality, it sounds stupid and unworkable.

First, who keeps lobbyist from lobbying the citizen budgeteers? Second, how versed will these citizens be in seeing through “smoke and mirrors” budgeting? Third, given the selfishness of many Americans, what if these citizens just don’t care about passing on big deficits? (The authors say, after all, they would be randomly selected.)

Oh, speaking of that, do you select registered voters only? Then, already, it’s not so random.

In short, this sounds like the same naïve idealism that led California a century ago to be the leader in referendum, initiative, etc. Hiram Johnson, et al, unfortunately, didn’t have enough foresight to know the monster they were creating.

Elmendorf and Leib should know better; if they don’t, they ought to have their tenure at Berkeley and UC-Davis revoked.