The Bullet Trains to nowhere

I don't know if anyone who reads this blog has heard about the Presidents grand plan for a bullet trains here in the good ole US of A, so if you haven't let me bring you up to speed. The President wants to put am $8 billion (yes, billion) dollar down payment to begin funding a project that will span the majority of the continental US states. Now keep in mind, that is just the down payment. The actual estimated is roughly around $35 billion per state (larger states costing more and smaller costing less, obviously).

The majority of the costs to build the train will come from the federal government with the states that the trains will go through chipping in. Unfortunately, that means that people who live in these states are going to effectively be taxed twice on these trains. The states are also responsible for the planning, developing and building of the the project, so once again, the tax payers in the states that this is passing through, get shafted for the costs. Also, most of the maintenance costs are going to be heaped on the states as well. No matter how you look at it, everyone is going to have to pay in order to get this monstrosity built and keep it running.

Some governors, have been more then happy to hop on the bandwagon and agree to take federal dollars (with all their little strings attached) to get started on this "visionary" project. I'm not going to name any of these states because you can find out easily which ones they are. Needless to say the states in question are all bankrupt and should be focusing on how to pull themselves out of the hole they dug instead of agreeing to dig more.

Other governors have refused to accept the federal funds, stating that they will not be a part of the project because it is such waste of money and places further burden on the tax payers in their state. These governors realize how damaging this will be to the economy, not just for their state, but the US economy as a whole.

Due to the willingness to not cooperate (a wise decision in my opinion), the rails from some of these states will connect to... nothing. This I must admit, makes me laugh.

Mr. Obama, please, stop wasting our money on stuff like this.