MaxRedline

Eminent Domain And Bullet Trains

The California "Bullet Train" has become such a colossal waste of time, money, and other resources that an increasing number of residents are calling for the plug to be pulled on the whole thing.

Eight years ago, the California High-Speed Rail Authority estimated it would cost $332 million to acquire properties for the route spanning the Central Valley’s orchards, vineyards, dairies and cities. The process, however, has proven far more legally tedious, politically painful and expensive than initially thought. The 1,900 property takes in the Central Valley are now budgeted at $1.5 billion. Such complications are part of the reason the project is 13 years behind schedule and at $44 billion over budget.

The land acquisition cases alone are moving so slowly that the judge hearing the cases is now referring to it as a lifetime job.

Kings County is the epicenter of the disputes, where the drama plays out in Ross’ courtroom for just two days each month.

The underlying stories are lengthy and convoluted. Even worse when one considers that the trains will carry no cargo (if they're ever built). And each passenger fare is anticipated to run around $1000, leading to the question of who would want to drop that kind of cash when they can fly from LA to SF nonstop for far less?

 

Responsible Land Management

California has a choice: encourage proper land management, or go all Green&Sustainable™. They've been doing the latter for years, and somehow, it doesn't look as though their "vehicle emissions standards" are all that important in the great scheme of things.

 

Tax Dollars At Work

The city of San Francisco spent $310,000 to register noncitizen voters, beginning last July. At present, 49 noncitizens have been registered to vote in the November 6 elections - at a cost of $6,326 each.

They really know how to get bang for the buck, down there. One thing that may have put a bit of a damper on the old enthusiasm index is that it belatedly occurred to the politicians that ICE can subpoena voter rolls - which of course include names and addresses.

Hmm. That could expose illegal aliens. Oopsie. One of their "supervisors" wanted to spend another half-million dollars to warn illegals that registering could bring ICE to their doorsteps, but in a rare burst of sanity, the idea was nixed.

 

Yes, This Looks Like A Great Location

If built, the new light rail route will run down the middle of Barbur Boulevard for miles.

Oh, they'll build it, all right; they always do. Even when one of their proposals is voted down, they come up with a way to cram another multi-billion-dollar set of rail lines down our throats. This one, they claim, will "only" cost $3 billion (until, of course, it costs a lot more).

 

As Expected, IRS Puts The Brakes On Democrat Subterfuge

By The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has laid down rules aimed at preventing residents of Oregon and other states from avoiding a new cap on widely popular state and local tax deductions.

In Oregon, the Legislature set aside $14 million a year in Oregon Opportunity Grant tax credits available for purchase.

Taxpayers who purchased those tax credits could, in theory, deduct the amount of their purchase from their federal taxes as if it were a charitable deduction. They could then take a credit on their state taxes to offset their opportunity grant purchase.

Measures designed to work around the $10,000 cap have been adopted in Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Oregon, and introduced or explored publicly by officials in California, Illinois, Maryland, Nebraska, Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington and the District of Columbia.

Basically, the Democrat-controlled states have been setting up fake "charities" so that they can still take your money, but you still get a write-off on your taxes for the "contribution". It's not a whole lot different than the "contribution" you make when an armed robber points a gun at you and demands your wallet. I believe that it's also illegal under federal law.

Oregon won't let you deduct more than $5000 in Fed Taxes, so you can already pay taxes on taxes here. But the state really needs more money; they want to build a 12-mile light rail line from downtown Portland to a shopping mall just north of the suburban city of Tualatin. That'll only cost, according to the latest liars' budget, about $3 billion, assuming they can use eminent domain to bulldoze a few hundred homes and businesses. And they need another half-billion dollars to provide for the drug addicts and bums homeless. These are critical endeavors. Critical to making Dermocrat politicians feel good about themselves, that is.

 

 

Green&Sustainable™ Oregon

There were so many reasons to say no: the eight years of consistent failure, the loan defaults, the shuttered factory, the management turnover.

But when SoloPower Systems called last summer, Oregon answered. The state that already had given the Portland company $13.5 million in tax credits, $10 million in direct financial assistance and millions of dollars' worth of tax breaks ponied up another $641,835 in rent.

Thirteen months later, SoloPower appears to be dead. The state doesn't expect to recoup its loans, and the company owes Multnomah County $1.8 million in property taxes.

In a final twist, the county could seize the company's equipment to cover the unpaid taxes, but it's steeped in a toxic stew of cadmium and hydrochloric acid.

Yep, nothing like that Green&Sustainable™ stuff. Oregon Democrat politicians want to be seen as world leaders, and they don't care how much of your money they have to blow through.

And hey, it'll only cost around 3/4 of a million tax dollars to clean up the mess.

 

As Expected

In Portland, Tri-Met now figures to spend over $3 billion to run their next light rail line exactly where I predicted: right down the middle of Barbur Blvd./Hwy 99W.

A rail line running in each direction surely won't impede other vehicle traffic, after all.

This was what they were going to do from the very start; they just had to hold a bunch of fake meetings to "gather input" before they ram this sucker through. It's what they do. They need federal money, since they're essentially bankrupt, and the only way they can get it is to keep building expensive "transit" projects that around 3% of the population uses.

$3 billion+ for twelve miles of rail that virtually nobody will use. Only to government employees does that make any sense. Where does it go? Why, to the Bridgeport Village shopping center. Because everybody goes there to buy furniture, drag it onto a light rail car, and....

 

UBI

A Canadian province has ditched a universal basic income welfare program after the government found it was “not sustainable,” making it the latest around the globe to scrap the plan.

Ontario: "We tried it; it sucks". Finland came to the same conclusion. But uber-wealthy cities like Stockton, California are sure they can make it work:

Stockton, Calif. Is set to become the first in the U.S. to take on the experiment, with a plan to pay 100 residents $500 a month without any conditions. The program’s purpose is to eventually ensure that no one in Stockton, with a population of 300,000, lives in poverty. The receivers of the cash will be able to spend the money on anything they want without any rules or regulations.

And that other paragon of fiscal responsibility, Chicago, is considering rolling out a similar program - which is great, because ammo prices are rising.

 

 

Ah, Justice

A federal judge on Thursday granted a request by former Portland parking manager Ellis K. McCoy to cut short his three-year term of supervised release.

McCoy, sentenced in May 2015, served about one and half years of a two-year prison sentence and then one year and three months of supervision. He was sentenced to three years of supervision out of custody. He now works in retail for Home Depot.

The guy's 67 and lives in a rental. He accepted bribes, including money, travel and entertainment worth almost $200,000, in exchange for steering multimillion-dollar city contracts to the two parking meter businesses over 10 years between 2002 and 2011. Quite the come-down. He is, of course, related to the formerly prominent Portland racist, Gladys McCoy, whose primary contribution in her stint in local politics involved getting the then-named Washington Park Zoo to change the name of their new "Africa Bush" exhibits because the term was offensive to black women such as herself.

McCoy said he's found it difficult to find work because of his felony record and his age. Since April 21, 2017, he's been working as a retail associate in Home Depot's garden department.

Evidently, he wasn't big on saving for retirement.

 

"Progressive" Left Coast

The anarchy and disorder dominating progressive cities across the West Coast recently hit a new low in Seattle. King County officials are looking to roll out a “safe injection van,” a legal venue at which addicts could shoot up illegal drugs unhindered and “safely.” The first of its kind in the United States, the van would manage to undermine further the rule of law while also doing little to help addicts. Seattle’s urban decay goes deeper, though, with skyrocketing rates of homelessness, an explosion in opioid usage and deaths, and spikes in violent crime.

It's the same story in Portland, minus the needle van. But stores have been closing downtown because would-be customers and tourists don't feel safe as they try to navigate their way through a seemingly endless gauntlet of aggressive panhandlers and various other bums. And the owners have grown tired of bums defecating in the entrances to their establishments, urinating all over the place, and shooting up drugs on the streets and in the parks.

Fed-up small-business owners took their concerns to Portland’s Democratic mayor, Ted Wheeler, who offered owners training on how to secure their stores—and then promptly blamed Department of Housing Secretary Ben Carson for not doing enough to support affordable housing.

Why should we provide bums with more incentives to stick around? We already have the "Bud Clark Commons" apartments, where bums are free to drink and do drugs - and on average, EMTs respond to an overdose a week, so there's plenty of turnover there.

Don't feed the bears - or the bums.