What Happened, America?

by Tom Kando

There was a time (roughly when I emigrated to this great country) when America was THE optimistic, future-oriented, self-confident, can-do society par excellence. After World War Two, when the world needed to be saved and rebuilt, no problem. America did it, with the Marshall Plan. When Africa and other Third World countries needed to be lifted out of sickness and poverty, no problem, America’s Peace Corps came to the rescue. When the country needed an interstate superhighway system, no problem, the Eisenhower administration gave the order and 45 years later the country had 50 thousand miles of turnpikes, built at a cost of half a trillion dollars. Landing men on the moon? No problem. President Kennedy decided that it was worth doing and ten years later it was done. And now?

California’s new governor Gavin Newsom recently gave his State of the State address. By and large, Newsom is doing and saying the right things. To wit:

● In defiance of Donald Trump, he has pledged to make California and many of its cities sanctuaries to all immigrants.

● He has removed several hundred National Guard members from the U.S.-Mexico border.

● He plans to downsize the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta twin-tunnels project from 2 tunnels to just one. This immense project aims to make it easier to move water from Northern California to Southern California. Governor Brown, Newsom’s predecessor, insisted on 2 tunnels. I welcome Newsom’s proposal to downsize.

● The new governor is proposing measures to combat homelessness and the housing crisis, and to control the exploding cost of rent.

● His budget allocates generous increases for child care and early education.

● He is re-introducing the individual mandate into California’s version of Obamacare. Repeal of the individual mandate by the Republican administration at the national level has meant that many young and healthy Americans no longer buy health insurance, thereby causing premiums for all others to rise. By levying once again a tax penalty upon those who forego health insurance - along with a generous premium assistance - the number of uninsured Californians will decline.

● Newsom will also forge forward vigorously on the environmental front, putting California totally at odds with the environmentally regressive federal administration.

There is, however, one issue on which I find the new governor so wrong as to be comical :The high-speed train project:

The original plan calls for the construction of a bullet train system that will connect California’s two major megalopolises - the San Francisco Bay area/ Sacramento region in the North and the San Diego-Los Angeles conurbation in the South. Together, these two urban areas have 33 million people (23 million in the Southern megalopolis and 10 million in the North).

The governor now argues that completing the project would be prohibitively expensive. To his credit, he is not proposing to kill it altogether. That would make it into a white elephant - a half-completed monstrosity that swallowed billions of dollars but turned out to be utterly useless, a mere desecration of the environment. One example of something like this is Sacramento’s nuclear reactor at Rancho Seco. It cost a couple of billion to build it and half a billion to decommission it when the people of Sacramento voted to shut it down after 14 years of defective operation. It now sits there, defacing the landscape. What a waste!

Newsom is aware of the sunk cost dilemma. So his proposal is to (1) abandon the attempt to link the state’s two giant conurbations, but to (2) complete the Merced-to-Bakersfield leg!

Have you been in Merced or Bakersfield? These are two minor cities in California’s Central Valley, about 160 miles apart. Populations: 80,000 and 380,000. This truncated high-speed railroad would go through places such as Chowchilla (18,000 people), Tulare (60,000) and Fresno (490,000). What kind of population and passenger base are we talking about here?

Is the governor joking? Was his proposal inspired by an excessive intake of marijuana? Building California’s bullet train where 9% of Californians live, rather than 90%?

I got an even better idea: Build the bullet train parallel to Highway 395, behind the Sierra Nevada, connecting Bishop and Lone Pine. That’s where the remaining 1% of the state lives.

I have written repeatedly about California’s bullet train over the years. I know that I am among a small minority of Californians who still support the project. People like Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee don’t miss a chance to rag on it. Even most of my university colleagues oppose it. I am perplexed. From my vantage point, this negativity is driven by ignorance.

My wife and I have ridden bullet trains in Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and elsewhere. They are marvelous, efficient and cost-effective. Not to mention the enormous environmental benefits.

Americans are a very insular people. They take their vast land to be synonymous with the world. Few of them experience life and conditions overseas.

As I suggested in the preface to this piece, Americans used to be the people who knew that they could achieve anything that they set their minds to.

But today? Universal health insurance? Nope, too expensive. Can’t do it. High-speed train? Nope. Can’t afford it. Countries like Poland can afford it, but this country cannot?

Have we become the opposite of what we were? Timid? Afraid of the future? What happened ? leave comment here

© Tom Kando 2019;All Rights Reserved