Cali’s dream train goes solar, the press’ trans delusions and other commentary
Boondoggle beat: Cali’s Dream Train Goes Solar
“Fifteen years, and countless setbacks later, not a single mile of track has been laid” for California’s bullet train, scoffs Jack Elbaum at the Washington Examiner, and its “estimated costs have risen to $128 billion.”
There’s “no money left” to build it — yet the “California High-Speed Rail Authority now plans for the entire project to be powered by solar energy.” “Because . . . why not?”
“The initial plan was passed in 2008,” it’s now 2023, and there is “nothing to show” for it.
“Adding another, even more, complicated element” is “a recipe for even more failure.” “This is exactly how scams work: huge promises, no results, and then more huge promises to cover up” failures.
Foreign desk: Congress Must Block Iran Deal
The text of a secret US-Iran nuke agreement is reportedly near “ready,” warns Eric Mandel at The Hill, and some fear there could soon be a “deal without a deal” — i.e., with “no signing, no ceremony, and no congressional oversight.”
Iran would promise to limit its uranium enrichment to 90% and free three US hostages; we’d give $20 billion in sanctions relief.
Yet it would be a “self-inflicted American tragedy” to strike a deal that “accepts Iranian ballistic missile development” and terror funding and doesn’t reverse Iran’s nuke program (even as Tehran aids Russia and aligns with China) and may spark a war with Israel.
Congress should “get ahead” of this and make clear that Team Biden’s bid to “end-run” lawmakers, as President Barack Obama did, “robs Congress of its constitutional responsibility.”
Media watch: The Press’ Trans Delusions
Polling shows a clear public shift against the idea “that athletes should be allowed to compete against those who share their gender identity”; in the last two years even “Democrats have moved a staggering 15 points away from the position advocated by most party officials” — yet, fumes Isaac Schorr at Mediaite, “efforts to enforce the majority opinion are characterized not as common sense measures . . . but extreme and even hateful.”
Media relentlessly cast the majority view “as ignorant and cruel” — ignoring even “plain-to-see anthropological evidence.”
“Despite being small in number, transgender athletes have risen to the top in women’s swimming, weightlifting, and track and field.”
Americans “rightly” take the media’s “unfair framing” as “an admission of their weakness.”
Ukraine War: A Key Opportunity for the West
The Ukraine war poses some key “strategic questions” for the West, argues Hal Brands at Bloomberg.
For starters: “Would the democratic world use the war wisely, to get ready for the even greater dangers ahead?”
The United States gave “Ukraine the support it needed to save itself and devastate [Vladimir] Putin’s army,” and “countries across Europe pledged to significantly hike military spending.” But urgency “has faded, ironically, as Ukraine has held its own.”
“During the Cold War, a hot war in Korea” moved the West to “forge the military shield” that would check the Soviets.”
“Ukraine’s tragedy was the free world’s warning” — “a chance” for democracies “to get ahead of impending challenges” from both Russia and China. “They may not get another.”
Libertarian: Rail Safety Gaslighting
“After many years of working in the policy world, I have concluded that politics is at most 10 percent about making the world better and safer,” grumbles Reason’s Veronique De Rugy.
The rest is “45 percent theater and 45 percent catering to special interest groups.”
Or sometimes worse: The Rail Safety Act, sponsored by Ohio Sens. J.D. Vance and Sherrod Brown — supposedly a response to the freight-train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio — has “little connection to the derailment, or to any other derailments for that matter.”
Instead, it “appears to push pet projects” and has “an awful lot in it for unions to like.”
Rather than getting policies that improve rail safety, “the American public is being railroaded by 50 percent pandering and 50 percent favoritism to unions.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
