California High Speed Rail Funding and Jobs

Wow Watt ... Trying to harsh my mellow?

Where you stated:

In the past, the primary push for progressives on transportation spending has been to secure money for things like mass transit, bike paths, pedestrian trails, etc. — spending that supposedly helps to wean America of our addiction to cars. Unfortunately, progressives have done next to nothing to curtail wasteful sprawl-driving spending on new pork highway projects and bridges to nowhere.

Well ... the past is the the past and the future for the so-called left leaning wild eyed liberals (Yes liberals - incorrectly referred to as progressives elsewhere) here in our own State of California have gone on record for a change to curtail wasteful sprawl-driving spending on new pork highway projects and bridges to nowhere.

I take it that you didn't attend the 2010 Democratic State Convention at the LA Covention Center right up the 110 Harbor Freeway from you? It was quite an eclectic crowd...

So, I direct you to my post over at Once Upon a Paradigm :

And in that post I list the complete plank, but the specific area which you noted is covered as follows:

From: 2010 California Democratic Party Platform (PDF)

Adopted at the State Convention, April 18, 2010
Los Angeles Convention Center

• Provide support for alternatives to driving, from bicycle education to high-speed rail;

• Work for equitable and environmentally sound road and parking use;

• Create greenbelts around our urban areas, thereby reducing traffic gridlock, wildfires and erosion, and promoting efficient land use;

• Promote regional tax revenue sharing in order to decrease local governments’ dependence upon sales tax revenue and minimize sprawl;

• Increase the construction of affordable housing to alleviate and prevent homelessness, and develop supportive housing with continuum of care services to help homeless people re-establish themselves as self-sufficient contributors to society;

• Protect and promote affordable housing to alleviate and prevent homelessness;

• Protect existing homeowners’ property rights by limiting eminent domain to reasonable public uses, and oppose the practice of abusing eminent domain to take homes without the consent of the owner and convey property from one private person to another or to any corporation merely to increase its tax revenue;

• Encourage incentives to reclaim and redevelop old abandoned buildings and brown-fields;

• Provide a homestead floor with absolute minimum protection for homeowners when they are forced into bankruptcy due to unanticipated health care costs or predatory lending schemes; and

• Oppose utility monopoly referendums that change state community choice laws allowing local governments to contract freely for electric power.

Thanks for dropping in Watt . . .

~OGD~

.