California Gov. Gavin “Slick” Newsom just effectively conceded defeat regarding his once-grandiose High-Speed Rail [HSR] plans. He recently withdrew the lawsuit he’d filed after President Trump cut off federal funding for the boondoggle earlier this year. 

Almost inconceivably, the cost of the state’s HSR plan, originally estimated at $33 billion, had grown to $128 billion.

The other problem was that virtually no track has been laid in the 17 years since the project’s inception. The $14 billion already spent accomplished nothing. There was neither track nor train, not even in the useless section of land going from nowhere to nowhere that the project had been scaled down to.

Only government could produce these results.

This is not exactly the Transcontinental Railroad. Rather it is proof that progressives, in one of history’s most bittersweet ironies, are no longer capable of building things.

Yet the erstwhile Golden State’s politicians are still hungry for money to feed the now-preposterous project.

Imagine that.

According to History.com, the cost of building the Transcontinental Railroad, completed in 1869, was approximately $60 million, which is only about $1.2 billion in today's money. Prior to the railroad's completion, travel across the continental United States cost nearly $1,000.

 After the rail line was finished and working, the cost dropped to around 150 bucks. That was an amazing return on investment, not a colossal boondoggle like California's High-Speed Rail.

Meanwhile, California legislators have also been busy attempting to make it a requirement for all tortillas consumed in the state to contain an additive that more than a fourth of the state’s population likely cannot process, according to some reports.

The Land of Milk and Honey will now mandate that all tortillas are imbued with folic acid, supposedly to help prevent birth defects, because, based on the number of birth defects seen, Latina mothers do not get enough of it in their diets. Unfortunately, folks with a certain common gene mutation cannot properly process folic acid (which may include some of the same Latina mothers), and ergo, it becomes toxic in their bloodstream.

According to a post on PJMedia, this means that the majority of Californians have between a 36% and 47% chance of experiencing adverse reactions from the additive.

As Ronald Reagan once noted, the nine scariest words in the English language are: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

Targeting Hispanics with an additive in tortillas?! What’s next for progressives, targeting Gen Zers with an “additive” in avocado toast? (Actually, I might be for that one if it were a substance that made them stop saying the eff word, “like,” and “feeling any kind of way.”

This won't end well.

Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License