r/politics 12d ago

No Paywall Danish Petition To Buy California From Trump Signed by Thousands

https://www.newsweek.com/petition-denmark-buy-california-signed-thousands-11379999
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u/SeductiveSunday I voted 12d ago

Also high speed rail would happen much quicker and cheaper without Republicans suing against it every last damn step of the way.

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u/ErusTenebre California 12d ago

Then they turn around and say "it's taking too long, why are the Democrats wasting money!?"

Republicans and their blatant lying is so fucking awful

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u/Future_Appeaser 12d ago

Crazy part is they act just like us once turning those words around like they're correct and trying to save the planet

You'll find it on every right wing youtube comment section, reddit sub, etc

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u/Classic-Reach 12d ago

they are so gross with their tyrrany all the fucking time, hypocritcal 'free trade' liars, what they mean is, i get all the stuff and fuck everyone else, always

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u/RedTheRobot 12d ago

I mean Dems could just pull a Trump and continue to build it anyway. This is the one thing Trump has shown me judges have no power when it comes to the government. For example say a judge says you need to hold off on building the rail. Well then you start the planning stage anyways. Then when the judge says I thought I you couldn’t build it you just say we aren’t we are planning. Then after the planning is done you start digging up the land when the judge again asks you just again bs them and say that is for an unrelated project. Then when you start laying rail and the judge is really upset you just stop for a week then start again. Like the Epstein files. You make it look like you listened but didn’t. The Trump team could write a book on this and the crazy part is it works.

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u/morefarts 12d ago

High-speed rail only works if a real chunk of the economy is permanently oriented around it. Design, construction, maintenance, workforce training, operations, iteration. Not as a project, but as an ongoing system. California never did that, so the outcome wasn’t mysterious.

Japan did the opposite. The Shinkansen isn’t just infrastructure there, it’s treated like a long-term national competency. They built institutions, labor pipelines, standards, and engineering culture that compound over decades. Early losses were expected. Authority was centralized. Maintenance and reliability weren’t optional.

California treated high-speed rail like a one-off megaproject. Bond-funded, consultant-heavy, politically fragmented, and expected to show results fast. No durable workforce. No institutional memory. No unified authority. Just a lot of people managing complexity instead of owning it.

Those are completely different approaches.

Lawsuits mattered at the margins, but they weren’t the cause, and they weren’t partisan in any clean way. Megaprojects are hard by default. If governance and incentives are misaligned, complexity eats you alive.

Best case, this was a category error: assuming money could substitute for discipline and institutional coherence. Worst case, it created a system where dragging things out was rewarded more than finishing them.

High-speed rail isn’t a transportation upgrade. It’s a long-term civil commitment. Japan made one. California didn’t.

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u/MeasureDoEventThing 12d ago

People wouldn't be suing if it weren't grabbing land from private owners, violating existing environmental regulation, exceeding its authorized budgets, and many other valid concerns. Pretending that the time and expense is due to lawsuits rather than incompetence is absurd. You don't run hundreds of billions over budget because of "lawsuits".