California Voters: Sign Your Petitions To Stop The High Speed Rail

From the John & Ken web page at KFI 640AM in Los Angeles:

When voters approved the Safe, Reliable High-Speed Passenger Train Bond Act for the 21st Century in 2008, they were promised a statewide High-Speed Train project including Sacramento, the San Francisco Bay Area, the Central Valley, Los Angeles, the Inland Empire, Orange County, and San Diego at a cost of approximately $45 Billion.

According to the California High Speed Rail Authority in 2008, the estimated cost for Phase One of the project linking just San Francisco and Los Angles was $34 Billion. This phase eliminated Sacramento, Oakland, the Inland Empire, and San Diego. By early 2012, their estimated cost for this Phase One more than tripled and could reach $118 Billion.

Despite spending more than $500 Million, not one mile of track was built between 2008 and early 2012 and plans became dependent on billions of dollars of future federal grants or billions of dollars of debt or private investments that the taxpayers of California will be responsible for repaying.

California cannot afford to pay for a high speed train system that will cost more than $100 Billion at a time
when teachers and police are being laid off, prisoners are being released from prisons, and taxpayers are being asked to dig deeper into their own pockets to pay for basic services.

This measure shall be known as the “Stop the $100 Billion High Speed Train Act.”

Get your petitions to stop the High Speed Rail at TeaPac.net

Find out more about the ReVote High Speed Rail Initiative at ReVoteRail.com

Join John & Ken and Support the Revote High Speed Rail Initiative

Californians, please get out to events like this and support a revote on this crazy BrownDoggle.

John and Ken will be LIVE, On-Location at the Ayres Hotel in Anaheim this Wednesday, June 27th from 3-7PM. They will have petitions to pick up and sign to get the initiative on the ballot.

The Ayres Hotel in Anaheim is located at 2550 East Katella Avenue Anaheim, CA 92806. Phone: (714) 634-2106.

More details here.

CALIFORNIA’S BAD BET MAKES JP MORGAN’S LOOK MINOR

From KFI Radio in Los Angeles:

Congress ordered JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)’s chief executive officer, Jamie Dimon, to testify about $2 billion that his bank lost on an investment bet.

Worrisome as that gamble was — after all, the banking crisis was largely due to bad bets by banks — it is unfortunate that Congress has never called hearings on a far bigger bet, one that has had more catastrophic consequences for millions of taxpayers.

The one I’m referring to was made by California legislators on Sept. 10, 1999. They decided that investment gains would cover 100 percent of the cost of retroactive pension increases they granted that day to hundreds of thousands of state workers.

The politicians made the wrong bet — and the result has been a penalty to California’s budget that has averaged $2 billion a year ever since and that will cost the state billions more for decades to come.

Promising that “no increase over current employer contributions is needed for these benefit improvements,” and that the state pension fund would “remain fully funded,” the proposal, known as SB 400, claimed that enhanced pensions wouldn’t cost taxpayers “a dime” because of healthy investment returns. The proposal went on to assert that it “fully expects” the state’s pension costs to remain below $766 million a year for “at least the next decade.”