Well, folks, it's time for our regular check in on the high speed
rail system, the California High Speed Rail System. It's going to be one
of the United states first two hundred and twenty mile per hour high speed rail
system. The High Speed Rail Authority has a Twitter account and they're celebrating the
tweet they released on March twenty second. We are celebrating a milestone with our
high speed rail project and you're not gonna be able to guess what it is.
It's gonna knock your all knock y'all socks off. Is it that we
finally have a train that has successfully transported people from Merced to Bakersfield and you
know, lickety split record time. No, No, actually, it's not
that. Oh is it that we've completed the stretch of rail, that we've
completed the stretch of rail and we're ready for testing. No, it's not
that either. What is it we've created thirteen thousand construction jobs. Wait,
but is there any operational track? No, no, there is no operational
track. Not a single person has been transported yet, not one inch of
the high speed rail line is actually operational, and actually, in fact,
the thirteen thousand jobs that the High Speed Rail is trumpeting this week that they've
created The problem is that it hasn't actually created thirteen thousand jobs. Basically,
what that means is like thirteen thousand different like one year contractors. So this
is one of this is the problem. Basically, each time a worker is
sent to a job site, whether that's for one day or hundreds of days,
it counts as odd job for the purpose of you know, what's on
the banner that the rail authority, you know, flags, So it's just
individual workers assigned there for a stretch of time for a contract. It doesn't
mean that there are thirteen thousand guys, you know, hammering away at any
one time. There might be a thousand people working on it. Now,
let's just talk this through. The high Speed Rail has been such an unmitigated
time and time again embarrassment, disaster, overspending on consultant sinkhole with very very
questionable utility, and the utility seems to be getting the possible expected utility out
of the thing, seems to be getting less and less and less and less
and less over time, such that basically what we've been reduced to is heralding
it as a jobs program. And there's a fundamental problem with this. Look,
we could, I guess, if we wanted in America have zero percent
unemployment, if the Soviet Union had that. How do you do it?
Well, you get every person who qualifies as a n able bodied person who
should is or should be in the workforce, and you can assign them from
the state a state run job. And the state controls all the assets and
means of production, and they assign everyone a job. I mean, if
we wanted, California could end unemployment tomorrow by just ordering people coercively to a
new state public works project, the dig a hole and fill a hole project,
where all we do is have people dig ditches and refill them. And
then we could herald it as what an incredible jobs program we've created. We've
put you know, here's all these people looking for work, and we've given
them salaries to you know, we'll give them all forty thousand dollars per year
and benefits to dig holes and refill them. But you sort of start to
kind of miss like, what is the point of a public works project.
The point of a public works project shouldn't just be creating jobs. And one
of the things some commentators have pointed out is that basically having your industrial policy
just be an elaborate jobs program. For one thing, it makes no sense
when unemployment is really low. And actually, you know, there are many
things about the economy now that are not great. Unemployment is actually relatively low.
Unemployment is under four percent. Okay, now that's some of that is
a little skewed by a lot of different factors. Like a lot of people
have sort of dropped out of looking for employment who are otherwise able bodied,
so they're not part of the statistic of people looking for employment. There are
some people employed but sort of underemployed who maybe they're getting part time work with
or gigwork, but they'd rather have full time work, et cetera. Nonetheless,
when unemployment is really low, having tons of state spending on industrial policy
in order just to create jobs doesn't really make a lot of sense, and
especially when inflation is already high, so you're just pumping more government money into
people's pockets artificially. That's not going to help out inflation. So there's all
kinds of and this is the thing, like, yes, okay, we
could just artificially have the state create the jobs program where everyone's digging holes and
filling them in. But all you're doing there, you're not doing anything productive
with the money. It's not doing anything to improve state infrastructure. All you're
really doing is just taking money from wealthier taxpayers and redistributing it to the workers
who are working on the project. Or you know, all the other costs
that are associated in this case, all the other costs that are associated with
high speed rail. And frankly, the thirteen thousand jobs I think is probably
a pittance of the total cost of this high speed rail project. I mean,
for the amount that has been spent on it. I mean, if
you're gonna do a if you're going to do industrial policy as a massive jobs
program, get more jobs. I mean, again, this thirteen thousand jobs
figure is massively overinflated to begin with, As I was saying, there's probably
no more than a thousand people working on this thing at any one given point.
Thirteen thousand is just the number of individual workers that have worked on the
high speed rail for some given period of times, sent from the union hall
to go there. But that's the absurd. You know, the problems we're
facing with high speed rail. There are so many problems not just that it
has taken so long. It is not just that it is so massively over
budget. I think there's also it's not just the problem that the only thing
they have to appeal to is the number of workers who've worked on it.
I think there's also a massive problem looming. And there were studies released I
think last year showing like twenty five percent drop in the numbers of people who
are likely to actually use the high speed rail. Is that we're going to
invest all this money into the high speed rail and I don't know how productive
it's going to be. I don't know how useful it's actually going to be.
I don't know how used it is actually going to be if you had
look, I'm not saying that private industry should run everything, but you know,
if you have a totally privately funded, you know, orts arena.
In order for the guy who funded it, built it, owns it for
that person to recoup his or her investment, that thing needs to be kept
busy. Okay, you know the Save Mart Center for example. Now I
don't know all the prison of state. I don't actually know who the ownership
who owns the Save Mart Center. I don't know, but they try to
keep that thing busy and filled. Okay, and Fresno State basketball has not
been the money maker that maybe they wanted when they first when you know,
Jerry Tarkanian was rocking in the in celen Arena. But you know, they've
kept that thing busy and active. They're concert after concert after concert after concert.
Have to concert that's happening at the Save Art Center all the time.
So you have a certain investment, there's a recouping of that investment. Well,
there seems to be this sort of blase attitude on the part of the
state rail authority about we're gonna invest tons and tons and tons of money into
high speed rail, but how many people are likely really really to use this
thing, especially for this initial stage where all we're doing is Baker's Field to
merced According to Gavin Newsom, so Gavin Newsom came into office and was basically
looked like he was gonna wave the white flag on high speed rail, and
then the labor unions got to him and Newsom kind of changed his tune to
basically saying, well, high speed rail, what we're gonna do is we're
gonna finish Baker's Field to mersaid, and that can demonstrate the viability of the
system long term. Now, I don't know how Baker's field to Mersed demonstrates
the viability of a system that was supposed to go from San Francisco to La
or was it supposed to go, say Ircisco to San Diego. I mean,
that would make more sense than San Francisco to La. Nonetheless, I
don't know how this is going to demonstrate the viability of it going through the
San Joaquin Valley. It's the flattest, least populous stretch of the high speed
rail system that's been proposed. It's the flattest engineering wise, I'd have to
imagine it's the simplest. You're not going through mountains, you're not going over
the San Andreas fault. And as far as eminent domain seizures and getting the
property, I mean, it's got to be a heck of a lot easier
cutting off a corner of farmer McGregor's orchard than it is trying to get through
you know, primo real estate in southern California or the Bay Area. So
the costs, the cost for getting the land, the costs of litigation around
getting the land in the eminent domain seizures. It's got to be less in
the sane and I don't think it's been easy in the San Joaquin Valley,
but it's gotta be easier than what it's gonna be in the Bay Area or
Los Angeles. But it's also this, how much really is a merced to
Bakersfield high speed rail? How much is that really gonna get used? The
indications that even the high speed rail authority has been getting is that the numbers
are dropping for people who are likely to use it. It's getting less and
less and less and less. Because I mean, just realistically, what am
I gonna do drive to a trains have someone drop me off at a train
station in Fresno to get on a train to take it to Bakersfield for a
train ride that'll probably take an hour. I gotta take twenty minutes to get
to downtown Fresno. I gotta get on a train that's gonna make a couple
of stops presumably along the way, so it'll it'll still take me maybe forty
five minutes an hour whatever it's gonna take me to get to Bakersfield. It's
not like we're just doing you know, two hundred twenty miles, just an
absolute bullet the whole way there, two hundred twenty miles per hour all the
way there. Then I'm in Bakersfield, and what do I do? Then?
I gotta wait for another uber, presumably to take me to wherever I
want to go. How useful is that as opposed to just get in my
car right now and I'll be in Bakersfield in two hours. How much time
are you really saving doing that? And probably it's gonna be a lot more
expensive then. I mean, I know gas costs keep going up, up,
up up up, but you know, the high speed rail ticket's not
gonna be cheap. And that's kind of the disaster of this is that,
you know, we're said to Bakersfield's not going to demonstrate the viability of anything.
If nobody's riding on the thing. How's that going to work? When
we return? I want to talk about the thing that really has killed the
future prospects of the high speed rail. I think zoom that's next on the
John Girardi Show. I think the real thing that's going to kill the high
speed rail, even if they do successfully complete the Merced to Bakersfield stretch of
it, The real thing that's gonna kill high speed rail is zoom and work
from home arrangements. So let me explain the appeal of high speed rail.
Was this idea that you could take the high speed rail. You could live
in Maderra and you can take that high speed rail and zip up to Silicon
Valley, look at his split, work at your high tech job. And
the mobility that that would offer was it was pledged to us was going to
radically fundamentally transform the economy of the San Joaquin Valley. You can just bloop
boop boop b bi bapu boo bop back and forth between your nice, big
old mcmanson in Maderra, Ranchos and then zip right up to San Francisco for
your high tech, high powered job. And that's why I always believed and
you could see this in the public opinion polling, like who supported the high
speed rail the most, it was people in the Bay Area supported the most.
People in Los Angeles were a bit more blase about it, and people
in the San Joaquin Valley were the most blase about it. But people in
the Bay Area supported the most. Why high speed rail was being viewed as
a release valve a way for people in the Bay Area to live farther and
farther away from their jobs, because that's just what's been happening. People in
the Bay Area, in order to find a for housing, have basically had
to move farther and farther and farther away south, giving them longer and longer
and longer commutes into Silicon Valley into San Francisco for their jobs. They're moving
farther and farther away because that's the only way they can find a place that's
decently big enough to house a family, that's possibly affordable. And I think
the dream, the real dream of the high speed rail system, it was
much more, you know, I think it was being sold to people as
well. What an amazing way to connect the whole state with high speed bullet
trains taking you from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Look at his split.
No, I think the real thing that was actually motivating it was the unsustainably
high cost of housing in the Bay Area and people want wanted to move farther
and farther away, and so this was the way that you could again,
you could live in a mansion in Maderra or you know, Clovis or whatever.
But you could still work at your job in Silicon Valley and still bop
up there almost every day. Well, here's the problem. Zoom COVID happened.
Zoom happened, and basically a whole bunch of people in Silicon Valley realized,
do we actually need to be in the office to do all this stuff?
If all we're doing is sitting at a computer? Anyway, do I
really need to come into the office? And there are a lot of job
now, I think there are a lot of jobs where, yes, you
there is something better to being in the office. I think people are more
productive in the office. I think they're more they get more done in the
office. Like, I think there's a lot about that that is better.
But frankly, there are a lot of jobs where maybe there's not that big
of a difference, honestly, And the presence of Zoom allows people basically to
say, Hey, I'm going to live in Madera, I'm going to work
from home. Like why should I work from home in Silicon Valley just because
that happens to be the general region where my office is. I'm going to
live in Madera or Fryant or you know, Heck, I'll live in Clovis.
Heck, I'll live in Nevada, void California state taxes. I will
zoom into work every day. I'll do my job that's based in Silicon Valley,
and that's it. Maybe I'll come to the office, you know,
once or twice a month. But the existence of a high speed rail line
to allow you to commute day after your day, you know, it's not
really necessary. This is not going to be an arrangement, you know.
I think the idea was, like people who live and this has been the
case for years, for years and years and years in New York, people
would live on Long Island and take a train into the city for their work,
and they would commute that way day after day after day. And I
think that was the thought behind the thought I've been hanging around my New York
relatives lately. That was the thought with the high speed rail system was,
yeah, people would repeat that kind of a model that people who live in
Westchester County or Long Island, who take they get on the train, they
go into the city, they do their job, they take the train back,
they go home. That that was that's what it was going to be
for the Bay Area people would live in Madera, they'd hop on the high
speed rail train, which could go faster and travel longer distances, go into
the city, do their job, commute back and use fewer cars, have
fewer emissions, save the environment. You don't have you know, thousands and
thousands and thousands of people commuting long distances to get through their jobs in Silicon
Valley. Well, that's not gonna happen. Zoom is just maybe just gonna
replace that altogether. Between Zoom, between the advent of electric zero emissions or
relatively zero emissions vehicles anyway, what is the benefit necessarily the high speed rail?
I mean, if California is gonna insist by twenty thirty five, which
maybe by twenty thirty five, some of the high speed rail will actually be
done. If California's gonna insist on, all new vehicles sold in California are
gonna be zero emissions electric vehicles. If we're gonna insist on that anyway,
that also undercuts the whole reasoning for the high speed rail. So I think
Zoom, Microsoft teams all these you know, all these different ways of remote
work, remote communicating, plus electric vehicles as they get more and more purchase
within the car market. And look, I've been on the show ranting that
one hundred percent new vehicle purchases being electric is completely insane for a long time.
Nonetheless, electric vehicles are beginning to take over a larger and larger and
larger share of the market. Eventually, the rationale for high speed rail is
just going to go away. It's already gone away quite significantly. So there
you go. High speed rail authority is just you know, they're celebrating fourteen
thousand new jobs created and that's or allegedly fourteen thousand jobs, not quite,
and that's pretty much all that they have to hold on to. When we
return, since it's Holy Week, I want to tackle a couple of dumb
modern recent Christian controversies, including all the debate about so called Christian nationalism and
what Jesus would actually do with political power. That's next on the John Girardi
Show. One of the big bugaboos on the left is the concept of Christian
nationalism, and I admit I think this has gotten a lot more discussion in
sort of Protestant in sort of liberal Protestant world than it has necessarily in the
Catholic side of things, and I'm obviously i'm John Girardi show. I'm kind
of on the Catholic side of the street over here, but I am interested
in what's going on on the evangelical and non denominational or maybe very denominational Protestant
side of the street. And Christian nationalism seems to be the big bugaboo on
the Protestant left, the Protestant left to the soft Protestant right, and a
lot of this has arisen really around the person of Donald Trump, the idea
being that Christians who like Trump are too eager and desirous for political power,
and that this desire for political power has corrupted them in lots of troubling ways,
you know, to the point of excusing all of Donald Trump's various piccadillos
and beyond just piccadillos, like genuine moral failings for the sake of political power.
And January sixth is sort of like the high point of Christian nationalism in
their view, that various kinds of evangelical Christians are willing to excuse an event
as destructive to our republic as January sixth for this end, By the way,
January sixth is not a good thing. I admit, I'm not saying
January sixth was great. I think the extent to which it is being framed
as the greatest disaster in our country's history since the Civil War, the greatest
single attack on American democracy since the Civil War, I think is wildly overstated.
Nonetheless, this is what it's been. This is what Christian nationalism is
framed as, is using your basically taking your Christianity and using it as a
pretext for the seizing of political power. That that is wrong, that is
harmful. Now, there's a lot of this that I find dumb and convenient
because I think Christians, yes, I don't, well a couple things.
One, I don't think Christians should be blind or ignorant or excuse, say,
Donald Trump's various moral foibles. I don't. I don't think we should
be like, Yeah, Donald Trump acted so wonderfully on January sixth, trying
to convince Mike Pence not to certify the election results when clearly he had no
power not to. You know, I've I've repeatedly stated I think that was
that was wrong on Donald Trump's part. I think it was a Kakamamy argument.
He was pursuing that I think was incorrect. I think everyone who violated
the law on January sixth should be punished in a fashion that is commensurate with
what they did. Now, commensurate with what they did was for most of
the people who've been prosecuted for January six I don't think should have been very
much. I don't know that they should have been prosecuted. Most of them
committed crimes like basically various species of trespass. Now, the guys who beat
up cops, yeah, they should. They should be arrested. Yeah,
those guys should be prosecuted, not me, maw, you know, wandering
onto into Oh George, look they're letting us go into the Capitol. Yeah,
she shouldn't be prosecuted because she happened to walk onto a piece of federal
property. Now, one of the things that has prompted me to think about
this was a tweet by this guy, Raymond Chang, who's the president of
the Asian American Christian Collaborative, And I noticed it's a lot of these ideas
are coming from either soft rite or outright liberal evangelicals with very comfortable jobs.
And it's Holy Week this past Sunday, we had Palm Sunday, and in
the Catholic and many other liturgical Christian traditions, on Palm Sunday, we commemorate
Christ's sort of triumphal entry into the city of Jerusalem, where he was heralded
as a king. And he wrote in on a donkey, and people laid
the palm fronds on the ground in front of him and said Hosanna to the
son of David. So this guy, Raymond Chang says, perhaps the greatest
apologetic against Christian nationalism. This concept that liberal Protestants created just a few years
ago, is in what we celebrate on Palm Sunday. Instead of riding in
on a majestic horse, Jesus wrote in on a donkey, declaring that his
kingdom is not of this world. He could have easily taken Jerusalem and overthrown
the Roman Empire, but he didn't. If he wanted to make Jerusalem great
again, there you go the trump polemic. He would have gone in as
a warrior king or a conquering hero. Instead, he went in on a
donkey, a sign of humility. The way of Christ is not one that
takes power by force. It is one that comes in humble service. It's
not about force or coercion, but of modeling a type of truth filled grace
is does not and this is the key point. It does not seek to
establish kingdoms, but call kingdom to serve the marginalized and vulnerable and oppressed.
And what seems to be happening is it's almost this quietism, this idea that
like, no, we Christians should just you know, we shouldn't be so
engaged like this in the political process. You know, we should just you
know, let things be that we shouldn't be so engaged in the political Basically,
don't be so engaged in political processes. Don't vote for Donald Trump,
I think, is the ultimate thing that they mean. It seems like they're
fine for Christians when they're voting for George W. Bush because he was kind
of a decent guy, but voting for Donald and there were certain norms that
George W. Bush respected that Trump does not. Let's ignore, for George
W. Bush the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians as a result of
the fact that he launched a strategically disastrous war of choice. Let's ignore,
say, for Barack Obama, who is almost in this viewpoint seen as preferable
to Donald Trump because he respects certain kinds of norms and was a personally decent
guy and does it didn't, you know, try to over quote overthrow democracy.
Let's ignore for Barack Obama that he continued that war that George W.
Bush launched, did not stop. It did not stop the war, and
againstan and on top of it, that Barack Obama supported the legal killing of
hundreds of thousands of innocent unborn children every single year in the United States of
America through abortion. I think it's this framing of things as if Donald Trump
is this singularly bad guy. And I'm not saying Donald Trump's a good guy.
I think he has his problems and they are pretty serious. George W.
Bush had his problems. Barack Obama had really serious problems. Joe Biden
has really really serious problems. But what are Christians supposed to do be disengaged
from the process completely, not do their best with the time that's been given
us, with the means that have been given us to try to say,
what what can we do to bring about the most good possible the legal killing
of Look, the Gutmacher Institute released it this year that a million abortions happen
in twenty twenty three. One zero zero zero zero zero zero A million abortions
in one year. It's staggering. It's flooring to think about what legal abortion
in America is doing. Yeah, I would vote for Donald Trump if there
was a chance that I could even save fifty thousand of them. And guess
what, I'm willing a little bit to overlook the fact that he's on wife
three point zero, as if Joe Biden is so much a better, more
decent man, this guy who's trading in on his name with his son,
with every corrupt government from you know, Ukraine to from Ukraine to Russia to
Roman you know, this idea that there's such a greater level of personal integrity
in the Obamas and the Bushes and the Clintons and the Bidens than there is
necessarily in the person of Donald Trump. And again I'm I'm not protecting Donald
Trump. He's a sleeve in various ways. But I'd rather have that and
some restriction on abortion than none. And it's also this historic point that I
think sometimes, I think sometimes Protestants who embrace the sola scriptura tradition, the
idea that the only source of authority is found in scripture, and that there's
nothing that sacred tradition or even Christian history kind of teach us about Christian history.
I think there's a pitfall for them. You know what. Actually,
I want to give more breath to this when we return. I want to
talk about this idea that, well, Jesus didn't come to establish any earthly
kingdoms. Well, there was maybe a decent role for the establishment of Christianity,
of having Christian influence in government from a pretty early time. And if
you don't think that, then you clearly don't know much about the Roman Empire.
I'm going to explain that when we return. This is the John Girardi
Show on Power Talk. The idea that Christian nationalism is super bad. Christian
nationalism this concept that seems to have been invented at some point around twenty twenty
one because Donald Trump is bad. In Janie six, was bad, and
therefore Christians who try to pursue some kind of political power are therefore bad and
terrible. But Christians who keep voting for Democrats who support legal abortion, oh
no, there's nothing wrong with that. That's not necessarily what's wrong. Christians
who vote for George W. Bush, who engages in a bunch of unnecessary
wars that kill hundreds of thousands of civilians. Oh no, no, no,
that's fine, No, no, no no. What's really problematic is
voting for Donald Trump. Because January sixth, and again, I read this
tweet. This gentleman named Raymond Chang as the president of the Asian American Christian
Collaboration, And a lot of this rhetoric about Christian nationalism is coming from soft
right and left wing Protestant leaders. And he talks about how this past Sunday
was Palm Sunday. Perhaps the greatest apologetic against Christian nationalism is in what we
celebrate on Palm Sunday. Instead of riding in on a majestic horse, Jesus
wrote in on a donkey, declaring that his kingdom is not of this world.
He could have eaten which he said his kingdom was not of this world
on Good Friday. He was accepting all these plaudits, says the son of
David. Anyway, Yes, I agree, his kingdom is not of this
world. But we'll get to this. He could have easily taken Jerusalem and
overthrown the Roman Empire, but he didn't. If he wanted to make Jerusalem
great again, he would have gone in as a warrior king or a conquering
hero. Instead, he went in on a donkey, a sign of humility.
The way of Christ is not one that takes power by force. It
is one that comes in humble service. It is not about force or coercion,
but of modeling a type of truth filled grace. Okay, I don't
think he kind of understands the Roman Empire very well if he's talking like this,
And this is a I think a thing. If I may be so
bold as to offer a Catholic criticism of Protestantism, and I say this out
of love and respect for the various Protestant traditions, I think that a sola
scriptura, the idea that the Bible alone is the rule of faith, can
sometimes lead in some Protestants to having a kind of lack of appreciation for Christian
history. And the idea is that, well, if it's not in the
Bible, it has nothing useful to say to us. And I realize not
every Protestant is like that. I might be painting with too broad of a
brush. But here's the facts Christianity did become the state religion of Rome as
soon as they possibly could. Christians tried to enforce various aspects of Christian conception,
Christian and natural law conceptions of justice on the Roman Empire as soon as
constant teen converted, as soon as we went from the Edict of Milan in
three fifteen to various aspects of Christian justice being imposed on the broader populace.
Why because the Roman Empire was a wildly, massively, murderously, blood drenched,
unjust society. The Roman Empire saw the systematic sexual abuse of hundreds of
thousands of slaves by their slave owners, the systematic killing of thousands and hundreds
of thousands of newborns who were just not wanted. If you were a Roman
free a Roman freeman, and you had a child with a slave and you
decided you didn't want it, you just left the baby to die. If
you had a child with your wife and you didn't want it, you could
just leave the baby to die, or leave the baby at a crossroads where
the baby would be picked up by somebody and raised as their household slave.
Archaeologists are able to determine where Roman brothels were because they find the skeletons of
children there, of babies. That's the kind of place the Roman Empire was.
It was this blood drenched, horrifically unjust place. They would kill people
in the coliseum just for fun, and Christianity stopped most of that. Christians
getting political power and pursuing political power is actually a pretty good deal. So
as much as you want to paint Christian nationalism as this horrible thing, understand
what the alternative often is and is right now in America. That'll do it
for John Girardi Show. See you next time on Power Talk.