{"id":14403,"date":"2012-06-22T13:01:49","date_gmt":"2012-06-22T17:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=14403"},"modified":"2012-06-22T13:01:49","modified_gmt":"2012-06-22T17:01:49","slug":"another-stimulus-project-bites-the-dust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=14403","title":{"rendered":"Another Stimulus Project Bites The Dust"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonexaminer.com\/california-high-speed-rail-is-dead\/article\/2500302#.T-N8Uo9pCts.twitter\">Washington Examiner<\/a>\u00a0reported yesterday that the partially <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Stimulus (physiology)\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Stimulus_%28physiology%29\" rel=\"wikipedia\" target=\"_blank\">stimulus<\/a>-funded high speed rail project in <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"California\" href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?ll=37.0,-120.0&amp;spn=10.0,10.0&amp;q=37.0,-120.0 (California)&amp;t=h\" rel=\"geolocation\" target=\"_blank\">California<\/a> is essentially dead. The project fell victim to a combination of environmental lawsuits and federal deadlines for breaking ground on stimulus projects.<\/p>\n<p>The article reports:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Barack Obama\" href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/\" rel=\"homepage\" target=\"_blank\">President Obama<\/a>\u2019s stimulus allocated $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, including, eventually, up to $3.5 billion for California\u2019s project. However, according to the stimulus law, California must begin construction on the project before December 31, 2012 or they will not be eligible for any more high speed rail stimulus dollars. Obama\u2019s <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"United States Department of Transportation\" href=\"http:\/\/www.dot.gov\/\" rel=\"homepage\" target=\"_blank\">Transportation Department<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/articles.latimes.com\/2011\/may\/26\/local\/la-me-high-speed-rail-20110526\">reaffirmed this time limit<\/a> last year when they admitted they had \u201cno administrative authority to change this deadline.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>&#8230;Studies show that <a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonexaminer.com\/article\/1112501\">the average time to complete the NEPA (National Environmental Protection Act) process is 6.1 years<\/a>. And NEPA is designed to be a preventative statute. Federal courts routinely issue injunctions to stop projects before they ever begin. That is why <a href=\"http:\/\/articles.latimes.com\/2012\/feb\/29\/nation\/la-na-nn-arctic-drilling-shell-20120229\">oil companies preemptively sued environmental groups<\/a> earlier this year over leases in Alaska. They wanted to get the litigation out of the way so they could begin oil exploration as fast as possible.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"California High-Speed Rail\" href=\"http:\/\/www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov\/\" rel=\"homepage\" target=\"_blank\">California high-speed rail<\/a> project was a bad idea from the start&#8211;it was not going to attract riders and was going to be a financial black hole for the already financially distressed state. It is, however, ironic that the thing that finally stopped\u00a0the project\u00a0was environmental red tape.<\/p>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zemanta.com\/?px\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"float: right; border-style: none;\" src=\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/zemified_e.png?x-id=7cb5a13f-eea3-495d-a35e-427403c937c6\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Washington Examiner\u00a0reported yesterday that the partially stimulus-funded high speed rail project in California is essentially dead. The project fell victim to a combination of environmental lawsuits and federal deadlines for breaking ground on stimulus projects. The article reports: President &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=14403\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[97,30,3302,1582,3303],"class_list":["post-14403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-barack-obama","tag-california","tag-california-high-speed-rail","tag-high-speed-rail","tag-united-states-department-of-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14403"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14404,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14403\/revisions\/14404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}