California: People used to swim here!

abc7news.com/automotive/california-drivers-to-pay-highest-gas-tax-in-us-on-monday/5369849/

The highest gas taxes in the US go even higher come Monday! Hooray for California! Way to stick it to those rich fat cats who all drive electric cars. This will certainly benefit the low income people who drive the old model trucks, vans, etc. and commute into the big cities. No no, it won't hurt them at all. #salty

It does, Keanu Reeves used it to decapitate Dennis Hopper.

We do, it's just hard for most of the LA population to use since it's not accessible for a big percentage of the county. LA is a 20th century city that grew out instead of up and our main transportation has been via the highway system. The most congested highway system in the country. 

We've tried to get rail to other parts of the county but it's tough to do without cutting through residential areas and people are deeply opposed to that.   We also have an ever growing homeless epidemic that's now involved in the discussion.  For example, a few years ago they built a line from downtown LA to Santa Monica on the coast.  The homeless population in Santa Monica and Venice exploded.  Now people are even more gun shy about new public transit.  I live in the southern part of LA county which isn't that affected by homeless people too much but it has its a few.  I have good friends who have moved to other areas much further from their jobs and greatly increasing commute time because they were tired of looking at the tents in front of their houses or complexes.  Seeing 10 or 15 tents on a stretch of sidewalk or a highway overpass isn't uncommon here in the least.  People think new public transit to their areas will bring just that.

Over the past few years they've really put the word out in southern CA that if you want to help give money to an organization like you said.  I remember hearing somebody saying for every dollar you give a homeless person on the street 80 cents goes to drugs, alcohol or sex.

There might be a solution

apnews.com/979b46c07f83411c8a99a19d2bb9ad8b

That's great! This will open up a wealth of career opportunities for those that may not have had them before. Getting a felony removed from their record will be a huge burden lifted for those in that situation.

What's bad for LA County is good for Orange and Ventura Counties, I suppose.

Impossible Burgers hitting South California grocery stores this weekend

www.theverge.com/2019/9/19/20869271/impossible-burger-foods-gelsons-markets-southern-california-meat-free-plant-based

So they moved funds from one part of the transportation budget to another part of the transportation budget? And they did it with a legal executive order in broad daylight? And this is supposed to be scandalous?

When the whole crux of the 'we need to raise some of the highest gas taxes even higher' argument rested solely on 'but they're only going to be spent on road repair because our roads are so bad' and then the funds are reallocated to rail and greenhouse gas projects (don't forget that nugget) while eliminating projects that actually repair roads well, yeah it's a really shitty thing to do.  

But not everyone uses rail, hardly anyone does in California. The whole point of the tax, the whole thing they campaigned on, was that the funds would go to road repair which really is desperately needed.

Think of it this way. Imagine your kid is in high school and they said 'hey parents, we're hitting you all with an extra $200 fee per student because we're using really old chalkboards, we want to get new, updated white boards with digital projectors for each of our classrooms so students can learn and have a better academic experience.'  It sucks and you're pissed and you say to yourself 'why can't they get this money from somewhere else, I already pay taxes to fund this stuff' but it makes sense and you grind your teeth and swallow it.  Then a couple months go by and they say 'Actually, remember that fee we hit you with? We're using a chunk of that to pay for new caps for the water polo team. Granted your child might not play water polo, they might not be interested in water polo whatsoever but we encourage fitness and they need good caps so they don't damage their ears.' Now maybe the water polo team does need new caps and maybe it would be good for everyone's health if they played water polo but that's not why you forked over the cash.  Now substitute the high school for California, a state which has been known to burn money to pay for disastrous programs and projects, and you'll get why people are a little peeved. 

It's not that rail is bad per se, it's that many parts of the state won't benefit from it. We have a metro in Los Angeles but it doesn't reach nearly as many areas as it should for most people to effectively utilize it. If you haven't been, come on out, take the metro and see where it gets you. I don't think people would be against putting an effective rail system in place if they could figure out how to do it but more importantly people want to see roads repaired, more housing built to ease the immense overcrowding and traffic in the major cities (that's another issue entirely, and no rail system could ever be put in place in the short term to help either of those). Not only that, many Californians feel burned on rail due to the disaster that was Jerry Brown's bullet train (I grant you it's a little different than inner city/high density transportation). You've probably heard of the 'train to nowhere.' About 10 years ago CA voters approved around $10 billion in initial funding for a bullet train between LA and San Francisco, currently a 6-7 hour drive. Well, it got delayed. And it cost more money. Then it got delayed again. Then cost more money. As of now its costs sit closer to $100 billion, not $10 billion, and isn't anywhere close to being finished. Keep in mind the original plan was to have the entire track hundreds of miles long completed by 2020. Billions of dollars down the drain for something that might never be completed.  And this was supposed to usher in a new era of transportation in our sprawling, enormous state.

So when the slimy governor of California, someone who's sole interest in California is to help himself get set up for a Presidential run in the future, says that he's diverting funds from a tax whose campaign was to fix our crummy roads into more rail and alternative transportation and away from fixing roads (see my previous link for specific projects that were canned), people don't want to hear it. They see failure and waste because that's all we've had. Sure he might have the best of intentions but his kindness won't fix my axle after I hit another goddamn pothole.