ObamaCare is so popular...

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(c'mon, all together now...)


How popular is it?


ObamaCare is so popular that the Department of Health and Human Services is going to spend $20 million of your money to convince you of how much you like it.

The Health and Human Services Department has signed a $20 million contract with a public-relations firm to highlight part of the Affordable Care Act.

The new, multimedia ad campaign is designed to educate the public about how to stay healthy and prevent illnesses, an HHS official said.

The campaign was mandated by the Affordable Care Act and must describe the importance of prevention while also explaining preventive benefits provided by the healthcare law. The law makes many preventive services available without a co-pay or deductible, and provides new preventive benefits to Medicare patients.

The PR firm Porter Novelli won the contract after a competitive bidding process. The $20 million contract was first reported by PR Week. Porter Novelli did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

If you are waiting for the other shoe to drop, you are way to accustomed to the M.O. of this administration. Via Hot Air, Matt Lewis reports:

Yesterday, The Hill reported that the Health and Human Services Department signed a $20 million deal with a PR firm to “describe the importance of prevention while also explaining preventive benefits” of ObamaCare.

The story notes that the public relations firm Porter Novelli “won the contract after a competitive bidding process.” Interestingly, the managing director of Porter Novellis’ Washington D.C. office is Catherine “Kiki” McLean — a true “D.C. insider,” according to her bio.

Indeed she is. Among her other accomplishments, McLean’s bio also notes she was “an on-air surrogate for the Obama for America campaign.”

This, of course, raises a few questions, including: Just how competitive was the competitive bid process that went to a senior Democrat?

And isn’t this the kind of insider access Obama decried in 2008?

Also worth noting is that this all comes amidst a probe investigating “deals the White House made to help pass the health care overhaul”

If you are going to saddle someone with the unenviable task of trying to make people like a government program that takes health care decisions out of those same people's hands, you might as well line the pockets of some cronies in order to do it, right?

Team O: Change As predictable as the day is long. And they're getting longer.


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So it begins (cont.)

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Last week, we saw Franciscan University drop its health care coverage for its students and employees rather than be forced to comply with the ObamaCare mandate to provide contraceptive procedures and devices.

This week, 43 plaintiffs, including Notre Dame University and the Archdiocese of New York filed suit against the Obama administration over the contraception mandate.

Some of the most influential Catholic institutions in the country filed suit against the Obama administration Monday over the so-called contraception mandate, in one of the biggest coordinated legal challenges to the rule to date.

Claiming their "fundamental rights hang in the balance," a total of 43 plaintiffs filed a dozen separate federal lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the requirement. Among the organizations filing were the University of Notre Dame, the Archdiocese of New York and The Catholic University of America.

The groups are objecting to the requirement from the federal health care overhaul that employers provide access to contraceptive care. The Obama administration several months ago softened its position on the mandate, but some religious organizations complained the administration did not go far enough to ensure the rule would not compel them to violate their religious beliefs.

(italics, ours)

This is nonsense. There was no softening. The regime merely allowed Catholic institutions to pass along the cost of the mandated provisions to the insurer. This hardly solves the core issue of Catholic institutions being forced to provide through their insurance plans, contraceptive devices.

At the end of the day, ask yourself this question: what in the hell is Barack Obama, Kathleen Sebelius or any other person on the face of the planet, outside of the Pope, we suppose, doing in telling what the Catholic Church what they can and cannot do? It's just that simple.

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Video rant of the day

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We'll get to Notre Dame's (and many, many other's) lawsuit against the ObamaCare contraceptive mandate later but we wanted to share this little gem from Penn Jillette regarding company policy (see: US federal law) with respect to the war on drugs.

This is aimed directly at you college-educated white suburban kids who receive the majority of your political content intake from the likes of Jon Stewart and Jimmy Fallon:

(language warning begins... raaght now...)

Maybe a little blow

Isn't that kind of like being a little pregnant?

I believe this is Obama chortling with Jimmy Fallon about lower-class people. Does anyone believe for a moment that if Obama had been busted for marijuana under the laws that he condones, would his life have been better?

... he would not have gone to his fancy-ass college...

He and many others that have matriculated through suggested Ivy League institutions over the past couple of generations that have managed to make quite a mess of things for our beloved country.




As for this "evolving" business with respect to drug legalization, we are evolving, ourselves. As recently as 10 or 15 years ago, there was no way you were going to get us to consider even the legalization of marijuana. However, back in 2010, we voted for the legalization of the same here in California (yes, we considered the overarching federal ban, so we hit the "go" button to send as much as a "message" vote as anything else) as we are coming around on the failure of the drug war.

However, the Chief Executive, as it is, is not afforded the same luxury as is a neighborhood blogger. Perhaps his shameless cynicism that guided his route to a heavily-qualified support of gay-marriage may extend also to drug legalization. Let's just see which way the political winds blow, shall we?



H/T: Dueliing Barstools

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Oddly enough, we don't think he'll take his own advice

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Alternative headline: Like engineers, ask an environmentalist and you'll get the truth.

The big tent of Malthusians and warmists have really fallen on some hard times. They keep getting their hands caught in the cookie jar when it comes to cooking the books with respect to climate data and when they're not doing that, they're basically admitting that their efforts aren't really about stopping and reversing global warming climate change but rather wealth distribution.

Think we're joking?:

Ottmar Edenhofer, a German economist and co-chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change (say that twice), told the Neue Zurcher Zeitung last week: "The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War." After all, redistributing global wealth is no small matter.

Edenhofer let the environmental cat out of the bag when he said "climate policy is redistributing the world's wealth" and that "it's a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization."

As we're finding out with the current administration, if your policies aren't working, don't talk about them. Talk about anything else except that at which you have failed.

Anyway, all that may not be the biggest problem with the faith-based AGW set. What pales in comparison to the above is a messaging problem. The message is this: they don't like you (humans) too much and would kindly desire that you excuse yourself from this mortal coil either voluntarily or involuntarily.


Here's Finnish environmentalist Pentti Linkola on the miserableness of the human condition:

"What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and there is only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship's axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides."

"The composition of the Greens seems to be the same as that of the population in general — mainly pieces of drifting wood, people who never think."

"A minority can never have any other effective means to influence the course of matters but through the use of violence."

"Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent dictator, that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. Best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and government would prevent any economical growth."

(ed. note: this is working out exactly as desired in places like North Korea and Cuba)

"The most central and irrational faith among people is the faith in technology and economical growth. Its priests believe until their death that material prosperity bring enjoyment and happiness - even though all the proofs in history have shown that only lack and attempt cause a life worth living, that the material prosperity doesn't bring anything else than despair. These priests believe in technology still when they choke in their gas masks."

"That there are billions of people over 60kg weight on this planet is recklessness."

"Alternative movements and groups are a welcome relief and a present for the society of economic growth."

"We will have to...learn from the history of revolutionary movements — the national socialists, the Finnish Stalinists, from the many stages of the Russian revolution, from the methods of the Red Brigades — and forget our narcissistic selves."

(ed. note: the entirety of the message of the 20 the century was this: "Oh... we learned, alright.")

"Everything we have developed over the last 100 years should be destroyed."

"A fundamental, devastating error is to set up a political system based on desire. Society and life are been organized on basis of what an individual wants, not on what is good for him or her...Just as only one out of 100,000 has the talent to be an engineer or an acrobat, only a few are those truly capable of managing the matters of a nation or mankind as a whole...In this time and this part of the World we are headlessly hanging on democracy and parliamentary system, even though these are the most mindless and desperate experiments of the mankind...In democratic coutries the destruction of nature and sum of ecological disasters has accumulated most...Our only hope lies in strong central government and uncompromizing control of the individual citizen."

Boy, oh, boy. If there is a more anti-BwD message, Linkola wins and the place and show horses aren't even in the picture.

Linkola then goes on to call for licensed birth-giving, the involuntary confiscation of private property, the end of competition and the return to a hunter-gatherer culture. He wants to turn back the clock of humanity to a time from which we've progressed from because, well... not having a car and having to hunt or fish for our meals every freaking day of one's miserable existence on this planet sucked.

There's a term for folks like Linkola besides idiot and it's totalitarian fascist. They aren't nice people. Does he sound nice? We don't like them and we encourage you to not like them as well.

We know what you are saying, though. You're saying, "Look, he's some crank that lives on a boat that no one outside of Finland (or maybe even his own dock) have heard of. That is true but what he is calling for and the means in which to accomplish it, have also been called for by far more main stream-accepted doom-and-gloomers like Paul Ehrlich, though in somewhat softer terms. What Ehrlich provides is some window-dressing to arrive at the same conclusion as Linkola (we swear that sounds like some blog-sharing program).

Scratch not too far below the surface of the environmental agenda and you find yourself a wide-ranging slew of propositions whereby the god-given rights and desires (remember: there's a reason why we don't live in caves, anymore) of the individual are subjugated to the will of the collective as determined by others be they rulers, committees, bureaucrats, even benevolent despots which is the extreme green's ultimate dream.

It's all a lie. Precisely because we have pursued freedom and liberty, we have been able to develop technology, much to the ironic chagrin of the Linkster, that has allowed this planet and its people to survive past the doomsday hour predicted by the likes of Ehrlich and his kind.

Let's face it: they are not really concerned with the fate of you or even the planet. For whatever sick reason, these people hate freedom. They hate liberty and the power within the individual that it has the potential to unleash.

Hey, we can't figure it out. Go catch a fish, bring it to Linkola and maybe he can tell you why he is so filled with hatred.

Caption Contest

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Zero Hedge is sponsoring a caption contest for a photo image of what one can only surmise was an exciting conclusion to this past week's G-8 conference in Chicago Camp David, Maryland.

Our contribution:

"And Chelsea has just defeated Bayern Munich on penalty kicks to win the Champions League title!"

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Great Moments in Presidential history

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Back at the beginning of last week, it was discovered that the Obama administration had dropped bullets touting their own accomplishments into the biographies of every President since Calvin Coolidge in the Presidential biographies section of the White House website (the additions have since apparently been removed but they were captured prior to by Capt. Ed of Hot Air).

A couple of our favorites:

President John F. Kennedy famously suggested the American people: “Ask what you can do for your country.” In 1961, the Peace Corps was created, facilitating service among citizens working toward peace in developing countries. In 2011, President Obama celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps with a Presidential Proclamation.

A Proclamation!



And this about Reagan:

In a June 28, 1985 speech Reagan called for a fairer tax code, one where a multi-millionaire did not have a lower tax rate than his secretary. Today, President Obama is calling for the same with the Buffett Rule.

Who says the official White House biographies are off-limits to some campaigning and opportunistic politics?




But here is the one that caught our eye:

President Barack Obama awarded George H.W. Bush the 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, for his commitment to service and ability to inspire volunteerism throughout the country, encouraging citizens to be “a thousand points of light.” The administration continues to promote service and civic engagement, honoring heroes of local communities as “Champions of Change” and fostering civic participation.

There was something fishy - we couldn't quite put our finger on it but we believed we had blogged about something similar when President Obama fist took office so we did a word search and sho' 'nuf...

Back in April of 2009, President Obama signed into law the Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act (yep, the GIVE Act). It was essentially a federal funding give-away to charitable and federally-favored volunteer oraganizations like Americorps, the Clean Energy Corps and the National Civilian Community Corps.

But do you want to know what else it did? It defunded the Points of Light foundation established by George H. W. Bush and which we blogged about here:

To many, this is the Americorps mandatory volunteerism Act as it boosts funding for this outfit and other community-related organizations. Yes, many other charitable organizations will be strengthened with your tax dollars except one.

Hazard a guess? Perhaps one established at the behest of the father of the President’s predecessor? Perhaps one whose initials don’t form pronounceable acronym that is still relevant to its intent?

Think PoLF.

Think Sec. 1831 of the bill…

(Sec. 1831) Eliminates federal funding for the Points of Light Foundation.

Yep, we’re throwing around trillions of dollars to god knows who on god knows what but this bill still takes time to stop, turn around and kick a political adversary in the nuts before merrily skipping along. Awesome.

We'll hand it to the Prez, though: snipping the federal umbelical cord after awarding President Bush the Presidential Medal of Freedom would've been completely classless, but we'll grant the President a certain measure of respect in performing the wing-clipping and then inviting the champion of that foundation to accept the award. Audacity, indeed.


We here at Beers with Demo are proud to bring you this Great Moment in Presidential History.

Radio KBwD is on the air

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A certain person near and dear to our heart has a tough time with our contention that while Stevie Ray Vaughan is our favorite guitar player, we recognize Jimi Hendrix as the greatest guitar player of all-time. It is indeed a distinction with a difference.


It is our opinion that over 40 years on, people are still trying to catch up to what Hendrix was doing. Where things were pretty much on a linear scale and black and white, he went 3-dimensional and full-blown technicolor with his guitar style.


And while we possibly confused Hendrix's free-wheeling style for being a little ragged around the edges, we always felt Stevie to be the more technically proficient player.




Since making this a covers competition would belittle the talents of both men and which would be an exercise in unsavoriness, you can find Jimi's "Voodoo Chile" very easily on Youtube. In the meantime, here is Stevie performing that song off his album Couldn't Stand the Weather:

Images and some random thoughts for the day

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Michael Ramirez, the best political cartoonist in America has been on it lately.


Here's his take on "Julia", the Obama composite woman and statist love-child of which our thoughts can be found here.

(click to enlarge)

Because submitting yourself to a comprehensive, full-service, cradle-to-grave nanny state is what (full-circle) feminism is all about. Hey, there's an undeniably attractive kink to a statist slave-girl, wouldn't you say?

You've come a long way, baby!

And while we're in the neighborhood...

Ramirez's take on the President's flip-flop pandering evolution with respect to gay marriage, days before his big Hollywood/meet George Clooney fund raiser.

By the by, gang, we're now full-tilt boogie on Twitter. Follow us at @deanriehm

We've been having a lot of fun of late especially with #FunnierthanCordova, the namesake of a whiny Comedy Central writer who has complained that Twitter has been ruined by conservative hashtag games which, of course, spawned a game of its own.

The Beers with Demo Caucus springs into action

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But first, Chuckie Schumer outrageously outraged over the fact one of the Facebook co-founders skipped the country to avoid paying capital gains taxes.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has a status update for Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin: Stop attempting to dodge your taxes by renouncing your U.S. citizenship or never come to back to the U.S. again.

In September 2011, Saverin relinquished his U.S. citizenship before the company announced its planned initial public offering of stock, which will debut this week. The move was likely a financial one, as he owns an estimated 4 percent of Facebook and stands to make $4 billion when the company goes public. Saverin would reap the benefit of tax savings by becoming a permanent resident of Singapore, which levies no capital gains taxes.

At a news conference this morning, Sens. Schumer and Bob Casey, D-Pa., will unveil the “Ex-PATRIOT” – “Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy” – Act to respond directly to Saverin’s move, which they dub a “scheme” that would “help him duck up to $67 million in taxes.”

The senators will call Saverin’s move an “outrage” and will outline their plan to re-impose taxes on expatriates like Saverin even after they flee the United States and take up residence in a foreign country. Their proposal would also impose a mandatory 30 percent tax on the capital gains of anybody who renounces their U.S. citizenship.

The plan would bar individuals like Saverin from ever reentering the United States again.

(italics, ours)


Good god, man. The tortured, pretzel twisting vocabulary of it all to come up with verbage that somehow relates to the legislation's acronym. Or is it the other way around? Who knows - damn our head hurts.


But alas, we went into the bunker of the Beers with Demo caucus to come up with appropriately-named legislative responses to what we see as objectionable and/or unserious Acts.

So in response to the honorable Senator Schumer we offer up: DIPSHIT

The Democrats Introducing Phaux Serious Hysteria If Tempted Act.

Fed up with over-regulation which is choking out jobs in this country?: HACK

The Harming America with Crappy Kontrols Act

Frustrated with the Senate's inability to pass a budget? We've got an Act for that: IDIOT

The Idle Democrats In Opposition to Timeliness Act

Want to break-down restrictions on home-schooling, vouchers and charter schools?: DOPE

Democrats Opposed to Private Education

Want to shut down the completely counterproductive yet hard-to-kill ethanol lobby?: ASSHAT

Attempting to Stop Subsidized Hackery All the Time Act

And finally, we have our own BUFFETT Rule:

Budget Unsavoriness not Fixed From Excessive Top-end Taxes

Man, this is fun and a lot easier than we thought it would be.

Hey, give it a shot and help out the Beers with Demo legislative caucus in coming up with similarly inane and mildly offensive legislative acronyms.


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ObamaCare: Forcing Catholic institutions to violate religious conscience and mandating maximum coverage working out pretty much as you would expect.

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The President's assurances that if you liked your health care coverage, you could keep it, not very reflective of reality. National Franciscan University, to our knowledge, becomes the first but certainly not the last Catholic institution to stop providing health care coverage to their students and employees.

National Franciscan University appears to be the first casualty of the new Obama HHS mandate that requires Catholic colleges, groups and businesses to pay for drugs that may cause abortions and birth control for their employees.

Although President Barack Obama declared "If you like your health care coverage you can keep it," when it came to passing Obamacare, a Catholic college in Ohio has determined it will no longer offer a student health insurance plan.

"The Obama Administration has mandated that all health insurance plans must cover "women's health services" including contraception, sterilization, and abortion-causing medications as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)," the university says in a new post on its website. "Up to this time, Franciscan University has specifically excluded these services and products from its student health insurance policy, and we will not participate in a plan that requires us to violate the consistent teachings of the Catholic Church on the sacredness of human life."

And it's not just the conscience violations that are cause for Franciscan University for dropping their healthcare coverage. When you mandate additional coverage, that has to come out of hide somewhere and almost invariably that hide will be increased premiums for the individual.

"Additionally, the PPACA increased the mandated maximum coverage amount for student policies to $100,000 for the 2012-13 school year, which would effectively double your premium cost for the policy in fall 2012, with the expectation of further increases in the future," FUS continues.

"Due to these changes in regulation by the federal government, beginning with the 2012-13 school year, the University 1) will no longer require that all full-time undergraduate students carry health insurance, 2) will no longer offer a student health insurance plan, and 3) will no longer bill those not covered under a parent/guardian plan or personal plan for student health insurance," the college said.

(italics, ours)

Expectation. Allow us to translate: With a healthcare law littered with verbage like "The Secretary (of Health and Human Services) shall determine...", you can expect even more mandates for additional coverage and thus higher costs.


Back to the linked article:

Franciscan University says the current student health insurance plan will expire on August 15.

Writing at CatholicVote, Tom Crowe, an employee at Franciscan University, blamed the mandate for Franciscan's decision.

"Employers, until Obamacare was passed, were not compelled to offer health insurance but they did do because it is expected and good for business-good luck getting top-notch employees if health insurance coverage is not among the benefits. Under Obamacare employers can both assure that employees have health insurance coverage by dumping them onto the exchanges, and can save lots of money and headache. Win-win," he writes. "But now there is another device by which Obamacare violates the "if you like it you can keep it" pledge: the HHS Mandate."

Bingo. For all you folks out there bummed out that ObamaCare did not contatain a public option: relax. Through a combination of heavy-handed dictates and inherent incompetence written into the law, expect many, many more Americans to get booted from plans they like and dumped into expensive, one-size-fits-all government exchanges subsidized by the tax payer.

More from Crowe:

"See, part of reason I like my current health insurance plan offered by my employer, Franciscan University of Steubenville, is that it does not waste money on things I will never use because they are morally repugnant to me, like contraceptives, sterilization, and abortofacients. The HHS mandate purports to force me into a plan that I do not want rather than the plan I've been very happy with. But that's a still-pending issue because of the one-year extension given (not that we will comply even after a year, of course)," he continues

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In a similar vein of befuddlement, our healthcare plan covers us for drug and alcohol counseling which we find highly dubious because we figure if we put ourselves into that situation where we required counseling, we should pay for it out of pocket instead of putting the rest of our risk pool on the hook for it. We're paying higher premiums for coverage we find morally objectionable and which we cannot opt out of.

How about a little smack? Mr. Crowe?:

Crowe says the Obama mandate has left students "high and dry" and some students now may not have health insurance as a result.

"Who knows how many will have insurance, how many will not, how many will have insurance of the quality we offered before, how many will be able to stay on their parents' insurance through the extended adolescence provision of Obamacare," he writes. "But there you have it: thanks to the government's firm desire to make sure the one or two women left in the country who did not have easy and cheap access to contraceptives, abortofacients, and sterilization procedures, our 2,500 students will no longer have an insurance plan ready and waiting for them."

(italics, again, ours)



Our buddy and devout Catholic, KT of The Scratching Post shared his thoughts on the matter via email:

This is really sad. What a waste of time. Five years ago (to pick a time frame at random), these Catholic institutions were behaving normally, educating kids and providing social services. Now they have to waste their time fighting that idiot, Obama. And all of it so he could score a couple of political points with single women.

You don't need to be a Catholic or even a person of faith to realize what a grave threat to freedom ObamaCare represents.

The One who came to unite has only served to divide us instead.



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Your California high-speed choo-choo update

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Another day and another round of bad news for high speed choo-choos here in California. Well, to be precise, it's not really more or new, just news that we've known now broken down in a different way that basically illustrates what a disaster this all will prove to be.

What we do know is that if the first 130 miles of track to be built (between Bakersfield and Fresno) is not completed by September of 2017, the project faces the loss of federal funding. That first section of track is expected to cost $6 billion, so on a per day basis that means that $3.5 million every calendar day in resources would have to be spent on that portion of the project.

If you are asking yourself what could possibly go wrong, you would not be alone.

If California starts building a 130-mile segment of high-speed rail late this year as planned, it will enter into a risky race against a deadline set up under federal law.

The bullet train track through the Central Valley would cost $6 billion and have to be completed by September 2017, or else potentially lose some of its federal funding. It would mean spending as much as $3.5 million every calendar day, holidays and weekends included - the fastest rate of transportation construction known in U.S. history, according to industry and academic experts.

Over four years, the California High-Speed Rail Authority would need as many as 120 permits, mostly from a tangle of government regulatory agencies not known to rush their business. It would need to acquire about 1,100 parcels of land, many from powerful agriculture interests that have already threatened to sue. And it would need to assemble five teams of contractors with giant workforces positioned from Fresno to Bakersfield, moving millions of tons of gravel, steel rail and heavy equipment across the valley.

Again, it has never been made clear to us if the estimated cost of the high-speed rail project takes into account the eminent domain compensation paid out to land owners whose property lies in way of the track. There has been a suspicious lack of discussion in what we see as a deal-breaker area. That amount alone may total in the tens of billions.


More from the article:

Even if the authority avoids any delays, its ability to complete the first construction section on time will require a breakneck pace of activity.

"It is a very aggressive plan," said Manuel Garcia, associate director at the Construction Industry Institute affiliated with the University of Texas at Austin. "It does appear that it will be a challenge."

If the rail authority runs into technical problems, legal disputes, permit delays or political roadblocks, it could end up building less track and potentially leave an uncompleted project, according to warnings contained in its own business plan. If the project blows past the federal deadline, for example, the flow of money could be stopped. And the scramble to meet that deadline could lead to construction problems and drive up costs.

Please stop us at any point when this does not stop resembling an absolutely unpassable minefield.

Rail officials, putting on a brave face, point out that the Bay Bridge project will have a "burn rate" of $1.8 million/day once it completed in 2013 but, of course, that is just over half of the required burn rate of the high speed choo-choo project.

And what does it say of this grand statist make-work scheme that it's success is measured in how much money they can blow through on a daily basis rather than meters of track laid?


Back to the article:

John Popov, a construction expert at Parsons Brinckerhoff, a consulting firm working with the rail authority, said he believes the project can be completed on time. Popov calculates that the job will spend $2.7 million per day, which excludes the cost of land acquisition, environmental work, management oversight and reserves. But construction experts say that including all of its costs, the authority would spend $3.5 million per day. Popov added that the authority is considering whether it can legally shift as much as $1.3 billion of work past the 2017 deadline, an option that has not been vetted with the Legislature.

(italics, ours)

That still doesn't answer our question if land acquisition is even in the overall budget. We're leaning "no" but we could be wrong.




And dig this:

The rail authority has just 37 employees and has been operating for months without a chief executive, a deputy chief executive or a chief financial officer. It also has no single executive overseeing construction, which outside consultants say is needed.

"You have 37 mere mortals who have never done anything like this before," said Robert Bea, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a retired UC Berkeley professor of civil engineering and director of the National Science Foundation's project on California's transportation infrastructure. "They need God, because he's the only one who can handle this management challenge."

Forget "God is my co-pilot" or "My boss is a Jewish carpenter", we'll hook up the rail authority employees with "God is my CEO and CFO" bumper stickers.


Want more?

A final environmental report on about half of the 130-mile project is uncompleted and months behind schedule, forcing the agency to start work initially on a 29-mile section from Madera to Fresno and hope that it can get the review problems with the rest of the line cleared up later this year.

In a status report this month, Mark Ashley, a senior vice president with the rail authority's consultant T.Y. Lin International Group, noted that the project has identified 25 issues in the Merced-to-Bakersfield construction plan as high risk or very high risk and that the project is now nine months behind schedule in securing official approval from the Federal Railroad Administration.

Oh, and here's some more discussion regarding land acquisition:

"Fresno to Bakersfield is going to be really tight," Ashley said. The acquisition of land is facing problems, including slow progress in getting agreements with freight railroads, he added. "It is dicey right now whether that is going to hold up our construction or impact our schedule."

Given the deadlines both past due and imminently looming, you think land-holders might have some leverage in which to squeeze the rail authority and by extension, the state and by further extension, the tax payers?



Please link to the article for more dreadful expectations regarding the bid process and how potential contractors are scared to death because of the faltering start high-speed choo-choos have got off to.

As you all know, we have been following this thing since it was a proposed bond issue back in 2008 and where we urged our readers to reject the ballot measure because there was simply no need for high-speed rail in California. Now that we know what a god-forsaken disaster this thing already is before a single length of track has been laid down (see also: ObamaCare) we would've been even more vociferous in our opposition to high-speed choo-choos.

But like the State Water Project back in the 70s, Governor Brown has hitched his wagon to an astronomically expensive public works project of highly dubious need and value and such is the ideological rigidity of big government statism that he just can't shake bad habits.