bastardization
of the promise – Merced to
Bakersfield – who cares?
Reading the article, Train to nowhere: can California’s high-speed rail project ever get back on track?, I could not help but laugh out loud over a comment about the once $9 Billion Dollar high speed train from Los Angeles to San Francisco that was funded in 2008 and planned to open in 2020 has so far cost $5Billions, might get a stretch of railroad (normal non-high speed railroad) open between the California cities of Merced and Bakersfield by 2030.
I am ignorant of much California geography without looking at a map but those two connections didn’t make much of impact on me.
The comment that made me laugh was made by an early advocate and cheer leader of the Cal High Speed Rail, Mr. Quentin Kopp, a retired former legislator and judge, who also felt that connecting Merced and Bakersfield did not make much sense.
Mr. Kopp said, ““Who cares about going from Merced to Bakersfield? I am appalled and angry over the bastardization of the promise to taxpayers … It’s a stupid waste of money. All this is doing is making contractors and engineers and bureaucrats fat and happy.”
The article goes on to explain that while other countries have implemented high speed rail, The United States, by contrast, has a highly decentralized system of government, with multiple competing jurisdictions jostling over land, water, electricity and other vital resources, and a political tradition, especially in the west, that celebrates personal freedom and private property over collective enterprises in the public interest.
In the words of Charlie Brown, “THAT’S IT!”
I propose that the United States Mint add something to our coins.
Where a coin is stamped, “E Pluribus Unum” I want an * added so it reads, “E Pluribus Unum*”.
E Pluribus Unum?
You remember that one don’t you?
One, out of many.
Then on the bottom of the coin, I want it to say, *The United States has a highly decentralized system of government, with multiple competing jurisdictions jostling over land, water, electricity and other vital resources, and a political tradition, that celebrates personal freedom and private property over collective enterprises in the public interest.
Should the word money be added so that it reads, money, land, water …
Or is money understood to be included in that less vulgar term, vital resources?
It works either way and it seems to answer a whole lot of questions today about the United States of America.
Talk about a the bastardization of a promise.
What promise?
The promise that we WERE one out of many.
The promise the we were something new.
Novus ordo seclorum it says on the One Dollar bill.
The New Order of the Age!
The New Order of the Age?
Maybe that’s why it ended up on the $1.
All in all, it comes to Mr. Lincoln’s warning in his Dec 1, 1862 annual message to Congress when he said, “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.”
No Haiku For You 