Lilly Springs 🇺🇸🦅

82 years ago today, Captain William C. Calhoun, Jr. and Captain Clark Gable after their mission to Antwerp. ✈️

Once upon a time there was a widow. Her husband was brilliant, world renowned in his field. He had chosen her because he thought the blue-eyed blond beauty was even more brilliant than he was and they worked side by side to accomplish extraordinary things, even though publicly, he received much of the credit. After his tragic, sudden death she was left to raise their two children and also to continue his work, even taking over his professional position, traveling and appearing at conferences. During this time the tide of public opinion turned against her. Considered throughly unlikable she was met with media slander and mob attacks, blamed for her work being the cause of her husband's death, accused of being a Jew and told to go home. Instead she poured her energies into doing more good than ever before, including in the lives of her two children who went on to become famously accomplished themselves. Her name was Marie Curie. Had she stayed home after her husband's death she wouldn't have won a second Nobel Peace Prize, nor developed mobile radiology units (Petite Curies) during WW1 which saw over a million soldiers saving hundreds of thousands lives and needless amputations, nor would she have established 2 international scientific research centers responsible for making huge strides in nuclear physics, medical research, and the treatment of cancer. Her two daughters followed in her footsteps, one going on to win a Nobel Peace Prize and the other achieving great success in journalism and diplomacy. Not all women are called to be widows like Marie Curie. But when they are, there is no more obvious fool in the world than those who seek to persecute them.

WHOA.

NEW: Judge apologizes in court to WHCA Dinner shooting suspect Cole Allen. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said that he was “fascinated and disturbed” by Allen's treatment in jail. Allen was placed on suicide watch when he was first imprisoned. Prosecutors argued that since Allen told investigators he did not expect to survive the alleged attack, he could be a danger to himself. But an incredulous Faruqui wasn't convinced by that argument, drawing comparisons between Allen and defendants arrested for rioting at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “To me, it’s extremely disturbing that he was put in five-point restraints, a person with no criminal history. It’s troubling. I never heard of one Jan. 6 defendant who was put in five-point restraints or in a safe cell. If the only way to keep him safe is the most punitive thing, that’s a problem.” “At a minimum, I should be apologizing to him. We are obligated to make sure he’s taken care of. Mr. Allen, I’m sorry that things have not been the way they are supposed to.”

California’s ballot has 59 (!) candidates for Governor.

Greg no longer wants to challenge me. I’m finding out the same way as you, by reading a VERY misleading post.

JUST IN: McDonald’s to eliminate self-serve soda stations nationwide by 2032, citing “changing consumer habits”

I am the Director of Strategic Planning at the California High-Speed Rail Authority. I have held this position for seventeen years. In that time I have written four business plans, overseen six revisions, and authored eleven methodology updates. The train has not moved. There is a hard hat on the shelf behind my desk. It was given to me at the Fresno groundbreaking ceremony in 2015. It is still in the cellophane. I use it as a bookend for the business plan binders. There are four binders. They are substantial. The hat holds them upright. In 2008, California voters approved Proposition 1A. San Francisco to Los Angeles. Two hours and forty minutes. Fifty-five dollars per ticket. Ninety-five million annual riders by 2030. Total cost: $33.5 billion. Fifty-three percent said yes. The current cost estimate is $231 billion. I am sometimes asked to provide context for that figure. The state housing shortage is 2.5 million units. At the California median home price, $231 billion would produce 577,000 of them. The average public school teacher in California earns $95,000. $231 billion is every one of their salaries for eight years. The state has a documented wildfire suppression staffing gap. $231 billion would fund 6,400 additional fire crews for a century. I include these comparisons for context. They are not relevant to my work. We have built 119 miles of infrastructure. Columns. Viaducts. Grade separations. You can see them from Highway 99 between Madera and Bakersfield. They stand in rows across land that used to grow things. No track runs on them. No train has touched them. Some of them have graffiti now. I have seen the photographs in the quarterly progress reports. I have not visited. There was an almond grower outside Hanford. She is in our files as Parcel 417, Hanford East. The Authority acquired twelve acres of her property through eminent domain in 2016 for right-of-way clearance. The trees were removed. The soil was graded flat. The right-of-way has been clear for nine years. Nothing has been built on Parcel 417. Her file notes that she attended three public comment hearings between 2014 and 2016. I do not know what she said at those hearings. I know what we said. We called the acquisition "a critical milestone in the project's advancement." I wrote those words for the 2016 Annual Report. They were well-received. Her contact information has been flagged in the Phase 2 preliminary assessment, in case additional right-of-way is required. Phase 2 does not yet exist. Her contact information does. The original completion date was 2020. The current target is 2032. The route has been revised from San Francisco-to-Los Angeles to Merced-to-Bakersfield. One hundred seventy-one miles. I refer to this as Phase 1. The French national rail company, SNCF, joined the project as a consulting partner in 2010. They left in 2011. They used the phrase "political dysfunction," which is diplomatic language for a country that built the Eiffel Tower in two years telling you it cannot build your train. SNCF then went to Morocco and built a high-speed rail line from Tangier to Casablanca. Two hundred miles. Operational by 2018. Seven years. We are in year eighteen. I included the SNCF departure in the 2022 business plan as a "comparative international case study." The lesson I drew was that Morocco has simpler permitting requirements. This is accurate. I did not draw other lessons. The $9.95 billion bond that voters approved costs the state $647 million per year for thirty years. Roughly $20 billion in total repayment. The bond is being serviced on schedule. $647 million leaves the state treasury every year and arrives in accounts associated with a train that does not carry passengers. It has done this since 2010. The bond repayment is the most functional transit system we have built. It moves $647 million a year. On time. Every time. In 2019, Governor Newsom said the project "would cost too much and, respectfully, take too long." He then continued funding it. I appreciated the word "respectfully." It acknowledged the problem without producing an obligation to solve it. My team delivered the 2020 business plan revision the following quarter. It was well-received. The Governor also supported legislation to shield certain cost details from public disclosure. That same year, thousands of pages were removed from the Authority's website. I was not involved in that decision. I was involved in the pages. Last Friday, a television host told the Governor on camera that the project now costs $231 billion. The Governor said, "No, it's not. It's not." The $231 billion figure is from the 2026 draft business plan. Page 47. I wrote page 47. The Governor then said we had gotten the project "back on track." I noted the phrasing. A rail project that has not yet laid operational track is not, in a strict sense, on one. I did not raise this. The ridership projection has been revised from 95 million annual riders by 2030 to 36 million by 2060. I updated that figure personally during the 2024 planning cycle. The ticket price has been revised from $55 to $105. Both figures describe a service that does not yet exist. The State Auditor published a report. The title is: "Flawed Decision Making and Poor Contract Management Have Contributed to Billions in Cost Overruns and Delays in the System's Construction." That is twenty words. We have 119 miles of columns that carry nothing. I read the report carefully. It was thorough. We incorporated its findings into the next business plan revision. The board was scheduled to vote on the latest business plan on April 29th. The vote was delayed. Additional review was requested. I support additional review. My pension vests in 2034. The project's current completion target is 2032. If the train is finished on schedule, my position becomes unnecessary two years before my pension matures. The completion date is determined by the business plan. I write the business plan. The plan says the project should continue. It has always said this. I have never written one that recommended otherwise.