So Jerry Brown won–the California legislature voted to approved $4.7 billion in bond sales to start high speed rail construction. I’m worried, because Brown has played a fairly big budgetary gambit to win this thing: a state budget based on the voters approving tax measures I doubt they will pass, a bunch of federal pork for transit to pay off Democrats around the state.

I have to say, it’s not often I agree with the National Review, but this time I do, as this project is a big expense. Here’s John Fund:

It was wrenching to watch the California state legislature — for which I worked in the 1980s — as it led California over a fiscal cliff. The high-speed-rail line that was approved on Friday is a train to nowhere. And it’s offering Californians a nonstop ticket to their future as residents of a homegrown version of Greece.

A bit overstated, perhaps, but still.

However, there are reasons to take solace. The most recent business plan isn’t the steaming pile of poop that previous ones have been. They’ve been forced to tell people the truth about how much the project is going to cost, so bond buyers know what they are getting into, as do California voters in the fall. If Obama wins in the fall, there will be more money because he loves the trains, so there may be more billions from Washington. And it will be an experiment in Keynesianism, that nice billion-dollar-spit-in-the-ocean idea that, when the state is in recession, the state should stimulate demand by handing billions to Parsons Brinckerhoff.