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A comment on Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated. Parent comment

Re:Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have b... by SllX on Monday April 28, 2025 @08:47PM (#43827631)
Tax increases and bond measures have to go through the voters. The alternative is to get enough of the legislature, including probably some in Central Valley, to agree to cut a bunch of other more popular programs in order to fund it out of the general fund.
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Re:Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have b... by pests on Tuesday April 29, 2025 @02:46AM (#43829351)
What does California do with all its income?
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Re:Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have b... by SllX on Tuesday April 29, 2025 @03:21AM (#43829570)
Same shit. Different State. Maybe a little extra compared to a Red State or a smaller State, and on a larger scale. You can dig into it here: https://ebudget.ca.gov/
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Re:Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have b... by inferiorhuman on Tuesday April 29, 2025 @06:17AM (#43830676)
Props 13 and 8.

Highly recommend Paradise Lost by Peter Schrag. Raising revenue requires supermajority voter approval in most cases. A huge chunk of the budget is already allocated by voter mandates and the legislature fights over the scraps.

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Re:Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have b... by Eridrus on Tuesday April 29, 2025 @08:38PM (#43839846)
I dug into this a bit since these comments were just confusing, but apparently Prop 13 required tax increases to get a 2/3 majority of the legislature.

So it seems like Prop 13 just fucked California.

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Re:Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have b... by SllX on Tuesday April 29, 2025 @09:15PM (#43840133)
Correct. What is the point of having a representative government with a legislature if you just forcibly remove the lynchpin of power for that type of government?
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Re:Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have b... by inferiorhuman on Wednesday April 30, 2025 @04:23AM (#43842529)
That's the point. Props 13 and 8 were part of the republican anti-government movement often memorialized by Norquist's remark about making government small enough to drown.
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Re:Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have b... by SllX on Wednesday April 30, 2025 @07:27PM (#43851862)
The motivations and rhetoric are before my time. What’s leftover is just this stupid counterproductive set of laws undermining the legislature’s ability to legislate.
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