Now The Bath Salts Police

Using Drugs as the excuse both parties grow a
Federalized and Centralized Police State.

The Bath Salts Police are Coming to "Protect" You

• The insane "war" on drugs is totally bi-partisan.
• Comrade Obama signs a new Federal drug prohibition bill that was passed by a "small government" GOP House and a Democrat Senate.

The cry has gone out:  "Think of the children."

In response Comrade President Obama signed a bi-partisan bill to grow the centralized police power of the Federal government and ban several types of synthetic drugs, including synthetic marijuana and “bath salts”.
.
Bath salts is the informal "street name" for a family of designer drugs often containing substituted cathinones, which have effects similar to amphetamine and cocaine. The white crystals resemble legal bathing products like Epsom salts.

There have been countless bans and laws passed on drugs over the years, and they’ve done little or nothing to halt the their spread.  What the laws have done is grow the police power of the state and take away the freedom of people to decide for themselves how to peaceful live their lives.

The new law bans the active ingredients of bath salts, mephedrone and methylenedioxypyrovalerone, by adding them to the Food and Drug Administration’s category of substances that cannot be sold under any circumstances and also cannot be prescribed for medical purposes.   (Newsfeed - Time - Obama)

.
FALSE PANIC - As usual, the media and government spread mindless panic to help enact laws to take away another slice of freedom.

For example, with zero proof bath salts was originally blamed as the cause of face-eating attack in Miami. But an official toxicology report found only marijuana to be in the blood stream of the attacker Rudy Eugene.

Maybe the guy was just crazy, but both parties beat the drums of fear and panic to grow the power of the Drug Police around the nation.
.
Florida  -  Commissioners of Miami-Dade County have given preliminary approval to outlaw the sale of the synthetic drug “bath salts”.  Bath salts are synthetic compounds of stimulants methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV), mephedrone, and pyrovalerone which manufacturers market as a legal replacement for cocaine or the hallucinogen LSD.    (Newsfeed - Time)

New York  -  Democrat Governor Cuomo announced New York state is issuing a ban on the selling and possession of bath salts, citing a need to crackdown on designer drug distributors.   Violators will face fines up to $500 and up to 15 days in jail for either distributing or possessing the illicit drugs.   (Huffington Post)

Ohio  -  Bath salts are banned in Ohio after GOP Governor John Kasich signed a bill prohibiting the sale and use of the crystals. Possession of bath salts is also now considered a misdemeanor. Up until the ban, the crystals were sold legally in stores and gas stations, and on the Internet.

“I am pleased this ban is about to become law in Ohio,” said state Representative Clayton Luckie, as quoted by the Dayton Daily News. “With House Bill 64, police will now have the tools needed to remove this scourge from our streets.”    (thirdage.com)

Pennsylvania  -  The possession and sale of drugs like synthetic marijuana, bath salts and saliva are now against the law in Pennsylvania.  Under the law the first offense for delivery or possession with the intent to deliver carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and a $15,000 fine. Simple possession of the drug carries a penalty of up to a year in prison and a $5,000 fine.   (policeone.com)


Retired NYPD Officer Frank Serpico on Drug War police corruption
Retired NYPD officer Frank Serpico to discuss police corruption and the drug war. Serpico's experiences as a police officer were dramatized in the 1973 film Serpico, which starred Al Pacino in the lead role.

Prohibition did not work then and it still does not work today.

Free people should have the right to medicate themselves with a prescription from a doctor without the Big Brother Police State putting them in jail.

Hitler attacked in Italy

Free Enterprise Attacked  -  Wine with Hitler's photo seized by the Italian government (but Mussolini & Stalin wine is OK)

• A business is assaulted and their product stolen by Big Government.
• If any product was to be pulled from the shelves it should have been the Jimmy Carter wine.

It would not be a day on the Internet without a Hitler reference.  So here we go.

A prosecutor in Bolzano, northern Italy seized wine bottle labels bearing a portrait of Hitler and other Nazis from a winery near the Austrian border, the company said.

The 20 labels from the "Der Fuehrer" line show Hitler raising the Nazi salute and his generals, including Hermann Goering, the Reich's economic minister, Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Gestapo, and Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy reports the UK Telegraph.

The black and white labels are imprinted with the mottoes "Ein volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer" (one people, one empire, one Fuehrer) and "Sieg heil", a slogan proclaimed by Hitler as a greeting or in front of the masses.

The government claims the labels constitute a glorification of the perpetrators of crimes against humanity, according to state prosecutor Cuno Tarfusser.

The Lunardelli company said it had sold around 20,000 bottles featuring the Hitler labels per year. It also sold wine with images of Mussolini on the label, which were not seized by police.

This product has been around since 1995.  I will bet cash money that this hack prosecutor is simply attacking an honest businessman so he can make a name for himself in Italian politics.

In other words, politics as usual.

The bottles make up part of a product line started in 1995 called the "historic collection", selling wine with labels with the faces of:

--- Winston Churchill
--- Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist philosopher
--- Adolph Hitler
--- Karl Marx
--- Napoleon Bonaparte
--- Benito Mussolini
--- Che Guevara.

The line stirred up controversy back in September 2003, when German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries made an official protest against its sale.

At the time, she claimed that the labels referring to the Third Reich were "abominable and in bad taste."    (UK Telegraph)

SOCIALISM - Over 100 million people on welfare

Marxism in America  -  Liberals use the force of government to re-distribute the wealth

• Liberals play Santa with other people's money in order to buy votes at election time.
• From each according to his ability.  To each according to his voting pattern.

A new chart by the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee details a startling statistic: "Over 100 Million People in U.S. Now Receiving Some Form Of Federal Welfare."

"The federal government administers nearly 80 different overlapping federal means-tested welfare programs," the Senate Budget Committee notes. However, the committee states, the figures used in the chart do not include those who are only benefiting from Social Security and/or Medicare reports the Weekly Standard.


.
Land of The Freebies, Home of the Enslaved

Food stamps and Medicaid make up a large--and growing--chunk of the more than 100 million recipients. "Among the major means tested welfare programs, since 2000 Medicaid has increased from 34 million people to 54 million in 2011 and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) from 17 million to 45 million in 2011," says the Senate Budget Committee. "Spending on food stamps alone is projected to reach $800 billion over the next decade."

The data come "from the U.S. Census’s Survey of Income and Program Participation shows that nearly 110,000 million individuals received a welfare benefit in 2011.

Thanks to the  Bloviating Zeppelin  for a heads-up on this video.

750,000 Chinese have Colonized Africa

The Road to Serfdom Series

The Communist Chinese are moving into Africa

• China is not only buying everything not nailed down, but they are exporting people to live in Africa.
• Land and mineral rights are being scooped up by "private" companies backed by the Communist Party as well as state owned Chinese companies. 

It was supposed to be a state-of-the-art city for 500,000 - but eerie footage shows how a Chinese-built urbanisation is at risk of becoming Africa's first 'ghost town'.

Constructed on the outskirts of Angola's capital city Luanda, Nova Cidade de Kilamba has 750 eight-storey blocks of flats, a dozen schools and more than 100 shop units reports the UK Daily Mail.

An empty Chinese built ghost city in Angola.

An empty city built by China to house 500,000.
Some 750,000 Chinese have already settled in Africa.  Will China offer to fill the empty city with exported surplus population from the homeland?



But, crucially, it has no residents, and many of the nearby slum-dwellers cannot afford the £75,000 price-tag to move in.

This has sparked fears the £2.2 billion project, a fraction of the cash China has poured into Africa in recent years, could lay abandoned for years to come.

It has also highlighted the increasing 'colonization' of Africa by China, seen to be wanting the resource-rich continent as a 'satellite state', in recent years.

It is said to be reminiscent of the West's imperial push in the 18th and 19th centuries, with critics pointing to trade deals with more than 40 countries.


Chinese 'ghost town' in Africa
A giant new Chinese-built city has sprung up on the outskirts of Angola's capital Luanda.

Massive Chinese built housing in Angola - K24 News

750,000 Chinese have settled in Africa

• China is taking up to 70 per cent of all timber from Africa
• Chinese owned mines employ local 'slave' labourers paid less than $1.50 a day to extract ore and minerals for export to China.

China's push into Africa is said to be reminiscent of the West's imperial move in the 18th and 19th centuries - but on a much more dramatic, determined scale.

China's rulers believe Africa can become a 'satellite' state, solving its own problems of over-population and shortage of natural resources at a stroke reports the UK Daily Mail.

With little fanfare, a staggering 750,000 Chinese have settled in Africa over the past decade. And more are believed to be on their way.

The strategy has been carefully devised by officials in Beijing, where one expert has estimated that China will eventually need to send 300 million people to Africa to solve the problems of over-population and pollution.

Chinese influence in Africa 

Lucrative deals are being struck to buy its commodities - oil, platinum, gold and minerals.

New embassies and air routes are opening up. The continent's new Chinese elite can be seen everywhere, shopping at their own expensive boutiques, driving Mercedes and BMW limousines, sending their children to exclusive private schools.

The pot-holed roads are cluttered with Chinese buses, taking people to markets filled with cheap Chinese goods. More than a thousand miles of new Chinese railroads are crisscrossing the continent, carrying billions of tons of illegally-logged timber, diamonds and gold.

The trains are linked to ports dotted around the coast, waiting to carry the goods back to Beijing after unloading cargoes of cheap toys made in China.

Confucius Institutes (state-funded Chinese 'cultural centres') have sprung up throughout Africa, as far afield as the tiny land-locked countries of Burundi and Rwanda, teaching baffled local people how to do business in Mandarin and Cantonese.

'The Chinese are all over the place,' says Trevor Ncube, a prominent African businessman with publishing interests around the continent. 'If the British were our masters yesterday, the Chinese have taken their place.'

Likened to one race deciding to adopt a new home on another planet, Beijing has launched its so-called 'One China In Africa' policy because of crippling pressure on its own natural resources in a country where the population has almost trebled from 500 million to 1.3 billion in 50 years.

In Angola, the government has agreed that 70 per cent of tendered public works must go to Chinese firms, most of which do not employ Angolans. As well as enticing hundreds of thousands to settle in Africa, they have even shipped Chinese prisoners to produce the goods cheaply.   (UK Daily Mail)



ANGOLA FAZ - HABITACAO

750,000 Chinese have settled in Africa

________________________________________________________________________

The Road to Serfdom Series

The world is moving toward a modern form of Neo-Serfdom where everyone works for the all-powerful State or businesses controlled by the State. A world where individual property rights and economic freedom do not exist.

FREEDOM IS VANISHING: What happens when the major employers are owned by government backed investment groups, or your food comes from government owned farms, or your news is delivered by so-called "private" corporations but are in reality connected and interconnected to governments?

George Orwell had a name for it: Big Brother.

Please check out other stories in our Serfdom series.

THE FEDERALIST - "Korea secretly buys Australia."

THE FEDERALIST - "Australia and Africa become Arab Food Colonies."

THE FEDERALIST - "China buys Australia (For Cheap Too)"

THE FEDERALIST - "The Chinese conquest of Africa"

THE FEDERALIST - "China buys New Zealand - The Road to Serfdom, Part XVII"

THE FEDERALIST - "Arab Food Colonies in Black Africa."

THE FEDERALIST - "Chinese colonization of New Zealand blocked."

THE FEDERALIST - "Chinese "Slavery" in Africa - The Road to Serfdom, Part XIV."

THE FEDERALIST - "Argentina fights Saudi Land Grab."

THE FEDERALIST - "LAND GRAB: 160,000 people thrown off their land."

THE FEDERALIST - "China is buying up Argentina."

THE FEDERALIST - "Corporations use Global Warming to steal land."

THE FEDERALIST - "China wants to buy a huge chunk of Iceland"

THE FEDERALIST - "China to buy up Australian farmland"

THE FEDERALIST - "Brazil takes action to protect their farmlands from foreigners"

THE FEDERALIST - "Saudi Arabian "Food Colonies" in Argentina"

THE FEDERALIST - "China buys oil fields in Texas"

THE FEDERALIST - "America is committing suicide - The Road to Serfdom, Part IV"

THE FEDERALIST - "The Road to Serfdom, Part III"

THE FEDERALIST - "Benito Mussolini was right"

THE FEDERALIST - "The Road to Serfdom, Part II"

_______________________________________________________________________

RIP - A Great American was Murdered



A Real American
Satwant Singh Kaleka murdered by Nazi scum.

"Can we all get along?"
- - - - Rodney King


How strange is it that Rodney King became perhaps the great philosopher of all time.

In but a single sentence King summarized the eternal horror of mankind:  hate, violence and murder.

Now we have Nazi scum murdering hard working and loyal great Americans in their Wisconsin places of worship.

Satwant Singh Kaleka was a deeply religious native of India who came to the U.S. as an impoverished immigrant and made his way up buying gas stations.

Kaleka was only armed with a butter knife when he died standing his ground defending his family, friends and religion.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Amardeep S. Kaleka, 34, of Los Angeles said his father had always believed strongly that America was going to be a place of new opportunities for him, his wife and his two boys when he arrived from India's Punjab region and settled in northern Milwaukee in the early 1980s.

He got a job working at a family member's gas station, Kaleka said. "He started working a third shift for an uncle and worked his butt off, 16, 18 hours a day. Then he went on to rent one, and then to own one, and at the end, he owned something like eight gas stations.… All with hard work. No tricks. Hard work."

Kaleka chastised his sons when they complained about discrimination or ill treatment, Amardeep Kaleka said. "He put the largest American flag right on the front lawn, and if you go there, you'll see the flag there. It looks like it was stolen from an elementary school standing there, it's so big," he said.

"We came home and we said, 'It's an eyesore; this thing is going to make us look foolish here.' And he said, 'You're an American now. You push the American dream. Study and knowledge and education, that's what's going to lead us forward.' "

Kaleka said his father used much of his earnings from the gas stations to help build the new Sikh temple, which opened in July 2007, not only with the help of his savings, but the pledges of 24 other community members who put up their houses as collateral for the loan on the property. The elder Kaleka became the president of the temple.    (Los Angeles Times)

The Sikhs  -  Great Americans one and all.
The Sikhs come here to work hard and open businesses while countless millions of native born Americans are looking for free handouts.

Muslims kill 19 Christians while they attend church

Islamist Murderers  - 19 Christians slaughtered and the world is silent

At least 19 people have been killed by Islamists in a gun attack on a church in central Nigeria.

.
Gunmen stormed the church near the city of Okene in Kogi state and fired on worshippers.
.
The pastor was among those killed when the assailants fired Kalashnikov assault rifles, reports  BBC News.

It is not clear who carried out the attack but militant Islamist group Boko Haram has carried out numerous raids on churches and other targets in Nigeria.

.
BBC Nigeria correspondent Will Ross says the shooting happened further south than most areas affected by Boko Haram violence.
.
The joint military force commander in Kogi state, Lt Col Gabriel Olorunyomi, said the gunmen opened fire on the Deeper Life Bible Church in the town of Otite, near Okene, the AP news agency reports.
.
Many others were wounded in the attack and rushed to different hospitals, Lt Col Gabriel Olorunyomi said.
.
The authorities are searching for more victims who may have run into the bush nearby, he added.


Muslim Group 'Enjoys' Killing Nigerian Christians
Islamic fighters have killed scores in multiple attacks on Christian homes and churches.

Victims of a Muslim suicide bomb attack are shown in Kaduna, Nigeria. (AP)

CORRUPTION - Obama targets GOP fundraiser

Republican fundraiser is targeted by Comrade Obama.

Obama attacks Freedom of Speech

• The Bill of Rights has no meaning to corrupt Democrats.
• Obama has the DOJ target GOP fundraiser Sheldon Adelson for daring to fund political ads supporting the Republicans.
• Corrupt Democrats use the bottomless US Treasury to fund the intimidation of those who dare to oppose Socialism.

Comrade Obama's corrupt Justice Department has decided right before the election to "investigate" GOP fundraiser and casino owner Sheldon Adelson.  I am sure that Adelson's pledge to spend $100,000,000 to defeat Obama had nothing to do with the decision.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Obama's boot-licking toady U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles is looking at how the Adelson owned Las Vegas Sands casino handled money from a customer later indicted on drug trafficking charges and a former California executive subsequently convicted of taking illegal kickbacks, the Wall Street Journal reported.

It comes as Las Vegas Sands, which is controlled by billionaire Republican super-donor Sheldon Adelson, is investigated for possibly violating the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in its operations in Macau, a Chinese territory.
The U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles, Andre Birotte Jr., declined to comment to the Journal.

That is totally expected considering this is a political witchhunt to frighten and send a message to everyone that the full weight of the Federal government will come down on your ass if you dare to oppose Democrat Socialism.

The money laundering probe is focused, the Journal reported, on whether the casino and some of its executives ignored warning signs and failed to file suspicious activity reports about transactions made by the two customers, as is required of casinos and other financial institutions.
Both customers spent most of the money at the Venetian casino, which is owned by Sands, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

FREEDOM  -  Lovers of liberty need to keep in mind that these insane Big Government "money laundering" laws that are used to intimidate and control people are eagerly passed by both parties.  In a free society people and businesses should be able to send and receive any amount of money from anywhere in the world at will.

In a free country a government should have no authority over what you do with your own money.
.
(The Wall Street Journal)

Communists put Bloggers on trial

Burned herself alive for freedom.
The mother of a Blogger arrested by the Vietnamese Communists burned herself alive in protest.

Internet Crackdown  -  The Vietnamese government is cracking down on Bloggers who criticize the Communist regime

• The one-party Socialist dictatorship keeps cracking down on Internet freedom of speech.
• While people are imprisoned, foreign governments and businesses line up to make money off the Communists.
• Governments all over the world live in fear of a free Internet.

The international community is calling for the release of three Vietnamese bloggers facing trial for propaganda against the state.  The request comes just days after the mother of one of the bloggers committed suicide by setting herself on fire.
.
Vietnamese authorities postponed a trial for three prominent Vietnamese bloggers, claiming their lawyers had called for the delay following the self-immolation death of the mother of one of the defendants reports Radio Free Asia.

Ta Phong Tan, a Catholic former policewoman, Nguyen Van Hai, better known by his online alias Dieu Cay, and Phan Thanh Hai, known as Anh Ba Saigon, are facing charges for the "crime" of conducting propaganda against the state.

The postponement came as authorities on Friday launched an investigation into the self-immolation death of Tan’s mother, Dang Thi Kim Lieng, who set herself ablaze in front of a municipal building in Bac Lieu province earlier this week in protest of her daughter’s trial, according to Tan’s sister Ta Minh Tu.

Tu said her mother was also troubled by a threatened eviction from her town over a personal land dispute which the government had not resolved, despite numerous petitions sent to officials.  In Socialist Vietnam all land belongs to the State.

Phan Thanh Hai’s lawyer, Doan Thai Duyen Hai, told RFA that a court clerk had contacted him and the other two lawyers to inform them that the trial had been postponed and to ask that they pick up the official notification from the courthouse.

“This afternoon I went to the court to learn the reason for the postponement and the date of the rescheduled trial,” he said. “The notice said the reason for delaying the trial was to ensure the rights of the defendants and their legal benefits as per their lawyers’ request.”

Imprisoned by the Communists for using the Internet.
Vietnamese Bloggers Ta Phong Tan awaits a Communist show-trial for the crime of using the Internet to speak her mind.

The three bloggers are charged with "distorting the truth, denigrating the party and state" for politically critical blogging and for posting hundreds of articles on a banned website known as the "Free Journalists Club" of Vietnam.

Tan, who was a member of Vietnam’s ruling communist party before she became a freelance journalist, frequently blogged about abuses in Vietnam’s legal system.

Phan Thanh Hai, 43, blogged on various issues including territorial disputes with China, environmentally sensitive bauxite-mining projects, a corruption scandal surrounding the state-owned shipbuilder Vinashin, and state harassment of dissidents.

The three bloggers face a maximum of 20 years in prison, based on the charges under Article 88 of Vietnam’s criminal code, a draconian provision that prohibits “conducting propaganda against the state.”

In the last three years, authorities in the one-party state have imprisoned more than a dozen prominent bloggers and activists for using the Internet to express their opinions and advance their causes.
.
(Radio Free Asia)        (UK Guardian)

Three Years in Prison for Blogging
A math professor was sentenced to three years for belonging to a pro-democracy group and publishing an anti-communist blog.
.
Pham Minh Hoang, 56, was found guilty of trying to overthrow the government by posting 33 articles against the one-party communist government, as well as of holding membership in the banned Viet Tan group and recruiting others to join it. It was the second high-profile dissident trial in just over a week.
.
US-based Viet Tan says it is a nonviolent advocate of democracy, but Hanoi considers it a terror organisation.
.
 The communist government does not tolerate dissent, and rights groups say it uses vague national security laws to imprison anyone who challenges its rule.   (UK Guardian)

Food Police - Hand over the tuna and no one gets hurt

The Food Nazis attack a Maryland deli for daring to serve tuna packed in non-government approved oil

• The lunatics have taken over the asylum. 
• The great American nation is no more.

It was right there on the label of the white tuna salad, an outlawed ingredient flaunted for anyone to see:  “partially hydrogenated soybean oil.”

A government stooge "customer" filed a formal complaint with the Food Police authorities reports the Washington Post. An investigation was launched. A Montgomery County, Maryland health inspector arrived on the scene, a deli in Potomac. He reviewed the evidence and handed down his verdict: the business was daring to serve food that Big Brother did not approve of.

“Wrote them up for a labeling violation and made them aware that Montgomery County is a Trans Fat Free county,” he later wrote in his report.

This time the deli would get off with a warning.  But the Food Nazis will keep coming back and back until all bow to the will of the State.

The banning of trans fat was among a series of controversial county laws passed in recent years, creating vigorous fights over the reach and role of government and testing the boundaries between personal liberties and those who want to tell you how to live your life.

Liberty lost the battle.  Welcome to the Big Brother Nanny State.
.
(Washington Post)


John Stossel On the Food Police

INSANITY - Move an entire freeway 100 feet for the bullet train

Tax Dollars down a Rathole.
The insane California high-speed rail project will shove the 99 Freeway in Fresno west by about 100 feet at a projected cost of $226,000,000 . . . . and we all know how government "projected" costs work.  The final costs will go through the roof.

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2012/07/31/2931368/high-speed-rail-will-move-highway.html#storylink=cpy

Insane Government Spending  -  One-quarter of a billion to move an entire freeway 100 feet for a bullet train no one will ride

• Business and labor unions join forces to rape the taxpayers and drive California deeper and deeper into debt.

Big Government and your hard earned tax dollars at work.

A totally bankrupt California wants to go even deeper into debt and re-pay campaign contributors by building a bullet train no one will ride.  After all, if you want to go from L.A. to San Francisco you would fly.  Taking a much slower "bullet train" that had to stop at every city along the way would be an act of insanity.

But insanity is the business of Big Government.

So the People's Republic of California plans to spend about $226 million and take up to three years to relocate a two mile stretch of the 99 Freeway through Fresno to make way for high-speed train tracks.

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2012/07/31/2931368/high-speed-rail-will-move-highway.html#storylink=cpy

In an area dominated by miles of agriculture, deliberately selecting the moving of a freeway naturally makes this the most expensive possible route for the train. And more money spent means more make-work jobs for locals and more money for business and labor unions to suck on.

The estimate by the state's transportation department includes acquiring the private property needed to shove the freeway west by about 100 feet between Ashlan and Clinton avenues in central Fresno, as well as building new traffic lanes and demolition of the old highway, according to a report to the California High-Speed Rail Authority reports the Fresno Bee.

The state will have to buy all or part of about 50 parcels to make room for the relocated freeway. Some of those properties are now occupied by businesses including a pair of mini-storage companies, several motels, a mobile-home park, an RV dealership, a truck-stop and an assisted-living facility.

Besides paying for the construction, the authority will have to foot the bill for the cost of moving businesses that would be displaced by the highway.

The highway relocation is part of the first stretch of the rail line that the authority wants to start building in the central San Joaquin Valley from Madera to the south end of Fresno.

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2012/07/31/2931368/high-speed-rail-will-move-highway.html#storylink=cpy

.
(Fresno Bee)

The Rape of the Taxpayer.
Stupidity on Parade.  In a near empty agriculture based Central Valley, Government deliberately wants to move an entire freeway 100 feet.  No one is going to ride California's insane bullet train in the first place.  But that does not stop government, business and labor from joining together to selected the most expensive possible routes for building the train. 
.
After all, this project is not about a train.  Government programs are about sucking the taxpayers dry for every possible dollar in order to line the pockets of special interest groups.