Local Mary Hunt poses an excellent question in a Letter to the Editor in the Daily Journal. It goes like so:

Question: While our state budget crisis deepens and the state is forced to defer payments to schools and vendors, what will our lame-duck governor Arnold Schwarzenegger be doing to help resolve the worst budget crisis in decades?

Answer: Our governor will be AWOL — taking a trade junket to China, Japan and South Korea from Sept. 9 to Sept. 15 (This is also the period for the governor to decide the fate of hundreds of bills recently passed by the Legislature). That’s bad enough. But there’s more reason for concern: Traveling with the governor will be the new CEO of the High-Speed Rail Authority, Roelof van Ark. This gives credence to the talk that Gov. Schwarzenegger wants China to invest tens of billions of dollars to make up the huge investment shortfall that many experts predict in the funding of California’s high-speed rail system. Why would China invest tens of billions of dollars in a project that — according to our state treasurer— Wall Street investors are, “convinced that no one can finance the routes from Los Angeles to the Bay Area?” That question needs to be answered, not in the California governor’s office, but in the president’s National Security Council.

Mary L. Hunt

And a guest opinion in the Chronicle hits on another aspect of the private investment needed

those investors will need to see a potential return. The hitch? The way the phasing or building of the system is currently proposed may not produce a return.

And the proposal which is quite logical is