It's been two months since my last high-cost rail post and there has been some good news along the way including the cap-and-trade auctions yielding less money than expected so the Guv may have less money to waste on high-cost rail.  And Brown was unsuccessful in amending Senate Bill 32, a bill to extend the state's greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, to include a provision continuing the state program beyond 2020. The cap-and-trade program is a major source of funding for Brown's high-speed rail project.  But my favorite news item came from today's SacBee

The state Capitol, Stockton farmer Dean "Dino" Cortopassi said, has been overrun by “porkers feeding at the public trough,” and if long-term debt is not constrained, he said his grandchildren’s generation will bear the cost. He called his November ballot initiative – a proposal to require voter approval before the state issues revenue bonds for public works projects costing more than $2 billion – his “moral obligation.”

Proposition 53, into which Cortopassi and his wife, Joan, have poured about $4.5 million, is in one way a referendum on Brown’s $15.5 billion plan to build two tunnels to divert water around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the south.   While the initiative does not address California’s most significant long-term liabilities, including pensions and retiree health care, Cortopassi, 78, said, “It’s a goddamn start.”