# Ezra Klein is an anti-intellectual (Part 3 of 3)
Date: 2025-06-06
Previous Part: https://disrael.github.io/blogs/raw/ezra-klein-is-an-anti-intellectual.part2.md

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> Most notably, the CHSR Project continues to be marred by countless change orders for almost every contract. Change orders ranged from tens of thousands of dollars to over $100 million. In just over two years, from January 2023 to present, CHSRA has publicly reported approximately $1.6 billion in change orders, suggesting that a substantial portion of all payments to contractors are being made outside the original terms of negotiated contracts. There is no indication that such renegotiations and costly change orders, necessitated by CHSRA’s failure to manage this project effectively, will ever stop.

> Simply put, CHSRA is not using State or Federal funding to advance responsibly the CHSR Project. Rather, it is simply perpetuating the same inefficient project management activities with change order after change order. It is no surprise, therefore, why CHSRA has made minimal progress to advance construction. The sheer volume and frequency of these change orders shows waste through an inexcusable combination of poor planning, implementation, or mismanagement of contractors, insufficient legal authority and technical expertise, and other factors.

So that’s the Trump administrations take. However page 47 of the report has a Letter to the Legislature (March 8, 2024) with this sentence:

> We cannot emphasize too strongly that lack of action by the Legislature and Governor to identify an adequate and stable source of funding for the project is increasing costs and hindering management’s control of the project.

So Klein says burden of government rules, transportation secretary Duffy says mismanagement, and someone on the project says unstable funding — plenty of finger pointing.

However the take away of “everything-bagel liberalism” from the wreckage of this project is just a giant neoliberal smoke screen anyway. Suppose this project succeeds and software engineers are able to commute to Silicon Valley from far away. Then what?

I mean first of all Silicon Valley already outsources much of its engineering to poor countries all over the world. So it’s unclear why anyone needs to ride a train to accomplish that. In fact this project is kind of the opposite of the dynamic cities that *Abundance* is advocating and more about getting smaller towns involved.

Second how is California high-speed rail even supposed to help wealth inequality? If the point is that people working on building the train system will have quality jobs then spend away — just make sure the money reaches people that are not already rich.

But the money isn’t reaching poorer people because richer people are preventing that. That’s what happens in general with wealth inequality and why allowing it to reach such monstrous levels is so hard to undo.

[Side note: I don’t want to come off as not wanting the many jobs and cool new and more environmentally friendly transportation that high speed rail creates. It’s just that high speed rail and other public works projects are not a vision of the future — for instance Japan leaned heavily into such programs but it didn’t solve [their wealth inequality](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/wealth-inequality-by-country) or economic woes.]

Page 116:

> When California applied for federal money under the terms of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Obama administration gave preference to bids that would improve air quality in poor communities. And so the $3 billion the federal government offered was not really to build high-speed rail. It was to begin building high-speed rail in ways that addressed air pollution in specific places. The Central Valley is poorer and more polluted than coastal California, so federal funding went there, and so did the initial construction. California is building high-speed rail in a place that makes it less likely that it will generate the ridership, political support, and financial backing to ever finish. The irony is that it’s not just bad for the high-speed rail project. It’s also bad for air pollution across the state.

Ah now we’re getting somewhere. Instead of trying to reach poor people with the money, the government should have targeted rich coastal elites. That way the rail would actually get built and eventually there would be a “trickle down” to the Central Valley when (and if) they get their turn.

This is the real meaning of “everything-bagel liberalism” — if you try to help the poor or the environment you will fail. Just leave those toppings off of your bagel.

Don’t worry it’s not like that’s exactly how neoliberals have failed for the last fifty years and led us to the brink of fascism. Except that it is.