California's 'Bridge to Nowhere' joins the 'Train to Nowhere'

'Nowhere' is a popular destination among CA government officials

$114 million for butterflies, but you taxpayer slobs will just have to deal with the potholes. We’re broke.

California is going nowhere, fast.

It isn’t even a figure of speech anymore. We are $13 billion dollars into a high speed train from Los Angeles to San Francisco. As of this moment it goes…nowhere. Not an inch. Not a stitch of high-speed rail has been laid. What was once projected to be a $33 billion dollar project that would be operational by 2020 is now projected to cost about $128 billion, becoming operational in 2032…but only between Merced and Bakersfield.

If you don’t know where those places are or why people would need high-speed rail to get between them…exactly. It is a scam on par with Boston’s notorious Big Dig, but until recently it was a singular scam.

City-Journal’s Chris Rufro found another Nowhere project, this one promising to move animals instead of people. The cost projections are overruns are eerily familiar.

In 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom broke ground on the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing (WAWC), a project featuring an overpass for animals atop ten lanes of the 101 Freeway in Southern California. At the ceremony, Newsom boasted that the state had committed $54 million. He promised to “complete the job within another $10 million,” before seeming to hedge on whether that final sum would do the trick. Officials projected a 2025 completion date for the overpass, and estimated that the entire project—which includes the bridge and other ancillary developments—would cost $92 million, some of it coming from private philanthropists.

You’ll be shocked to know it has since incurred another $21 million dollars in overruns.

You’ll be even more shocked to learn the woman in charge of the Big Dig 2.0 is a crazy person.

Beth Pratt, the woman in charge of 114 million of our tax dollars

What was supposed to be the world’s largest wildlife crossing has become a jobs program for environmentalists, with taxpayers on the hook for what WAWC leader Beth Pratt told us is an overpass “for everything from monarch butterflies to mountain lions.”

Pratt, a cougar-sweater-wearing environmental activist who serves on WAWC’s Partner Leadership Team, is the program’s public face. She is also a regional executive director of the National Wildlife Federation. In 2021, the group received a $25 million grant from “Wallis Annenberg and the Annenberg Foundation” for the bridge that bears the late philanthropist’s name.

Great work if you can get it.

Rufro reports the California Department of Transportation cites the creation of 13,000 jobs during the construction of the Bridge to Nowhere Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing. As Rufro writes, “some of these jobs are absurd.”

Indigenous team members to “help steward” vegetation, including making “offerings” to nature; ‘seed scouts’ to wander around the Santa Monica Mountains and look for native seeds for ‘design’ aesthetics; a fungi whiz; a ‘soil scientist’ who’s only job is to practice rebuilding the native soil from around the bridge, in case the government needs to replace the soil.

$114 million dollars. 13,000 jobs. 6 years.

Endless fraud.

And just to put the cherry on top, here is Gavin Newsom acting like a psychopath at the bridge dedication back in 2023.

Notice the ‘low, low’ price tag he puts on the bridge - just $56 million dollars with maybe another $10 million in private donations and he’s definitely not asking for more money because…QUOTE: WE’RE GOOD!

We were not good.

We are not good.

Gavin Newsom is not good.

None of what is happening in California is good, and while its all been decades in the making, the worst of it can be laid directly at Gavin Newsom’s feet. California is what happens - GAVIN NEWSOM is what happens - when the people leave their government on autopilot.

The plane stays in the air for a while, but the only option to end the flight is a crash landing.

We’re crashing.

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