Letters to the Editor: With the bullet train boondoggle, why would voters elect a Californian as president?

To the editor: I’m saddened that the worthy project of high-speed rail in California was mismanaged from the start. (“The cases for and against high-speed rail in California,” letters, Jan. 2)

The $11 billion that has already been spent should have gone toward starting the project in the Los Angeles or San Francisco Bay areas, facilitating commuting to these higher-salaried cities from lower-cost housing markets as an adjunct to addressing homelessness.

I also believe that California’s Democratic Party politics increased high-speed rail’s price tag. How much have union-enforced wage scales padded the project’s costs? Did California’s environmental lobby add roadblocks for an initiative that would actually reduce carbon emissions?

From my view here in Tennessee, California’s management of this vital high-speed rail project exemplifies how Vice President Kamala Harris or Gov. Gavin Newsom would operate the U.S. government if elected president.

If California wants the rest of the nation to model its form of government, the state must demonstrate that it works — which, today, it doesn’t.

Jim Kennedy, Smyrna, Tenn.