Not all teenagers are stupid.
Some teenagers are reasonable people.
Some teens are California.
Some teens are given money for college tuition and books.
Then they drop out of college and ask Dad, “Can I keep the money?”
Dad says, “Um. No.”
The teen freaks out and says, “I am not interested in sending $3.5 billion in federal funding that was allocated to this project back to Donald Trump.”
No, wait…California said that.
The dumbest teenager on Earth wouldn’t expect to keep billions of dollars for a project they carefully explained wasn’t happening.
California: “We’re not building a bullet train. Can we keep the money?”
Trump: “Um. No.”
California: “Why not? You promised!”
Trump: “It’s not your money. It belongs to American taxpayers.”
California: “But you promised!!”
Trump: “And you promised to build a bullet train.”
California: “We tried! We tried really, really, hard!”
Trump: “I’m not asking you again…”
California: “You hateful, racist, homophobic, bigot! You suck!”
And California runs off to its room and slams the door.
Between muffled sobs you can hear it muttering, “I hate this awful country! I hate it so much! I wish Vladimir Putin was our President!”
But we know that’s not true.
Tantrums can’t last forever.
In a few hours, the bedroom door will creak open.
California will shuffle into the kitchen and pour itself a bowl of cereal.
It’s kinda funny sitting there with an indignant scowl on its face.
It won’t say “thank you” for the free breakfast.
That’s teenagers for ya!
Maybe this is just a phase that California will outgrow.
Take all the time you need, California.
Adulthood is hard.
If you need to pout for awhile, that’s fine.
You still owe us three and a half billion bucks.
5 Responses
I think you might have interpreted the meaning of that statement wrong, when I read through the article, it seemed to me that California was using that to encourage people to build the train, because some people think it’s a waste. Look at the statement before it: “For those who want to walk away from this whole endeavor, I offer you this:
Abandoning High Speed Rail completely means we will have wasted billions of dollars with nothing but broken promises and lawsuits to show for it.” From THERE he goes on to say the trump thing. They’re still planning on making the bullet train 🙂
Right. But it’s not going to be the original deal. The train is going to be much shorter and the project is going to take much longer. It’s projected to cost more money too.
It would be like paying your teenager to mow the yard. The teen pulls the mower out of the shed and starts it up. He lets it idle for three weeks. Then the kid says he’s going to mow half the yard because he doesn’t want to break his promise.
Fair enough, that makes more sense
https://reason.com/blog/2019/02/19/trump-mocks-californias-bullet-train-boo
That train boondoggle has certainly been a greater waste than Trump’s wall. It is no wonder Trump has drawn attention to it.
Perfect. Thanks for creating this analogy and sharing it!!!