China wins in California

There was an article in the Wall Street Journal that shed some light on the high-speed train project in California - a project that was given $3.1 billion by the Federal Government.  There is a part of that story still missing.

As I reported last year, China was funding part of this "investment" to the tune of a few more hundreds of millions and the beneficiaries were Harry Reed and the governor of California:

While the rest of us have been focusing on other things, our government has favored a company formed from state-owned companies in China, teamed with a US partner, to build a high-speed railroad from the Los Angeles area, in California, to Las Vegas, in the middle of the desert in Nevada.     It has collapsed because the Chinese were not making progress with the build and the Federal officials must have thought it was not going to play well in an election year.  Nobody, until now, has raised an eyebrow over this deal, especially since we are starting to see the relationship of Chinese businesses and people connected to the election of local governments in the US.

The story came out in the Wall Street Journal June 10th 2016, but several news outlets are carrying similar stories (Las Vegas and the LA Times have details). China was to finance this operation, starting with $100 million to get it going.  This is a lot of money funneled into two states run by leaders in the Democratic Party.  The way this worked in Virginia (also a Democrat) was that US companies, owned by a Chinese businessman, were funding both the governor and the Clinton Foundation.  One of the Chinese who commented about this said it was important to influence local leaders because that was the path to influence at the top.  Somebody in our government gave that Chinese businessman permanent residence status in the US so his donations would not come from foreign sources.  Very clever, but highly illegal.

What we should be looking for is a similar arrangement with US businesses and Chinese leaders who are allowed to come to the US for permanent residence.  They are using this as a path to influence our government leaders.  The smoking gun is in Virginia, but a smoking cannon lies somewhere in the West.

What we have discovered since, of course, is that the Federal government has gotten involved and given billions to the people in California so they can study the problem to death and build nothing - again.  There is a lot of money involved here and the only people to benefit are the local Democratic parties of the respective governments.  The Chinese, of course, were betting that money would be well spent when Hillary Clinton got into the White House.  Too bad for them.

Now I wonder if the Russians really succeeded in influencing the U.S election to stop the Chinese from getting someone into office that they favored.