By Paul Losch
About this blog: I was a "corporate brat" growing up and lived in different parts of the country, ending in Houston, Texas for high school. After attending college at UC Davis, and getting an MBA at Harvard, I embarked on a marketing career, mai...
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About this blog: I was a "corporate brat" growing up and lived in different parts of the country, ending in Houston, Texas for high school. After attending college at UC Davis, and getting an MBA at Harvard, I embarked on a marketing career, mainly in the Bay Area with different companies. My former wife went back to medical school after we had been married a few years, and we moved into married student housing at Stanford, had our two now adult children while she was a medical student, and moved into Palo Alto when she started her Residency. Been here ever since. As my kids were going through the Palo Alto schools, I was actively involved in their activities, most notably head umpire for Palo Alto Little League and 9 years as a member of the Parks and Recreation Commission, among other activities. My kids both are grown, my son teaches 5th grade locally, and my daughter, fluent in Mandarin, is working in China. I sold the business I owned and ran for 8 years in 2012, worked on the Obama campaign, and am consulting for non-profit organizations, which gives me a nice, flexible schedule. Lots of stamps in my passport, and for fun, I like live performances &emdash; theater and music - and of course the Giants!
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I am not crazy about litigation and courts getting involved in matters of public policy, unless it is necessary.
The law not on the books is the law of unintended consequences, which no court can effectively pass muster.
I have had serious misgivings about the concept of HSR between Nocal and Socal, and voted against it last fall, and have weighed in accordingly.
From what I perceive, there is too much hubris by the folks in charge of the HSR, and they "pretend" to listen, but have their game book lock and loaded. Full speed ahead.
From what I perceive, cities with neighborhoods up and down the Peninsula do not have a clear idea of what HSR really means for them, if there are benefits, and if there are not, what offsets the lack of benefits for others in this idea.
I think it is folly for HSR to go beyond San Jose all the way to San Francisco. Way too complicated and way too expensive. More importantly, the benefits are not clearly articulated.
How about you HSR guys grab the low hanging fruit and get a connection to points South from San Jose? You are expending a great deal of your time against a formidable group of folks and I am not sure it attends what you believe to be the greatest public benefit of this concept.