Why build a pipeline just from the east? We just visited Promontory Point, Utah where the two railroads met to produce the first intercontinental railroad. If an intercontinental railroad can be built in the 19th century, an intercontinental pipeline can be built in the 21st century out of just one tenth of NASA’s budget, much less if cheap Chinese labor,which built the railroad, is used. A little more energy will be required to lift and move that much water than was required to move a few cars on steel rails, but a couple of nuclear power plants along the route should do the job. Yeek! I forgot! Now, we have the EPA, the environmental impact statements, the fear of a nuclear holocaust, the Chinese who make widgets for us and who ship them to us, creating their own jobs rather than migrate to the other side of the world to build pipelines. We have adequate nuclear fuel to move the water, and Nevada has adequate storage capacity for the nuclear waste; but our Congress and our President don’t have the guts to step into the unknown with grand, ambitious projects that will solve the water problem. Instead, we have the EPA to keep our environment clean, pure, dry, and pristine for the love of life in the desert.

President Obama says government will have to build the nation out of the economic trough. “We’re the country that built the intercontinental railroad,” Obama says. “So how can we now sit back and let China build the best railroads?” Ironic that he mentions the Chinese. Progressives used to complain that to build the railroad, bosses abused Chinese workers — called them “coolies” and treated them badly. Now this is big success?I guess Obama doesn’t know that the Transcontinental Railroad was a Solyndra-like Big Government scandal. The railroad didn’t make economic sense at the time, so the government subsidized construction and gave the companies huge quantities of the best land on the continent. As we should expect, without market discipline — profit and loss — contractors ripped off the taxpayers. After all, if you get paid by the amount of track you lay, you’ll lay more track than necessary.Credit Mobilier, the first rail construction company, made enormous profits by overcharging for its work. To keep the subsidies flowing, it made big contributions to congressmen. Where have we heard that recently? The transcontinental railroad lost tons of money. The government never covered its costs, and most rail lines that used the tracks went bankrupt or continued to be subsidized by taxpayers. The Union Pacific and Northern Pacific — all those rail lines we learned about in history class — milked the taxpayer and then went broke.One line worked. The Great Northern never went bankrupt. It was the railroad that got no subsidies.