When it comes to rich and powerful, it’s not easy to beat Alain C. Enthoven. He served as a Deputy Secretary of Defense under Robert S. McNamara during the 1960s. He was a professor at Stanford and is now an emeritus professor there as well. He lives an Atherton and owns a home with an estimated value of at least $2.7 million dollars. Oh sure, there are richer people out there, and more powerful people out there. But let’s be clear. Enthoven wants for nothing. He has built a privileged life for himself. Which is to his credit.

Still, it doesn’t necessarily make him an expert on what is best for the middle class. Especially when it comes to high speed rail. Enthoven, as we know, is not a neutral observer on the topic. He lives about a block from the Caltrain tracks in Atherton, a railroad that was built 100 years before he served in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Enthoven has a material interest in killing a high speed rail project that he is convinced will undermine his property values. Enthoven lent his name to a flawed study that tried to put an academic face on NIMBYism – but as he explained in a comment on the revised program EIR for the high speed rail project, his primary worry is – and I quote:

An elevated railway would be hideous and intolerably noisy. We like to eat outdoors in the summer, but with such noise we would not be able to hear each other talking. And it would wake people at night. It would transform our pleasant semi-rural environment into an ugly urban environment.

We have consulted with a local real estate broker who has 34 years of experience and knows our neighborhood well. In her judgement, even the hint of HSR becoming reality is causing a 10-15% drop in real estate values. When or if the train actually materializes, prices will drop 25-30%. That will reduce assessed values and local tax revenues. We are counting on our property value sometime in the next 10 years to pay for a retirement home and to help with the college education of our grandchildren.

Enthoven isn’t concerned about the rest of us poor schlubs, who struggle to pay our bills and watch helplessly as college becomes unaffordable for ourselves and our families, who see gas prices soar, who see government scaling back stimulus and now even basic programs in the name of giving more money to rich people like Enthoven. Nobody in the middle class owns a home worth $2.7 million, most aren’t expecting to buy a retirement home, and few expect to be able to pay for their grandchildren’s college education.

Our earlier criticisms of Enthoven as being a privileged NIMBY must have stung, because he’s out this week with a new report attacking HSR – this time on the basis of it somehow hurting the middle class.

If the ancient world knew to “beware Greeks bearing gifts,” 21st century California should know to “beware rich people offering advice to the middle class.” Enthoven doesn’t care about the actual needs of the middle class. They only matter as far as they can help him preserve his property values, his ability to buy a retirement home, and his ability to enjoy a meal out on his patio (which, it should be noted, will be made easier by grade-separating the tracks and eliminating the horns).

Especially because, as we see in this report, Enthoven has once again put his name to a bunch of flawed and indefensible statements. HSR critics apparently cannot rely on factual arguments, so they have to make up their own facts – and distort others. Let’s have a look.

Will The Train Be Where My Family Can Use It? – The project scheduled to start at the end of 2012; from north of Fresno towards Bakersfield will not have riders. That’s because the State and Federal governments plan to spend over $5Billion to build a track bed in the Central Valley without a locomotive, passenger car or electrification. So the answer for at least the next five to seven years is definitely no.

Well, by that logic, we shouldn’t have started the Interstate Highway System in 1956, because it wasn’t finished for decades.

If the government assembles $66Billion to build the Anaheim/Los Angeles to San Jose to San Francisco project, it is supposed to benefit all Californians. However, if you are among the 7 million residents north of that route you aren’t likely to drive south to use the train. Ditto for the 3.2 million residents to the south and east of the route, and the 1.7 million in the coastal counties.

Note the assertion – undefined and unexplained – that the project will cost $66 billion. There is no firm basis to believe that number; it’s a scare tactic being used by the opposition. They plucked that number out of thin air, and are willfully ignoring the value engineering the CHSRA is now undertaking. But they like to define a lie as truth and then make assumptions based on that “truth.”

The rest of this paragraph is pretty flawed. It assumes no connecting rail service will ever be delivered to other residents – and in fact ignores the connecting service, such as BART and the Capitol Corridor, that already exists. Not everyone will drive to those stations, no. But a hell of a lot of people will get there.

Still, this is setting up the next set of arguments – that Californians shouldn’t have to pay for a train nobody will use. As we’ll see, that’s simply ridiculous.

Will My Family Be Able To Afford To Ride The Train? – The California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) said in 2008 that the cost of a one-way ticket between Los Angeles and San Francisco would be $55. By the end of 2009, that one-way fare had risen to $105.5

Which is still cheaper than flying – but they do not mention airfares anywhere at all. A notable omission, designed to bias the “study.”

If you drive that 407 miles, and use the standard deduction the Federal government allows for business trips by car, your total cost would be $206.6 That puts a round-trip at $412, including all the costs of owning the auto; that is, fuel, taxes, insurance, amortization, depreciation, etc. Only counting gasoline costs at $4.50/gallon, the round trip would be about $200.

That’s assuming 2011 conditions remain constant forever. As we know, they won’t. By 2020 fuel prices will be much higher than they are today – unless demand destruction occurs. That demand destruction will come in one of two forms – either people don’t take those trips, or they use more affordable options such as electric trains.

The denial of reality and ignorance of planning shines through here as well:

For the family to ride the train it will cost $840 round trip, twice as much as the total cost of driving and four times the gasoline costs. You’ll also have to rent a car when you get to San Francisco or Disneyland, adding another $45- $65/day even for a compact. The same is true if you’re not going the entire length of the route. If you’re going only to where it stops, the trip may take less time, but can your family afford the extra costs?

The family won’t “have to” rent a car at all. SF is well-served by public transit today. And the ARTIC station in Anaheim will be close to Disneyland, which will provide some kind of connecting service that does not require a separate car rental.

Their next question is “Will There Be A Job For Someone In My Family To Build Or Operate The Train?” That’s a flawed way to frame the matter if ever there was one. Most Californians won’t be hired to build or operate the train. But that economic activity – as a economics prof like Enthoven knows very well – will create other jobs that WILL employ middle-class Californians. The construction jobs alone will add tax income to state and local governments, helping to sustain vital services. That’s how “stimulus” works. But in their self-interested zeal to attack the project, Enthoven and the other authors are reduced to parroting Tea Party arguments.

We can see that in their next section, a completely specious and flawed argument that the train will cause taxes to soar and services to be slashed:

Will It Cost Me More In Taxes To Support The Train? – A $66Billion Phase One construction cost doubles the State’s long-term debt. To help pay that off, your middle income California family will pay 8-11% above the $1,300 in State income tax you already pay. That’s an unannounced $100-$140 annual tax increase. And the more you earn, the larger bite of your income that 8-11% takes.

The lies are flying thick and fast now. Not only have they failed to prove (or even explain) the $66 billion cost claim, they’re falsely assuming the cost will be borne solely by the state of California. It won’t. California voters already approved $10 billion. The other $33 billion (of a total project cost of $43 billion) come from the federal government and the private sector.

Of course, if for some reason California did decide to spend more and decided to raise taxes to do it, we could always tax the rich to do that. Notice, of course, that the wealthy Enthoven does not mention it as an option (shocking, I know). And of course, Californians could well decide that even if the costs soared, that it was worth paying $100 more a year to help build a train that people want to ride, that enables economic growth, helps our environment and reduces our dependence on expensive foreign oil.

But Enthoven isn’t done on this question yet. Not by a longshot:

There’s even more downside. History teaches us that nowhere in the world does a high-speed rail system collect its entire operating costs from riders. It’s impossible to know precisely what passengers will bring to the fare box. But it’s not impossible to be skeptical about the CHSRA’s claims that, on average, nearly every Californian will ride the train every year and the CHSR operator will collect all of the relatively high fares all the time. So, you must assume that your family is exposed for even more, probably substantial annual income taxes, to pay creditors’ in order to subsidize the operations.

This is complete nonsense. Bald-faced lies being promoted under the cover of a prominent academic. Most HSR systems DO indeed cover their operating cost from riders, including Amtrak’s Acela. Here you also see the core argument of the anti-HSR forces – that “nobody in California will ride trains” reappearing. No matter how often we show them that around the world and even here in the US that HSR is massively popular with riders, the opponents refuse to acknowledge that truth. Nor can they – they’re motivated by self-interest.

All the while, your State Government is collecting less in taxes to pay for education, police or other services from its middle class’ shrinking incomes. You could choose to pay these taxes as-you-go. Or you could create more State debt that puts off the day of reckoning for your children to face. And this for a train you may not be near enough to use and can’t afford to ride.

Or we could raise taxes on the wealthy and not worry about it. Again, Enthoven refuses to consider that option.

The “study” closes with this doom-and-gloom scenario:

To continue the virtuous cycle that has fueled California’s growth and provided long-term jobs, your taxes would have to increase, more debt created or choices made to cut present State spending on other programs. What will benefit the next generations more: a world-class education system, or the profits of a few engineering, equipment, software and train-operating companies? Choosing the later might bring California a train your family may not be near enough to use or afford to ride; raise your State taxes, cut essential services like police and cripple California’s education system that sustained its virtuous cycle. That threatens the kids’ future.

Of course, that future is already being threatened – right now – and not by high speed rail, but by state budget cuts that are happening because California politicians refuse to do what 78% of Californians want and tax the rich to close the gap.

But we can, and must, say more. I’m from a middle-class California family, and am still middle-class myself. So I am much better qualified to speak on this issue than a wealthy former Pentagon official.

California’s middle class is suffering because the rich have taken our money and are leaving us to face the problems caused by soaring gas prices without any alternative. Enthoven never has to worry about affording to fly or drive wherever he wants to go, whenever he wants to go. The rest of us do. And as gas prices pass the $4/gallon mark, that reality bites hard for most middle-class Californians.

That’s why a majority of California voters approved the $10 billion in HSR bonds in 2008. Gas prices soared and the middle class immediately understood: their future lay with electric passenger trains. Enthoven and the rest of the HSR opponents have never accepted this truth, and believe they can somehow snap voters out of this “delusion” – not stopping to think that voters knew damn well what they were doing in November 2008 when they voted for Prop 1A.

California’s middle class will vanish if it is not liberated from dependence on oil. It’s that simple. High speed rail helps that happen. It has saved money and created jobs all over the world and it will do so here in California. It won’t save the middle class alone, obviously, but it’s a necessary part of the solution.

So is taxing the rich. And that’s what this is really about. Enthoven isn’t just worried about his own property value (which if anything will rise when the loud horns and diesel fumes are gone). He is worried about us middle class folks coming after his money and his assets. And he should be worried. We need things like high speed rail, affordable and quality college education, universal health care, and government-funded job creation programs if the middle class is to survive. Enthoven doesn’t dare mention the idea of taxing the rich in his “report” because if he did, he’d undercut his entire argument.

Enthoven doesn’t care about the middle class. He only cares about himself. California’s middle class saw right through similarly specious arguments in November 2008. They did so again when Enthoven’s fellow Atherton resident, the mega-rich and anti-HSR Meg Whitman, got crushed in the November 2010 election. Now Enthoven is reduced to making stuff up and distorting the truth to try and convince middle class Californians to somehow undercut their own economic interest in favor of his own.

It won’t work. But it’s still good to push back against this nonsense anyway. We can never rest until the trains are built and operating.