California’s Latest Boondoggle: The $114 Million “Butterfly Bridge” That’s Still Not Finished
Only in California could taxpayers be forced to cough up more than $100 million for a so-called “butterfly bridge”—and, after blowing past the deadline, still have nothing useful to show for it except another embarrassing fail for Democrat leadership. This is Gavin Newsom’s home state, after all, where sky-high spending on pet projects always seems to end in disaster for the regular people footing the bill.
At the helm of this disaster sits Beth Pratt, an environmental activist whose priorities are about as far from reality as you can get. While crime skyrockets, schools crumble, and ordinary Californians struggle to pay for groceries, Sacramento’s brain trust chucks away a fortune on a bridge designed not for hardworking citizens, but for coyotes and mountain lions. Pratt seems more excited about celebrities showing up at a ribbon-cutting and about celebrating Earth Day than about getting anything actually built on time. For her, the highlight isn’t fixing collapsing roads or connecting towns—it’s making sure some wild animal gets to be the “first” to use this concrete monument to liberal virtue-signaling.
Pratt’s latest media appearances ooze with self-congratulation while she talks about progress and planting 30,000 more plants. Yet anyone paying attention can see that the deadline was missed, the real needs of Californians have once again been ignored, and taxpayers have been fleeced for the privilege. The “world’s most hopeful construction project,” she calls it—never mind all the unfinished hospitals, falling bridges, and broken schools desperately awaiting the funding that gets wasted on publicity stunts like this.
And let’s not pretend the leadership in Sacramento gives a rip about ordinary people. For them, it’s about checking the right boxes, appeasing the radical green lobby, and turning every project into another tribalist trophy. If a few families get attacked by mountain lions or lose jobs because transportation is broken, that’s just a footnote in their anti-human climate crusade. Complaining? Get ready to have the woke crowd call you a “racist”—because that’s standard California problem-solving these days.
Gavin Newsom wants to take this brand of incompetence national in 2028. But if he can’t even get an animal bridge built on time and under budget in his own state, why should anyone trust him with the nation? California could serve the very people who pay the taxes. Instead, the left would rather let taxpayer money burn while animals get VIP treatment. Maybe the joke’s on us—maybe this was always the plan.
Source: Townhall
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