Timothy Benefield

Privileged to feed the flocks at Golden Valley Baptist Church (Patterson, CA) and Cornerstone Baptist Church (Modesto, CA)

[Timothy Benefield @TimBenefield]

This is who I really wish could be our next president.

[Ron DeSantis @RonDeSantis]

The US Debt Clocks counts up (by a lot).

Florida’s Debt Clock counts down.

More than 50% of the debt retired in the past 8 years!

[Allie Beth Stuckey @conservmillen]

Several years ago, Jill Stanek, a former registered nurse, testified before the House Judiciary Committee about her time working in the Labor and Delivery ward of Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois.

She described what it was like to discover that babies who survived abortions were being placed in a utility closet to die.

She said: “I was traumatized and changed forever by my experience of holding a little abortion survivor for 45 minutes until he died, a 21/22-week-old baby who had been aborted because he had Down Syndrome.”

Infants with special needs in this nation are routinely killed, maimed, and tortured simply because of their diagnosis. If you can’t take the most morally obvious position in the world, that babies shouldn’t be murdered, I am not interested on your view on anything else.

[Libs of TikTok @libsoftiktok]

Today, the City of Minneapolis wants to celebrate George Floyd instead of Memorial Day.

In fact, they've failed to honor Memorial Day for years. All their posts on Memorial Day are just to remind people that the offices are closed.

A violent career criminal who overdosed on fentanyl and held up a pregnant woman at gunpoint vs honoring brave service members who gave their lives for our country.

Minneapolis is a FAILED city. Tampon Tim is a DISGRACE

[Timothy Benefield @TimBenefield]

It's hilarious that this guy turned off the replies to his post. He doesn't really want to know the answer.

[Jim Acosta @Acosta]

Trump gets to redraw maps in his states but the Democrats cannot do the same? What is happening to our democracy?

[Martin Wickens @mnwickens]

Serving Jesus is not the same as following Jesus.

I fear many may serve Jesus publicly while not following Him closely personally.

Serving involves activity teaching, preaching, singing etc.

But following involves surrender yielding our will, Obedience, personal holiness, walking with God daily and denying self.

It is possible to serve while drifting from closeness with Christ.

Service should flow out of love.

[Timothy Benefield @TimBenefield]

@RealBrittHughes It doesn't even sound cool

[Timothy Benefield @TimBenefield]

@RepJeffries

[Oliver Burdick @oliverburdick]

"A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education".

- Theodore Roosevelt

[Timothy Benefield @TimBenefield]

@MattWalshBlog Ecclesiastes 8:11 "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil." (Holy Bible)

[Timothy Benefield @TimBenefield]

@s_benefield

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Adding a backflip in motion.

Farming aura brought to a whole new level.

[Timothy Benefield @TimBenefield]

😲

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am the Director of Strategic Planning at the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

I have held this position for seventeen years. In that time I have written four business plans, overseen six revisions, and authored eleven methodology updates. The train has not moved.

There is a hard hat on the shelf behind my desk. It was given to me at the Fresno groundbreaking ceremony in 2015. It is still in the cellophane. I use it as a bookend for the business plan binders. There are four binders. They are substantial. The hat holds them upright.

In 2008, California voters approved Proposition 1A. San Francisco to Los Angeles. Two hours and forty minutes. Fifty-five dollars per ticket. Ninety-five million annual riders by 2030. Total cost: $33.5 billion. Fifty-three percent said yes.

The current cost estimate is $231 billion.

I am sometimes asked to provide context for that figure. The state housing shortage is 2.5 million units. At the California median home price, $231 billion would produce 577,000 of them. The average public school teacher in California earns $95,000. $231 billion is every one of their salaries for eight years. The state has a documented wildfire suppression staffing gap. $231 billion would fund 6,400 additional fire crews for a century. I include these comparisons for context. They are not relevant to my work.

We have built 119 miles of infrastructure. Columns. Viaducts. Grade separations. You can see them from Highway 99 between Madera and Bakersfield. They stand in rows across land that used to grow things. No track runs on them. No train has touched them. Some of them have graffiti now. I have seen the photographs in the quarterly progress reports. I have not visited.

There was an almond grower outside Hanford. She is in our files as Parcel 417, Hanford East. The Authority acquired twelve acres of her property through eminent domain in 2016 for right-of-way clearance. The trees were removed. The soil was graded flat. The right-of-way has been clear for nine years. Nothing has been built on Parcel 417. Her file notes that she attended three public comment hearings between 2014 and 2016. I do not know what she said at those hearings. I know what we said. We called the acquisition "a critical milestone in the project's advancement." I wrote those words for the 2016 Annual Report. They were well-received. Her contact information has been flagged in the Phase 2 preliminary assessment, in case additional right-of-way is required. Phase 2 does not yet exist. Her contact information does.

The original completion date was 2020. The current target is 2032. The route has been revised from San Francisco-to-Los Angeles to Merced-to-Bakersfield. One hundred seventy-one miles. I refer to this as Phase 1.

The French national rail company, SNCF, joined the project as a consulting partner in 2010. They left in 2011. They used the phrase "political dysfunction," which is diplomatic language for a country that built the Eiffel Tower in two years telling you it cannot build your train. SNCF then went to Morocco and built a high-speed rail line from Tangier to Casablanca. Two hundred miles. Operational by 2018. Seven years.

We are in year eighteen. I included the SNCF departure in the 2022 business plan as a "comparative international case study." The lesson I drew was that Morocco has simpler permitting requirements. This is accurate. I did not draw other lessons.

The $9.95 billion bond that voters approved costs the state $647 million per year for thirty years. Roughly $20 billion in total repayment. The bond is being serviced on schedule. $647 million leaves the state treasury every year and arrives in accounts associated with a train that does not carry passengers. It has done this since 2010. The bond repayment is the most functional transit system we have built. It moves $647 million a year. On time. Every time.

In 2019, Governor Newsom said the project "would cost too much and, respectfully, take too long." He then continued funding it. I appreciated the word "respectfully." It acknowledged the problem without producing an obligation to solve it. My team delivered the 2020 business plan revision the following quarter. It was well-received.

The Governor also supported legislation to shield certain cost details from public disclosure. That same year, thousands of pages were removed from the Authority's website. I was not involved in that decision. I was involved in the pages.

Last Friday, a television host told the Governor on camera that the project now costs $231 billion. The Governor said, "No, it's not. It's not." The $231 billion figure is from the 2026 draft business plan. Page 47. I wrote page 47. The Governor then said we had gotten the project "back on track." I noted the phrasing. A rail project that has not yet laid operational track is not, in a strict sense, on one. I did not raise this.

The ridership projection has been revised from 95 million annual riders by 2030 to 36 million by 2060. I updated that figure personally during the 2024 planning cycle. The ticket price has been revised from $55 to $105. Both figures describe a service that does not yet exist.

The State Auditor published a report. The title is: "Flawed Decision Making and Poor Contract Management Have Contributed to Billions in Cost Overruns and Delays in the System's Construction." That is twenty words. We have 119 miles of columns that carry nothing. I read the report carefully. It was thorough. We incorporated its findings into the next business plan revision.

The board was scheduled to vote on the latest business plan on April 29th. The vote was delayed. Additional review was requested. I support additional review.

My pension vests in 2034. The project's current completion target is 2032. If the train is finished on schedule, my position becomes unnecessary two years before my pension matures. The completion date is determined by the business plan. I write the business plan.

The plan says the project should continue. It has always said this. I have never written one that recommended otherwise.

[Timothy Benefield @TimBenefield]

@Skint_Eastwood1 Boy, is he in for a big surprise.

[Leonard Ravenhill @ravenhillquotes]

The Devil’s substitute for the joy of the Lord is entertainment.

[Martin Wickens @mnwickens]

"Today, I suspect that only a minority acknowledge the authority of God in their lives. ​Perhaps that is why we have turned to the state to do so many things which in the past were the prerogative of the family.”

​— Margaret Thatcher
Speech at St Lawrence Jewry. 1978

[Brennan's Pen @BrennansPen]

It does not take great men to do great things; it only takes consecrated men.
-Phillip Brooks (1835-1893)

[Paul Chappell @PaulChappell]

Even if the task is not worthy of you, diligence is.

"Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men." (Proverbs 22:29)

[Brennan's Pen @BrennansPen]

The one grand end and object of Christianity and of salvation is to make us holy.
-Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981), Darkness and Light; An Exposition of Ephesians

[Brennan's Pen @BrennansPen]

Everyone is just as holy as he wants to be.
- A.W. Tozer (1897-1963)