Each time I see someone arguing that we shouldn't harshly punish criminals and that those who do are just sadists, I just see someone saying. "He is a good christian man." or "that boy has a bright future ahead of him." as justification for a judge letting a rapist off the hook.
I've outright stated that, in the grand scheme of things, becoming a criminal is breaking the trust of the public and trust has always been something that is easily broken but
incredibly hard to repair. How much trust is lost heavily depends on the sort of criminal activity...
Also, High Speed Rail in the US is a pipe dream in the US's current population density situation. Europe gets the most of out it's HSR system because Europe has effectively subsidized their cargo traffic out of existence (forcing them onto trucks), nationalizing their railroads (Britain is an exception -as far as I can tell- to this as it privatized their railroad), and subsidizing their railroads to the point that you only pay about
half the actual ticket price (at least in France). People have forgotten that, historically, passenger services on railroads have always been a monetary
drain on railroads and the
real money has been always with the goods work. The only reason that passenger services existed is because if they did it well, it's basically
free advertising for their goods work (and in the US, the oh so juicy US Postal Service contract).
So there is probably a phrase back in the day that sums up the situation with rail, which would probably sound like this: Passengers Advertise,
Goods make Money.
Add to the fact that the vast majority of US cities had been designed with
the horse first (and thus why our counties always had weird shapes before Gerrymandering became a major thing, they were drawn based on how far a horse can travel within a day or two, forgot which) then the car (which is why even old US cities and towns have far wider streets than their European counterparts, the original planning was based around horse-wagon traffic and not foot traffic).
The only way that the US is going to get HSR is that Congress decides to break up the coast cities and spread the population (and economy) over a wider area...