How can a high speed rail benefit Texas economy and travelers

I shared a commentary expressing the possibility of building a high speed rail in Texas from Texas tribune last week. While I said building a high speed rail without government funding was unrealistic, the high speed rail is never a bad solution to transport the growing Texas population among metropolis.
The biggest resistance from the public maybe government funding. Judged from the precedents of high speed rail in America, government funding is not avoidable. The only high speed rail in USA, the Acela Express, is run by the state-owned corporation Amtrak. However, as the population of Texas grows and the metropolis expand, it is possible that the government can reduce its subsidiary on high speed rail gradually (assume there would be one) and ultimately yield it to private corporations. The reason behind is that high speed rails are profitable when it can carry a large amount of passengers.
As for the economic benefit of a possible high speed rail, an obvious one is that its convenience would bring business travelers from other states and even foreign countries. As a frequent flyer, I would be optimistic to foresee the mutual benefit between high speed rail and aviation transport. I fly 10K miles per year on international routes and round trips to the West coast. Like many other student flyers, my priority is low fare, fewer connections and shorter travel time. The current business mode of airlines is hub-to-hub, meaning that they carry passengers between large airports and then have the passengers take connection flights to smaller cities. The connecting flights are very time-consuming because many factors can cause delays (bad weather, heavy traffic flow, mechanical failure). In this case, connecting to small cities on high speed rail is a perfect alternative. In the case of Texas, there are three large carriers based here, namely, American Airlines at Dallas-Ft. Worth, Southwest at Dallas Lovefield and United (former Continental) at Houston George Bush Airport. Hence, these major airlines can sell joint tickets with high speed rail while keeping passengers flying into their Texas hubs. In this way, both railway and airlines in Texas can benefit from the growth of passengers.
On the other hand, the competition between airlines and railway benefits travelers. Faced with competition, airlines will try to take back their markets in the smaller airports by adding non-stop flights. In fact, non-stop flights are reviving in recent years. An example is the non-stop flight from Austin to London Heathrow operated by British Airways. This is partially caused by the vision of aircraft manufacturers. Boeing and Airbus have seen the potential in non-stop flights and designed the next generation of more fuel-economic jetliners (B787 and A350). It is reasonable to believe that the innovation in aircraft manufacturing can couple with the competition with high speed rail to force airlines to increase non-stop flights. Of course, more competition between the carriers results in lower fare for travelers.

The future of railroad transport in Texas

A recent commentary on Texas Tribune argues for the possibility of building a high-speed rail in Texas. This article is written by two conservatives who work in the railroad industry. Based on the recent success of the inner-city light rail in Dallas-Ft. Worth, the authors believe that light-rail is the optimal solution to the increasingly packed Texas cities. They took Austin for example, where the south-to-north-bound roads of the city can be easily paralyzed in rush hours due to a few accidents. Personally I think the authors suggestion about Austin makes sense. In this summer I drive on every weekday between University of Texas and my work place on Burnet road. In rush hours, the traffic flow can slow down very easily but hardly speeds up. Even a single vehicle trying to make a left turn can stop a whole lane. So I totally agree with the authors that Austin deserves a light rail transit.
The authors also make their efforts to convince their conservative partners that public rail transit is not a poison on conservatism. They argues that public rail transits spurs economic growth and help many poor people to get to work, which alleviates the government's duty in intervening the market. They further dismiss the concern about the railroads' being subsidized by the government. The authors illustrate with statistics that railroads need less subsidiary than the current highway system.
However, I want to make a point that the authors are overly optimistic about building a high-speed rail network in Texas. They propose that the high-speed rail can be built by private companies without government subsidiary, which is not very reasonable. In my home country China, the expense of building one kilometer of high-speed rail is 130 million RMB (16 million USD), not including the maintenance expenditure on these technologically complex systems. Hence, building a high-speed rail without government funding is almost impossible. Nevertheless, the authors are right about refining inner-city transit in Texas with light rails

State Attorney General Conducting Investigation into Planned Parenthood

An article on Texas Tribune shows that Texas Attorney General has commanded an official investigation into the alleged preservation of fetal organs by the Planned Parenthood clinic. Early this year, an anti-abortion group named Center for Progressive Medics released a video portraying a high-level official of Planned Parenthood discussing harvesting fetal organs for medical researches in an inter meeting. This news is noticeable because abortion and stem cell research are a sensitive issue in Texas. Despite the conservatism of Texas on abortion, the controversy of stem cell research is at what stage can a fetus be classified as a living human being. Biologically, organs form after the fetus begins to differentiate. Hence, there is a risk that the company is actually harvesting organs from a nearly human fetus, which is unethical and brutal.