A few corrections are in order. Brasil has a President who actually has power--when the country is not under a dictatorship. As to parliamentary government, v presidential government, Tony Blair and George Bush were products of opposite systems but equally disastrous as leaders; and I dearly wished for a no confidence vote to oust Johnson.
You are certainly correct some of us would like to see the orange liar deposed, castrated, and blinded--following Byzantine and Chinese Imperial traditions that a physically compromised person could not rule.
All of that is tangential to the issue of whether and how to upgrade rail transport in the most productive state in the US. As to raiding the Federal Treasury, given the forced support for the deliberately semi-illiterate but guaranteed supporters of DOD waste (is there ANYTHING they buy that is legitmate I ask as the son of civil servants who worked for the Army) (neo?)Confederate states, I have no problem with getting some of our taxes back for HSR and many other useful projects. As to the specific route details, having lived in Chicago, Philly, NYC, DC, I am used to disastrous transit/rail route choices. You are of course correct that the decisions are made based on patronage, not the best way to provide for "the public necessity and convenience". The great IND Division of the NYC Subway was conceived as a way to bankrupt and destroy the private sector "traction interests" so much of it was either dead parallel to or a subway replacement for existing elevated routes. Routes to under/unserved areas??? Nope. BART's route to Fremont was built on excess ROW availble cheaply as opposed to actually tapping where people lived. CTA's Orange Line to Midway is similarly on surplus RR ROW--no one lives within walking distance of those stations.

Part of these mistakes is the stinginess of our nation when it comes to funding for transit. Given that ALL publicly funded projects in the US are essentially handouts to the kleptocrats, I had thought that BART represented the camel's nose under the tent for full funding as wealth transfer to the bribing elites. Unfortunately BART was so poorly designed (and WMATA followed suit) that little actual money was available for transit and that has only gotten worse across the entire US culture.
Second Avenue Subway anyone? I mean they spent more on the tiny stub than the 1968 plans expected to spend on the entire trunk in Manhattan.

Here endeth the rant.