Tim Moore: 'We Don Need No Freaking Mass Transit'

 

In the New York Times this morning, a lengthy article by Michael Wines about how Republican-dominated state legislatures seek to punish big-city governments in their own states because the majority rural Republicans feel mainly contempt for "urban" (read "Black") cultures and because most of those big-city governments are dominated by Democrats.

It's part of the incipient new civil war that conservatives seem to invite and love.

Here's a section about one of our own Republican legislative bosses who has an obvious cob up his ass about Charlotte:

In North Carolina, where Democrats and Republicans have warred for a decade over gerrymanders, voting restrictions and social issues, the Republican speaker of the State House, Representative Tim Moore, seemed prepared this month to scuttle a $13.5 billion initiative by the Democratic leadership in Charlotte to expand mass transit.

Charlotte leaders aim to move half of the city’s trips away from cars by 2040 through embracing light rail, buses and bike paths. But they need the Legislature’s approval of a local sales tax referendum to finance the effort.

Mr. Moore, who lives in the Charlotte exurb of Kings Mountain scoffed at the plan. “If you put more bike lanes in, that doesn’t mean more people are going to ride their bikes to work — that’s not going to happen,” he said at a political forum this month. “You need to build and expand roads because we are driving cars.” Charlotte’s mayor, Vi Lyles, later said she hoped to meet with Mr. Moore to explain the proposal.