Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Tennessee Tries To Claim Crazy Conservative Crown

In order to prevent Nashville from building a bus rapid transit route (BRT), the legislature banned construction of BRT systems within the entire state:
Tennessee lawmakers overwhelmingly voted in favor a bill that bans the construction of bus rapid transit (BRT) anywhere in the state.
The impetus for the vote was a proposal to build a $174 million BRT system in Nashville called The Amp, which would’ve ran on a 7.1 mile route and served rapidly growing neighborhoods across the city. There’s a more detailed summary of the project over at The Tennessean.
Although BRT has been shown to revitalize economies and reduce congestion, opponents of The Amp voiced concerns about the safety of unloading bus passengers along roadways and whether private land would be used to build dedicated bus lanes.
After the vote, Amp opponents revealed that the conservative group Americans for Prosperity, founded with the support of brothers Charles and David Koch, had lobbied in favor of the bus ban.
The legislation is startlingly specific: Senate Bill 2243 forbids “constructing, maintaining or operating any bus rapid transit system.”
The Senate version of the BRT ban also forbids buses from “loading or discharging passengers at any point within the boundary lines of a state highway or state highway right-of-way not adjacent to the right-hand, lateral curb line.” Though the House struck that provision and sent revised legislation back to the Senate, it would still require special approval from the Tennessee Department of Transportation and local government bodies.
I still don't think Tennessee is as stupidly regressive as Mississippi or Arizona, but it is making it's case for inclusion in the top five idiot conservative states. Please tell me that the opponents of the project who revealed that Americans for Prosperity lobbied for the ban were making that up to troll liberals.  I can't imagine those asshole Koch brothers think it is worthwhile to waste money on idiot state legislators in an ass-backward state just to kill one little mass transit project that they should be pretty confident would fail anyway (see note about ass-backward state).  If it is true they were lobbying for this idiotic legislation, then that is proof that income taxes are way too low on those two jackasses and other too-rich jerks.

2 comments:

  1. Yeah, I doubt the Koch Brothers literally had anything to do with this, but I'll bet one of their minions did. They're evil enough to make sure every attempt to stem the use of oil gets attention. It's frightening to watch so many states make a run towards complete craziness. Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Mississippi, Wisconsin, ad infinitum, etc. The crazy people are right. We're going to hell. It's just that it's them that's taking us there. Not their spiteful God.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Mississippi I expect. Wisconsin is the one that throws me for a loop. I still don't understand how that state elected Scott Walker twice, and possibly a third time this fall, although off-year and special elections explain part of it. I've also heard that there is a political split between dairymen and grain farmers, but I still haven't figured that claim out. I figured dairymen were just as conservative as other farmers.

    ReplyDelete