It's Like They Got Him From Austin!

In Austin, there is not a city council member representing a single district of the city (single-member districts). There is nobody standing up to the Man for the brown people East of the Interstate. There is no voice for the junkyard proprietors on South Congress. In Austin, there are seven people running the council, ostensibly elected by the populace of the entire city. They ALL come from between 15th and 45th street, between the highways. ONLY the inner city dwellers are represented by these people That is to say, only the extremists in the city who care enough to get off their bicycle saddles and go vote.

The Spandex Lobby is in large part responsible for what happens in the City Council in Austin. That explains why they are trying to spend millions of dollars to convert a street downtown into a "bicycle boulevard" over the outraged protests of people who depend on the cars on that street for their very livelihood.

Ray LaHood, apparently, is cut from the same cloth as the Austin City Council: “Today I want to announce a sea change . . . This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of nonmotorized.” He wants to make you the taxpayer pay to run snow removal equipment on footpaths, for example. Go click through the links. Maybe it's pandering to the bicycle voting block (?!) but even as such, it's madness to say things like what you will see him proposing to them. Even a sane biker should be booing this [deleted].

N.B.: Almost everyone living outside of downtown Austin hates the city council. The suburb cities are growing like gangbusters because Austin is run but STUPID. The people in flyover country will no doubt have similar sentiments with their hour-to-the-nearest-town everybody-needs-a-truck selfish attitude.

But it's for their own good!