North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore, of Cleveland County, has played at divisive, cynical politics since- as a UNC freshman- he sued to defund a gay student group on grounds they must be committing criminal acts under the crimes against nature statute.
Last year, he jammed HB2 through his House in an hour. Last December, he sprung his second, secret special House session with no notice and a passel of bills to strip incoming Democratic Governor Roy Cooper of most of his appointment powers (wherever you live in North Carolina, Tim Moore now rubber-stamps whoever GOP Senate boss Phil Berger wants to make a district court judge).
In Speaker Moore's House, there is no real debate. His committee chairs work things out with each other and the affected business or religious groups. They pass bills out of committee and the bills go, directly and immediately, to the House floor for passage. His members don't need to know what a bill says: the Speaker's word cuts through the process like a car through a crowd.
So when he realized he had to say something about Charlottesville this past weekend, Speaker Moore knew he couldn't come up with anything genuine of his own. His heart just wasn't in it for the victims.
That's because in April, Moore shepherded HB 330- which would clear Ohio Nazi Boy James Fields from Murder by Dodge Charger in Charlottesville, to a 67-48 final passage in the House.
Only three of Moore's supine veto-proof majority bucked the whip to vote against the bill, which is now before the State Senate for action (he picked up one Democrat, too).
US News & World Report wrote of the bill's April passage,
Opponents say the legislation is unnecessary and may give drivers the false impression they can maliciously run over activists. One Democrat warned it would make the state the butt of jokes about being full of “dumb rednecks.”
But Republican proponents, who sent the measure to the state Senate by a veto-proof margin, say recent encounters between activists and drivers makes the reform both sensible and necessary.
Last year, people protesting the fatal shooting of Keith Lamont Scott by a Charlotte police officer blocked roadways during at-times chaotic protest-related activities.
“These people are nuts to run in front of cars like they do … and say, ‘Me and my buddy here are going to stop this two-and-a-half-ton vehicle,’” GOP state Rep. Michael Speciale said in support of the bill, The News & Observer reports. “If somebody does bump somebody, why should they be held liable?”
Democratic state Rep. Henry Michaux, however, points out North Carolina is one of just four states with a pure contributory negligence rule, which means it's already impossible to collect a payout if the injured party is even 1 percent at fault for an accident.
Michaux, an African-American attorney, tells U.S. News the bill therefore would not give drivers additional protection from liability. Instead, he sees it as an unconstitutional invitation to mow down protesters or weave through parades, and he feels the motivation behind the bill may be racial.
“Who demonstrates more than people of color?” Michaux says. “It would give some folks the idea,” he says, to intentionally run over people “because you’ve got a group of black folks out here or a group of Latinos out here.”
The idea of immunizing drivers appears to have originated in North Dakota, where state Rep. Keith Kempenich proposed a similar bill in January after his mother-in-law allegedly was swarmed on a roadway by protesters opposed to construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline. The measure was rejected in a 41-50 vote in February.
Tennessee lawmakers also took up the cause after a driver ran into protesters opposed to an action by President Donald Trump and wound up with "five or six" on his hood. Sponsors were tight-lipped amid negative press and the bill failed in committee in March.
The potential for bad press did not deter lawmakers in North Carolina, who passed the bill over a warning from Democratic Rep. Graig Meyer that it was inviting jokes about “those dumb rednecks” in the state.
The bill says drivers are not protected from liability if they are "willful or wanton" in plowing over pedestrians, but are protected if they are exercising "due care" and hit someone who is "participating in a protest or demonstration and blocking traffic in a public street or highway."
The measure includes language barring immunity if a driver strikes a pedestrian who has “a valid permit” allowing a protest in the public street "where the injury occurred."
It's kinda hard to seem sincere when you've left your fingerprints all over a murder weapon. True to form, Moore doubled down on cynicism and cribbed the comments of his party's only black US Senator (as President Bush 1 famously read from a cue card in 1992, "Message: I care"):
Domestic terror in #Charlottesville must be condemned by https://t.co/3gbI2ZFxr5. Otherwise hate is simply emboldened.— Tim Scott (@SenatorTimScott) August 12, 2017
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