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Obama’s Transportation Secretary Says He Wants to ‘Coerce People Out of Their Cars’
CNS News ^ | May 26, 2009 | Terence P. Jeffrey

Posted on 05/26/2009 5:42:24 AM PDT by SJackson

(CNSNews.com) - Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood told a group of reporters at the National Press Club on Thursday that he wants to “coerce people out of their cars.”

In Newsweek magazine last week, nationally syndicated columnist George Will published a piece critical of Lahood, entitled, “Ray Lahood, Transformed--Secretary of Behavior Modification.”

“He says he has joined a ‘transformational’ administration: ‘I think we can change people's behavior,’” Will reports that Lahood said over lunch.

Lahood, a former Republican congressman from Peoria, Ill., has become a champion of using the Department of Transportation and federal transportation spending to get people to take trains, busses, and ride bikes instead of driving cars.

At the National Press Club on Thursday he attempted to respond to George Will’s column and to explain his vision for using the power of government to change people’s transportation behavior and to change the nature of American residential communities.

“We want to really--and notwithstanding the fact that George Will doesn't like this idea--the idea of creating opportunities for people to get out of their cars--and we're working with the secretary of HUD, Shaun Donovan, on opportunities for housing, walking paths, biking paths,” said Lahood. “If somebody wants to ride their bike, if--to work or to the place of employment or to other places--mass transit, light rail--creating opportunities for what we call livable communities.”

The moderator of the press club event asked Lahood: “Some in the highway-supporters motorist groups have been concerned by your livability initiative. Is this an effort to make driving more torturous and to coerce people out of their cars?”

Lahood answered: “It is a way to coerce people out of their cars.

“Yeah,” he continued, “I mean, look, people don't like spending an hour and a half getting to work. And people don't like spending an hour going to the grocery store. And all of you who live around here know exactly what I'm talking about. You know, the dreaded thing is to have to run an errand on a weekend around here or to try and get home at 3:00 in the afternoon or even 5:00 in the afternoon.

“Now, look, every community is not going to be a livable community. But we have to create opportunities for people that do want to use a bicycle or want to walk or want to get on a streetcar or want to ride a light rail,” said Lahood.

Lahood suggested to the reporters that George Will is the only person opposed to using the government to promote mass transit and bicycling over driving a car.

“And the only person that I've heard of that objects to this is George Will. Check out Newsweek magazine,” said Lahood.

Lahood then made a joke about the fact that some conservatives believe that the way he wants to use the Department of Transportation represents an increased government intrusion in people’s lives.

“Some conservative groups are wary of the livable communities program, saying it's an example of government intrusion into people's lives,” said the moderator. “How do you respond?”

“About everything we do around here is government intrusion in people's lives,” said Lahood. “So have at it.”


TOPICS: News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: agenda; bho44; bhodot; lahood; libs; lping; nannystate; socialism
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To: Scotswife

That’s the elephant in the room which the pols and the media are completely ignoring.

And it’s right in their face.

Inner cities are out of control with drugs, crime, and nobody with any choice and in their right mind would send their kids to inner ccity schools.

Clean up the corrupt, totally failed school systems, crack down hard on crime, cut people off welfare, and a lot of people probably would move back to the cities.

All ‘good’ cities -— like Paris, Toronto, and San Antonio TX have lively downtowns, well-policed, no graffiti. Maybe the school systems are not so great.

And it’s because of tourism, but still.

But will they clean up the inner cities? When hell freezes over and the corrupt city councils are taken away in manacles.


41 posted on 05/26/2009 6:06:37 AM PDT by squarebarb
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To: CaptainAmiigaf
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.


42 posted on 05/26/2009 6:07:58 AM PDT by MrB (Go Galt now, Bowman later)
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To: squarebarb

I wish some brave reporter would just yell at LaHood -— ‘Clean up the inner cities and maybe people would move back. Answer that!’


43 posted on 05/26/2009 6:08:04 AM PDT by squarebarb
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To: silverleaf

Two words:

Tar.
Feathers.


44 posted on 05/26/2009 6:09:12 AM PDT by Cymbaline (Bipartisan consensus - that's like when my doctor and my lawyer agree with my wife that I need help.)
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To: SJackson

Now this Administration thinks its their Constitutional duty to force people out of their cars. What’s next?

Note to Secretary Lahood: You won’t force me out of my car, putz.


45 posted on 05/26/2009 6:09:50 AM PDT by popdonnelly (The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by governments. You've been warned.)
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To: SJackson

I’ll live in the city when I am allowed to properly arm myself.


46 posted on 05/26/2009 6:10:24 AM PDT by central_va (www.15thVirginia.org Co. C, Patrick Henry Rifles)
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To: Scotswife

bite your tongue! we still have part of the helicopter program.......layoffs were last week. we are expecting lots more layoffs without them cutting more helicopters.


47 posted on 05/26/2009 6:10:50 AM PDT by tioga
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To: SJackson

Obamaism is fascism.


48 posted on 05/26/2009 6:12:03 AM PDT by Yankee
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To: SJackson

Content aside, I am guessing that this was written by the 4th grade child of the person in the byline. Are reporters no longer held to basic standards such as the knowledge of grammar/spelling or the construction of coherent sentences?

Only two of many examples of sloppy, illogical writing:

1) He says he has joined a ‘transformational’ administration: ‘I think we can change people’s behavior,’” Will reports that Lahood said over lunch.

2) Lahood ...to get people to take trains, busses, and ride bikes instead of driving cars.

(Busses? Do I get to choose my kissing partner?)


49 posted on 05/26/2009 6:14:43 AM PDT by Bigg Red (Palin in 2012)
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To: MrB

LOL!

I would love to see Obama spend one evening trying to manage this household!


50 posted on 05/26/2009 6:14:46 AM PDT by Scotswife
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To: tioga

Chris Dodd is going to do his darndest to wrastle it away.
He’s been at it ever since Sikorsky lost.

Now his political career is severely threatened - and he needs this contract.

This is all about politics.


51 posted on 05/26/2009 6:16:03 AM PDT by Scotswife
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To: SJackson

Mobility is as threatening to fascists as free speech and the right to bear arms are.

They must control your movements, your language, your every thought and action or they cannot succeed.


52 posted on 05/26/2009 6:16:26 AM PDT by Yankee
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To: squarebarb

Yep...we live in a good school district - rural area.

Our home is in the countryside where the kids can’t find too much trouble - and we have alot of control as to what their activities are and what kids they are hanging around.


53 posted on 05/26/2009 6:18:28 AM PDT by Scotswife
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To: SJackson

Don’t forget the other moron, Chuck Hurley of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Along with LaHood, he belives when you drive that you should be randomly pulled over and checked out and if you are doing anything wrong, be fined. This is the plank of MADD.


54 posted on 05/26/2009 6:18:50 AM PDT by CORedneck
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To: SJackson

Hey, Ray. You first. Lead by example. What? You’re too important to do so? Well, I’m your employer, I guess that makes me too important to do so, as well.


55 posted on 05/26/2009 6:19:43 AM PDT by IYAS9YAS (Obama - what you get when you mix Affirmative Action with the Peter Principle.)
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To: metmom

Not to be pie-in-the-sky about this, but imagine having a plugin hybrid flex-fuel 4x4 in your garage, a solar panel below a small wind turbine on your barn roof.

A couple hundred gallons of bio-ethanol out back.

And being completely, utterly shielded from any gas or transportation cutoffs. In nice weather, your 4x4 could charge and run directly off solar - for free. In the winter - wind (and solar). If there’s a really cold stretch with no wind, run directly off gasoline for the cold-weather oomph.

If Iran and Israel drive the price of gas to $10, run ethanol.

None of that tech is more than 2 years from market.

There’s nothing liberal, about being self-sufficient or technically proficient.


56 posted on 05/26/2009 6:21:08 AM PDT by Cringing Negativism Network (Got Tea?)
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To: WVKayaker
Three words: ten buck gas

Three more words: Double-Ought Buck.

57 posted on 05/26/2009 6:23:13 AM PDT by IYAS9YAS (Obama - what you get when you mix Affirmative Action with the Peter Principle.)
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To: SJackson

You know what is funny?

About 50 years ago the big three auto makers conspired to destroy the Street Car and electric bus companies and were socked by congress with a couple of thousand dollars in fines.

Now with the federal government hot to destroy the automobile in America, the DOT which has build this vast network of superhighways wants to remove Americans from their cars and put them into the very things the Automobile industry destroyed 50 years ago and got a slap on the wrist for.

Personally I think our government is filled with the dumbest idiots on the face of this planet right now.

They are literally tripping over their own stupidity.


58 posted on 05/26/2009 6:23:27 AM PDT by usmcobra (Your chances of dying in bed are reduced by getting out of it, but most people still die in bed)
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To: ridesthemiles

I used to hitch rides to work in the morning with Congresscritters. Can’t imagine any of them riding Metrorail.


59 posted on 05/26/2009 6:25:52 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: Cringing Negativism Network

what’s stopping the government from attaching some sort of measurement gizmo on that hybrid that reports units of energy you are producing and taxing you on it?

We’ll call it a “road usage tax” or something like that.


60 posted on 05/26/2009 6:27:47 AM PDT by Scotswife
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