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.”
bookmarked
Thank you. Glad someone understands that. I thought I may have been a tad obtuse, but you laid that fear to res.
res S/B rest....need more coffee!
Don't worry. Dear Leader's Cultural Revolution will probably relocate you to a ghetto, while giving your country home to some ghetto dwellers or 3rd world immigrants, all in the name of fairness...
The left doesn’t like the whole idea of the individual not being subject to the dictates of the “elite”.
They LOVE the feudal system, which is what the whole “community organizer” system is about.
If they (through the fedgov) can move everyone into cities, or close by, then own all the rural lands,
they can punish you for “poaching the king’s game” on that land and only allow you to have a subsistence from your own labor.
I put my car right up there with my gun. News flash to Lahood: You’re not going to get either one.
The zerO's begun eating into arenas frequented by as many leftists as right wingers, *now*.
It'll do 'em in as sure as God made little green apples.
Yes people will beg for a right-wing led government before the imbecile's first term's finished.
Just watch.
Once upon a time, government was supposed to defend the shores, deliver the mail and let people get on with their lives. Today's far-seeing and fastidious government, not content with designing the cars Americans drive to their homes and the lightbulbs they use in their homes (do you know that, come 2014, the incandescent lightbulb will be illegal?), wants to say where their homes can be.
Did he really say this?
ML/NJ
Speaking of which, I just might buy some of those mandated newfangled light bulbs and smash them to smithereens just for the entertainment of seeing Hazmat show up. Along with this car coercion idiocy, that is one of the biggest nitwit ideas anyone has ever come up with.
For some reason, I just can’t understand why the name ‘Joseph Stalin’ keeps coming into my mind.
Cool.
Make no mistake, there are three things they fear the most in the citizenry:
1 - Information
2 - Arms & Ammo
3 - Mobility
They already control much of the flow of information. In order for the Coup to be complete they must disarm the public, and then take away the ability to travel and mass.
At this moment they face a population which is well armed, and equipped with SUVs and Pickup trucks, many of which are capable of off-road travel (like mine.) An insurgent force could pose a credible threat to the establishment.
The goal is to ensure that if we are forced to the point of insurrection, we will fight the next Civil war with the same weapons as the first.
It wouldn’t be all that hard to defeat a militia armed with muskets, riding in Tatas and on Segways.
Before it’s over, this country is going to look like the black and white pictures of collective farms in my early 1960s history textbook: robotic people dressed alike in Chairman Mao jackets piling into their village’s little tin can of a car and going to town for their weekly visit (when they’re not bent over in a field somewhere scything wheat and singing state songs in unison, that is). Meanwhile, the elite rumble by in their big gas guzzlers to check on the serfs. Do any of the rest of you Boomers remember these pics?
Hopefully, our people aren’t that easily subjugated.
At least some will fight back before what you stated happens.
ping to post #94
Joe Stalin couldn't have said it better...
See that's kind of the point. They don't want you living in the country, and they're going to do everything they can to make that difficult and expensive. Us country folk are too independent and difficult to control.
Or we can choose to *be* the encircling army.
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