Posted on 05/26/2009 10:21:11 AM PDT by ClassicLiberal
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.”
(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
Beware of Nazis in business suits.
I happen to enjoy country life and driving an SUV. I doubt I can be coaxed out of my life style.
he wants to “coerce people out of their cars.”
O.K.!...you stupid smart-ass! When are you going to build the light rail line from anywhere near my house to my place of employment forty miles away? Just let me know...O.K.?
You first....get outta your government provided limo.
The list, ping
They’ll only get my evil, diesel-swilling SUV from my cold, dead hands.
Stick your stupid bike where the sun don’t shine!....
Obama is a fascist! People need to call Obama a fascist more than a socialist. Although he blends the two totalitarian forms of government in such a way as to be very scary.
Is Ray-Ray chauffered to work via bicycle?
Let’s start by bringing rickshaws back to the streets of DC and requiring anyone above the rank of GS10 to use them to get to work and meetings!
Seems sort convaluted here.
The Obama Adminstration has taken huge stakes in General Motors and Chrysler- whose principle lines of business are private motorcars. Obama has said that these will be viable ongoing businesses in fairly short order.
And now, they want to get Americans out of their cars? Does Obama think that GM and Chrysler will make their money exporting their product to India or China?
One more example out of thousands of huge political opportunities for the Republicans which will be ignored in favor of getting along.
I can’t ride a bicycle thirty miles each way to work. Some of us live in small towns and rural areas. If you don’t have a car in towns like that, it’s hard to get a good job.
My SUV has a mind of its own. I hope my SUV doesn’t see this asshole jaywalking one day. I might not be able to stop my evil SUV from swerving.
We have “livable communities...” They’re called suburbs.
They want people to be stuck in crime-riddled cities with bad schools, high taxes and corrupt governments.
Excellent.
It worked with smokers, now for drivers.
We have a secretary of transportation against transportation. Just like all the other agencies.
Aren’t civil servants supposed to be our, well, servants?
How did they transform into our masters?
WTF’s up with this guy? He IS a Republican, right?!? From what I’ve read on this site, he was a right-of-center congressman during his time. Wow.
-PJ
You’ll just have to move to an apartment above the store.
Corrupt IL RINO Combiner. He ran out Sen. Fitzgerald for the totalitarian fascist pig occupying the White House, and the Cabinet job was payback.
Obama is very active in the auto industry. He's giving control to the UAW, he's hiking up the mpg requirements, and he's trying to coerce people not to drive at all. It's all very strange.
Sudenly I'm thinking of the James Bond movie Goldfinger, with Bond strapped to a table, and a powerful laser beam inching toward him:
Bond: Do you really expect me to talk?
Goldfinger (laughing): No Mr. Bond! I expect you to die.
Obama does not expect the US automakers to become viable businesses. He expects them to be totally destroyed.
Sounds like he has already been through the re-education camp himself.
I love riding my bicycle to work. But one of the reasons it is fun is that I DON’T HAVE TO RIDE MY BIKE TO WORK!!!
I wish these people would leave us the he** alone.
Somewhere in the OK panhandle ... the main alternative to a car would be a horse. Yes, we are definitely going backwards. The Luddites have seized control.
Thank you for the info. The guy’s a real scum.
FURlaH
“Second Hand Driving?”
See the USA in a Chevrolet.......
He wants you to ride a horse!
Typical nanny-state liberal mindset — change the rubes’ behavior to suit the masters in power.
He would never be elected again in Peoria with this policy.
The population of his district is spread over a big countryside..in nice suburbs and country homes.
The remaining city—Peoria—is in real trouble. They don’t ride the buses cause they don’t work. Good luck riding a bike in the winter..ha.
and Lahood is a REPUBLICAN (RINO branch of the GOP)
RINO’s want to coerce you out of your car.
True Liberal Dems just want to cap you as you’re
sitting behind the wheel.
LaHood is the a&&hole that wants to tax us by the mile, too.
***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.” ***
I’ve been saying for the last 35 years that the Gov is meddling in the auto and fuel industry (since the first oil embargo in 1974) to try and force people to use mass transportation.
***I think some of this craziness could be curbed simply by moving the capital of this country to someplace west of the Mississippi (not California).***
Criswell, of Criswell Predicts said that Wichita, KS would be the new capitol of the US.
But then, he also predicted the end of the world would happen a few years back.
EXACTLY! Walk the walk and then we’ll talk.
Seriously, those people have gone berserk!
Heck, I live on an island with no grocery store and my goods must be flown in. This is so typical of this administration which is shaping up to be the worst and most intrusive ever. It is amazing that some people still refuse to see the socialist/commie nature of odumbo.
You are expected to move to a corrupt drug and gang infested Democrat Ghetto. (City).
Plus anyware else I want to go, non-stop, on my schedule.
Why Do Progressives Love Trains?
http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/78374.html
The headline reads “Obama’s Rail Plan Speeds Ahead,” and the article explains that President Obama has “unveiled his plan to develop a high-speed passenger rail (HSR) system in the United States.” These “specifics” are evidently not actually very specific, however, because reporter Bruce Watson tells us only that the plan is three-fold: “initially, it will pour investment into infrastructure upgrades that have been approved but not yet funded. Later, it will fund high-speed rail planning and, subsequently, construction. In the process, it will also seek to improve rail service along existing lines, increasing the quality of current rail service and laying the track (as it were) for faster, more efficient rail in the future.”
Watson spends the rest of his article rhapsodizing about the glorious possibility that the Obama administration will succeed in “changing American patterns of behavior,” not simply by improving rail transportation, but also, along the same lines, by establishing “a strong moral counterbalance to the ‘greed is good’ ethos that has ruled much of the last 28 years.” You would have trouble making up this stuff.
What are progressives thinking? If I prefer automobile transportation to taking a train, they condemn me for my greed. Their preference for taxing people and pouring the money into economically wasteful expenditures for rail facilities, however, they laud as the very heart and soul of public-spiritedness.
Read more at hnn.us ...
FMCDH, Jack.
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