Ray Lahood, Transformed

George, maybe you didn't know this, but Washington, DC, is a big anthill of interests competing for subsidies and to rip off the government. The auto industry has been king of the transportation heap for a long time.

However, you are onto a glimmer of insight that LaHood is disappointing. I knew nothing of him until hearing him interviewed on the Diane Rehm show today (6/1) and knocked my socks off with his lack of candor and unwillingness to speak to important issues. Either that or he is really stupid.

Mr. Will needs to climb down off of his elephant-dung-sized pile of hubris and realize that he and his do not hold all the answers. Indeed, the post WWII boom was centered largely around the explosion of automotive-related growth. Am I the only one who can remember "Two in every driveway"? (Rhetorical)

And, ChicageGuy, education and wisdom are two widely disparate things. Your comment was pointed at the proof of that.

To belittle anything but the autocentric status quo, Mr. Will, indicates to many of us, the 'great unwashed', that you need more than just a wake-up call or an attitude adjustment...you need an enema.

I used to think George Will was somewhat educated. I now know otherwise.

Come on, George!
Think of all the subsidies that have gone into creating our nation of SUV-loving, gas-aholics:
the Interstate highway system that created our white-flight, suburban society in the 50's and 60's, the billions of military dollars and thousands of lives spent on keeping oil flowing from the Middle East, the SUV subsidy that idiot George Bush passed in his first term, on and on and on.

Bottom line is that Americans (particularly young Americans) want to live in vibrant cities that have viable public transportation (Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, etc.) not in hilbilly exurban hells filled with mega-Churches and gun-toting Palin Republicans. And when gas prices get back up over $4 (which they will do).. expect the exurbs will continue to empty out as they have been during the current foreclosure crisis.

George Will must still be living in the 50's with his "nucular" family in good old white flight, wonderbread, racist suburbia. How does he think that the interstate system and the VAST amount of dollars put into highways for 50 years by the federal didn???t create basically the car culture? How was highway not social engineering - a subsidized incentive to buy cars, build suburbs, burn gasoline, and pour asphalt. Who benefits? Car manufacturers, road construction, home construction, and big oil. What party do you think they vote for? Again the old ???transit = subsidy??? and ???highway = investment??? euphemisms. Then he throws Portland under the bus by insinuating that they???re all tree huggers and hippies without saying anything concrete. Like how is Portland bad? I think if you ask a suburb commuter if they feel the auto has given them freedom they would disagree ??? more like suffering.

Also ??? LaHood is a highway guy! He???s a Republican and the Illinois State Highway Association???s and Caterpillar???s man in Congress.

I'm sure Will has had a grand old time trolling progressives with this column. I'm not sure, however, why the Newsweek editors decided to subject the rest of us to it.

If he's that intent on those sorts of games, give him a blog and instruct him to write a <i>real</i> column for a change.

George F. Will is a terrible dogmatic individual unconcerned with problem solving and more concerned with keeping the support of the ideological base he's part of. Why does this man's voice hit the papers every week? He's not a good writer, he doesn't offer any interesting or new viewpoints -- I mean you can take the talking point of the local dumb machismo Republican identity invested village idiot and it'll be totally interchangable with this man child you have on your website.

Imagine - a government that . . . forces . . . people to use better, more efficient, technology. Devastating really.

I mean, if it wasn't for the wonders of children eating lead paint chips, we might not *have* a George Will!

"(do you know that, come 2014, the incandescent lightbulb will be illegal?)"

You should stock up now, that way you can corner the black market on incandescents... selling them to all of your "conservative" holdouts. You'll show those liberal socialist commies. Seriously though, you do realize that the incandescent light buld itself won't be illegal, right? Right?

Wait a minute, George Will thinks living in Portland with multiple transportation choices suppresses my freedom as an American? Well then consider my freedom happilly suppressed! I think I'll stay. And bike home from work this evening. Or maybe take a street car or light rail. Or maybe a bus. Or I might even walk since it's only two miles. And have a nice dinner with my family 15 minutes after I leave work. GTH George.

Posted By: thestalkinghorse @ 05/23/2009 4:00:59 PM
This is George Will at his finest. Thank you.

Yeah, Will at his finest... Too bad he knows nothing about Portland. I consider myself pretty conservative but when it comes to "smart growth", I think it is just that, SMART.

This is George Will at his finest. Thank you.
Read the posts and you undersand how Obama got elected. What do we have to do to keep these people from voting? Wake me when it's over.

I think it is about time we began the process of organizing. The internet is a wonderful thing, in this regard. It probably was best that President Obama was elected. No sense slouching toward Gammora. Just run this herd off a cliff, then it is time to throttle an oppresive government, and along the way water the tree with a little patriotic blood.

Where to begin.... First of all I lived in Japan for 5 years and never drove a car during the entire time, I walked, bicycled and used public rail systems. In the process I saved $10,000's of dollars, factoring in the cost of the vehicle, fees (which are insane in Japan, $3000 just for a license) gas, which was about $8 a gallon at the height of the oil boom last year. Smart growth isn't about 'Telling people where to live.' It's not even exclusively about 'reducing our carbon foot print' It will reduce our dependency on foreign oil (a point the author omits). Suburban living and commuting was built around the availability of cheap gas. In the post war boom during which suburbanization took off, cheap gas was taken for granted. Now, sixty years later due to declining oil reserves and national security interests society has to evolve. As for the automobile reducing the ability to 'supervise people's lives' this has nothing at all to do with the automobile! If the government t wants to monitor you they can simply tap for phone and track your internet usage, ever hear of the Patriot ACT? JEEZ Will please think things through before you write.

People who bike to work, frankly, smell. It is only good for the 60 something, grey-haired, male ponytailed crowd with which Oregon is overloaded. We in Boston the other day had a system-wide subway glitch, which left 60 thousand people in sweltering prison. No thanks. I will surrender my car when they pry my cold dead hands from the steering wheel.

Mr. Will asks: "Does he think 0.01 percent of Americans will ever regularly bike to work?"

They already are.

United States Census, 1990 & 2000
Percentage of journeys to work by bicycle in 1990: 0.41% (466,856 people)

United States Census Fact Finder (Sampled data)
Percentage of journeys to work by bicycle in 2000: 0.38% (488,497 people)