That’s what I think Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood’s political career should be. This is a guy who’s in love with the idea of government coercion and control – all for the ‘greater good’, of course. From the Cybercast News Service:
(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. . . .
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.”
Here’s a ‘thought experiment’ for you: how could we design a behavioral modification program for politicians like Lahood? Something with electrodes and high amperage, perhaps?
On a more serious note, however, what makes me most weary are smarmy bureaucratic microbes trying to coerce me. Any American politician happily embracing coercion – like Lahood – should be redirected to a career in, say, the custodial arts.
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