[Carfreeliving] War against the car
Steve Jones
Steve at sfbg.com
Mon Dec 12 17:45:32 MST 2005
Have y'all ever read the WSJ editorial page before? This is actually pretty tame stuff for those fascists. WSJ often does good journalism on its front page, but the editorial page is written by a bunch of knuckle-draggers.
Steven T. Jones
City Editor
San Francisco Bay Guardian
(415) 487-2552
-----Original Message-----
From: Hitesh Soneji [mailto:koolkwote at yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, December 12, 2005 3:41 PM
To: Carfreeliving at livablecity.org
Subject: Re: [Carfreeliving] War against the car
Anyone out there willing to write an eloquent letter to the
WSJ editors board?
--- "Brinkman, Cheryl" <Cheryl.Brinkman at McKesson.com> wrote:
>
>
> "I really can't even believe that the Wall Street Journal
> printed this
> tripe. This nutcase is really on the editorial board? "
>
>
> I had to check, just in case, yes he appears to be.
> http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006842
>
>
> I read something that said since people under 40-ish get
> increasing amounts
> of their news and info on-line, that the "old school" print
> media outlets,
> The Journal, Forbes, etc etc, exist only to assure the old
> white guys with
> money that their world is safe and not changing in any way.
> Pay no
> attention to the doom sayers, it's all right - it's like
> lullabies for rich
> people.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joshua Switzky [mailto:Joshua.Switzky at sfgov.org]
> Sent: Monday, December 12, 2005 11:31 AM
> To: Brinkman, Cheryl
> Cc: Carfreeliving at livablecity.org
> Subject: Re: [Carfreeliving] War against the car
>
>
>
>
>
> I really can't even believe that the Wall Street Journal
> printed this
> tripe. This nutcase is really on the editorial board? This
> is really just a
> cariacture, a joke. This guy probalby doesn't even exist.
> It's amazing how people can continue to trump the fantasy
> of everyone in
> their cars whisking along untrafficked rural roads with the
> wind in their
> hair, while a different reality greets them everyday.
> Someone ought to be
> doing psychological studies on this mass delusion and
> effective automotive
> advertising. And that Katrina bullshit -- what the fuck is
> he talking
> about? A car doesn't do you any good when the entire
> population wants to
> get on the road at the same time and roads are either
> impassable and
> flodded or gridlocked.
> -j
>
>
>
>
>
> "Brinkman,
>
> Cheryl"
>
> <Cheryl.Brinkman@
> To
> McKesson.com>
> Carfreeliving at livablecity.org
> Sent by:
> cc
> Carfreeliving-bou
>
> nces at livablecity.
> Subject
> org [Carfreeliving] War
> against the car
>
>
>
>
> 12/12/2005 10:55
>
> AM
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> I know it's the Wall Street Journal, not really a bastion
> of progressivism,
> but it's still shocking to know that a presumably
> intelligent person could
> engage in such simplistic thinking.
>
> I love the idea that New Orleans could have been evacuated
> if only everyone
> had a car. Houston tried that, it was called gridlock. We
> saw friends
> from Houston last week, they told us about their experience
> evacuating, 6
> hours to go 30 miles, a total of 16 for a normally 3 hour
> trip- the
> kicker: they took both their cars. Mom and son in one, Dad
> in the other.
>
>
> Sounds like the second graders are smarter then this guy.
>
> The War Against the Car
>
>
> November 11, 2005 ; Page A10
> Commentary - Wall Street Journal
>
>
> A few years ago, I made a presentation to my
> second-grader's social studies
> class, asking the kids what was the worst invention in
> history. I was
> shocked when a number of them answered "the car." When I
> asked why, they
> replied that cars destroy the environment. Distressed by
> the Green
> indoctrination already visited upon seven-year-olds, I was
> at least
> reassured in knowing that once these youngsters got their
> drivers'
> licenses, their attitudes would change.
>
>
> It's one thing for second-graders to hold such childish
> notions, but quite
> another for presumably educated adults to argue that
> automobiles are
> economically and environmentally unsustainable "axles of
> evil." But with
> higher gas prices, as well as Malthusian-sounding warnings
> about
> catastrophic global warming and the planet running out of
> oil, the tirade
> has taken on a new plausibility. Maybe Al Gore had it right
> all along when
> he warned that the car and the combustible engine are "a
> mortal threat . .
> . more deadly than any military enemy."
>
>
> * * *
>
>
> Welcome to the modern-day Luddite movement, which once
> raged against the
> machine, but now targets the automobile. Just last month,
> environmentalists
> organized a "world car-free day," celebrated in more than
> 40 cities in the
> U.S. and Europe. In the left's vision of utopia, cars have
> been banished --
> replaced by bicycles and mass transit systems. There is no
> smog or road
> congestion. And America has been liberated from those
> sociopathic,
> gas-guzzling, greenhouse-gas-emitting SUVs and Hummers that
> Jesus would
> never drive.
>
>
> It all sounds idyllic, but in real life this fairy tale has
> a tragic
> ending. As Fred Smith, president of the Competitive
> Enterprise Institute,
> reminds us, if the "no car garage" had been a reality in
> New Orleans in
> August, we wouldn't have suffered 1,000 Katrina fatalities,
> but 10,000 or
> more. The automobile, especially those dreaded all-terrain
> four-wheel drive
> SUVs (ideal for driving through floodwaters) saved more
> lives during the
> Katrina disaster than all the combined relief efforts of
> FEMA, local police
> and fire squads, churches, the Salvation Army and the Red
> Cross. If every
> poor family had had a car and not a transit token, few
> would have had to be
> warehoused in the hellhole of the Superdome.
>
>
> This month we paid honor to the heroism of Rosa Parks for
> fighting racism
> through the bus boycott in Montgomery. What helped sustain
> that historic
> freedom cause was that hundreds of blacks owned cars and
> trucks that they
> used to carpool others around the city.
>
>
=== message truncated ===
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