Our utterly worthless Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has appointed a panel of “leading experts” to assist him on “transportation equity,” including several who believe that cars cause climate change and promote racism and should thus be phased out. No, this is not the Babylon Bee.
Are you already getting sick of this nonsense as much as I am? When they use the term equity, some think it means equal. But that’s not what it means. What it means to the yokels in the wokety woke-woke world of the Biden administration is that white people are the reason why non-white people don’t have it nice, and it is the government’s job to make life nice, not for everyone, but for non-white people exclusively, but at the expense of white people. In other words, government-sanctioned punishment for perceived wrongs that the victims of equity never perpetrated.
My black friends are sick of this crap as well because, as they say, it makes them look weak. It makes them think everyone around them believes they can’t get ahead in life without the help of do-gooders in government.
Pushing policies through the lens of equity does nothing but create resentment, jealousy, and anger. In 2023, there is hardly a problem where white people somehow stole from non-white people and the government’s job is to steal it back. It’s patently absurd.
Buttigieg appointed 24 new members to his Advisory Committee on Transportation Equity earlier this month, recreating an Obama-era panel that was disbanded by the Trump administration. Andrea Marpillero-Colomina, a “spatial policy scholar,” is on the committee and believes “all cars are bad” because they produce “a myriad of environmental issues and conditions.” In an August piece, another Buttigieg appointee, self-described “transportation nerd” Veronica Davis, contended that cars propagate “systemic racism” and are thus “the problem” in America’s transportation system.
What the hell is a spatial policy scholar? And how does a car propagate systemic racism? Cars are not alive. They can’t hate.
VISIT OUR YOUTUBE CHANNELThese people are nuts.
Buttigieg’s nominations, as well as his decision to resurrect the equity advisory council, reflect the Biden administration‘s commitment on diversity, equity, and inclusion across the board. President Joe Biden signed an executive order immediately after taking office in 2021, directing government agencies to “pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all.” Agency chiefs must conduct an “equity assessment” to uncover policies that create “systemic barriers” in minority populations, according to the mandate.
I can’t wait until Trump throws all of this garbage out again.
According to Buttigieg’s August announcement, the group will advise him on “promising practices to institutionalize equity into agency programs, policies, regulations, and activities” and will meet for the first time this fall. Marpillero-Colomina told the Washington Free Beacon that she is not “advocating for a complete erasure” of automobiles, but rather wants Buttigieg to drive America away from its reliance on private automobiles.
And yet it took this man weeks and a lot of condemnation to visit East Palestine, Ohio, where the people there experienced a train derailment that threw chemicals in the air and water. He couldn’t care less about real-world problems because he’s too focused on streamlining the Gibberish Brigade in the woke factory of government. They don’t realize that normal people hear this stuff and think that it’s the craziest thing this side of the giggle house.
“My interest in being on the [equity committee] is to raise the question and push the Department of Transportation to really think about: What are some equitable, environmentally sustainable, economically beneficial, and feasible alternatives to policy that is car-centric?” she explained in an interview. “How can we reimagine streets to prioritize people instead of cars? How can we create streets that are inclusive of modes other than cars?”
In other words, how can we send us all back to the 18th century?
Davis, who did not respond to a request for comment, is expected to pursue similar objectives on the committee. Davis published Inclusive Transportation: A Manifesto for Repairing Divided Communities in July, arguing for “a different way of thinking” to “address healing the damage done by cars.”
These are people looking for problems, and when they can’t find any, they invent them.
“Not to oversimplify the problems of transportation, but all roads lead back to cars,” Davis wrote in an August column derived from her book. “This isn’t anti-car propaganda, but vehicles have wreaked havoc on the environment and communities. … Racism shaped the urban and suburban areas, where even today we see the residual effects.”
He’s got something there. FDR promised the black intelligentsia that if black Americans voted for him, they would be a part of his jobs in the cities program. They voted for him, and black communities got a lot of jobs building the bypass highway ramps that allowed white people to drive from the suburbs into the cities where the real jobs were by avoiding having to drive through the black neighborhoods. Once the ramps were finished, so were the jobs. Never trust a Democrat, and yet here we are.
In addition to Marpillero-Colomina and Davis, Buttigieg appointed Oliver Sellers-Garcia, Boston mayor Michelle Wu’s Green New Deal director, to the committee. Sellers-Garcia heads the city’s Green New Deal program, which pushes for Boston to abandon vehicles in favor of a “multimodal” transportation strategy.
“We need to make it not only possible but also preferable for residents to leave traffic- and pollution-inducing fossil fuel-powered vehicles behind,” the city’s strategy says.
This is not the first time Buttigieg has shown open animosity toward automobile mobility. Buttigieg’s office produced a climate strategy in January targeted at reducing carbon emissions from the transportation sector. The strategy calls for a reduction in “commuting miles” through an “increase in remote work and virtual engagements.”
“The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted major opportunities for telework, with some studies showing the possibility of 10 percent long-term reduction in annual vehicle miles traveled,” according to the proposal.
