At The Plum Line, Greg Sargent takes a whack at explaining the blogger term “The Villagers.” After tracing its roots back to the Lewinsky scandal and a 1998 Sally Quinn article, Sargent delivers a cogent definition of the political mindset of The Villagers:
In political terms, the term “Villagers” denotes a kind of small-minded refusal to think outside an “acceptable” center-right consensus, and a refusal to acknowledge it when a majority of the American people take a view on a particular issue that is not in line with that center-right consensus. Thus, the “Villagers” include, in part, Democratic elected officials and consultants who insist that their party can’t succeed unless they ally their party with that center-right consensus; think-tankers who churn out position papers designed to prop up this elite consensus view; and elite pundits who insist that mainstream liberal views are radically leftist and insist on “bipartisanship” for its own sake, damn the consequences.
This elite consensus, in the view of the bloggers, represents this particular Village’s hidebound small-town values, which must be maintained at all costs to protect this elite’s status and interests.
And of course there is also The Iron Law Of Institutions, as set forth by Jonathan Schwarz in 2005. Consider the two terms and you have a basic understanding of why the Senate may struggle today to reach 60 votes instead of passing the damn stimulus bill 100-0.
It’s better to be in charge of smoking rubble than to not be in charge.
Progressives have to be completely dedicated to changing “the Village”. And it doesn’t just mean electing Congressmen, Senators and Presidents. It means progressives have to take jobs as staffers, lobbyists and military officers and bureaucrats.
Many are disappointed in Barack Obama for his centrist leanings but as a graduate of the Alinsky school he has to deal with the world “as it is”. He has to know “who’s who in the zoo” and the “zoo” IS the Village.
Obama says he wants to change Washington and we all have to pitch in and help him. We are the change.
It could take a generation to change the Village for the better but it took longer than that to get to where it is.
Two News tidbits…
LESSONS FROM A STIMULUS THAT FAILED: “Japan’s rural areas have been paved over and filled in with roads, dams and other big infrastructure projects, the legacy of trillions of dollars spent to lift the economy from a severe downturn caused by the bursting of a real estate bubble in the late 1980s. During those nearly two decades, Japan accumulated the largest public debt in the developed world — totaling 180 percent of its $5.5 trillion economy — while failing to generate a convincing recovery. Now, as the Obama administration embarks on a similar path, proposing to spend more than $820 billion to stimulate the sagging American economy, many economists are taking a fresh look at Japan’s troubled experience. . . . Among ordinary Japanese, the spending is widely disparaged for having turned the nation into a public-works-based welfare state and making regional economies dependent on Tokyo for jobs. Much of the blame has fallen on the Liberal Democratic Party, which has long used government spending to grease rural vote-buying machines that help keep the party in power.”
Well, that sounds familiar . . . .
CHICAGO’S MAYOR DALEY REFUSES TO RELEASE STIMULUS PROJECT LIST:
Unlike hundreds of other cities, however, Daley said Chicago won’t make its list public.
“Yes, we do, we have our list, we’ve been talking to people. We did not put that out publicly because once you start putting it out publicly, you know, the newspapers, the media is going to be ripping it apart,” Daley said.
Hope, change, and transparency!
@2: If you check out the rest of the article on Japan, it talks about the fact that Japan already had very good infrastructure when they embarked their infrastructure investments.
I’m sure you’re citing the article because you agree with this part:
In any case, a good cautionary tale.
2 – You haven’t made anything close to a convincing case there. I’m sure those Japanese appreciated the jobs, the income. It certainly bought them some time to deal with the looming threat from China.
What’s missing from your missive there?
Give me an inflation number. That’s what you right wingers are always fear-mongering about.
Public works? They’re everywhere. They’re needed and relied upon. Nothing wrong with them.
Whatever….the objective here, considering that at the present rate there would be another six million people out of work by this time next year, is to reverse that process. We need to start applying resources to keeping people who are still working doing so, and create jobs for those who aren’t. Giving more and more hundreds of billions of dollars to banks and then watching them put it in their vaults and slam the doors ain’t doing it.
@4: He cherry-picked the article to fit his view. Read the whole thing, it’s very interesting.
Alternatively, we could use the money to build about six nuclear plants, create hundreds of thousands of jobs AND be energy independent.
re 2: I see your point. Japan survived their depression with expensive public works projects and now the people fail to appreciate that fact.
When people don’t like Liberals. it’s because they are incredibly acute and prescient. When they don’t like Conservative policies it, in the words of Dick Cheney: “…doesn’t matter.”
re 7: OR, we could park a nuclear submarine in every major harbor and power the city with them!!
Then we could dispose of the nuclear waste on your front yard. (Liberal Scientists are just trying to scare you about radiation).
7 – You don’t know what you’re talking about. Building nukes don’t employ that much domestically, not nearly what we need. And we need a lot more than 6 Gigawatts of juice to become energy independent. I think some of the steel needed is produced in Japan. Big help there.
They are very expensive. And take a long time to build. Currently touted projects in Canada and Scandinavia are way over schedule and over budget. In my opinion they are lucrative skimming operations for big engineering companies like Bechtel than just happen to lean Republican.
Insulating a lot of homes and buildings employ more people, are way cheaper to do and probably save more energy than the nukes produce.
That being said, I think a serious look at Thorium-Flouride reactors are warranted as they are much more efficient, proliferation proof and probably safer than current designs. But still it takes time (at least 10 years) to bullet-proof a design and then do a France and widely deploy it (another generation). All this could happen under the aegis of shutting down coal plants to reduce the atmosphere’s greenhouse gas load.
But we don’t have that kind of time. It’s much easier to use energy wisely than to gamble for the current mirage offered by the nuclear industry.
re 7: “…Thorium-Flouride reactors….” Is this a Crest™ based energy model?
I already knew that Crest is an effective decay preventitive dentifrice that can be of significant value when used in a conscientously applied program of oral hygiene and regular professional care — but nuclear energy! Who knew?
11 – Yep
http://thoriumenergy.blogspot......actor.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/.....rench.html
From a PBS article:
Civaux in southwestern France is a stereotypical rural French village with a square, a church and a small school. On a typical day, Monsieur Rambault, the baker, is up before dawn turning out baguettes and croissants. Shortly after, teacher Rene Barc opens the small school. There is a blacksmith, a hairdresser, a post office, a general store and a couple of bars. But overlooking the picturesque hamlet are two giant cooling towers from a nuclear plant, still under construction, a half-mile away. When the Civaux nuclear power plant comes on line sometime in the next 12 months, France will have 56 working nuclear plants, generating 76% of her electricity.
In France, unlike in America, nuclear energy is accepted, even popular. Everybody I spoke to in Civaux loves the fact their region was chosen. The nuclear plant has brought jobs and prosperity to the area. Nobody I spoke to, nobody, expressed any fear. From the village school teacher, Rene Barc, to the patron of the Cafe de Sport bar, Valerie Turbeau, any traces of doubt they might have had have faded as they have come to know plant workers, visited the reactor site and thought about the benefits of being part of France’s nuclear energy effort.
There’s an arguable point to be made that America needs to reindustrialize–we’re debating about whether a “buy American” provision is good or bad, when what we should be talking about is “sell American”!
This will require an even greater abundance of energy, minimally encumbered by dependence on fossil fuels. I’m enough of a technocrat to find it reasonable that nuclear power be part of the equation. In that sense, Biblical John is right in that building nuclear power systems that are both safe and economically competitive with other sources would potentially support job expansion in the greater economy. However, it’s not a panacea, and so far its history in the US has been marred by mismanagement and profiteering.
13 – Right winger, that was a centrally-planned quasi socialist effort. And admittedly it was a successful effort. They took one power plant design and cookie-cuttered it. As top down a decision as you can get.
The more “free market” approach here in the U.S. resulted in over 100 plants to their 56. It also resulted in huge wastes of money both private and public as many of those plants went over budget. I guess you’d call that quasi-socialist as well. But most energy is publicly subsidized anyway.
Funny how wingers trained to hate France by Faux News and elsewhere look to their nuclear example.
France is 4/5 the size of Texas by the way. Imagine 68 reactors in Texas. That’s a lot of glowing Bushies.
You ignore how much of the cost overruns and delays in building the reactors result from legal challenges. Nuclear power production and generation is far more a political football, than a technical issue. Get the obstructionists out of the way and the plants get built – it’s that simple.
Nuclear waste. Yuk!
http://energypriorities.com/en.....ke_was.php
re 13: You, an American Conservative dittohead, is pointing to the French as examples of wisdom and energy-probity.
Just proves you’ll say anything to support an argument.
17 Whatever we end up doing is likely to be yukky in one way or another. The issue has been raised (albeit also exaggerated) that wind farms and birds don’t get along very well. There certainly have to be some questions regarding the long-term effects of large areas of pristine desert (that which the Jeep nuts and dirt bikers haven’t already ruined) being covered by vast solar collectors.
The thing we as a society have to come to grips with is that the way to react to all this shouldn’t be “Oh, horrors!!! This is going to take all sorts of extra work!”, but rather, “Ah, this is going to be more complicated, and doing it right is going to put people to work.”
That’s working so well on the Jobs and Infrastructure bill.
Get the obstructionists out of the way and the bill gets passed – it’s that simple.
….Not really.
A depression, which is probably where we’re headed, isn’t just a “business” problem. It’s a social problem. Social problems beg social solutions. We need to get away from the idea that things are going to magically get better by encouraging the powerful and greedy to exploit other peoples’ misery. To paraphrase a line from Starman, humanity is at its best when things are at their worst.
re 16: “Get the obstructionists out of the way….”
You obviously have little feel for the ironic.
17 – Good article. Excellent details on the “little problem” of “nukular” waste.
headlesslucy is playing with herself again…I used the French example as a choice that they made in response to the energy (oil) crunch some time ago. If indeed, France is about the size of Texas as someone says, then they are probably energy-independent BTW: the 60 Minutes program profiled this same story last night and mentioned the fact that France has another side industry of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel for re-use. I am reminded of the old remark about “letting the bastards freeze in the dark” if we don’t drill for oil and/or build nuclear plants.
headlesslucy is playing with herself again…I used the French example as a choice that they made in response to the energy (oil) crunch some time ago. If indeed, France is about the size of Texas as someone says, then they are probably energy-independent BTW: the 60 Minutes program profiled this same story last night and mentioned the fact that France has another side industry of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel for re-use. I am reminded of the old remark about “letting the bastards freeze in the dark” if we don’t drill for oil and/or build nuclear plants.