Renewable Energy Revolution

Help name the Nimby Nabobs

As gas heads toward $5 a gallon, the Alliance raises money to stop Cape Wind
These 21st Century Tories needs a new name

Stop whining, you people!  Haven't you been reading the news? Listen up to Republican Senator Gramm who thinks you're all a bunch of whiners who don't realize "you've never had it so good." 

Senator Phil Gramm described the present economic pinch squeezing the average American last week saying, "You've heard of mental depression? This is mental recession."

The former senator holds a doctorate in economics. He suggested to the Washington Times newspaper that hard economic times are a figment of people's imagination.

Gramm added,"You just hear this constant whining, complaining. We sort of became of nation of whiners," he said.

Senator McCain considered Gramm one of his top economic advisers.

Scarier still, he's still McCain campaign Vice Chair

"No one is more respected on the issue of economics than Phil Gramm,” McCain said this weekend.

F. Scott Fitzgerald surely knew what he was taking about when he had the Great Gatsby say "The rich are different from you and I."

Stop Whining?
The Privileged Are in Charge
...But the main event of last week for me was for Senator Phil Gramm's comments that Americans are a bunch of whiners. In fact, this is the heart of the tragedy. Washington lost its sense of the people a couple of decades ago, all the while cleverly convincing the people it was working in their interest.
Senator Gramm's views simply reflect much of Washington and Wall Street. These are the people who tell Americans to go to the public hospitals if they don't have health insurance -- and stop whining. They tell the making $30,000 a year worker to go buy a private health plan for $3000 to $6000 annually -- and stop whining. They claim both parents work so hard simply because they want to get all those fancy cars and take vacations -- not because they are paying a high mortgage in a good school district to give their kids a chance. Stop whining. They are not only Republicans. And they can't understand that workers are struggling... Jeff Madrick These descendants of Marie Antoinette stay home and "eat cake" while their chauffeurs make separate trips to the gas station to fill by the Rolls, and little things like having a mortgage foreclosed or finding an extra $6,000 this year for gas, heating and electricity won't even enter their well-coiffed heads.

The Fossil Kings of Cape Cod

Our good buddy Jack Coleman suggested a contest on cc2day to find the appropriate name for these remarkable folks - the ones who think giving the NIMBY Alliance an extra $100 thousand or so to stop the renewable energy wind farm which the rich  might see through the martini mist from their waterfront trophy homes in Osterville during the few weeks a year they tear themselves away from their other trophy homes elsewhere.

Is the word obscene too severe to describe coming to Cape Cod in season and having oceanfront cocktail parties to raise funds to stop a renewable energy project which could provide the working stiffs here with 75% of their electric needs without burning an ounce of oil?

I think our Colonial fore-parents would have had them tarred and feathered and run off the Cape on a pole.

Here are the suggestions we've received so far, but please add your suggestion in a comment below and the winning name will be used in all future references to these incredibly out of touch Americans. Of course, what would you expect from people who own fossil fuel corporation which might see their earnings threatened if we even got serious about renewable energy.

NIMBY names

• Energy Ostrich
• Today's Tory
• Nimby Nabobs
  
• Ancien Régime
• Marie Antoinettes
  
• Fossil Fool
• Petro Poltroon