“The American dream mattered a lot in this election,” writes Christopher Caldwell in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine. But it mattered so much that it has practically lost any clear meaning.

Marco Rubio, the Tea Party-fueled Republican who captured a US Senate seat in Florida, claimed it as his cause, and so did President Obama. And so did Americans for Prosperity, a conservative organization committed to repealing Obama’s health care law, which dubbed its recent conference the Defending the American Dream Summit.

If the true meaning of the term is fuzzy, blame the man who coined it. Popular historian James Truslow Adams is credited with introducing the phrase in 1931, but Caldwell writes that Adams conceded that it was never “a logical concept of a thought.”

“Sometimes it meant the frontier spirit,” writes Caldwell, “sometimes Jeffersonian democracy and sometimes just the hope that Americans could ‘grow to fullest development as men and women, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in older civilizations.’” One thing it has come to mean in recent years is owning the roof over your head.  Caldwell says home ownership only came to be so closely linked to the American dream around the time of Ronald Reagan’s election. The 30-year push to expand home ownership that followed, fueled by federal policies and, ultimately, unrestrained Wall Street avarice, helped put us in the mess we’re now in. “The American dream is the ideology of the housing bubble,” writes Caldwell. But there’s nothing wrong with the aspiration of home ownership, only with the expectation of annual double-digit appreciation rates.  As the chief asset most Americans will accumulate in the quest for some measure of economic security, it seems as good a marker of the American dream as anything else. But we’re learning the hard way that there is no free ride.

Gimme shelter

Caldwell says one University of Chicago researcher has argued that government policies to promote home ownership were aimed at counterbalancing “the rise of income inequality to dangerous levels.”  Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, known best for his coverage of the developing world, says growing income inequality in the US has made the divide between haves and have-nots here as bad as that in any of the banana republics he writes about.

Closer to home, Banker & Tradesman columnist Scott Van Voohris shakes his head [subscription required] over the failure of the governor’s race to address one of the biggest drags on the state’s economy: the difficulty building reasonably priced homes here. “Simply put, it costs too much to build here, whether it’s a single-family home or a new factory. And those high costs – reflected in middle class homeowners priced out of suburban towns and businesses forced to relocate – are slowly but surely putting a stranglehold on the state’s economy,” he writes. The core problem: “entrenched NIMBY attitudes among local officials throwing every zoning rule in the book to stop new construction.” It’s a longstanding lament, but that makes it no less worth repeating.

Local Moves

Cities and towns across the state are responding to fiscal tough times in frugal fashion, today’s Globe reports, with communities increasing their “rainy day” savings accounts even if it means painful cuts in their budgets.  Meanwhile, Lowell city manager Bernie Lynch is hoping to achieve some budget belt-tightening with a new contract bargaining approach with unions that would cut out retirees.

No need to break the news to the kiddies just yet, but the unmitigated joy of a snow day could become a thing of the past if a plan being rolled out in one Ohio school district catches on.  If it’s too snowy to get to schools in the Mississinawa Valley School District, a plan will kick in for kids there to get their day’s lessons online.

Also going online: the sale of small town-owned parcels of land in Haverhill.

The Fall River School Committee is trying to get ahead of the bullying epidemic with a new policy at all grades, according to the Herald News.

Business and economic development leaders in the Berkshires have set their sights on a train line linking the Berkshires to New York City, according to the Berkshire Eagle.

One with everything: In Lawrence, pizza magnate Sal Lupoli is fueling the comeback of mill buildings along the Merrimack.

Health hits

Republicans need to think long and hard about the law of unintended consequences if they start dismantling the health care reform law through the budget, says Beth Israel Deaconess CEO Paul Levy.

The Massachusetts Hospital Association says, starting Jan. 1, it won’t hire people who use tobacco products.  In an editorial, the Globe pronounces the policy one nanny state move too far. The paper points out that, under the policy, neither President Obama nor incoming House Speaker John Boehner could be hired by the group.  Neither is looking for a new job just yet, which is good because MHA president Lynn Nicholas wasn’t persuaded by these examples, saying the Puffer-in-Chief “wouldn’t be a good fit for my organization when someone else who is equally qualified would.”  That sounds like HR-speak for the remark directed at Obama by Rhode Island’s frustrated Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Frank Caprio.

Power plays

In an echo of the Cape Wind debate that animated the governor’s race here, the New York Times reports that concern over costs is prompting pushback nationally against state-backed renewable energy projects.  While the green energy debate rages on, we need to get power from somewhere.  So says a Brockton engineer, who uses the Enterprise editorial page as a bully pulpit to urge city officials to give up the ghost in their battle against a planned natural gas power plant.

Officials at Vermont Yankee, the troubled nuclear power plant near the Massachusetts border, shut down the facility Sunday night to fix a pipe leaking radioactive water. Associated Press via the Springfield Republican.

Hubbub

The bodies continue to pile-up in Boston, where two weekend homicides push the 2010 murder count to 63, roughly 50 percent higher than the count at this point last year.  Saturday’s news that Police Commissioner Ed Davis was replacing the department’s highly-regarded gang unit commander, Gary French, suggests the police brass know something has to change.  Unless it’s accompanied by a well thought out change in strategy, however, it’s not clear what a command staff shuffle will accomplish.

Menino to businesses: pay up. The Globe weighs in with a front-page story that follows earlier coverage – including in CommonWealth’s fall issue – of Boston’s new business improvement district, a long awaited development in Downtown Crossing that is proving to be somewhat bittersweet because some big property owners are balking at the voluntary contributions to help with upkeep in the area. “It’s a little selfish,” quoth Hizzoner.

North Enders to students: shaddup. NorthEndWaterfront.com says two Boston city councilors are exploring ways to have bans on loud parties written into students’ leases. Via Universal Hub.

Politicking

As proof that blogs provide a soapbox for saying almost anything, an apparently serious post on BlueMassGroup has touted Tom Menino as the Democrats’ best hope for unseating Scott Brown in 2012. Reality asserts itself in the comments section.

And who says Brown will be the GOP nominee in two years, anyway?  The Herald’s Joe Battenfeld breaks the news to Brown that he is a dead man walking in the aftermath of the get-out-the-vote muscle the state’s Dems showed last week.  “If Suzanne Bump can win a statewide election here, all Republicans are doomed,” says Battenfeld. His plan:  The state’s centerfold-turned-senator should run for the White House.

Jon Chesto takes apart the money behind the winning sides of all three ballot questions on Wicked Local’s Mass Market blog. The Recorder in Greenfield takes apart the demographic realities and says it’s likely that the area west of Worcester will lose one of its two congressional seats in redistricting.

The talking heads on WGBH-TV’s “Beat the Press” talk about the talking heads on talk radio, who were all bark and no bite this election.

This and that

A lost art? Literally. The city of Fall River could be on the hook for $40K after losing three color panels that once adorned City Hall.