One of the battalion of Beeboids covering the US these days, Jonny Dymond, has just done an extremely one-sided collection of sob stories for Today about the struggles of the middle class. He went to a couple of slowly dying cities in Connecticut to create his tapestry of woe, and his agenda is clear.
I say it’s one-sided not because there are tons of stories of rising successes for the middle class he could have provided in the interests of balance, but because of the way Dymond presents the situation in the first place. Highly selective, and framed in a very narrow-minded fashion. The whole story is presented as a case study in how the 2008 financial disaster and the subsequent recession has ravaged the middle class, the backbone of the US. But the agenda here is really to support the Occupiers’ cause.
Dymond starts out in a metal parts factory in Prospect, CT, where he wrings his hands over the plight of the workers. They no longer get the guaranteed annual raises, or the constant overtime which pads the regular paychecks of anyone on an hourly wage in any industry (especially including the public sector), so their American Dream, he opines, is on hold at best, and possibly even disappearing for good.
The factory boss also laments the plight of his employees. But in the middle of all this, he casually mentions that Connecticut hasn’t actually has any net job increase in 20 years. What does that have to do with 2008 or the recession? He and one of his suffering employees also point out that the food prices and gas prices and taxes are going up and up, which makes things tough for those on an essentially fixed income. Well, we can all guess what the standard BBC answer to that is: they need pay rises. Never mind that Connecticut ranks 47th in crushing taxes which hurt businesses and job growth.
The Tea Party movement – so disparaged by the BBC – wants to lower taxes, something that’s an anathema to Left-wingers like Dymond, so he doesn’t mention the idea. Nor does he mention that the Democrats who run the state recently enacted the largest tax increase in state history. (Over the last two decades, when the state wasn’t run by Democrats, it was run by Bush-style Big Government Republicans, the kind the Tea Party movement has been working to get rid of.) Dymond also better hope that none of these factory workers earn more than $50K pa, or have spouses earning a similar middle-class income, as the Democrats who run Connecticut recently raised state income taxes for both. These aren’t even the “millionaires and billionaires” against whom the President often rails, either.
Food prices going up? Even the Guardian admits that this is in large part due to the Warmists forcing biofuel down our throats, causing edible corn prices to skyrocket, which drives up everything else. Who’s robbing the American dream here, Jonny?
One of those responsible is the Democrat former Senator, Chris Dodd, who was partially responsible for driving the mortgage crisis, and got a sweetheart deal from one of the failed sub-prime companies. Never mind all the campaign largesse he got from the industry.
One of the staples of the American Dream Dymond mentions is home ownership. Well, he better hope none of his struggling middle class workers in Connecticut own homes these days, as the Democrats who run the state have made property taxes there 50% higher than the national average. Sure, these geniuses think they’re doing to it soak the evil rich bankers and David Letterman who live within commuting distance of New York City, but the unintended consequence – as always in these cases – is that hurts the middle class most. Dymond couldn’t be bothered to find this out, as it would detract from his Narrative.
If that’s not bad enough, they also just raised the state sales tax from 6% to 6.35% (still significantly lower than New York, but then New Jersey has no sales tax on retail good at all), and eliminated tax exemptions for all kinds of things which affect these middle class factory workers, like heating oil and the sacred property tax credit. They even killed the tax exemption for products which help people quite smoking. At the same time, they jacked up taxes on cigarettes. I hope none of those struggling factory workers smoke, or if they do they’re not thinking of quitting any time soon. So much for the American Dream, eh, Jonny? As we all know, and which the BBC has mostly kept from you, some states not controlled by Democrats have cut taxes and added jobs. Even New York, with the highest tax burden in the country, the Democrat Governor is trying to fix the budget without raising taxes. But that doesn’t help the Agenda, now, does it? So don’t bring it up.
To tie it all together, Dymond goes to the city of Hartford to meet up with his darling Occupiers. He manages to find one of them who hasn’t pulled a knife on someone. This Occupier laments that we’ve all been lied to, that there’s no such thing as the American Dream. What Dymond fails to realize is that this, just like the factory bosses’ statement about no net job growth for the last 20 years, also has nothing to do with the recent financial crisis and recession. This Occupier means that there has never been an American Dream available to everyone willing to work for it. He’s not talking about a temporary rough time we need to fix at all.
This keeps happening with BBC reports on this issue. On the one hand they say that the Occupy movement is inspired by anger at the greedy bankers who caused the financial crisis that everyone else has to pay for. Ask yourself how many times you’ve heard someone (usually a trade union mouthpiece or Labour politician or Robert Peston) say that people are being forced to pay for a crisis they didn’t cause. On the other hand, they moan about income inequality and corporate greed. But if this is all anger at a recent phenomenon, why do the Occupiers keep saying that this has always been a problem, and everything has always been bad? It’s because the BBC keeps misleading you about the whole story, as Dymond is doing here.
This is a very biased report. Everything is framed from one side of the issue, and facts which detract from the Narrative are swept under the rug.
