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.
Wasn`t Dymond the one going through his European beat on the Beebs behalf a year of so back…but with more drugs on his person that even a Beeboid could defend as for “personal use”?
Guess that is why he`s been sent somewhere safe like the USA.
To be fair, Dymonds nightmare is the BBCs as prtrayed here…the State aren`t paying out as they used to, the States mouthpiece sees its money under question as never before and the whole LibLeft World Alliance is seen as redundant, unwanted and economically impotent…which brings the BBC out in hives…the ones that will have to be evicted from soon!
No wonder they care about squatters rights…the likes of Dymond have been squatting way too long in the minds of the nation.
I was watching the show “Coal” on Sky this afternoon and it struck me that its this kind of quality programming that the BBC no longer makes. There was no political statement, nothing about Mann Made Global Warming, absolutely nothing what so ever that was political or environmental. It was first and fore most a story about workers and their job.
BUT…what really caught my eye was that the small coal mine that was on the show today was owned and operated by two small business men, who had sunk four million dollars of their own money in to the mine, were employing 30 men from the local community and were struggling to make ends meet.
It is these kinds of businesses that power America…where men have taken risks with their own money to get a business going and where other men risk their lives to keep the lights on!
You can hate Murdoch as much as you want BUT while he can air programmes like this the BBC just sinks further and further in to its biased mire.
Mailman
Thanks. It’s always good to get the context and a bit of depth about an item featured in the news.
You can’t expect a Beeboid journalist…oh, wait…what am I saying? I forgot for a moment…only on Sunday it was telling us (at 4mins 38secs to 4 58) in Points of View in response to a viewer / listener who just wanted the facts and not a lot of doom mongering about the economy (segment starts at 3mins 10 secs):
..we aim to provide all our audiences with not just the facts regarding the economy, but also the broadest context around those facts…
…we will continue to cover stories with the depth and balance audiences expect.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0178pgj
…for ‘the broadest context around those facts’ read pro-Labour lefty blather.
“…we will continue to cover stories with the depth and balance audiences expect” which is absolutely true – a first for the BBC!
Heh at Umbongo 😀 😀
The BBC is interested only in one context around the facts they select for your education.
The arrogance and offensiveness of the BBC. Their audience is so stupid they need to give us “depth and balance “. Thank God for the BBC, otherwise we may come to our own conclusions.
What a bunch of tossers.
i find it quite surprising that Mr Dymond is actually let into the USA when one considers the beeboids drug habbits
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1580845/BBCs-Jonny-Dymond-caught-with-cannabis.html
Occupy wall street protester wants another 911 9/11s…
The mask is begining to slip……
Johnny Dymond’s bleak report from Prospect, Conn should come as no surprise. Remember Mardell saying, in the video David Preisser (USA) brought to our attention a month or so back, that the people back in Television Center will only want a story about Palin if there’s a scandal?
So this is how it probably went: “Johnny,” says a Julian or Justin or an Imogen or whoever was on duty at the Today programme, “We have a hole in the running order tomorrow. Be a good boy, put that spliff down, and get some “realism” from a “typical American town”. You know the sort of thing: lots of “Grapes of Wrath” imagery. I read it at Warwick and it’s a great book. Ok. Ya.”
So here’s where Johnny went: http://www.townofprospect.org/
By the way, anyone notice the missing word in Dymond’s report. It is missing in every “they’ve never had it so bad” story. The word is Obama. A few years ago, you can bet that the phrase, “This is what its like to live in Bush’s America” would tripped off Jonny’s yellowed tongue.
PS Dazed and Confused. That’s a truly shocking clip. It also seems the idiot interviewed is under the influence of a “Dymond”.
I’ve had great fun over the last hour (like I’ve got nothing better to do?) looking at Jonny Diamond’s US past reports. In them, you’ll find woven tightly the BBC’s American narrative. Fascinating. We should watch him and the assumtpions he has. For example: he says Romney is the Republican candidate that Dems fear most because he attracts moderate voters. Now there’s a big parcel worth unpacking.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/9612352.stm
Those are the reports which Mardell told the BBC CoJ was “fantastic stuff”.
In a sense good journalism is like good science. You go in with some idea what to expect – a germ of a theory – but with an open mind. Then you gather all the evidence which is available (not just the evidence which is favourable to what you – sort of – expect or supports the case you want it to support). Then, having gathered the evidence, you assess it, again with an open mind, and then (and only then) conjecture about the underlying truth (which conjecture might or might not be similar to your original germ of a theory). Then you publish your conjecture with all the evidence you’ve gathered and ask your fellow scientists – or editors – to have a bash at disproving your conclusions.
Manifestly Jonny, his colleagues at the BBC or (let’s bring it in, the BBC never lets slip an opportunity after all) the warmist faux-scientists don’t believe or practise this model of truth discovery. Jonny (and Black, for instance) know what they want to “prove”, only acknowledge evidence to support their pre-ordained opinions or – in reality – don’t even bother to search for any evidence which might contradict their theories. OK, Black doesn’t even do that. He just makes assertions and abuses those who disagree but, there again, Black is neither a scientist nor a journalist. He (like Jonny) is simply a propagandist.
Umbongo,
I doubt if a single journalist ( reporter, correspondent, editor, whatever ) at the BBC has a degree in science. And it shows !
Except David Gregory.
Also Newsnight’s Susan Watts.
However, out of the full complement not many, with some glaring holes where it matters.
And possession of a degree in a pertinet subject is of course no guarantee of jounalistic integrity, especially once things hit the arts/PPE grads upstairs, as a certian post-Predidential speech fallout testified.
I see Richard Black is pushing the evil Koch Bros narrative:
@BBCRBlack Richard Black Excellent Guardian account of Koch Bros plans for next US election bit.ly/uDDzDL – what chance EPA survival?
Funny how these BBC lefties never worry about Soros, or union funds, or the hundreds of millions of tax dollars wasted in dodgy green energy schemes, or the fact that Obama has received more money from the financial industry than any other US politician in history. As far as Guardian-reading teenage girls like Richard Black are concerned it’s all about the evil Right. The BBC’s 2012 narrative.
For US news junkies – here is an adult discussion between Newt Romney and several commentators :
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/11/09/special_report_center_seat_panel_with_newt_gingrich.html
These days I ignore all BBC news coverage of the US. It is shallow, usually biased, frequently inaccurate.
And BORING.
Solyndra Emails Claim Biden Team ‘About Had an Orgasm’ About Energy Loans to Firm <img src=”http://a57.foxnews.com/video.foxnews.com/thumbnails/110911/640/360/190/107/110911_rosen_solyndra.jpg”/>
A series of emails provided to the House Energy and Commerce Committee from individuals tied to Solyndra offer striking characterizations about running strategy with the White House to secure assistance for the now-bankrupt solar energy firm.
Oooh well looky here =-O Obviously the BBC are silent about this growing scandal, it goes against their core values I suppose. Protect the democrat president and the CAGW eco green fraud. In fact if you wanted a scandal the BBC wouldnt dare touch you really couldnt find a better example could you? This story is like garlic to a vampire.
A team orgasm. Phew , I am glad I wasn’t there to witness it !
I know the beeb are biased, but the fact remains that the middle class are being screwed by banks. The scandal really is the fraud in Wall Street, aided and abetted by Congress, Parliament and the EU.
Jefferson was spot on about the control of currency.
The problem with blaming the banks exclusively (not that you’re doing that) for screwing the middle class is that they’re only obeying rules set by government. Robert Peston does actually blame the banks exclusively for this, always failing to understand that they sit on capital now because A) they’re told to now by the government and B) because lending to people who can’t repay is what started all this in the first place. Setting lending targets is never going to have a happy ending.
I think the fraud in Wall Street is more negligence than deliberate fraud, for the most part. Mortgage lenders were the fraudsters, not traders. The banks were told by Congress (Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Maxine Waters) to lend to people who couldn’t pay. The fact that this debt got bundled into the crap that financial companies move around was coincidental, but something that people should have seen coming sooner. They didn’t, and then the bastards at places like AIG and Merrill Lynch just re-arranged the deck chairs and tried to pass the problem off to someone else. I think a few of them should go to jail (they won’t), but don’t see the entire industry as fraudulent.
But Congress created this scenario (after Clinton started it), and much of it is do to corruption as well as misguided ideology. The middle class will now be screwed more by Congress and the President than by the banks.
Franklin Raines drove Fannie Mae into the ground and helped screw up the housing market – because of his own corrupt dealing with Countrywide – and all he got was a $90 million golden parachute. I don’t see the Occupiers or the BBC screaming about that. Chris Dodd and Barney Frank and Maxine Waters kept the whole scam going for years after we all knew it was a disaster, yet are getting away with it. No Occupiers or Left-wing media types screaming about them.
And banks have nothing to do with taxes or energy regulations or ObamaCare, all of which screw the middle class.