The CNN huckster Lou Dobbs was in town last week, doing a special show and hosting a public forum. The show and the forum both had the same title as his new book, which he's hyping.
"War on the Middle Class," they're all called.
Dobbs went in his usual spiel about illegal immigration and the outsourcing of jobs overseas, and his guest, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, got up and went into his usual spiel about how he's commissioned new studies that will help turn the place around.
The show wasn't interesting and it wasn't entertaining. We don't really need Lou Dobbs or anyone else coming here and telling us this place is a mess. Its only possible audience could have been people in Cleveland and Pittsburgh.
"And we think we've got it bad," they could gloat.
The next morning, the Buffalo bloggers were in a tizzy because the city and, by extension, Western New York had been portrayed nationally in an unfavorable economic light. The show didn't highlight the ways we're trying to change and adapt, one complained.
"For all the hard work that people do to try and better this area, outside of the 8 counties of WNY, we are still the poster child for rust belt ineptitude and inertia," he added.
Here's a news flash. Anybody living in the eight counties of Western New York who doesn't consider themselves to be a poster child for rust-belt ineptitude and inertia hasn't been paying attention. The way people are trying to "change and adapt" is by getting in their cars and driving west or south as fast as they can.
Our own governor-elect compared our region to Appalachia, a comparison that made those living in Appalachia rightfully angry.
We pay the highest taxes in the nation. We have more public employees per capita than anywhere else in the United States. In the city of Niagara Falls, half the population is drawing Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, Aid to Dependent Children, Section Eight Housing subsidies or other forms of welfare.
If you meet someone under the age of 70 who seems fairly affluent, you can bet they work for the city, the county or the school district, or have some business that draws upon the funding those entities receive in the form of tax dollars.
The only thing Dobbs got wrong was his title. While "War on the Middle Class" might be appropriate in many parts of the country, here it should have been called "Death of the Middle Class."
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | December 12 2006 |