The lies of class warfare

Anyone who thinks that America is not embroiled in a nasty class war between a would-be fascist super class and the proletariat is just not paying attention to the hate propaganda that the regressives have put into circulation.  The neo-fascist rationale, as always, is grounded in the false mythology of its own making.  


The charge that the protestors who occupied the Wisconsin state capitol building caused $7.5 million in damage is a case in point.   The falsehood began when a lawyer for the Wisconsin Department of Administration, which oversees the building, told the press that the clean up required by what the occupiers of the building left behind would cost that much.


That gave the neo-fascist lie fabrication machine some grist to start milling.  One South Dakota blog, the old South Dakota Wart Collage in its tradition of "everything false and ugly all the time" picked up the story and combined it with the finding of 41 rounds of hollow point ammunition scattered around the Capitol grounds to flesh out the  portrayal of the protestors as the thugs of serfdom.  Then another of the neo-fascist whine generators added to the South Dakota blogosphere cacophony by rounding the amount up to $8 million.  


The story did not get much play in the legacy press, because the real reporters were skeptical about the $7.5 million figure.  The press had been  reporting how the protestors organized a group of people to be in charge of cleaning up and helping to maintain the building, and they asked the Department of Administration to authenticate the figure cited.  The Wisconsin State Journal reported on the  response to that request for authentication in  a story  headlined:

State officials say $7 million cleanup of state Capitol was overstated

 The article reported:

Department of Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch admitted Friday the $7.5 million quoted by DOA lawyer Cari Ann Renlund was "at the high end of the range" and that actual cleanup costs could be as low as $347,500.

It also reported on a response by one of those lumpen prole thugs:

"It's an insult," said Kevin Gibbons, co-president of Teaching Assistants' Association, the union that organized daily cleanups of the Capitol while maintaining a 24-hour protest village for two weeks. "I'm sure anyone who made that estimate didn't witness the lengths we went to to make sure we didn't hurt the Capitol."

Here is the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's lede on their story:

Officials charged with overseeing the state Capitol Friday backpedaled sharply from their estimate - delivered in a high-profile court case only the day before - that demonstrators did more than $7 million in damage to the building and grounds during the tumultuous yet peaceful protests that erupted Feb. 15.

And this graph:

Touring the building on Friday morning with state architect Dan Stephans, who oversaw the Capitol's restoration that concluded in 2001, Jeff Plale said he had not immediately observed any damage from demonstrations over Gov. Scott Walker's budget-repair bill. Plale is a former Democratic state senator and now the state facilities administrator.

The American neo-fascists haven't gotten all the way to medieval feudalism.  They have paused to relive the Spanish Civil War.