Jew World Order

_{A family crosses the goods train tracks that run through town}

Perhaps that’s true, says Pete Brunow, 54, a vocal Democrat and former
high-school football coach who brought glory to the town in 2004 by winning
the Ohio state championships, but that the benefit culture is a symptom, not
the cause, of the problems facing rust-belt towns like Dunkirk.

“The real problem is that there are too many 10-dollar-an-hour jobs,”
he counters, with a shake of his head, “There are always going to be
people on welfare – always have been, always will be – but the problem is
that the jobs we do have today are too poor-paying.” Such barbershop
debates are often drowned out in the raucous gaffe-spotting and
point-scoring that monopolise much of the airspace of modern US political
campaigns, but they go straight to the angry, despondent heart of Middle
America.

Over the next 50 days, up
until polling day on Nov 6, the people of Dunkirk, Ohio will provide
a touchstone for The Telegraph’s election coverage, providing
unvarnished comment on the fizz and froth of the national campaign.

The story of Dunkirk’s decline is one that has been repeated in thousands of
towns across Ohio, a must-win battleground state that has borne the brunt of
the fall-out from globalisation, and where Mr Obama will campaign again
today.

_{Kids drive across the Main street in a go-cart which they share with the
heavy truck traffic of Route 68}

A once-prosperous town that sprung up in 1852 up on the intersection of two
railroads, Dunkirk hit the buffers five years ago when, after years of
struggle, the factory where most of the town’s men had worked since it
opened in 1951 finally shut down.

The consequences of the closure of the Rockwell International axle plant –
blamed on intransigent unions or greedy bosses, depending on your point of
view – have been devastating.

The plant provided the kinds of incomes that, as Mr Obama likes to remind
voters in his stump speeches, enabled hard-working families to save for
their kids’ college education, to own a house and put a car in the garage.

Neil Hipsher, a 63-year-old former Rockwell employee, remembers those days. He
went to work at the factory in 1972 a few years after graduating the local
high school and was soon earning $18 dollars an hour – the equivalent of
about $60,000 (£40,000) per year at today’s prices.

“You just went there and got a job,” he says. “They trained you
so you could get the union card and you were in. That’s one of the problems
now, there aren’t enough unions.”

_{Barber Kevin Ridgeway, 49 (r) talks to Neil Hipsher, 63 (c)}

These were the kinds of incomes that sustained what 73-year-old Charlie Green,
another life-long former Rockwell employee, recalls as a “hoppin’ town”,
with grocery and hardware stores, several petrol stations and even a cinema.

Today, there are still some jobs in Dunkirk – the town has a factory, Diamond
Plastics, on its outskirts that employs nearly 60 people – but at $12
dollars per hour they pay only less than half, in real terms what the old
jobs did.

“The old middle class is dying,” says the town’s 63-year-old mayor,
Teresa Cramer. “Even couples with jobs are being killed. If you’re both
making ten bucks an hour, even then it’s all you can do to pay the bills.
There is no light at the end of the tunnel, only us getting further and
further into debt.”

Mrs Cramer, who retired on an almost full-salary pension after 37 years as a
teacher, knows that she and the men sitting in the barber shop are the lucky
ones.

_{Mayor Teresa Cramer (centre) holds a town council meeting on a monday
evening}

The concern is not for themselves, but the people starting out in life, like
Brent and Ashley Kelly, a young couple with newborn twins, who no-one – not
Mr Obama or Mitt
Romney – seems to have any answers real for.

Already she and her husband, who earns a healthy $18-an-hour in a factory that
supplies parts to a nearby Honda plant, are making plans to save for their
twins’ further education – but they honestly don’t know how they’ll manage
it.

“In future, you’re going to have to have a degree to get a job,”
says Mrs Kelly who is well aware of how cheap Chinese labour has reduced the
value of her own. “Today there are some factory jobs, but those are
going to be gone – and they’ll definitely be gone in 18 years.”

If the campaigns stooped to listen to the people of Dunkirk – which voted
60-40 Republican in 2008 – they would encounter a number of truths about
the 2012 election.

_{The Kelly family with their newborn babies attend church at The
Bridgeport Church}

Mr Obama would hear deep disappointment about his failure to deliver the
change he promised in 2008, but he would be comforted to know that few
people in Dunkirk – Republicans included – believe that Mitt Romney
understands how tough life is for people now.

At the same time, Mr Romney might be surprised to hear how many people,
including Republicans, like Mr Obama’s healthcare reforms (particularly the
part that keeps children on parents’ insurance policies until they are 26)
and are worried at the prospect of leaving Medicare – subsidised care for
the retired – to the mercies of the market.

Equally, Mr Obama might be surprised to learn how many Democrats are resentful
towards a welfare system that allows those on benefits – including those who
cheat and game the system – apparently able to live almost as well as those
pulling 60-hour weeks.

But both candidates might be chastened by how little hope anyone in Dunkirk
seems to pin on their abilities to make life better.

The people of Dunkirk are pinning their hopes on its volunteer spirit. While
Dunkirk might have a drugs problem and declining church attendances, it also
has a food pantry for the hard-up (donations are left on a trolley in the
library), a thrift shop and recently started monthly ‘community meals’, with
the latest one attracting a 100 people.

The village council also recently snared a $280,000 (£185,000) grant to spruce
up crumbling infrastructure, and this week a few months after the previous
establishment, the “Daily Grind” closed down, a new café, called “Oh
My Grill” will open its doors in the hope of attracting more life to
the town.

Gregg King, Dunkirk’s owlish, evangelical pastor – and also a former Rockwell
employee – is among those who are determined not to let go, whatever the
politicians can – or can’t – deliver.

“There is a sense that ‘nothing will ever get better’, because for the
last 15 or 20 years or so, nothing has got better,” he says, while
staging a hog roast to raise money for the community centre, “But I
don’t believe in that.”