Let’s say that you own a business. Did you build the road in front of your store? No, the government built that. Using taxes. How about the three backbones of interstate commerce: canals and navigable waterways, railroads and the interstate highway system. Who made those? Does individual enterprise make sure that potholes get filled every year? Does WalMart ensure that a bridge can keep safe the ten thousand commercial trucks that roll over it every week? Railroads are only slightly more complicated. The government set aside enormous stretches of land, bought it or claimed it through eminent domain and then ‘sold’ it all to railroad companies for pennies and a pack of bubble gum. It was not hard to make a fortune when Uncle Sam happily gave you vast stretches of dirt that would go up a hundredfold in value as soon as you lay those tracks down.
Government made the internet. Most people who earn college degrees get them from state schools. Not from worthless for-profit schools, but from schools that produce an education with some value. IBM never had to teach its staff the principles of engineering because government-funded schools produce some of the top STEM graduates in the world. Did IBM pass the Morrill Act? Did Xerox set aside hundreds of thousands of acres in each state to permanently endow a college opportunity for each qualifying American? No, they did not. IBM and Xerox attracted the best talent and helped shape the modern American economy precisely because the American system gave talented entrepreneurs a leg up and granted them the freedom to focus on what they do best.
We need individual entrepreneurs to compete with one another and take risks to drive the economy forward. However, individual entrepreneurs would ‘compete’ for the protein they can find under rocks if they had to do it without the many things that government has already done for them.
donovong
Amen my brother! Preach!
Can I get an “amen?!”
Baud
I don’t like this response. It’s accurate, but defensive. I prefer just admitting that Obama was inartful but his basic point that businesses need public investment to proper is basically correct. Let them try to explain to you why that’s wrong.
danimal
I think all those self-made men and women just need to uproot and plant themselves in Somalia. No taxes to speak of, no environmental laws, no Dept of Labor, no minimum wage, etc, etc. All they need is their hard work and ingenuity without all those meddlesome government busybodies to hamper their creativity.
Of course, none of our captains of industry will actually move on to Somalia, because the benefits of living here (meddlesome government included) OF COURSE set the foundation for their success. But I’d still put them on the first boat to Somalia if I could.
Felanius Kootea
But but that’s socialism!
@Baud: I think Elizabeth Warren put it much better in her stump speech, but you know Obama would have been attacked for saying it anyway that he did say it.
LanceThruster
Seems like most these captains of industry think of their “self-made man” status as some sort of “Immaculate Conception” but even in that respect, Jehovah had Mary’s help (and Joseph’s too, if you think about it).
Ash Can
@Baud: This. The thing to say to all those people who won’t shut up is, “Yes, the president misspoke. Have you ever misspoken? And do you know what that speech was actually about?”
Baud
@Felanius Kootea:
Sure. Obama’s mistake wasn’t his message – it was in phrasing his message to give the other side a short sound bite to exploit.
Ed Drone
I think you can make the case that the oddly-phrased quote doesn’t even have to be seen in context to work.
Start a business? By yourself? You still need the rest of us for it to succeed. Capitalists put up capital, workers put up their labor; without both, the business fails. And both need customers for the product or service the business creates. It’s not a vacuum, it’s not a one-man show (even one-man shows require stagehands, lighting and sound crews, and ticket-sellers.
The point is, NO MAN IS AN ISLAND.
Simple as that. Trite, cliche, but accurate.
Ed
pseudonymous in nc
@Baud:
Yep. I think “if you’re explaining, you’re losing” applies here for the Obama camp. The succinct response should be “silly Mitt Romney, taking misreading lessons from Fox News. Americans know that our strength lies in what we build together as a nation.”
RP
@Ash Can: This too. The best response is “The President misspoke. He was referring to the roads, not the businesses.” KISS.
cathyx
Didn’t Elizabeth Warren give this same speech?
catclub
@LanceThruster: “self-made man” status
Yes. “I worked hard.” Never mind anyone else and their effort.
@Ash Can: Also, Yes.
This is nothing like not releasing your taxes.
c u n d gulag
Also, in a ‘jobless economy’ the seller of that job is in control.
Companies used to “TRAIN” a lot of people for jobs – both skilled, and unskilled – once you showed some ability to perform that job.
I know – I was a Trainer.
Now, they don’t want to pay for training.
They want someone with experience.
I saw an ad recently, asking for someone to handle lottery sales at a local gas-station-bodega – and that person had to have at least 1 year of experience.
1 YEAR!
To do what, exactly?
Count money, and hand-out scratch-off tickets?
To put in a dollar value for randomly selected tickets for state and P*werball lotteries?
To take the customer’s “lucky numbers” on the ticket they filled-out themselves, and put those tickets under a scanner, get the tickets, and give them to the customer?
What?
You can’t train someone to do that in a day or two?
If it takes longer than that, you probably hired someone too stupid to take their pants off when they take a dump.
1 YEAR’S EXPERIENCE!
OY!!!
And I’m NOT kidding, or making this up!
JMG
The people who get their rocks off on this alteration of Obama’s words regard their money as proof God loves them better than other people. It has nothing to do with reality, it’s about their psychopathic level of self-love and the desperate need to make it seem like righteousness.
catclub
@Ed Drone: “The point is, NO MAN IS AN ISLAND.”
Have you _seen_ Rush Limbaugh?
Baud
@Ash Can:
One nit. I don’t like the word “misspoke.” It sounds like he revealed something true he didn’t want to reveal. I prefer something like “Meh, I listened to the whole thing, and I understood what he meant, even if he didn’t express himself clearly. All he was saying was . . . “
cathyx
@c u n d gulag: With unemployment as high as it is right now, they can ask for it and get it.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
This BS goes back to Thatcher’s “There’s no such thing as society!”.
The irony being that Thatcher (just like Reagan across the pond) was exactly the product of her society at that particular place, time and circumstance.
Thatcher, of course, was Wrong.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Best response “Bah, quote mining. next!”
This is a game the fundamentalist play all the time with scientists. They chopped up Gould’s books so much it sounded like Gould believed Jesus was a dinosaur rancher.
Tim F.
@Baud: A patronizing response like that has no chance of convincing anyone. Tell people that they misheard something that sounds as obvious as that quote and they will laugh in your face. Or write you off as a crank.
If you care to do anything then convince them of the point of the speech first. If that works then they will ask you why the President didn’t just say that in the first place. Then you can say he did, he just phrased it poorly. Or forget about what the president said at all and just argue the point. If it works, then congrats! You made a liberal.
James E. Powell
Here is a response from a facebook discussion on the subject of the president’s speech:
There is so much in there that I don’t know where to begin. Also too, I get the impression that this speech is just another reason that people who already hate the president will vote even more emphatically for Romney.
japa21
They well find a way to turn anything he says aainst him. He could say “God loves America. Al Qaeda hates America” and the next thing you know they would be quoting him as saying “God…hates America.”
That being said, yes it could have been clearer.
Holden Pattern
@danimal:
/wingtard
Baud
@Tim F.:
I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t associate with people who would take this gaffe seriously, so maybe you know better. But it strikes me that the people who are talking about this aren’t looking to become liberal or be convinced about the rightness of the liberal worldview. And assuming some of these people are open to listening, I don’t think a defensive response is very convincing.
Pillsy
I think the best approach is to focus on the content of the next
Tim F.
@Baud: Just claiming that the person misheard what sounded perfectly obvious to them sounds a lot more defensive to me. Brachiator is not a wingnut; many people talking about this already like Obama and plan or planned to vote for him, they just don’t like what sounds to them like a patronizing statement. We are not talking about crazy wingnut uncle Jim here, but regular people who work for a living and do not have the time or interest to hang out on blogs.
Possibly the biggest problem that Obama faces, and the rest of the American left for that matter, is that even many Democrats are no longer sold on the basic idea of liberalism. I can tell you from experience with my own family. This is what DougJ has in mind when he says that totebaggers make him want to skin a kitten.
Elizabeth Warren gets so many people worked up exactly because she makes a solid pitch for the core philosophy of liberalism. The more people who spread that argument the better off everyone will be, above and beyond whether it helps settle this latest gaffe-in-a-teacup. Which it would.
chopper
but obama said:
i mean, come on! this guy is bonkers!
henrythefifth
Reminds me of this:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/09/18/783895/-The-Teabagger-Socialist-Free-Purity-Pledge
chopper
christ, if you only clip out every fifth word of any of obama’s speeches, he sounds like he has some sort of psychosis! this guy is heck of dangerous.
LanceThruster
@catclub: The man’s practically a triple bacon cheeseburger away from being his own continent.
chopper
@RP:
no need to say ‘misspoke’. because he didn’t. say clearly he was referring to the aforementioned infrastructure, and if you can’t figure that shit out on the first try you need to retake “remedial english for ‘tards”. it’s okay, scrot. lots of ‘tards are leading real kick-ass lives. my first wife was ‘tarded. she’s a pilot now.
Mino
It flat out amazes me that they think hard work is equally rewarded. What world do they live in?
Lee
If I remember my history correctly it actually took 2 earlier tries with transcontinental railroad legislation before there was enough government involvement for it to actually work.
JustAnotherBob
Can we drop this silly shit?
We all know that Mitt built the hospital where he was born.
JerryN
@James E. Powell: I saw basically the same sort of responses from my wingnut FB friends. I made the mistake of trying to engage and it was pointless. They know that kenyan-mooslum-soshulist bastard is taking all their money and giving it to the parasites. Anything he says, up to and including that the sun came up in the east this morning, just reinforces that belief.
jwb
@Tim F.: I’ve been fighting on FB today with a bunch of flat taxers, a useless fight if there ever was one. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this crowd and it makes me wonder what brought them out today.
Baud
@Tim F.:
I didn’t say that you should say they “misheard.” I said you should admit that Obama did not express himself well, and then explain what you understood his point to be and that you agree with it.
I guess we just disagree. I don’t think this “gaffe” is a productive starting point for a conversation about the “basic idea of liberalism” (whatever that is) if you’re in the position of responding to someone else’s criticism of Obama’s speech.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Lee:
There’s a reason that legislation passed when it did. The members of Congress most opposed to it were somewhat indisposed at the time…
…attending to business in the Confederacy.
Same is true for the Homestead Act.
Mike Furlan
@Ed Drone:
Ed,
The ideal society for our modern Republicans was the antebellum South.
More specifically the large slave plantations.
They had access by river to the ocean trade routes, and so did not need roads.
They could grow pretty much everything they needed, and what they couldn’t grow they could obtain by sale of a cash crop.
They had their own labor supply, and didn’t need schools. Schools would, in fact, “ruin” their labor force.
The only use that the slavemasters had for government were:
1. Removal of the Native Americans from “their” land.
2. Protection from foreign invasion.
3. Aid in putting down slave revolts.
A government that tried to do anything more than that, was of course considered to be tyrannical.
Lee
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God:
Well yeah there is that :)
Pillsy
I think if you’re going to dive into the fray on this one, just emphasize the next paragraph of Obama’s speech:
Now, the real hardcore wingnuts still aren’t going to like this. Indeed, it’s this message that’s the one they really hate, and if you look at a lot of the actual comments that their making on the speech, this is all about the inverted Marxism at the core of the Republican worldview. Sure, an individual job creator didn’t build that bridge, but job creators as a class built the bridge, and fuck you for saying the government had anything to do with it.
RP
@chopper: Touche! That approach is less diplomatic, but could also be quite effective.
delphi_ote
@Baud: Very well put!
VividBlueDotty
Which message is most likely to win voters?
Stop claiming credit for all your hard work and acknowledge that none of your success would be possible without the government.
You’ve worked hard to build your business into a success. And the government has created systems that helped you get there. And under my leadership, we will continue to help small businesses. In order to continue doing the things that will help you, we are asking those who’ve been successful to contribute their fair share.
The fair share part is aimed at those making $250,000 a year, but Sherrie the Florist whose taxable income (gross profit from her flower shop) is $25,000 a year is hearing message number one. She works 60 hour weeks, and she is hearing the part that says lots of people are smart, lots of people work hard…you’re not special.
Small business owners, no matter where they are on the income scale consider themselves small business owners and entrepreneurs. One of the flaws of this speech was the failure to distinguish the two…people who ARE paying their fair share, vs. those who aren’t.
The second flaw is the lecturing tone of it, and a defensive or patronizing response just doubles down on that.
It’s true that whatever Obama said or however he said it, some will take it out of context or find some kind of fault. But IMO that does not justify being OK with sloppy delivery of an important message.
birthmarker
Another thing that never gets pointed out–the middle class buys and sells to the middle class.
My hubby has a small business and most of his customers are middle income people. That is what is at risk when we eliminate the middle class. Suck on it, Rand Paul.
SES
@catclub:
ROFL!
RSA
Amen. Some of the most annoying arguments discounting our history come from libertarians who say that things would have happened just the same (or better!) without government involvement: the invention of the integrated circuit (on a military contract at Texas Instruments), the Internet (ARPA plus MIT research)… and going back in history, even outlawing the slave trade. Please.
I don’t have great ideas about how to convert wingnuts, but I’m reminded of a somewhat out-of-context quote by Romney that was picked up in the blogosphere and elsewhere: “I like being able to fire people.” Even Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich dumped on Romney for saying it.
So one possibility is to ask a wingnut whether we want a President who likes to put people out of work. Turnabout is fair play. Of course, I suspect that the natural wingnut inclination is to change the subject.
El Cid
@Mike Furlan: The Southern plantation colonialists (i.e., former spoiled British Caribbean landholders looking for slave-labor profits of certain crops, I mean, hardscrabble yeoman farmers) depended upon the federal government to support slavery.
One of their chief fears and the main reason South Carolina gave for its secession is that non-slave states weren’t patrolling for and capturing and returning escaped slaves enough.
They didn’t want the “state’s right” to slavery — they wanted every other state to help enforce and patrol their slaving system.
Catch that?
Their honored demand to the ‘right of compact’ or upholding a contract? Yeah. Meaning, enforcing our slavery.
Their love of the Constitution and the Founding Fathers? Only as far as the Constitution was read to permanently endorse slavery.
Their hatred of those who would undermine the Constitution? Oh, right, that means those who would fail to see it as the highest purpose of the Constitution to force non-slave states to patrol for and enforce Southern slave states’ definition of humans as property and to capture and return escaped slaves.
And that there would have been no Constitution if it hadn’t permanently enshrined the national responsibility to uphold the shitty South’s shitty elite’s shitty slave-based economic system.
They didn’t want “freedom”. They didn’t want to be left alone to be as beastly and inhuman they could be in their slothful, greedy pursuit of the lordly administration of colonial production and export of primary agricultural products versus their poor white, broke as shit Southern brethren.
They wanted soshullism, and Big Gubmit subsidy, and Big Gubmit regyoolayshun, and Crony Slavery Capitalism. They wanted to be protected from free enterprise and from the market economy and to have their government use money and violence to enshrine the wealth of a tiny few.
They wanted a nation in which every state kissed their asses by making sure slaves couldn’t ever, ever escape to any other state.
Haydnseek
@cathyx: Yes, Elizabeth Warren did give this same speech, just not often enough for the rest of the Obamaverse to put it in heavy rotation in the media.
Mike Furlan
@El Cid:
Thanks, I’ll add “Slave Catching” to the list of acceptable activities of government.
But the ACA, that is tyranny.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@VividBlueDotty:
IMO, this is exactly correct.
The evil genius of the GOP since 1980 or so has been twofold: (1) Convince the white working class that they have more in common with the white boss upstairs than they do with the non-whites working right beside them, and (2) Convince the small businessmen and other self-employeds that they are exactly equivalent to plutocrats like the Kochs or Romney (when, in fact, those small businesses are nothing more than plump and tasty little morsels to be consumed by mega-corporations, to Romney’s mind).
(1) Has been slowly fading, if only because of demographics and new generations being less racist than those that came before them.
If the Democrats could just figure out how to annul or counter the effects of (2), however… That’s when we get our sea change.
burnspbesq
Not so fast. The SUNY system was for shit until Rockefeller started throwing money at it in the 1960s.
IBM, Kodak, Xerox, Corning, Bausch & Lomb and the other pillars of the Upstate New York tech-business world were built by graduates of private schools like Union, U of R, Cornell, Colgate, Hamilton, St. Lawrence, Clarkson, etc.
The general point is valid. The specific examples were poorly chosen.
AkaDad
Without workers most businesses would be out of business.
WaterGirl
@Felanius Kootea: That’s exactly what I think happened. I think Obama was speaking on the fly and was being careful not to have his words too closely match those of Elizabeth Warren, and it didn’t come out well.
Will
I still think it was sloppy for a public speaker as skilled as Obama to provide them an easy sound bite like that. What good possibly comes out of a phrase that can so easily be twisted into some kind of attack on small business owners? I don’t know why that wasn’t caught in advance.
pattonbt
Meh. Obama doesn’t need to do anything about it. If he gets a question on it he should simply go “Here’s what I said (and maybe say it a bit better, which O always does) and I see no reason to back away from that.”. He’ll sound smart and reasonable and end of story.
O has a good habit of turning poutrage to his advantage. He stays calm and he takes it as an opportunity to sell his platform more and hit his adversaries harder.
Sometimes, getting poutrage du jour is actually good for O because the media will scurry and seek clarification which then actually gives O the spotlight to say things even better and with more attention from the press. Kind of a win actually. And becuase O has a verifiable track record (no matter how hard the 27% want to believe otherwise) he wins.
Sure the 27% will never let it go (57 states, cling to guns and religion, etc.). But the majority of the public (whether they support the Pres or not) know he isn’t an idiot and is a nice man.
BruinKid
I was surprised the Ron Paul fan I know posted this on Facebook, which chides libertarians and conservatives for misquoting and misinterpreting what Obama said in Virginia. But then another one of his libertarian friends responded:
Sigh. Such hatred.
IdahoMatt
@catclub:
Rush Limbaugh is a continent, not an island.