Also read Brian Maffly’s article in the Salt Lake Tribune which mentions John Leavitt’s coverage of an epic legal battle in the Biotech/Pharma industries.
From the Salt Lake Tribune
The president’s whole context, as White House aides have repeatedly pointed out, is that other people — including, in some circumstances, government — have helped successful people succeed.
Romney, however, has seized on the condensed version of the comment as illustrating that Obama doesn’t understand small businesses and their challenges. It’s a strategy that seems to be galvanizing conservatives. Last week, Romney’s campaign held 18 “We did build this” events in a dozen states featuring small-business owners who say they made their companies what they are without the government’s help.
But critics note that while Romney likes to take credit for turning around the 2002 Winter Olympics, which had been savaged by an international bribery scandal, the federal government pumped more than $340 million into Utah, funding about 18 percent of the Games’ overall cost. If money for rebuilding Interstate 15 in Utah and adding light rail are included, the federal total rounds up to $1.3 billion.
“Not only has Mitt Romney blatantly taken the president’s words out of context, he has done so with brazen hypocrisy,” says Ty Matsdorf, a senior adviser with the pro-Obama American Bridge 21st Century super PAC. “Romney claims the Olympics as one of his successful turnarounds, but what he fails to mention is he was only able to do this with a billion-dollar check from taxpayers — a far cry from doing it on his own.”
When I first heard President Obama say this, I immediately thought of Elizabeth Warren who said essentially the same thing, but only better, in one of her election campaigns:
“You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.
Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”
These are strong but important words because they dispel Republican social darwinism myths and slap reality into the face of libertarians and those who advocate for small government. These words draw a fundamental line in the sand that distinguishes between two very different social philosophies. They remind us that we are all in this together, like it or not, and that wealth is not created by a select few but from the multitude of motivated and creative workers.
I’m thrilled when I hear these conversations being raised in election campaigns. It brings us all into deeper conversations, more profound thinking, and rises above the usual simple political rhetoric and nasty ad hominems.