Just noticed that both Karin and I were mightily impressed (unfavorbly) by President Obama's condescending remarks about entrepreneurship last week in Roanoke, Virginia:
If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.
The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
Well, that's what I'd call a slap in the face to people who've scrimped, saved and worked hard to build their own businesses!
One of my late mother’s rare forays into the almost vulgar statement was this: every tub stands on its own bottom. It’s something I heard often growing up, and in a way, inelegant though it is, it is the American credo. You can do it on your own.
President Obama’s credo is just the opposite: You can’t do it on your own. President Obama thinks that nothing of any importance happens without the government. He made it clear in Roanoke that, if re-elected, we will see more bailouts along the lines of the automobile industry bailout (quotes from pro-Obama Daily Kos):
[W]hat happened in the auto industry I want to see happen in manufacturing all across this country — right here in Virginia. (Applause.) We’ve invested in advanced manufacturing because we want to beat out countries like Germany and China. I want the great inventions to be done here, and I want great new products created here — which is why — and this is another contrast — whereas my opponent, in his private business, was investing in companies that The Washington Post calls “pioneers" of outsourcing, I believe in insourcing. (Applause.)
I want to stop giving tax breaks to companies that are shipping jobs overseas. Let’s give those tax breaks that are investing right here in Virginia — (applause) — right here in the United States of America, hiring American workers to make American products to sell around the world. That’s why I’m running for President of the United States. (Applause.)
Got it–he wants to bail out more sectors of the economy?
In addition to the bail out mania, the president doesn’t understand why companies hire overseas. Outsourcing and off shoring are symptoms of American policies that make domestic hiring so expensive as to threaten a company’s ability to survive. President Obama thinks you can solve this economic problem by making a rule, getting some bureaucrat to create or enforce some pet regulation. So how's that been working out for the last three years?
It is true that the internet used some advances made by the space program, but it's equally true that there are millions upon millions of Americans who have build great fortunes without a scintilla of government involvement.
It’s interesting that President Obama made thse remarks in the Old Dominion where America first learned the lesson of self-reliance: the colony endured what is called in American history “the starving time” before Captain John Smith came up with a nice idea: if you don’t work, you don’t eat.
People recognized then that every tub stands on its own bottom.