IGX

After the conservative blogosphere used a selectively edited Obama campaign speech to suggest that the president belittled the achievements of small business owners, the Romney campaign released an attack ad featuring New Hampshire small business owner Jack Gilchrist as a counterpoint.
In “These Hands,” the Romney campaign repeated the out-of-context quote, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else did that.” Jack Gilchrist, the owner of Gilchrist Metal Fabricating in Hudson, New Hampshire, incredulously asks, “My father’s hands didn’t build this company? My hands didn’t build this company? My son’s hands aren’t building this company? …Through hard work and a little bit of luck, we built this business. Why are you demonizing us for it?”

In context, Obama’s speech was not “demonizing” small business owners but simply challenging the idea that wealthy and successful individuals have never benefited from government services.

And, as it turns out, Jack Gilchrist is no different. The New Hampshire Union Leader reports today that Gilchrist benefited from millions of dollars of government loans and contracts to get his business on its feet:

In 1999, Gilchrist Metal received $800,000 in tax-exempt revenue bonds issued by the New Hampshire Business Finance Authority “to set up a second manufacturing plant and purchase equipment to produce high definition television broadcasting equipment,” according to a New Hampshire Union Leader report at the time…

Last year, Gilchrist Metal also received two U.S. Navy sub-contracts totaling about $83,000 and a smaller $5,600 Coast Guard contract in 2008, according to a government web site that tracks spending.

Gilchrist wisely took advantage of these funds, which help small businesses like his survive in their early years. He also took a U.S. Small Business Administration loan in the late 1980s totaling “somewhere south of” $500,000, plus matching funds from the federally-funded New England Trade Adjustment Assistance Center.

ButterCupPowerRanch wrote:I'm sure it pissed a bunch of Obama supporters off, I just think its funny that the guy they picked to illustrate the hardwork and dedication of small business owners actually reinforces Obamas claim. Don't they vet these people first?

BobW wrote:My wife was a big Obama fan, until that Roanoke speech. She knows the hours I've put into my business - the hundred hour work weeks, working 30-40 hours straight, the fines I've paid for getting bad advice from accountants on maintaining unemployment insurance for myself, which I'll never be able to claim against...and I've never received any government grant or loan.

For fuck's sake, I'm 50 years old, and haven't had a vacation longer than 3 days in the past 8 years. I've had one two week vacation since I started the business in 1992.

I have had numerous other people steal my code, my ideas, my clients, thereby materially impacting our life.

After that single speech - and I didn't say anything, just had her watch it - she's voting against Obama.

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. 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.

Obama’s infrastructure argument is easily refuted by what is essentially a controlled social experiment. Roads and schools are the constant. What’s variable is the energy, enterprise, risk-taking, hard work and genius of the individual. It is therefore precisely those individual characteristics, not the communal utilities, that account for the different outcomes.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html

Obama’s infrastructure argument is easily refuted by what is essentially a controlled social experiment. Roads and schools are the constant. What’s variable is the energy, enterprise, risk-taking, hard work and genius of the individual. It is therefore precisely those individual characteristics, not the communal utilities, that account for the different outcomes.

Grandpa's Spells wrote:

Obama’s infrastructure argument is easily refuted by what is essentially a controlled social experiment. Roads and schools are the constant. What’s variable is the energy, enterprise, risk-taking, hard work and genius of the individual. It is therefore precisely those individual characteristics, not the communal utilities, that account for the different outcomes.

Infrastructure is not constant. Try starting Amazon or Facebook in any non-Westernized country. Start a newspaper in Pyongyang or delivering pizzas in Damascus or Mogadishu.

johno wrote: In the US, people generally succeed by working smart & working hard.

johno wrote:

Grandpa's Spells wrote:

Obama’s infrastructure argument is easily refuted by what is essentially a controlled social experiment. Roads and schools are the constant. What’s variable is the energy, enterprise, risk-taking, hard work and genius of the individual. It is therefore precisely those individual characteristics, not the communal utilities, that account for the different outcomes.

Infrastructure is not constant. Try starting Amazon or Facebook in any non-Westernized country. Start a newspaper in Pyongyang or delivering pizzas in Damascus or Mogadishu.

You dodged the issue. Obama was talking about the US. So were we.

In the US, people generally succeed by working smart & working hard.

BobW wrote:After {watching a carefully edited snippet of} that single speech {on Fox News} - and I didn't say anything, just had her watch it - she's voting against Obama.

johno wrote:Oh, I think he does. Or panders to those who do.
Why else his (Elizabeth Warren's) comments?

Did Romney say we don't need the police, the courts, or the roads?

Grandpa's Spells wrote:it gave a very desperate Romney a chance to move the news cycle off his taxes and Bain