VIRGINIA — The Republican National Convention may be happening in Tampa, but the theme for the gathering’s opening Tuesday night—“We Built It”—was Virginia-made, and one of the speakers espousing that line was the commonwealth’s governor, Bob McDonnell.
Unfortunately, the way that misleading theme and McDonnell’s speech were covered by Virginia newsrooms fell mostly flat. Let’s do some deconstruction.
“We Built It” has its origins in a now-infamous July 13 campaign stop in Roanoke by President Obama, in which the president in three rambling paragraphs made the point that successful businesses depend on support from other sources, including public investment. Here’s the key part of the relevant passage, which has by now been reported many times across the nation:
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.
That’s part of an argument about the sources of success and the responsibilities people owe that represents a real and meaningful disagreement between the political parties. But anyone who has turned on a television in Virginia and other swing states in the last month has heard anti-Obama ads featuring a truncated and misleading portion of his remarks—“If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that”—used as part of an argument to portray the president as anti-business and anti-entrepreneurship. That same line of attack was invoked by McDonnell in his primetime address to conventioneers Tuesday night. Here’s how the speech was reported in the lede of Olympia Meola’s story in Wednesday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch:
Gov. Bob McDonnell stepped to the national stage Tuesday night to tout the economic successes of Republican governors and to make the case for Mitt Romney, who he said would lead a change to an “opportunity society.”
“We need a president who will say to a small businesswoman: ‘Congratulations, we applaud your success, you did make that happen, you did build that!’ ” said McDonnell, who was followed onstage by a business owner from Fairfax County.
“Small businesses don’t come out of Washington, D.C., pre-made on flatbed trucks,” McDonnell said. “That coffee shop in Henrico County, that florist in Virginia Beach, that bakery in Radford Virginia, they were all built by entrepreneurial Americans with big dreams—not a big-spending government with a wide-open wallet full of other people’s money.”
Campaign rhetoric in this vein has been debunked many times over the past six weeks, with journalistic fact-checkers practically playing a game of whack-a-mole. But politicians’ persistence in repeating the attack in the face of those factchecks leaves journalists with some questions: Do you allow a candidate or surrogates to repeat a false claim up high, then place it in context further down in a story? Do you focus on some different element altogether? Do you push back more aggressively? How much pushback can you give on deadline, anyway?
The Times-Dispatch article opted for the “more context, further down” route. The opening was followed by three paragraphs of speculation on McDonnell’s political future and a bit on the “personal references” he wove into the address, before some attempt was made in the seventh paragraph to challenge the “build it” comments:
It’s a play off the “you didn’t build that” remark President Barack Obama made July 13 during a campaign appearance in Roanoke.
Republicans have hammered Obama over the comment, but Democrats accuse Republicans of taking the president’s remark in Roanoke out of context. They say Obama was noting that government helps create the climate in which successful businesses thrive.
The comment came in this passage of Obama’s speech: “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.”
As Romney correctly stated, the context is worse than the quote.
Obama shows a plain disdain for entrepreneurship and a clear love of Gubmint. Or as Romney rightly puts it, a "foreign" vision that does not comport with the American experience.
Business doesn't owe its existence to Gubmint. It's the other way around.
The welfare mooch who lives in a Section 8 house, rides a subsidized bus over paved roads and bridges to the grocery store to buy Snickers bars with food stamps for her illegitimate kids (when they're not sucking down free lunches in public schools)... Owes her livelihood to "rich" guys like Romney who pay the majority of taxes in this country. She (and half of all Americans) sure as Hell aren't paying anything substantial into the system.
Businesses DID build that infrastructure - both directly in the form of the contractors who actually do work (you won't see Gubmint employees running any asphalt machines) and indirectly in the form of the revenue they raise to pay for it all.
I know it drives you Obama cheerleaders nuts, but if anything Romney is being too reserved on this issue.
We have a Food Stamp President. That's just how it is.
#1 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Thu 30 Aug 2012 at 03:44 PM
padikiller,
That's satire, right?
I mean, nobody really believes what you're saying right? You're mocking misinformed people on the Right, right?
She (and half of all Americans) sure as Hell aren't paying anything substantial into the system.
Umm, all people making less than $116,000, have all of their income subject to social security taxes in addition to sales taxes. Whereas, only about 1/2 of 1% of Romney's income is subject to social security taxes.
#2 Posted by NattyB, CJR on Thu 30 Aug 2012 at 03:53 PM
Tharon Giddens: You didnt write this.
#3 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Thu 30 Aug 2012 at 04:07 PM
CJR - You didn't produce this article. It was produced by the technological infrastructure that carried it. Einstein didn't come up with the theory of relativity, either - the Swiss postal service delivered his paper to the journal that published it, so these entities deserve part of the credit in the history of science.
Government 'invented' the Internet in theory, but come on, the Internet was nothing until Andreeson and others, entrepreneurs, invented user-friendly web browsers.
While I'm at it, President Obama is simply wrong to a significant historical degree. Original roads in this country, a lot of them toll roads, were privately built, then taken over by government authorities when they started losing money and were declared some equivalent of 'too big to fail'. Railroads, same story. Most of the latter were helped by government grants of eminent domain, but this was not necessary - James J. Hill built his transcontinental railroad entirely from private resources.
Straphangers in New Yawk may be surprised to learn that the first subway lines were built privately. Companies issued bonds for their financing, and everything. The fact is, if a company wants a road or a bridge, they are less likely now as then to wait around for the municipality or state to build it. What happens in the real world is that private companies build the infrastructure and the state or local government takes over its maintenance.
#4 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Thu 30 Aug 2012 at 04:57 PM
Seriously? It's true, CRJ couldn't exist in its current form without the Internet, which was funded by the US government. So yes, in part, we can thank the government for the ability to snark on the Internet about how useless government is.
As to those contractors, WE the tax payers paid for those contractors. Including the folks presenting before the RNC, who claimed they built it themselves. They relied on SBA loans, on government contracts, and on other things paid for by you and me, the average tax payer. We should get credit for creating a country where someone can start a business. And by "we" I mean "we the people, who formed a government."
#5 Posted by Thalia, CJR on Thu 30 Aug 2012 at 08:00 PM
Where once we might have said "Modernized variants: If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." today we slay giants and see nothing.
The modern conservative movement is populated by giant killers, and we let them have way then the dust will be our diet.
#6 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 30 Aug 2012 at 08:53 PM
Brevity suits you, Thimbles. Good one.
#7 Posted by Edward Ericson Jr., CJR on Fri 31 Aug 2012 at 08:17 AM
Yay! (unfortunately I was being paged so I had to rush it. Could have done without the 'Modernized Version' I accidentally snipped.)
Danke.
#8 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 31 Aug 2012 at 09:47 AM
Nattyb wrote : "Umm, all people making less than $116,000, have all of their income subject to social security taxes in addition to sales taxes. Whereas, only about 1/2 of 1% of Romney's income is subject to social security taxes."
padikiller responds: Three things:
1. Welfare mooches don't pay taxes that go to fund infrastructure and they don't pay taxes to fund retirement or disability. The "rich" pay taxes - almost all of them. Indeed, half of all Americans have no federal income tax liability at all.
2. Social security taxes DO NOT pay for infrastructure (according to leftists, at least). They go purchase trust fund securities which are sold later to pay retirement and disability benefits.
3. If Social Security retirement benefits are limited (as they are to $2500 per month) then OF COURSE premiums are limited! A person making $110,000 per year sees more than $1100 a month of his or her salary go into OASDI (that's nearly HALF the maximum retirement benefit).
The "rich" are getting screwed over in this "insurance" scheme. They pay for the retirement benefits paid to the "poor".
#9 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Fri 31 Aug 2012 at 09:51 AM
Thalia wrote: As to those contractors, WE the tax payers paid for those contractors.
padikiller responds: If by "we" you mean "primarily the rich", then you're right.
If by "we" you mean "everybody", you're wrong.
Half of Americans pay no federal income tax at all.
But you're making my point, nonetheless... Government owes it existence to the taxpayers and the businesses that employ them... Not the other way around.
THIS is the fundamental distinction between Obama's "foreign view" and the American Dream.
In Obama's plainly stated view.. If you start up a business and make it work.. You're nothing special. You owe your success in substantial part to the Gubmint.
This view is idiotic, as anyone who has actually signed a paycheck can tell you.
Businesses succeed DESPITE Gubmint, not because of it.
The lefties can spin and bitch all they want, but they aren't going to convince the American people to believe Obama's collectivist nonsense.
#10 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Fri 31 Aug 2012 at 06:52 PM
It's fun to note that when Padi is talking about welfare and moochers, he's not taking about the welfare for the rich like TARP and the free money from the federal reserve and oil subsidies and the like which the government offers to people for... You know... Capitalism.
Which is well in excess of what the government does for the poor.
The truth is taxes are very low:
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/are-taxes-in-the-u-s-high-or-low/
And the tax system has become less progressive over time:
http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-front/posts/2012/04/13-tax-greenstone-looney
"This decline in tax rates for the wealthy has coincided with an increase in income inequality, where most of the wage gains have been concentrated among a relatively small portion of the American people. For example, since 1979, earnings for households in the top 1 percent of the income distribution have risen by over 250 percent. At the same time, many households at the middle and bottom of the income distribution have experienced stagnating incomes or even declines in earnings. This means that the very people who have received the biggest income gains in the past three decades have also seen the largest tax cuts.
In addition to being less progressive relative to other countries, the U.S. tax system has also become less progressive over time. Over the last fifty years, tax rates for the wealthiest Americans have declined by 40 percent, while tax rates for average Americans have remained roughly constant. This is illustrated in the figure below.
This decline in tax rates for the wealthy has coincided with an increase in income inequality, where most of the wage gains have been concentrated among a relatively small portion of the American people. For example, since 1979, earnings for households in the top 1 percent of the income distribution have risen by over 250 percent. At the same time, many households at the middle and bottom of the income distribution have experienced stagnating incomes or even declines in earnings (figure below, blue bars). This means that the very people who have received the biggest income gains in the past three decades have also seen the largest tax cuts (figure below, red bars).
These estimates may come as a surprise to observers focused on the share of federal taxes paid by high-income individuals, rather than the tax rates that those individuals face. Without a doubt, the share of taxes paid by high-income individuals has increased. But the reason why the share of taxes paid by the top 10 percent has increased is because their share of income has increased.
In 1979, the top 1 percent of Americans earned 9.3 percent of all income in the United States and paid 15.4 percent of all federal taxes. While the share of income earned by the top 1 percent had more than doubled by 2007—to 19.4 percent—the share of federal tax liability paid by that group only increased by about 80 percent, to 28.1 percent. The share of taxes increased less for this group because high-income tax rates fell by more than the tax rates for everyone else—reductions that made the system less progressive."
So supply side economics - by forcing income upwards and driving wages downwards - not only made the wealth of the nation accumulate at the top (thus making the 1%'s tax share increase) but it also made deficits a unavoidable reality since tax rates did not increase with income share and that disproportionate contribution of the 1% (due to wage depressing policy) made the government ever more influenced by the concerns of the rich.
#11 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sun 2 Sep 2012 at 12:40 PM
Thimbles wrote: In 1979, the top 1 percent of Americans earned 9.3 percent of all income in the United States and paid 15.4 percent of all federal taxes. While the share of income earned by the top 1 percent had more than doubled by 2007—to 19.4 percent—the share of federal tax liability paid by that group only increased by about 80 percent, to 28.1 percent.
padikiller responds: And in 1979, federal spending was about 20% of GDP instead of 26% of GDP like it is now.
I would GLADLY swap you 1979 tax rates to get 1979 spending....
#12 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Sun 2 Sep 2012 at 01:00 PM
Spending on who and why? A good deal of that spending is on military due to two wars you guys started and to support the global financial system and the American economy which you guys allowed to collapse.
Hell, I'd love 1979 spending if wages had kept to 1979 levels and the economic stability of the global financial system had been maintained by 1979 levels of regulation and enforcement.
You don't get to be in charge for the last four decades, Padi and then yell about the mess someone made. A personally responsible person might try and help clean it up.
#13 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sun 2 Sep 2012 at 01:19 PM
As I have demonstrated her fifty bazillion times using census data...
The current "income inequality" we see is a direct result of "work inequality" brought about by leftist policies of paying people not to work.
Indeed, for every hour worked by an adult in the bottom 20% of American households (by income) an adult in the top 20% works nearly 12 hours!
More work=more money?! Whodathunkit?!
I'll leave it as a homework exercise to mine through the 1980 census data and see how those numbers were then.
Here are some pretty straightforward ways to "clean up the mess" right now:
1. Balanced budget amendment.
2. Mandatory drug, nicotine and alcohol testing for anyone getting welfare or disability benefits. Taxes should not be going to buy beer, cigarettes or cocaine.
3. Work instead of welfare - i.e. you want food stamps? Do community service to get them. Or go hungry. Your choice.
4. Eliminate corporate income tax (the highest in the world) and tax dividends instead.
5. Eliminate ALL corporate welfare except subsidies necessary for defense and order (strategic reserves).
6. Get the Gubmint out of the business world and let people do business. Prosecute fraud and theft, but don't foster and reward failure and stupidity. Regulate ONLY to the extent necessary to protect non-parties and to keep markets free and competitive.
7. Eliminate ALL tax credits. PERIOD. For the "rich" and for the "poor" alike, Institute a flat tax, a "fair tax", whatever.. But make sure that EVERYBODY pays something into the treasury. Keep it progressive, but fix the current situation where HALF of all Americans pay NO federal income tax at all.
8. Use the Social Security "trust funds" to underwrite mortgages with the following caveat - if you default on a loan backed by SS funds, your benefits are reduced to cover the loss. Giving SS market rates on mortgages instead of 1% returns from Congress would fix the system.
See how easy???
You know what WON'T "clean up the mess?"
1. Paying people not to work.
2. Spending more money than we take in.
3. Printing money.
4. Borrowing money.
5. Letting government bureaucrats control the economy.
6. Paying people to make babies.
7. Paying people to buy drugs, cigarettes or booze.
#14 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Sun 2 Sep 2012 at 02:21 PM
"The current "income inequality" we see is a direct result of "work inequality" brought about by leftist policies of paying people not to work.
Indeed, for every hour worked by an adult in the bottom 20% of American households (by income) an adult in the top 20% works nearly 12 hours!"
Incorrect, as I pointed out before:
http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/audit_notes_decline_of_labor_e.php#comment-61694
"How many of those are old, sick, disabled, or caring for relatives who are such? How many are single parents caring for multiple children under circumstances you wouldn't understand because you never bothered to try? How many people are just unemployed or under employed due to macro-economic circumstance not in their control?..
Don't overattribute your fortune to skill when luck is likely as much responsible. Overattribution makes you unempathetic, unkind, more accepting of castes, and less accepting of sacrifice."
You want to push this Charles Murray "It's not an economic problem, it's a cultural problem" meme. It used to be callous and racist. Now that he's claiming the whites got the bug too, it's just callous and dumb.
Which brings us to a comment from the thread where you orignally pushed this "income inequality doesn't exist. You people are lazy" bs. On the topic of We built it:
http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/aeis_myth_of_equality.php#comment-53155
"Did your money pay for the roads you drive? Did it pay for your air to be clean, your water to be drinkable, your food to be checked? Did you foot the whole bill for your elementary to high school graduate education? These are things from which the whole benefits and therefore the whole supports by law. I am entitled to the basic necessities of life, as are you, as is my child, as is your wife.
We are entitled to benefit from the policies of the governments we elect. If, as a society, we decide to create a solution to a problem the society cannot tolerate, then yes we are entitled to the resources to implement that solution which will come from the society's labor. If you feel the society's rules are an unjust imposition, then go live on an island where you'll suffer none of society's burdens, and get none of its benefits either. Otherwise pay your society dues and quit being a whining free loader, like Ayn Rand or Hayek."
#15 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 3 Sep 2012 at 01:41 PM
JFK, circa 1961 : Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.
Thimbles, circa 2012: We are entitled to benefit from the policies of the governments we elect.
padikiller responds: And it is this entitlement mentality that is strangling us.
The sooner we get rid of it, the better.
#16 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Mon 3 Sep 2012 at 02:03 PM
Meanwhile, let's talk about labor and the value of work:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/we-have-to-take-it-over-by-davidoatkins.html
"Digby linked yesterday to Dan Froomkin's article on Jeff Faux's incredibly important book about the new servant economy. The key bit is here:
Jeff Faux, a progressive economist who founded the Economic Policy Institute in 1986, is the author of the new book, The Servant Economy: Where America's Elite Is Sending the Middle Class. "The mantra, as you know, in today's political debate is jobs, jobs, jobs," he told an audience at EPI recently. "Listen carefully because the subtext is low wages, low wages, low wages.""
The problem with American politics is that we are focused on reducing the value of work in the anticipation that it will reduce the price of goods and thus inflation (the only real worry in the economics world) will be held down by throttling the worker.
What actually happens is that prices don't go down enough on the necessities to compensate for the losses in wages and benefits, consumers rely increasingly on credit and dual incomes to make ends meet, and the profits of enterprise from the debt supported economy go to executives and shareholders until the whole thing collapses and the rich get a blank f'in check, to which they cash and then complain about these terrible deficits which necessitate further kicks to the stomach of the working poor.
Both parties are stuck on these ideas, one WAY more than the other. These ideas need to be named and fought if we are to win any future social progress.
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2012/06/structrual-issues-behind-labors-decline
"Martin just sort of presents labor’s decline as a reality in the present. But there’s a history behind falling union numbers and it has nothing to do with corruption and very little to do with union complacency, even if both of those things might have been problems in the past. What we see today is the culmination of a half-century war on American unions that corporations concocted in the years after World War II to repeal the gains labor made during the 1930s and 1940s. It was a slow, steady, stealthy plan that has proven almost impossible to stop. It was largely bipartisan, couched in terms of trade that centrist and conservative Democrats like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama love.
This war is called Globalization."
In a free trade world, where the cost of transportation is negligible and regulation is largely absent, manufacturing gravitates to the lowest common denominator countries and goods gravitate to the highest volume and yield markets.
Walmart makes in China and sells in your home town, bankrupting any store that doesn't adopt competitive practices.
This is your trade deficit, America. This is the source of your income inequality. America is on the course to a servant class because of the idea that a healthy middle class causes wage/price inflation. If people own stuff, they don't need to earn it, therefore we should boost the price of stock, assets, investments, wall street.
While both parties remain committed to these ideas, the political system will remain broken to the population it's supposed to serve.
#17 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 3 Sep 2012 at 02:05 PM
Walmart makes in China and sells in your home town, bankrupting any store that doesn't adopt competitive practices.
This is your trade deficit, America.
AGREED
This is the source of your income inequality.
NOT AGREED.
How does lowering prices at Walmart hurt lower income people, directly?
I would argue that lower prices are a symptom of our disease, not a cause of it.
Lower prices enable Gubmint welfare mooches to buy more Chinese stuff. You drop welfare, put people to work (instead of paying them not to work) and you will see American companies becoming competitive again. More people working.. Standards of living increasing... Wages increasing...
In short, a healthy economy.
50 years ago, the terms "taxpayers" and "voters" were interchangeable. They were synonymous.
Not so anymore. HALF of this country pays NO income tax at all. No healthy democracy can exist under such disparity.
Time to cut the umbilical cord and to stop paying able-bodied people to not work.
It would fix just about all that's wrong in our economy.,
#18 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Mon 3 Sep 2012 at 02:27 PM
And it's not just fringe lefty blogs saying it anymore.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/29/changing-views-of-globalizations-impact/
"For decades, economists resisted the conclusion that trade – for all of its many benefits — has also played a significant role in job loss and the stagnation of middle-class incomes in the United States...
But now economists are beginning to change their minds. Responding to The Times’s recent survey about the causes of income stagnation, many top economists have cited globalization as a leading cause.
While the evidence is still not conclusive, it is pretty strong. Trade’s effect on jobs and income, which was probably modest through the 1990’s, now seems to be growing much larger...
The real-world evidence makes it surprising that it has taken economists so long to catch on. The recent strike in Joliet, Ill., at Caterpillar – a true global company — ended with union workers being forced to accept an agreement that includes a six-year wage freeze, even as the company is earning record profits. Elsewhere, two-tier agreements, in which new hires earn wages and benefits roughly half as large as those in the old union contracts, have become standard in many of the manufacturing industries that remain in the United States."
On the topic of the Joliet strike, I hate being right near all the f'in time. It'd be fun to be an optimist in a dream world of cowboys and liberals. Speaking of which, why did it take economists so long to realize the fairly obvious ramifications on labor price when you increase access to the global labor supply and do nothing but make easy credit to boost global product demand?
"One reason that economists may be uncomfortable talking about trade’s impact on jobs and wages may be concern that it could set off protectionist responses."
Oh yeah, protectionism - the other big worry that economists scare the children with. This is intellectual capture, folks. It's going to take time and effort to pry it away.
#19 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 3 Sep 2012 at 02:41 PM
Silliness: The recent strike in Joliet, Ill., at Caterpillar – a true global company — ended with union workers being forced to accept an agreement that includes a six-year wage freeze,
padikiller notes: Yeah.. I bet they had to beat those machinists over the head to make them keep those $26 an hour union jobs in the midst of the "Obama Recovery"...
#20 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Mon 3 Sep 2012 at 05:55 PM
LiberalSpeak 101:
"being forced to accept" means "voluntarily agreed after a democratic process through voting against the wishes of their union leaders to accept".
That's "forced" in Liberal La La Land...
#21 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Mon 3 Sep 2012 at 06:04 PM
It's a good thing that, by coincidence, we got into a discussion about wages and labor power on May Day.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/09/03/happy-labor-day-immokalee-workers/
It's a pity there was no one to mention or feature it on CJR.
Oh well. Happy belated May Day.
#22 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 4 Sep 2012 at 07:08 PM