In a local newspaper I was reading the article In Roxbury, Romney hits Obama’s business message.
In the first 3 column inches of the printed story we read,
Mitt Romney on a visit to a Roxbury truck company Thursday slammed President Obama for suggesting profitable businesses owe their success to government.
Flanked by denim-clad workers in a garage bay at Middlesex Truck & Coach, Romney praised company owner Brian Maloney and his family, asserting “they did build this business.”
Romney’s brief address was a direct assault on a remark Obama made during a campaign event in Virginia last Friday. “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that,” the president said. “Somebody else made that happen.”
20½ column inches later in the story, we read the following:
In Virginia, Obama’s blunt “you didn’t build that” was accompanied by, “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.”
As in all reputable newspapers, lies come first, truth comes later.
The story also points out about the founder of the business where Romney spoke:
In fact, the city and federal governments appear to have played at least some role in Middlesex Truck & Coach’s early growth.
Maloney founded his company as an auto body shop in Cambridge in 1966, while pursuing an MBA at Boston College. In the late 1970s, according to a 1986 Globe profile of the business, “he approached Boston city officials because a preferential bank loan was possible if his firm relocated to the Crosstown Industrial Park,” where Middlesex Truck & Coach remains to this day.
In its first year at the new location, Maloney’s company accepted a $560,000 federal government contract to overhaul 10 buses. Within a half-decade of the move, Maloney reported, his company had quintupled its annual revenue.
If it weren’t for the fact that I know Romney is just spouting political rhetoric, I would think that Romney suffered from terminal stupidity in pretending not to understand the meaning of what President Obama was saying.
In context, Democrats argue, Obama and Warren were simply noting that successful Americans have benefited from public investments — the roads that make delivery of goods possible, the schools that educate workers, the police and fire services that keep plants safe.
If Romney really doesn’t understand the role that government plays, then he should not take a position in government, should he?