I am at a loss as how to explain, to any degree, the Republican talking point that government has no role, or assistance, in making sure businesses are created, and that they prosper.
Over and over for much of the summer the Republicans have claimed that individual entrepreneurs achieved, all on their own, the various businesses that dot the landscape.
The problem with that line of thinking is that it is clearly wrong.
No one in this nation makes it all on their own. From the education we get in public schools, to the doctors we visit who were able to attend college with the aid of student loans, or the roads we travel side by side with the trucks that transport items of commerce–it is all connected.
No one makes it all on their own in this nation. No one can claim “I built this all on my own’. That is just laughable.
If I wanted to get real precise I could argue that the small business person who spills shredded paper in the office, and wants to pick it up may reach for a hand-held vacuum cleaner. Fact is, that product was made from tax dollars invested into NASA for the space program.
On every level, often in ways we never stop to recognize, government spending has a positive connection to our lives. A direct and positive influence on businesses.
Which makes the partisan display of outrage over the notion that government does not in fact assist in business creation all the more maddening.
Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan has been making much over this flawed notion that business people make it on their own. In speech after speech he continues talking the party line on this matter.
In his particular case that argument is really not true at all. Over and over there have been governmental contracts to his family business which has allowed Paul Ryan to attain a net worth of up to $3.2 million, making him the 124th richest member of Congress.
Over the years Ryan’s family business has personally benefited from the very thing that he now rails against.
According to the Ryan Inc. Web site, the company completed “some of the original work at what would become O’Hare Airport” in Chicago. Originally, O’Hare Airport was a manufacturing base for World War II transport planes. In other words, it’s likely that construction project, too, was paid for by tax dollars. A current search of Defense Department contracts suggests that “Ryan Incorporated Central” has had at least 22 defense contracts with the federal government since 1996 , including one from 1996 worth $5.6 million .
There is nothing wrong with admitting that government works, and is needed. It looks down-right partisan to make a claim in the other direction just on a talking point basis. But it looks just plain silly to do it when making piles of money off of government contracts.
Paul Ryan needs to change speech writers.
CAFFEINATED POLITICS 
Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone has a good take on the Romney/Ryan hypocrisy… read it here: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-20120829
Not to mention that Ryan went to an ou-of-state university using Social Security benefits.