Mitt Romney: What I learned at Bain Capital.

Via the Wall Street Journal:

My business experience confirmed my belief in empowering people. For example, at Bain Capital we bought Accuride, a company that made truck rims and wheels, because we saw untapped potential there. We instituted performance bonuses for the management team, which had a dramatic impact. The managers made the plants more productive, and the company started growing, adding 300 jobs while Bain was involved. My faith in people, not government, is at the foundation of my plan to strengthen America's middle class.

The Bad History Behind "You Didn't Build That"

Virginia Postrel:  "The president’s sermon struck a nerve in part because it marked a sharp departure from the traditional Democratic criticism of financiers and big corporations, instead hectoring the people who own dry cleaners and nail salons, car repair shops and restaurants -- Main Street, not Wall Street. (Obama did work in a swipe at Internet businesses.) The president didn’t simply argue for higher taxes as a measure of fiscal responsibility or egalitarian fairness. He went after bourgeois dignity."

Equality

Don Watkins:

Obama wants to wipe out the enormous difference between people like my grandfather, who succeed because they choose to think, create, work, and build—and those who don’t. In the president’s account, what makes us successful isn’t our intelligence, it isn’t our ambition, it isn’t in the end even the infrastructure: We all drive on the roads and go to school; we don’t all create a successful restaurant let alone a Fortune 500 company.

No, the real root of success is dumb luck. Some happen to get a lot from society, others happen to get a little. To borrow my colleague Harry Binswanger’s apt summary of Obama’s argument, “The only reason Joe Sixpack didn’t find the Higgs boson is that he didn’t happen to be provided with a large hadron collider.”

Hat tip to Instapundit.

Context

After days of trying to defend his "you didn't build that" remark, Obama is now reduced to claiming that Mitt Romney "took it out of context."

As Romney noted yesterday, however, the context only makes the quote worse:

Plus, Michael Ramirez' take:

Let America Be America Again

Barack Obama's Democratic Party is not John Kennedy's Democratic Party.  It's not even Bill Clinton's Democratic Party.

Mitt Romney's Moment

Salena Zito: 

Mitt Romney was fired-up.

“The president actually said, if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that, somebody else made that happen.” He paused and threw his hands up before adding: “Really?”

Sitting in a small office attached to a local shale industry company for an interview with the Trib, Romney remained agitated and energized.

The agitation was personal because he is genuinely appalled by President Obama’s attitude toward business.

“I could not believe he said that. And it wasn’t just a twist of phrase, he actually goes on to explain what he meant by that,” Romney said, suddenly stretching forward as if finding it difficult to contain his feelings.

The energy came from what arguably was the presumptive Republican nominee’s best rally so far. More than 1,400 people packed a 4,000-square-foot warehouse – but it wasn’t the numbers, it was the event’s organic nature.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

Bill Whittle: It's a Miracle

These Hands

The Mask Has Come Off

I have been swamped by work/life the last few days, which means I have not had an opportunity to address Obama's revealing "If you've got a business, you didn't build that," speech.  I still don't have the time deserved to address it, but, fortunately, Romney knocked it out of the park in a speech yesterday.

Plus, Legal Insurrection has gotten straight to the heart of the matter: Obama views the state as master, not as servant.

Forget Bain

Obama's public-equity record is the real scandal.

Despite a growing backlash from his fellow Democrats, President Obama has doubled down on his attacks on Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital. But the strategy could backfire in ways Obama did not anticipate. After all, if Romney’s record in private equity is fair game, then so is Obama’s record in public equity — and that record is not pretty.

Since taking office, Obama has invested billions of taxpayer dollars in private businesses, including as part of his stimulus spending bill. Many of those investments have turned out to be unmitigated disasters — leaving in their wake bankruptcies, layoffs, criminal investigations and taxpayers on the hook for billions. 

Click the link for a list representing just some of these Obama public-equity failures.  Then there is this:

. . . fully 71 percent of the Obama Energy Department’s grants and loans went to “individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party.” Collectively, these Obama cronies raised $457,834 for his campaign, and they were in turn approved for grants or loans of nearly $11.35 billion. Obama said this week it’s not the president’s job “to make a lot of money for investors.” Well, he sure seems to have made a lot of (taxpayer) money for investors in his political machine.  

Hat tip to Instapundit. 

Another Democrat Criticizes Obama's Attacks on Bain Capital

On Morning Joe, Former Congressman Harold Ford Jr. defended Cory Booker's criticism of the Obama attacks on private equity  explaining:

I agree with [Booker], private equity’s not a bad thing. As a matter of fact, private equity is a good thing in many, many instances,” Ford told the Morning Joe panel.

Obama Surrogate Describes Anti-Romney Ad As "Nauseating"

Newark Mayor Cory Booker on Meet the Press:

"I have to just say from a very personal level, I'm not about to sit here and indict private equity," Booker said, referring to the Obama ad which spotlighted the story of a Kansas City steel company that went bankrupt after Bain Capital's involvement.

"If you look at the totality of Bain Capital's record, they've done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses," he added. "And this, to me, I'm very uncomfortable with."

Booker tied the choices he faced as mayor to those faced by companies Bain dealt with.

"This is not about what happened at Bain Capital. Heck, I've reduced the employees in my city 25 percent because it's the only way my government would survive. Call me a job-cutter, if you want," he said.

Then there is also the fact that Romney had already left Bain by the time of the events involving that steel company.

Happy Birthday, F.A. Hayek!

From Reason.com.  In honor of his birthday, I invite readers to read (or reread) The Great Utopia from his book, The Road to Serfdom, a work that remains remarkably applicable today, though written more than 70 years ago.

Milton Friedman - On Capitalism And the Escape From Poverty