State Sen. Alberta Darling didn’t hold back Wednesday afternoon as she criticized President Barack Obama for his controversial comments that “offended” business owners.
“Your comments are a real kick in the gut” to hardworking business owners and the middle class, said the GOP lawmaker for River Hills said during a rally at the GOP's Waukesha County’s headquarters.
Two weeks ago, at a campaign event in Virginia, Obama said: “If you've got a business — you didn't build that. Someone else made that happen.” Republicans are jumping on those comments in their fight to elect Mitt Romney. Romney’s campaign has been on the attack with ads that use Obama’s statements against him.
“That statements shows that our president does not know how the economy works,” Darling said. “He does not know how small business works. He does not know about the sweat equity and effort and the trials that small business people go through day in and day out.”
The rally was one of two dozen events sponsored by the Romney campaign Wednesday in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Virginia, Ohio, Iowa, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Nevada. At each rally, small business owners respond to Obama’s statement.
Several area business owners spoke at the Waukesha rally about the hardships they faced when starting their own business in Wisconsin.
Erin Decker, owner of Double Decker Automotive in Kenosha, said her family didn’t receive government assistance when she and her husband decided in 2006 to open their own business. Decker was pregnant with their second child at the time, already a mother to a 3-year-old. Still, their family took the risk, she said.
“We decided to do it because we wanted to live the American Dream,” Decker said.
That dream required hard work and devotion every day working long hours to make their business successful, she said.
Ken Dragotta, the owner of Systems Engineering in Milwaukee, said he learned the value of hard work as the son of a Sicilian immigrant. He also took Obama to task for his comments.
“Mr. President, government is to facilitate, not impede business,” Dragotta said. “Government isn’t the answer to our success; it is the obstacle to success.”
Dragotta said he would expect the president to be “reasonably correct” in his comments about business owners.
“After all, the American people look to you for direction, not misdirection,” Dragotta said.
Democrats have accused the Romney campaign of taking Obama’s statements out of context as Obama was promoting the value of infrastructure in the country. The full quote was this:
"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 been fighting back against Romney’s ads. He’s released a new ad where he describes Romney as being “flat out wrong,” according to the Associated Press.
(Ex.)when so many folks that are making $40-50k and buying quarter million dollar homes, there's gonnan be a problem. Chris Dodd and Barney Frank ignored this looming crisis until it was too late.
Wow! This jerk doesn't think Olympic athletes earned their own success! What a freaking socialist, America-hating, jerk!
So why did he make it into a 6 trillion deficit with 16 trillion in debt? You can tax all you want we are now over 100% of GDP there isn't enough money to pay it all off. We showed how it's done here in WI, cut SPENDING.... it's not that hard to realize.
If that was indeed what Obama was referring to, it was a very poorly structured sentence. Grammatically speaking, using the pronoun "that" (as in "you didn't build that.") refers to the last noun used, in this case, a small business.
Taking 1 trillion out of the private economy is about as dumb as you can get and totally slows down all growth. Not only does the private sector have to recover that 1 trillion, they have to double it just to get back to it's net loss not to mention the loss of not being able to use it for 3+ years. Then add in all the interest. But all I need is a road in front of my business to succeed, and an art teacher to come balance my books in the summer.
Bertrude, if we all use Obamabucks to pay our taxes- how long will that last?
I know that Mom and Dad made huge sacrafices. Mom stayed here and worked two jobs. Dad moved to another State with an Olympic training facility, found work there and rented an appartment for himself and his athlete child. Don't compare apples to oranges, it makes you seem even fruitier than you are.
How Alberta Darling can appeal to any constituency whatsoever is also baffling. Anger and hostility just seem to seethe from her. The country already has a higher percentage of the population in prison than Stalin did, yet her ever focus seems to be on punishing to the extent that she has done little or nothing to make anybody's life here better by encouraging competition or enabling job creation. She is basically a tool of the megacorporations such as GE, which "creates" jobs by buying other companies to cannibalize their inventions and then lays off the people who invented them. Thanks to companies like that competition in the medical equipment (and other) fields is virtually non-existent. There are only two companies left in the world who make many of the most important medical devices. She is also a BIG supporter of the H-1B guest worker visa program that replaces US citizens with cheap foreign labor right here in our own country. But she would have us believe that us Americans aren't skilled enough to work in their own country and need to be replaced with cheap 3rd world labor that has yet to even make their own countries worth inhabiting.
And remember "The private sector is doing fine".
Yea, we got too many in prison- so let's let them all out! I find it rather odd you have a screen name as Johnny Paycheck, do you actually earn a paycheck? I'm thinking you are sucking the Government teet.
No, I'm not on welfare Craig. I own 2 very small businesses and I will most likely never have more than 50 employees in either of them so anything that Obama has done (which is basically only Obamacare) matters little to me. And why is it that you want to let everyone out of prison? My point was that we are already locking up people who break our laws. Anyone that gets caught is tried and sentenced and has to do their time, and the justice system is working just fine, so I would rather my representatives work on something more productive than becoming overly focused on the never-ending "get tough on crime" campaign which has been going on for 20 years or more. Whatever penalties there are or ever will be won't be enough for Alberta Darling anyway.
So in your business at the company meetings do you get up on the podium and tell your employees how every success is due to you and you alone? I can imagine what morale must be like in your company...
What difference does it make regarding Willy? Too many point the finger at W for the economy, forgetting that deal Willy Wonka struck with China. It makes a lot of difference to me, I wanna know who screwed me, my family, my fellow Americans. We learn from our mistakes. When Obama was elected, I elected to use soap on a rope. After 3 1/2 years, Kenya still hasn't chistled out his Birth Certificate on a rock. Our debt is over 100% of our GDP. I am not in favor of learning a new language, but Chinease may be in our future.
I personally would take a pass on moving to China-- you will live fine while you're there, but due to currency manipulation what you can earn there won't be enough to get you back home if you don't like it. The most appealing thing about living in China is that feminism hasn't taken root there yet so it's a society where the women still respect and honor the men, but I digress... The whole situation seems so hopeless at times, that I have caught myself wishing for a righteous dictator once or twice... But that may the intentions of the plutocracy... To make people wish for that, and then give us something else that caters to their own needs even more so that the system we have now.
Sure it could have been better, if only the economic traitors for the GOP would have not been wrapped around his legs.
His policies are NOT working. He was a mistake and the American people are waking up to that fact. He will be soundly defeated in November. The Summer Recovery was supposed to be last year.....and we're still waiting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwWW2DQS_DU&feature=player_embedded
Average unemployment under Bush was 5.3%
Walker has been hiding out of state. Kelly Steele @steelekelly No tweets from @GovWalker on brutal WI jobs #s. Figured he'd at least blame Obama or some foreign government. #wiunion