ran 2.0 miles
Today ends week ninety-eight of running against Obama. I ran 22.2 miles this week, averaging 3.17 miles per day.
President Obama recently spoke in Roanoke, Virginia, pushing the message that "If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen".
Attempting to soften voters up to the idea of higher tax rates ("2+2=5" sort of stuff) he spoke similar words that Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts Democrat running against incumbent Republican Scott Brown in November) expressed last year regarding this notion that highly successful individuals give themselves way too much credit and way too little reward to the taxpayers who apparently empowered them to succeed.
This is what our president had to say:
"There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there." [Emphasis added]
He continued:
"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." [Emphasis added]
This was Elizabeth Warren's speech from 2011:
Roads and bridges are built and used by taxpayers but once they open up it falls upon each individual to use them in whatever ways they choose to. Many taxpayers use them in highly unproductive ways, a lot of us use them in moderately productive ways and some use them in brilliant ways.
And, Mr. President, if I become idol and unambitious, lose all motivation and drive to succeed, if the flame in my heart to accomplish burns out because America no longer offers me any reason to succeed because the federal government takes every reward that once made my life goal-oriented---I will remember to thank you for that. I will not gloat about my failures and forget who I have to thank for my mediocrity. I will pay it forward to the next citizen who is awaiting the opportunity to have their larger-than-life dreams shattered by a government who does everything it can to blame all of our woes on a tax revenue problem in the private sector when it is so obvious that it is a spending problem in the federal government.
2,080 miles from Lafayette, LA to Washington D.C. and back + 58.4
Here is what happened one year ago on Day321.
