Oh, you mean government did build that? Oops.

Well, the Romney campaign did it again. Another day, another set of local business owners cited by the Mitt camp as having gotten where they are without the help of government exposed as hugely dependent on government.

And this one, via the Tampa Bay Times, isn't even subtle:



The point of the 11 a.m. news conference was to stress that small business owners succeed because of their own grit and determination and don't need government to do it. [...] In Tampa, the campaign spotlighted Rebecca Smith, owner of the construction company A.D. Morgan Corp., and Lou Ramos, owner of Value Enterprise Solutions, an information technology company.

The A.D. Morgan Corporation employs 50 people and has annual revenues of about $80 million, according to its website. The company lists more than 130 projects and developments. Impressive, no doubt. But the list is nearly all government projects. [...] "We're not going to have an opportunity in the private sector, they have a tendency to use lump sum, low bid," Smith said, explaining how government bids work. "So by virtue of what it is that we do, we go to the client base that purchases construction services that way."

As for Ramos, his company's Facebook page describes Value Enterprise Solutions as "providing value added service/education to businesses, local government, federal government, Department of Defense, and industry contract organizations." [...] In the Air Force for 24 years, Ramos dismissed the role it played in providing him the training and expertise to run his business today. "It wasn't handed to me," Ramos said. "I worked my butt off. My military experience taught me integrity. But that didn't come from the government."

Well, that sounds fine, then. John Galt would be proud. Wait—but what's this?So the company can't compete in the private sector, and deals almost exclusively in government-backed projects, but the owner is outraged that Obama would imply that government helps businesses. And here's the other one:Oh, gawd. Keep in mind, this is after an entire week of ads events that similarly featured businesses that had received very direct help from the government . It appears that the Mitt Romney campaign is supported almost entirely by people whose businesses have received taxpayer money but are so arrogant that they're not willing to admit it. He's gone on a nationwide hunt to find Republican business owners who will feign outrage at Obama's suggestion that businesses are helped by government, and he apparently can find few to no actual businessmen in his camp who don't collect money directly from the freaking government?

So far, the only thing we have learned about businesspeople who support Romney is that they appear to uniformly be gigantic, self-aggrandizing, self-entitled assholes. Wow, what are the odds.