I GUESS YOU CAN ARGUE WITH SUCCESS

News Item: General Motors pays off its government loans five years ahead of schedule with interest. Not only have the taxpayers been paid in full, they made a tidy profit.

If we would have listened to the likes of Jeff Sessions, Bob Corker and Richard Shelby, republican senators from southern states that host foreign owned, non union, auto manufacturers, we would no longer have a US auto industry. It would have been a terrible mistake.

Clearly their position was not based upon what is good for the whole of America but rather on what is good for them politically and their friends at Toyota et al. They cynically wanted to use the crisis as a way to break the unions who have traditionally supported democratic causes.

News Item: The US Treasury to sell 1.5 billion of the shares it owns in Citigroup at a profit to the taxpayers of just over $2 billion.

The original concept of the tea baggers was put forth by Congressman Ron Paul to stress his support for fiscal conservatism. The idea was then picked up by slick republican operatives who then took it to another level with the help of an avalanche of republican lies and talking points relentlessly pushed by Fixed News. Whipped into a frenzy, the tea party, at it's base, coalesced around their anger over the federal government's bailouts of the financial and automobile industries.

Now there is nothing wrong with being fiscally conservative but a time of spiraling deflation and raging recession demands public investment as a spur to recovery.

If we had followed calls for fiscal conservatism at just the wrong time and failed to act decisively, the results in terms of lost industries, not just individual businesses, would have been catastrophic for the American and indeed the world economy, the effects of which would have been felt for decades.

They say hind sight is 20/20 but aren't we fortunate to have a forward looking leader who has confidence in the future of American Capitalism. A leader who at a time of great economic crisis, not of his own making, understood the need to invest in the future of America and not give in to fear and retrenchment.

So with the taxpayers earning handsome profits on their investments they can thank the President for not only his money management skills on their behalf but also for saving the US auto and financial industries at the same time. It's time for anyone who opposed those investments in America to admit that they were wrong.

The question that comes to mind, at this point is, what is the purpose of the Tea Baggers?

I guess you really can argue with success.