Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
Today I came across this fascinating exposition on a facet of American History often overlooked in our educational syllabus. The Boston Tea Party, from which today’s Tea Party takes its’ name, was actually a revolt against the dominance of the largest Multi-national Corporation of its’ time and its’ monopoly of the ubiquitous tea trade. The power of this entity came through its political dominance of the British Monarchy and with its’ compliance and enforcement of this Corporation’s needs. Contrast the actual positions of today’s “Tea Partier’s” with those whose names they usurp. I think you will find this a fascinating video and I will comment after the fold.
Even if you didn’t watch this whole video, I’m sure you got enough information to understand that the Boston Tea Party was about fighting the bestowal of government privileges, including tax cuts, to a large, influential corporation. Today’s “Tea Party” is a movement created by wealthy corporate interests, guided by a powerful lobbyist, Dick Armey, and is committed to ensuring that corporations have no regulations whatsoever. I had previously documented that here:
http://jonathanturley.org/2011/08/02/tea-party-and-the-myth-of-a-grassroots-movement/
This is a fact that it seems none dare mention in the Mainstream Broadcast Media, excepting MSNBC. The average viewer is led to believe, by the bloviating pundits, that this is a “grass roots” movement of average folk, fed up by too much government involvement in their lives. The “Tea Party” has been invested by the same punditry, with the mantle of being a “populist” movement. In fact, the only resemblance to them and certain “populists” of the past is that there is a racialist percentage among them.
Today’s TP’ers are essentially anti-constitutionalists, in league with those who would be theocrats, working in the service of corporate interests. They bandy about epithets for the rest of American’s, the majority of Americans I must say, that call their opponents socialists, communists and fascists. Although all of these epithets could hardly characterize either the Democratic Party, or the President they revile, they gain currency through the repetition of the corporate “Big Lie” and are given equal treatment by the media.
The only way for real American’s to battle these anti-constitutionalists is by constantly exposing the lies and the memes they use to give themselves legitimacy, such as taking on the mantle of an historic American move towards independence. Admittedly, these are harsh words and do not necessarily represent the views of this blog or its proprietor.
Enough, however, is enough. I cannot abide the hypocrisy being displayed here, nor can I abide watching a field of Republican candidates, kowtowing to this movement, who are themselves made up of clowns, knaves and even much worse. Oh, do I long for the days of Richard Nixon and Dwight Eisenhower before him. The current crop of Presidential hopefuls in the GOP isn’t fit to step into the shoes of their Republican forebears, who were demonstrable realists with no small intelligence.
The worst part of it is that although the whole contingent of Republican Presidential hopefuls pretend to represent themselves as the people’s protectors, their history strongly suggests quite the opposite. Their greatest weapon thus far has been to seize the political initiative and attain power through erecting a Potemkin Wall of popular support. They have done this by redefining American History, the Constitution and given new meanings to words. The TP’ers have successfully infiltrated our Congress with preachers of cant and no-nothingness and because of this, we must perforce expose and oppose them, or watch the very heart of our government, our Constitution, shredded by the hypocrisy by which they justify their actions.
Roco,
Plaintiffs (including the government) who win judgements against corporate persons should get equity in the company in compensation. The only way a corporation can be punished is by loss of shareholder equity – and the shareholders should have the right to elect board members that uphold their fiduciary duty to avoid losing the shareholder’s equity.
Roco,
Mandate pollution levels? What an incredibly bad idea – how does a mandate make a business pollute less? Take the CAFE standards – I was at a dinner where one of the top people from the GM Tech Center was speaking and he said that they could make a car that got 90 mpg and seated 4 people and went 300 miles – they just couldn’t sell it. This was in 1992, mind you… If instead of enacting CAFE standards in 1975 we had instituted a $0.01/gal additional gasoline tax which automatically went up by $0.01/gal each year, I bet we would be getting an average of 100 mpg and would have a much smaller debt with very little negative effect on the economy (well, except the oil industry – on noes!). How long do you think it would take to have an average 100mpg if we instituted this tax today? If we don’t? If there is a cost – especially an escalating cost – to having low gas mileage, then consumers will demand higher gas mileage (and be willing to pay more for it) and they will get it (and it will become cheaper [barring a monopoly or some such]). That’s how the regulated market works to produce a more stable economy. In every case appropriate negative feedback works to damp the boom and bust cycle. You’re an engineer – if you had some machine which was regularly oscillating out of control in various ways, how would you try to stop that? I think you’re a good enough engineer to know that you would apply a negative feedback control – why do you think the market is any different?
Pete:
Arent corporate executives liable for criminal acts? If you have pollution levels based on good science and laws based on that science, wouldnt the executives be legally responsible?
Also arent there laws on the books which prevent a corporation from knowingly selling assests to get out of a jam?
roco
then the LLC you sued declares bankruptcy, sells its assets to the parent corp (a tax write-off), and you ( the plaintiff) still have a polluted well.
drink up
Slarti:
“We have two choices – control pollution and be faithful stewards of the environment for our descendants (isn’t that what God told Christians to do in any case?) or condemn them to drown in their own filth until the ecosystem collapses.”
The ecosystem is not going to collapse and we are not going to drown in our own filth. the history of economic progress makes that clear to us. Now poor nations do wallow and drown in their own filth.
There is a third choice as well. Let economic freedom take hold, problem solved. Progress Slarti, Progress. And here I thought you were the progressive.
Slarti:
Weyerhauser has thousands of acres of trees they grow for their business.
Bob Esq:
you are a lawyer, sue the bastards who pollute their neighbors well.
Bob Esq:
“Every argument you’ve made against environmental protection contradicts your expressed views of the social contract.”
Mandating certain levels of pollution based on good science is reasonable. Pulling environmental BS out of your ass for political reasons is a violation in a free society.
“Crashing the Tea Party
By DAVID E. CAMPBELL and ROBERT D. PUTNAM
Published: August 16, 2011
GIVEN how much sway the Tea Party has among Republicans in Congress and those seeking the Republican presidential nomination, one might think the Tea Party is redefining mainstream American politics.
Related
But in fact the Tea Party is increasingly swimming against the tide of public opinion: among most Americans, even before the furor over the debt limit, its brand was becoming toxic. To embrace the Tea Party carries great political risk for Republicans, but perhaps not for the reason you might think.
Polls show that disapproval of the Tea Party is climbing. In April 2010, a New York Times/CBS News survey found that 18 percent of Americans had an unfavorable opinion of it, 21 percent had a favorable opinion and 46 percent had not heard enough. Now, 14 months later, Tea Party supporters have slipped to 20 percent, while their opponents have more than doubled, to 40 percent.
Of course, politicians of all stripes are not faring well among the public these days. But in data we have recently collected, the Tea Party ranks lower than any of the 23 other groups we asked about — lower than both Republicans and Democrats. It is even less popular than much maligned groups like “atheists” and “Muslims.” Interestingly, one group that approaches it in unpopularity is the Christian Right.
The strange thing is that over the last five years, Americans have moved in an economically conservative direction: they are more likely to favor smaller government, to oppose redistribution of income and to favor private charities over government to aid the poor. While none of these opinions are held by a majority of Americans, the trends would seem to favor the Tea Party. So why are its negatives so high? To find out, we need to examine what kinds of people actually support it. ”
Read the rest at the New York Times.
more $ for planned parenthood
TOOOTIE!!! WAKE UP!!! You’re having a nightmare!!!
The Tea Party was grassroots. If it no longer is then that is another matter. Because of the internet any corruption of the Tea Party will get exposed. Naturally, it is the Democrats who wish to silence the internet, so hopefully that won’t happen and the Tea Party folks will be spared any shame.
But Mr. Hartman is indeed a trickster and a deceiver (no surprise then that his video clip shows up at this website) by calling the duty free transport of the tea for the East India Company as getting their “tax cut” (like rich people in America are accused by the communists (Democrats) of supposedly getting their tax cuts though they actually pay the most taxes. Except if you are a Democrat communist like Warren Buffet. Or a communist like Timmy the tax-cheat Geithner, of course.
I’m guessing the Tea Party folks want the Constitution to work. I say I guess because I know very little about the Tea Party.
The Constitution allows for duties (and imposts) on goods. Thus it follows that the Tea Party folks are by their support of the Constitution NOT opposed to duties on goods and therefore not in the same camp as supporters of the East India Company which got duty free privileges. Thus the Tea Party members then and now are essentially the same people.
So Hartman’s example is faulty. And it is morally twisted in various ways. Of course it is.
The Tea Party demographics as revealed in this* Gallup survey show that Tea Party folks are very regular folks indeed. Nearly half of them have incomes under 50k. Only about 15 percent have advanced degrees, but a whopping 34 percent of them have no college. They are not corporate types. They are generally working class people and the kind of people who suffer under the yoke of corporate jobs themselves. I know this grates on the communists (Democrats, liberals, progressives) who, in their demented little warped minds like to think only they suffer under this kind of burden.
Yet, it is the Democrats who kill and murder small businesses. These businesses are more friendly to America workers, but the Democrats are eliminating them through regulation leaving workers with fewer options outside of corporations and government work. Once Democrats kill the corporations by fascist take over all that will be left is government work. Government car companies. Government green companies. Government schools, Government banking. Government medicine. Commie heaven. Earthly hell. Thanks for nothing.
Tea Party folks then and now loathed such a world. And that is what any rebellion is about.
Tea Party folks mainly want government to stop being corrupt and stop usurping the Constitution. That is what the original Tea Party members wanted of their government as well. Tea Party folks today despise corrupt government, just like the Tea Party folks of yesterday did. Hartman pretends the problem was the corporations. It wasn’t. It was the government in league with them (in modern times we call it fascism and socialism). But it is Democrats who the are big supporters of centralized government taking over the functions of the corporations (i.e actually becoming corporations themselves).
It is deceptive to make it about corporations and take the focus off the biggest evil of mankind: powerful central governments. Powerful central governments have always been the biggest perpetrators of mass murder, wars, and slavery throughout history. It is no surprise then that Democrats worship at their altar and continually advocated unlimited government powers while they try to distract from their evil doings by demonizing lesser offenders (corporations).
Democrats did this smoke and mirrors with Hitler. Democrats supported a greater evil of the 20th Century (Stalin, Mao, communism, etc.) and then tried (and almost completely succeeded through government schools and government media) to cover it up with hysteria about Hitler. Yes, the hysteria about Hitler was legitimate, but there should have been a greater hysteria about what Democrats dabbled in: Stalin and Mao: Marx and Engels. Democrats have yet to repent of this sin. In fact, they are promoting it and have installed a communist in the White House.
It is Democrats who are the big-government unlimited-power Tories. It is Democrats who demand centralized, enslaving, mass-murdering powers like the Loyalists. General Electric is the East India Company. Barack Hussein Obama is King George. And everyone in the Democratic Party is as much an enemy of liberty as British loyalists were.
*
http://www.gallup.com/poll/127181/tea-partiers-fairly-mainstream-demographics.aspxYet
Ha, i know the video is a lie. lexington and concord are in new hampshire.
Roco,
Even the extreme Right Wing is aware of the importance of preserving our precious bodily fluids…
General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk… ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children’s ice cream.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: [very nervous] Lord, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: You know when fluoridation first began?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: I… no, no. I don’t, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It’s incredibly obvious, isn’t it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That’s the way your hard-core Commie works.
Roco,
The whole reason we have an EPA is to protect against the tragedy of the commons. Since there is no economic incentive to prevent corporations from shitting where we drink and eat, we the people delegate the power to protect our food and water to the government. We don’t leave the state of nature and join society to have our water and food polluted.
Every argument you’ve made against environmental protection contradicts your expressed views of the social contract.
Roco,
Protecting the environment does not fatten the power of government. Not protecting the environment is all about fattening the pockets of the Koch Brothers and their ilk.
Roco,
You MANAGE resources by increasing dependence on renewable or green resources and reducing and eliminating the need for things that are expensive because they are scarce or because of the damage done by their use. If you think my statement was untrue, please give me an example of the free market acting in the public good when there was no economic incentive to do so.
Slarti:
“Managing resources for the public good is not something that free-market capitalism does (there isn’t any profit in it – except that what’s good for society as a whole tend to be good for all of its members…).”
that is just untrue, if you use it up where are you going to be in 10 years?
rafflaw:
“and you want to destroy the environment in order to fatten the pocketbook of the corporate masters.”
and I say do you want to fatten the power of the big bad government?
The nexus of environmentalism and corporatism is diminishing the ability of the proletarian to materialistically effect his future economic viability.
This combination of environmental over-regulation and economic incentives across a broad spectrum of industries is counterproductive to future economic viability for the poor and middle class. What you see as corporate masters are actually that set of industries which take money from government and use political connection to diminish competition in the form of over regulation.
A more correct restatement of your proposition would have been – do you want to destroy the economy in order to build up government.
Roco,
We have two choices – control pollution and be faithful stewards of the environment for our descendants (isn’t that what God told Christians to do in any case?) or condemn them to drown in their own filth until the ecosystem collapses. If you get your way it wont matter what Caribou taste like – because they’ll be extinct. Managing resources for the public good is not something that free-market capitalism does (there isn’t any profit in it – except that what’s good for society as a whole tend to be good for all of its members…).
I don’t want to put arsenic in your drinking water, but one of the logical conclusions of your argument seems to be that if I can make a buck off of doing so, then I should have that right. Corporations make enormous amounts of money off of their right to pollute – why doesn’t the government have not just a right, but an obligation to tax this anti-social behavior? How can the free market determine the value of anything without a price attached to it? The answer is that the free market assigns a value of $0 to anything without a price attached – what else can it do?
The economy, like any other dynamical system, can be controlled by negative feedback. In fact, it is simple to do so in principle (and functionally as well provided the political will to implement it) All you have to do is put a small price on any behavior that you want to discourage and slowly increase it over time. This allows the market to account for actions that cause generalized harm like pollution (the damage of which is not limited to individuals with the standing to sue). By what mechanism do you think that the free market can eliminate or even control pollution if there is no cost attached to polluting?