Happy Birthday, Tea Party!

Last year at this time marked the start of the August recess-attack against health care reform and the Birth of the Tea Party “Movement.”

Though it was conceived during the 2008 election and incubated through the April tax season, it was the ranting and raving in crowd-filled town hall meetings last summer that really announced the arrival of the modern-day Tea Party to the world.

So last month when I visited Boston and its historic sites – Cobb Hill, Christ Church, Bunker Hill, Harvard and it’s then-school to segregate women, Radcliff – I got to thinking about how those men who dumped tea into the harbor 236 ½ years ago compare to their modern day incarnation.

The original Boston Tea Party was a reaction to Britain’s bailing out of a too-big-to-fail tea company, the East India Company, in the form of corporate tax breaks. Despite the fact that much of the East India Company’s economic crisis was caused by internal corruption and mismanagement, King George and the British parliament exempted the East India Company from taxes, thus granting it monopoly control over American markets.  (http://www.bostonteapartyship.com/history.asp)

The British Parliament, with no input from colonial representatives, then placed a tax on East India Company tea sold in America so they could recoup some of their own losses from the French and Indian War – the ultimate in externalizing costs. http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/teaparty.htm

It was the seminal moment when a revolution was all but decided by the American Colonial leaders.

In truth, the original Boston Tea Party was not prompted because the Colonists were being overtaxed, or even taxed at all as the modern day tea party asserts. American colonists were pissed off to the point of criminal vandalism because corporations weren’t being taxed their fair share, and instead their tax burden was shifted onto the people. 

It’s important to note that the most detailed part of the Declaration of Independence is not the famed Introduction with its commitment to the equality and rights of the good people of these colonies (341 words). Nor is it the final paragraph where they all pledge their fortunes and sacred honor (159 words). It is the middle section which outlines the long chain of usurpations and litany of abuses by King George and the British Parliament (820 words).

Unlike the modern Tea Party, the revolutionists from the Boston Tea Party didn’t gripe about wanting a smaller government. In fact, the first abuses listed in the Declaration talk about how the king kept dissolving their colonial governing bodies, how the King denied recognition of colonial government laws, of the King’s failures to allow the legislative processes to take place in the Colonies (makes me think of Senate Republican filibustering).

Among the other litany of abuses is how the King was, “obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither.” Ironically, Tea Partiers attack Obama’s stance on immigration despite the fact that his administration has actually increased deportations from the previous Bush years.

The King also prevented an independent judiciary (you know – those “activist” judges who make decisions independent of the executive branch).

In addition, the King held military’s rights higher to those of civilians – mind-wrenching irony here since the modern day tea party movement prioritizes maintaining the military budget over cuts to education, unemployment and health and human service programs to solve budget deficits.

As stated earlier, the originals were not insulted by a government’s necessity for taxation or “big” government, but that King George had imposed taxes without the consent of the governed and to the benefit of British corporate interests.

The King “plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts” much like BP is doing today. Yet today’s Tea Party stands up for Republican apologists for BP. (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-now/2010/06/tea_party_leader_backs_barton.html)

The King “excited domestic insurrections amongst us” – kinda like how modern Tea Party favorite Sharon Angle talks about the “second amendment remedies” for disagreements over government policies. Or Michelle Bachman saying she wants Minnesotans “armed and dangerous”. Or this gem posted on Sarah Palin’s Facebook page: “The crossfire is intense, so penetrate through enemy territory by bombing through the press, and use your strong weapons — your Big Guns — to drive to the hole. Shoot with accuracy; aim high and remember it takes blood, sweat and tears to win,”

So at this point, on this anniversary. I’d like to wish the Tea Party Movement a Happy 1st Birthday. Indeed, they are behaving like a one year old, with no knowledge of their own history, reacting immediately to external stimuli, and walking around with a load of crap.