>
Today marks the 236th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party
There are taxes, regulation, a massive corporate bailout, and a popular uprising called “the Tea Party”-but it’s not 2010. It’s 1773, and today marks the 236th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. The similarities are illuminating.
Early in 1773, Parliament pushed a bailout package for the British East India Company called the Tea Act. The bill extended a massive loan-well over what was already owed-and more government control over the company’s governance. It also allowed the East India Company the freedom to sell tea directly to the Americas.
While Parliament had removed some of the regulatory roadblocks for tea sales, it decided to keep the tea tax in place.
Being unrepresented in Parliament, the patriots opposed importing the tea and vowed resistance. The Boston patriot club, the North End Caucus, voted to “oppose the vending [of] any Tea, sent by the East India Company to any part of the Continent, with our lives and fortunes.”
In a well-orchestrated piece of protest and political theater. The “Indians” boarded the ships and dumped hundreds of crates of tea into the bay, destroying the entire cargo.
History never really repeats itself, but an observer would have to be thick to miss the parallels here. Governments that distort markets with taxes and regulation, perpetuate incompetence with bailouts, utilize cronyism and ignore constituents should not be surprised when those same constituents rock the boat and upset the crates.
Full Article:
https://nation.foxnews.com/boston-tea-party/2010/12/16/happy-birthday-tea-party
