The Real Boston Tea Party was Against the Wal-Mart of the 1770s

[CactusCarlos]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002909671

HiPointDem (3,173 posts)

 
The Real Boston Tea Party was Against the Wal-Mart of the 1770s

Last edited Fri Jul 6, 2012, 03:17 PM USA/ET - Edit history (1)

The real Boston Tea Party was a protest against huge corporate tax cuts for the British East India Company, the largest trans-national corporation then in existence. This corporate tax cut threatened to decimate small Colonial businesses by helping the BEIC pull a Wal-Mart against small entrepreneurial tea shops... That is how I tell the story of the Boston Tea Party, now that I have read a first-person account of it...."Retrospect of the Boston Tea Party with a Memoir of George R.T. Hewes, a Survivor of the Little Band of Patriots Who Drowned the Tea in Boston Harbor in 1773..."

Although schoolchildren are usually taught that the American Revolution was a rebellion against "taxation without representation," akin to modern day conservative taxpayer revolts, in fact what led to the revolution was rage against a transnational corporation that, by the 1760s, dominated trade from China to India to the Caribbean...

A pamphlet was circulated through the colonies called The Alarm and signed by an enigmatic "Rusticus." One issue made clear the feelings of colonial Americans about England's largest transnational corporation and its behavior around the world: "Their Conduct in Asia, for some Years past, has given simple Proof, how little they regard the Laws of Nations, the Rights, Liberties, or Lives of Men. They have levied War, excited Rebellions, dethroned lawful Princes, and sacrificed Millions for the Sake of Gain. The Revenues of Mighty Kingdoms have entered their Coffers. And these not being sufficient to glut their Avarice, they have, by the most unparalleled Barbarities, Extortions, and Monopolies, stripped the miserable Inhabitants of their Property, and reduced whole Provinces to Indigence and Ruin. Fifteen hundred Thousands, it is said, perished by Famine in one Year, not because the Earth denied its Fruits; but this Company and their Servants engulfed all the Necessaries of Life, and set them at so high a Price that the poor could not purchase them."

The East India Company's influence had always been pervasive in the colonies. Indeed, it was not the Puritans but the East India Company that founded America. The Puritans traveled to America on ships owned by the East India Company, which had already established the first colony in North America, at Jamestown, in the Company-owned Commonwealth of Virginia, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi...

Most of the members of the British government and royalty (including the king) were stockholders in the East India Company, so it was easy to get laws passed in its interests. Among the Company's biggest and most vexing problems were American colonial entrepreneurs, who ran their own small ships to bring tea and other goods directly into America without routing them through Britain or through the Company. Between 1681 and 1773, a series of laws were passed granting the Company monopoly on tea sold in the American colonies and exempting it from tea taxes. Thus, the Company was able to lower its tea prices to undercut the prices of the local importers and the small tea houses in every town in America. But the colonists were unappreciative of their colonies being used as a profit center for the multinational corporation...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thom-hartmann/the-real-boston-tea-party_b_187189.html

[Skul]

Wal-Mart sells government taxed tea???
No sales tax for tea!!!

[Bad Dog]

Wal-Mart sells government taxed tea???
No sales tax for tea!!!

Damn, Sam Walton looked old but not that old.

[Skul]

Damn, Sam Walton looked old but not that old.

Julia Childs was a wee girl while he was peddling polished stones for cookware.

[Doc Savage]

I was not aware that Wal-Mart was exempt from sales taxes.  Their prices are lower due to volume purchases from producers, and branding of product to the Wal-Mart brand.  Seems that I always pay sales tax when I am at the register, just less of it due to the decreased cost. 

If the primitives should be mad at anything, they should be mad at the loss of tax revenue due to lower prices.  Paying taxes is patriotic remember, at least for the 50% of America that does.

[USA4ME]

Although schoolchildren are usually taught that the American Revolution was a rebellion against "taxation without representation," akin to modern day conservative taxpayer revolts, in fact what led to the revolution was rage against a transnational corporation that, by the 1760s, dominated trade from China to India to the Caribbean...

Nice attempt at a rewrite of history, but the BTP had everything to do with "no taxation without representation."  Had you actually read your history books, you would know that the colonist had to pay taxes to the crown and yet had no one to represent them in the British Parliment.

But since it doesn't fit  your modern-day liberal viewpoint, you have to make up stuff about how evil corps are.  Nice try, but you lose.

.

[Airwolf]

The OP from DU is a perfect example why there should be a 15 day waiting period for crackheads to post online.

[miskie]

Achievement Unlocked : Mescaline Overdose

Manage to post a semi-coherent message on a forum of your choice after indulging in a near-fatal amount of sweet, sweet peyote. Answer the call of the prickly green tomato - because he is calling for you !

[GOP Congress]

IF you have to throw a corporate baddy into the mix, then you can't compare it to Walmart, which pays cumulatively more taxes than virtually any other corporation, including the collection of various state sales taxes. Instead, you can compare the East India Tea Company to a crony capitalist (RE: socialistically criminal) company such as GM or Solyndra, who get the government bennies and contracts that aren't approved by the stakeholders, RE: taxpayers. This is the slam-dunk technical rebuttal to this DUmmies attempt at revisionism.