Real Life Adventures by Gary Wise and Lance Aldrich for March 28, 2010

I wanna join. Who could take Sara’s place?

What’s really funny about this so-called movement’s name is that the Boston Tea Party is one of the most inaccurately told stories in American History. Prior to the ship landing in Boston Harbor, tea could only be bought from smugglers at extremely high prices. Even with the tax, the tea on the ship would have sold for far less than the smugglers were charging. The people who dumped the tea into the harbor were acting as agents of the smugglers, not the ordinary people. The modern-day tea-partiers continue to represent the corporations and rich at the expense of the ordinary people.

Edcole l961: I find your story hard to believe! Why would they smuggle tea? It surely wasn’t illegal to import or purchase tea. It would have been a staple commodity for the English immigrants, they would have welcomed merchant ships carrying tea. I still believe it was a tax protest until I see some references cited.

JDG, not a tax protest – that’s not even what’s taught in school. It was a protest against a tax imposed by an occupying power overseas. The entire protest was against taxation without representation, ie., without the people who were being taxed being afforded the opportunity to have their own elected officials decide. Love or hate our present system, it is the people WE as a nation elect who make those taxes. And by the way, Americans are about the least taxed people in the industrialized world. It’s just that we spend so much of what we do tax on the military – far more than anyone else.

But they talk and act more like the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, and not the nice one shown in the recent movie.

actually we would be taxed far less if we would get rid of entitlement programs and people took responsebility for them selves and would quit wanting hand outs from the government the government was not created to give handouts to people

a doobie party would be even better

ya know?

DevilsNight, if your grasp of capitalization and punctuation is any indication, we need far more of our Federal tax dollars spend on primary education.

nighthawks said,

a doobie party would be even better

Isn’t that what’s meant by “tea” in this context? Oops, my bad…

Happy to dump my social security “entitlement” once they pay me everything I put into it. Plus interest…Seems even Republicans can’t read the Contract With America…Ted: devil reads e.e. cummings. Can be disorienting, teach.

@ tedcoop actually when typing in areas like this i do not do that as for you you must have a very pathetic life to only have my capitalization and punctuation to comment about

Actually, we would be taxed far less if we got rid of half our military spending – which would still leave us the largest military in the world. And then maybe if we quit giving subsidies to corporations that don’t pay taxes anyway (because of the loopholes they wrote into law via their bought-and-paid-for representatives). I have no problems paying taxes to help my fellow neighbors who are truly in need – and most of those on welfare really are in need. But when I’m paying for rich folks or for bloated military spending on multi-million dollar weapons systems that don’t work…. that burns me up.

hey man this is Chris and Sara founders of THE BEER PARTY!!!! what gives? this is awesome!!!!

My view is that any government that takes more money than it needs to run itself has taken too much. The military should be slimmed down to only what is needed to take care of the borders. And all hand-outs, tax breaks, and “free” programs need to eliminated.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, Ayn Rand, in her book “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal” argues for government limited to the defense of rights, which means the police, the military, and the courts. A government so defined would be so small that it could be financed voluntarily, as would be everything else in society.

As for those here expressing contempt for corporations, try living a week without the products they bring you. Who taught so many Americans to bite the hand that feeds (and houses and clothes and medicates and transports) them?

JDG:

Richard Shenkman mentioned it in his series “Myth America,” and the Boston Tea Party’s official site mentions it as well. See: http://www.boston-tea-party.org/smuggling/John-Hancock.html

The Tea Party should be named the Me Party. It seems to be based on selfishness and posturing.

It’s not just about the taxes. We’re “angry” because our freedoms are being taken away little by little. With just the healthcare bill, we’ve lost our right not to have insurance and get a school loan from the private sector. And these are just the ones we know about.