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A Tea Party - is it Team Time... Again?
If ever a tea party made history, it was surely the symbolic Boston Tea Party of 1773. Sorry if you were thinking of your grandma's tea party she had last weekend.
The root cause of the Boston Tea Party was the attempt by the British Government to impose economic tyranny on the American colonies of the time. The government of Great Britain effectively stepped in and passed specific laws in an attempt to help the corporation of the East India Trading Company.
In a well-documented case of economic and political collusion, the government passed the Tea Act in favor of this company in order to forego the taxes normally levied. With this, the company was able to sell its tea at prices that competed with the other importers and even the tea smugglers of the period.
The evident favoritism shown by the British Government to this particular company stemmed from previous measures, in which the government had levied such high taxes on tea that the sales of tea for the East India Company in America had fallen practically to zero.
This brutal decrease in sales of tea was the result of a boycott of tea organized in the Colonies by John Hancock.
WHEN POLITICS TRULY INTERFERES WITH THE MARKET
Hancock had moreover already been charged by the British Government of smuggling, although the charges had been dropped. The Tea Act allowed the East India Company to start selling tea again, but ruined a number of other merchants and stirred the anger of the American colonialists.
REVIVING HISTORY AGAIN TO MEET SIMILAR CHALLENGES
The Boston Tea Party itself came about when sixty Bostonians dressed as Mohawk Indians surreptitiously boarded British ships and dumped some 45 metric tons of tea into the sea.
Their action was the culmination of an ongoing battle between the British and the American colonialists, in which the British were being refused the right to dock their ships and to unload their tea. The Bostonians took action with a tea party after the East India Company had enlisted the support of the governor of the British Armed Forces to be able to dock their ships.
Soon after that, the American Revolution started and the colonialists finally rid themselves of British despotism.
It is therefore highly symbolic that some two hundred years afterwards the American people have organized more tea parties, this time throughout the land in order to emphasize their dissatisfaction with the situation. The growing malaise embodied in a tea party like this and concerning the U.S. Government is what has typically been evoked as a cause.
THE NEED TO IDENTIFY THE ELITE BEHIND THE GOVERNMENT
However, the real despotism of the times comes from the people behind the government. It comes from elite in industry and finance that is responsible for much of the government policy, through its strong and shadowy influencing.
The same problems of the colonialists regarding taxation without representation are again coming to the fore. The entire system is apparently broken and therefore Americans feel that once again... it is tea time.
About the Author Do you feel that it is time to have a tea party? If not, please seek the truth!
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