This new one is far from the original Boston tea party. Now it's 2010 and both parties are right in step with the lambs on our back 40, who would bloat and die if I would indulge their emotions and let them go after the new alfalfa I seeded.
Listen to the propaganda bloat that passes for democratic debate, promoted by the new "Tea Party" leadership, corporate and media backers, etc. It goes something like this:
"The best government is the least government. End taxes! End regulation! It's time for real change."
Look at 1773.
Yes, the original Boston tea party was about taxes, but not whether there would be taxes. It was about who was doing the taxing. There was a history of the British crown taxing American colonial citizens' purchases of imports, and then that money pot sailed away right back the Atlantic with the next clipper.
Yes, it was about big government, a big British government with no vote or voice from the colonies. It was NOT against the growth of government on the land in which these citizens lived, for which they soon elected representatives. In fact, they are among those we venerate in our high school history classes who helped our fledgling government on this land grow constitutionally, to the benefit of all of us today.
Yes, it was against government regulation passed by the British parliament to "teach the colonists a lesson" and force them to submit. But it was also for new regulations to break the oppressive collusion between the British crown and one of the first multinational corporations, the East India Tea Company. That collusion smashed what sovereignty the colonies enjoyed and destroyed fair competition in overseas trade.
Now it's 2010.
Look at Republicans and Democrats who distrust the modern tea party. The "racism" controversy recently in the news is nothing more than a sham. The real issue is loss of collusion benefits, which would happen if either party started adopting priorities similar to the original Boston Tea Party. The fact is, there are huge benefits to both parties today from collusion between government and big business. And that, my friends, is the biggest bipartisanship our Congress can muster. Few politicians of any party want that changed.
Our citizenry, raised by mainline radio and TV, love pretense and surface rhetoric; we like that luscious look and smell, deep green and tender, of government sham-regulation of big business for the benefit of all the people, but in reality no change, so the few, the richest, benefit the most.
Unfortunately, we sheep give our votes to the sham of ending big government. We roll over and ignore the deception and theft from our own pockets.
Take the government's recent sham crackdown on Goldman Sachs. After packaging and selling mortgages they knew were bad, they got off scot-free with their deception and theft:
1) No further investigation of fraud.
2) No jail sentences (The S & L scandal decades ago led to 1000+ sentences).
3) A fine payable to the Securities and Exchange Commission of a fraction of the profit made from the scheme.
4) No requirement to pay back their ill-gotten wealth; no restitution.
5) The system of secrecy and deception stays in place.
The media still hypes the biggest fine ever levied against a Wall Street corporation. Hidden in its back pages are the data: millions in profits from the deception.
Sometimes it takes a fringy documentary news source to plumb reality and feed it to the mainline media, who then cannot afford to ignore it, like the recent WikiLeaks version of the Pentagon papers.
I would applaud a reincarnation of the Boston Tea Party. I hoped the Obama presidency would deal with the sham in the collusions. So far I see same old same old across the political spectrum.
Meanwhile my sheep, resentfully munching the tough old brome and wheat grass of the wild meadow strip along our channel, stop and turn west, sniff their noses in the morning breeze and exclaim in chorus, "Baa-a-a! We want our fresh green alfalfa, and want it right now, early this morning when our stomachs are empty." Sometimes we, like sheep, would be better off munching on what's best for us, not what our TV and radio pundits put out to titillate our tastes and thinking habits.
Oh, for some help in our country and on this back 40 to take rational charge of these colorful delicious delusions! Slowly, carefully, transparently and honestly, with the kind of courage and determination absent in Washington right now in either party, and disappointingly absent in the new tea party.
Previous columns and comments: http://greenwoodback40.blogspot.com/
David Graber
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