On Feb 23, 2010, at 9:04 PM, Michael Pollak wrote:
>
> On Tue, 23 Feb 2010, Shane Mage wrote:
>
>>> No, of course not. It's called the Tea Party to evoke the Boston
>>> Tea Party. For most of them, no pun is intended.
>>
>> And, I bet, *none* of them know that the Boston Tea Party was a
>> protest against a tax *cut*.
>
> Okay Shane, I'll bite. How was the protest agains the Tea Act a
> protest against a tax cut?
The East India Company had a legal monopoly over the importation of tea into British Colonies. The profits were large. The King wanted more of them, so he put a tax on the importation of tea into New England. This raised the price of tea so much that the colonists got angry. But not for long, because enterprising New Englander patriots began to smuggle tea in at a price much lower than the taxed price. Soon, all the tea drunk in New England was smuggled tea. The patriots were very happy. But the East India Company wasn't, and told the King as much. The king was crazy, but not so crazy as not to know who he couldn't say no to. So the King repealed the tea tax. That made the patriots very unhappy. So they organized a boycott of English tea, and informed their less patriotic neighbors that the drinking of unsmuggled tea would be dangerous to their health--by dressing up as the feared savages and vandalizing a commercial ship carrying tea.
Shane Mage
> This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
> always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
> kindling in measures and going out in measures."
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos
>