To Have a Tea Party: Disecting the political movement, part 1

Every time hear the term Tea Party, I hear this song in my head.  Yes, I blame my kids.

What is this populist movement “sweeping the nation” known simply as the Tea Party Movement? How did it begin?

The Right Name for the Job?

By all accounts the Tea Party name is a nod to the Massachusetts rebels of 1773 who, in an act of defiance against new British taxation laws, disguised themselves as Mohawk Indians, snuck aboard British vessels docked in Boston Harbor, and dumped their cargo of tea into the bay. The issue was quite a bit more complicated than that, but that is the gist (for the full story of the Boston Tea Party and the actions precipitating it, check out www.boston-tea-party.org. An interesting online read with first hand accounts can be found at eyewitnesstohistory.com.

The modern Tea Party movement began as a protest against the rumors of higher taxes (hence the name of the group). Unfortunately, those who named the movement and so vehemently compared themselves to those Boston rebels of 1773 neglected to notice the glaring discrepancy between their protest and the original Boston action: Where the Boston action was a response to the ’73 Tea Act, which granted British merchants an unfair market advantage over colonial merchants by way of tax breaks to the East India Trade company, The 2009 Tea Party movement is a protest against the tax changes that President Obama either has enacted or is planning to enact, namely the repeal of tax cuts to high end corporations and the top 2% of wealthy individuals that were enacted under the 2000-2008 Bush administration.

So in a nutshell:

1. 1773 Tea Party = Protest against unfair tax cuts to major companies over lesser/smaller merchants;
2. 2009 Tea Party = Protest against a repeal of previously established unfair tax cuts to major companies and highest wealth over lesser companies and lower income individuals.

The 2009 Stimulus Package that the Tea Party Movement has protested and demands the repeal of reduced federal income tax for more than 95% of working Americans. A breakdown of who was eligible, why, and for how much, TurboTax’s website has a clean and easily scannable explanation of benefits.

Here is a movie compiled by NewLeftMedia.com that illustrates the Tea Party movement in their own words, from their Tax Day Tea Party 2010.