Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

“A little frightening how you cats jump straight to revolutionary violence when faced with a political loss. I know you’re joking here, but that shit is for real for a whole lot of people” – a frightened blogger Okay, let’s at least try to get the history of the Boston Tea Party right. There were genuine revolutionists among the “Indians” who threw the tea into Boston harbor. The principle organizer was Sam Adams, as fine a made in America revolutionist as you are likely to find anywhere. But the issue that propelled the dumping was THE TEA. In an attempt to save the East India Company, an early government supported entity (GSE), the British government gave a subsidy to the company in the form of a tax reduction that allowed the company to reduce the price of its tea. Americans drank a lot of tea in those days because Starbucks as yet was not in business, and the British knew they could undercut the market by lowering the price of tea produced by their principle GSE. So they loaded al...