NewsFlash to the 'baggers - The Founding Fathers Were Against Big Corporations!

What do we always hear from the likes of Glenn (the humble rodeo clown) Beck, Sarah (I like all of them) Palin and the rest of the obviously under-educated 'baggers.. "The Founding Fathers this... and, The Founding Fathers that..." ad nauseum, but hey, what about the REAL Founding Fathers of Jersey Shore... eh?

Here's what they had to say about corporations:


The Founding Fathers Did Not Want Large Corporations
From The Daily Seminal (FDL) by Jim Moss (emphasis added)

"Many proponents of the free market defend our current system of corporate-based capitalism as if it descended directly from heaven into the pen of Adam Smith and then onto the hearts of our all-knowing Founding Fathers. An investigation of the history of the corporation, however, reveals a much
different story.



"The first corporations appeared in Europe in the 16th and 17th
centuries and were chartered by governments for specific public
missions. The largest and most powerful of these early corporations
was The East India Company founded by Queen Elizabeth in 1600 to
facilitate trade between England and her colonies. At the height of its
power, The East India Company held economic control over 1/5 of world’s
population and maintained a private army of over 250,000 soldiers. Unjust
taxation policies favoring this company insured that the crown, and not the
colonists themselves, reaped the benefits from the colonies’ natural wealth and
industry."

"During the 18th century, Enlightenment ideals began to challenge the power of monarchies and corporations, and the power of the queen’s corporation began to fade. The Boston Tea Party of 1773 signaled not only a victory over the economic tyranny of the East India Company, it also helped pave the way for the political uprising known as the American Revolution. Also around this time, Adam Smith published the Wealth of Nations, arguing for free market economics, but against the concept of large corporations, claiming that they limit fair competition among smaller-sized merchants and artisans."

"When the United States gained its independence in 1776, there were 336
corporations in the United States, but most had been chartered by state
governments for specific public works projects. The Founding Fathers, still
mindful of the crushing power once wielded by the East India Company, severly
limited the power of corporations and never would have dreamed of nor
allowed the trans-national behemoths we see today. In fact, the original
limitations seem laughable when we consider our modern corporations -

More here, please take a look it's well worth a minute.

And from Thom Hartmann:

The Real Boston Tea Party was Against the Wal-Mart of the 1770s

"...The real Boston Tea Party was a protest against huge corporate tax cuts for the British East India Company, the largest trans-national corporation then in existence. This corporate tax cut threatened to decimate small Colonial businesses by helping the BEIC pull a Wal-Mart against small entrepreneurial tea shops, and individuals began a revolt that kicked-off a series of events that ended in the creation of The United States of America."

"They covered their faces, massed in the streets, and destroyed the
property of a giant global corporation. Declaring an end to global trade run by
the East India Company that was destroying local economies, this small, masked
minority started a revolution with an act of rebellion later called the Boston
Tea Party."

"That is how I tell the story of the Boston Tea Party, now that I have read
a first-person account of it. While striving to understand my nation’s struggles
against corporations, in a rare book store I came upon a first edition of “Retrospect
of the Boston Tea Party with a Memoir of George R.T. Hewes, a Survivor of the
Little Band of Patriots Who Drowned the Tea in Boston Harbor in 1773,” and I
jumped at the chance to buy it."

"As I read, I began to understand the true causes of the American Revolution.
I learned that the Boston Tea Party resembled in many ways the
growing modern-day protests against transnational corporations and small-town
efforts to protect themselves from chain-store retailers or factory farms. The
Tea Party’s participants thought of themselves as protesters against the actions
of the multinational East India Company. "

"Although schoolchildren are usually taught that the American Revolution was a rebellion against “taxation without representation,” akin to modern day conservative taxpayer revolts, in fact what led to the revolution was rage against a transnational corporation that, by the 1760s, dominated trade from China to India to the Caribbean, and controlled nearly all commerce to and from North America, with subsidies and special dispensation from the British crown."

Hewes notes:

“The [East India] Company received permission to transport tea, free of all
duty, from Great Britain to America…” allowing it to wipe out New England–based
tea wholesalers and mom-and-pop stores and take over the tea business in all of
America."

“Hence,” wrote, “it was no longer the small vessels of private merchants,
who went to vend tea for their own account in the ports of the colonies, but, on
the contrary, ships of an enormous burthen, that transported immense quantities
of this commodity … The colonies were now arrived at the decisive moment when
they must cast the dye, and determine their course … ”

"A pamphlet was circulated through the colonies called The
Alarm and signed by an enigmatic “Rusticus.” One issue made clear the
feelings of colonial Americans about England’s largest transnational corporation
and its behavior around the world: “Their Conduct in Asia, for some Years past,
has given simple Proof, how little they regard the Laws of Nations, the Rights,
Liberties, or Lives of Men."

"They have levied War, excited Rebellions, dethroned lawful Princes, and
sacrificed Millions for the Sake of Gain. The Revenues of Mighty Kingdoms have
entered their Coffers. And these not being sufficient to glut their Avarice,
they have, by the most unparalleled Barbarities, Extortions, and Monopolies,
stripped the miserable Inhabitants of their Property, and reduced whole
Provinces to Indigence and Ruin. Fifteen hundred Thousands, it is said, perished
by Famine in one Year, not because the Earth denied its Fruits; but [because]
this Company and their Servants engulfed all the Necessaries of Life, and set
them at so high a Price that the poor could not purchase them.”

"The citizens of the colonies were preparing to throw off one of the
corporations that for almost 200 years had determined nearly every aspect of
their lives through its economic and political power. They were planning to
destroy the goods of the world’s largest multinational corporation, intimidate
its employees, and face down the guns of the government that supported it."

Please, read the rest here

Sounds familiar doesn't it? I like to say, "How many dollars left 'till the revolution?" How long will we let trans-national corporations push us around through our elected representitives until we do something? How broke and indentured do we have to get as a people until we realize, as a whole, that corporations do not have our best interest at heart? What will it take to get the truth out to the teabaggers, and arm those crazy bastards in indian garb and throw the Fox News - Rush Limbaugh conservatives the hell overboard?

Thom Hartmann is one of my heroes. This is some of his best work. Now riddle me this, batblog... How come the corporate right was able to usurp the message of the original Tea Party movement to advance their "populist" cause? Hmmm... could it be that education has taken a sound beating over the last 30 years producing some of the least educated Americans ever? Could it be the dumbing down of the Television-watching public through stupid media with subtle messaging? Or the overt overthrow of local education boards by know-nothing board members like in Texas? Or maybe the Right-wing takeover of the news media outlets by corporate villagers, always trying to gain advertisers (corporate) money and access through propagandizing?

Whatever the cause.. we, the American people are like the frogs in the ever-warming corporate bath, soon to be boiled in the corporate/facist takeover of our dear and wonderful country. Especially after the SCOTUS ruling of Jan. 21, 2010. We won't even feel it...