Quick answers to US politics queries for those of us not in the know.

This should give you most current points of view on the concept/label:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teabagging

Thank you, Butrflynet.

I'll go to that link now.

Goodness me!!!

Well I learnt something new today. Nothing to do with politics, but interesting all the same!

OK. I should have asked about The Tea Party Movement.

Trust me to get my wires so totally crossed!

And I think I'll leave it at that, for the moment.

Essentially, the tea baggers are the far right fringe of the conservatives here, who are just outraged that the Republicans lost, and for many i suspect that they are outraged that a black man won, although, of course, they would never admit that.

Technically, they are known as the Tea Party, or sometimes the Tea Bag Party, although the later is an innovation. In this case, "TEA" stands for "taxed enough already." It is an obsession with conservaties and the Republicans in particular to claim that they are overtaxed. That's nonsense, of course, especially in comparison to the rest of the industrialized world--but it is an effective rallying cry for the far right. (Tax cuts by the Republicans almost never help the working class, and do nothing significant for the middle class--their tax cuts benefit the wealthy, and that was the case with the Bush tax cuts from 2001 onward.)

These jokers are trying to wrap themselves in a patriotic flag. The early ministries of George III were breathtakingly stupid. Beginning immediately after the French and Indian War (equates with the Seven Years War in Europe), they began a series of measures, each one infuriating the colonists more than the previous ones, sometimes new measures, sometimes enforcing old measures which had not been enforced in the past. It began with the use of the quartering act in New York, with soldiers who came back from fighting the Indian leader Pontiac in what is now Michigan and Ontario. This was followed by the Stamp Act, an incredibly stupid act, which attempted to recoup the costs of the Seven Years War on the backs of the colonists. They had been super patriotic, and had contributed most of the cost of the French and Indian War, from which the crown got Canada, so they were not being unreasonable to object to the taxation. Parliament eventually repealed the Stamp Act, but then passed the Declaratory Act, which stated that Parliament could legislate as they chose in any matter which affected the colonies. This was ominous, and much resented by the colonists, who pointed out that they weren't represented in Parliament, to which the ministry blandly replied that they were virtually represented.

The East India Company was getting hammered by tea smuggled in Europe into England, and into the colonies, mostly by the Dutch. Their taxes were very high, and originally they could only bring the tea into England, and it was then imported into the colonies by other companies. To try to prop up John Company, Parliament remitted a good deal of their taxes, including 25% on the tea which was to be transhipped to the colonies. To offset the lost government revenues, the idiots passed the Townsend Acts, which replaced the lost revenue through new taxes on the colonies--incredible stupidity coming as it did in 1767, immediately after the Stamp Act crisis of 1765. That dredged up the whole issue of Parliaments right to tax the colonists, along with the now hated Declaratory Act.

In 1772, Parliament did not renew the tax breaks to John Company, and in fact re-instated three quarters of the taxes they had remitted, including the special tax on tea to the colonies. With the Dutch gleefully smuggling tea into England as though there were no tomorrow, the increased costs not only could not be passed along, but the market for legal, non-smuggled tea tanked. Lord North, George III's PM would not repeal the Townsend Acts, because he was being pig-headed about the colonists' protests, and did not want to be seen as backing down. So early in 1773, they passed the tea act, which allowed John Company to import the tea directly to the colonies, and pocketing the difference which previously had gone to the middlemen. Most of those middlemen had been colonial shippers, and anyway, the Americans weren't stupid, they knew they were being mulcted.

One of the idiocies immediately after the war had been the new sugar act, which actually reduced the tax on molasses, but then enforced its provisions--and in the past, the Royal Navy had never tried to enforce the sugar duties. This had already outraged the colonists, and now the Royal Navy's presence was increased, and they were given the task of preventing the Dutch from smuggling tea in, or Americans from smuggling tea they had bought in the West Indies from the Dutch or the French.

For shooting themselves in the foot, the North Ministry was just unbelievable. Just as with the sugar act, the new provisions actually reduced the cost of tea, although it was cutting out the American middlemen. It was also being foisted onto a now politically aware public spoiling for a fight. John Company sent seven ships with about 30 tons of tea to America, four of those ships headed for Boston. During the Stamp Act crisis, the stamp agents had been forced to resign with threats of violence or with acts of violence, and the same method was now used on the tea commissioners.

So, four ships sat at the docks in Boston. Longshoremen would not unload them, either by defiance of through the fear of the "Sons of Liberty," whiggish opponents of North's ministry. No one would buy the tea wholesale, because they'd have to unload it themselves, and not only would no one buy it, but everyone would know that they had bought it. It was looking like stalemate when the Sons of Liberty decided to take matters into their own hands.

So, in December, 1773, the Sons of Liberty, badly disguised as "Indians" (fooling no one, but once again, it was as much as your property or perhaps even your life would be worth to inform on them) went on board three of ships, carried the chests of tea up on deck, broke them open and dumped the tea into Boston Harbor. I have actually left a great deal of detail out of this account, but i have probably written too much. I wanted it to be comprehensible, though.

So these clowns here at the beginning of the 21st century are trying to compare themselves to the bully boys in Boston in the latter half of the 18th century, and portray themselves as patriots. There is an implicit threat involved, too, because the Boston Tea Party lead through a series of minor farces and genuine tragedies which culminated in the spring of 1775 with the local militia firing on Royal Marines and British regulars in what has become known as the battles of Lexington and Concord. So this reference to the Boston Tea Party is also a veiled threat of rebellion.

They're idiots, but that's nothing new in politics here, or anywhere else.

Ah. Thank you, Setanta!

The reference to the Boston Tea Party is just as significant, and arguably more important, with its veiled threat of rebellion.

Yes, I figured there was a connection there. Thanks.

Veiled? Let's throw a party and talk about that over a cuppa tea.

(I never understood why the colonists didn't just shut up and pay their bloody taxes. If they had done this, the USA would be just like Canada today. Can't say that's a terrible picture.)

Actually, it does have to do with politics. If you read further down the Wikipedia page, you'll see how it is connected with the Tea Party movement. It's about the midpoint of the page.

but we're practically communists up here

Tea is an insipid beverage, fit only for Saxons and other forms of Germans.

For some reason I always thought "rebellion" has an undertone of "unsucessful" (uprising or whatever); so it wouldn't apply to either the Boston tea party or to the current Tea Party (the latter remains to be proven). So personally I'd use "insurrection" instead.

Actually, to answer Thomas seriously, i think the colonists felt that they were getting screwed after having kept faith as loyal Englishmen.

Frederick, the Prince of Wales died in 1751, and his son George was about 12 or 13 at the time. George II didn't much like Frederick (who as too obviously impatient for the old man to die), but he despised George even more. Now, however, with George the heir presumptive, they had to hurry up and polish the boy's education and manners. They got him a loony Scotsman, the Earl of Bute. Bute was to be George's first prime minister, but George also dumped him soon after. But the Earl of Bute, who was expected to introduce George into society, and who didn't really "know" polite society, had introduced him to young army officers of his acquaintance. That was to have unfortunate consequences.

During the French and Indian War (at about, but not exactly the same time as the Seven Years War), the Governor of New England (they used one governor for five colonies) was William Shirley. He succumbed to a disease which seems to afflict a lot of civilian administrators when they become involved in a war, and decided he was a grand strategist. He eventually made such a mess, interfering to the point that honest-t0-god experienced soldiers were complaining about him the ministry, and he was replaced by Thomas Pownall in 1757. In the Spring of 1758, Pownall wrote to the Lords of Trade (who were then responsible for the colonies) to tell them that in Massachusetts alone, one in seven men was serving the king by land or by sea, and that although the pre-war budget of Massachusetts was somewhat in excess of 45,000 pounds, the colony had now contracted a debt in excess of 330,000 pounds. He then explained that the Massachusetts legislature had come up with a plan to sink that debt within three years by raising revenue through a property tax and a local excise, and that the population had accepted it because it had been passed by their elected representatives. The lesson seems to have been lost on the ministry.

Many other colonies (but by no means all) responded in a similar manner. The expedition against Louisbourg, the great fortress which dominated the entrance to the St. Laurent River, was reduced by an expedition for which the New England colonies provided all the non-military shipping, all of the supplies, and several regiments of militia. In the disastrous expedition against Montcalm at Carillon (later Ticonderoga), militia from New England and New York and New Jersey provided the bulk of the troops, and the colonies provided the shipping on the lakes of what is now upstate New York, as well as the provisions for the expedition. After the debacle in 1755 when Braddock's army was routed, General Forbes, using both regular troops and militia from Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland marched to Fort Duquesne, driving off the French and setting up an outpost there with militia, at what he named Fort Pitt, and where Pittsburgh is now located. Throughout the succeeding years of the war, the Virginia militia protected the frontiers of not just Virginia, but the Carolinas and Georgia, too.

After the war, an Indian leader named Pontiac lead an uprising at what is now Detroit. The colonist were glad to see him put out of business, but he hadn't really threatened them, and they had been defending themselves from Indian attacks instigated by the French for a century. So when the regulars who had fought Pontiac were marched into New York, and began running people out of their homes, or seizing inns and warehouses to quarter their troops, the colonists didn't like it all. Resistance to the use of the Quartering Act was only the beginning.

With the Seven Years War ended, there were many officers out of work, most of them the young men whom George III (his grandfather died in 1760, and he became king) had met socially before the war. The Lords of Trade, encouraged and abetted by Lord Bute, George's first PM, had prohibited the colonists from crossing the mountains into Indian territory, and began raising troops in the colonies (Royal American regiments and independent companies) to patrol the mountain passes (which they didn't actually do--there were no inns or public houses in the mountains). Bute and George III looked on this as an opportunity to find employment for their friends thrown out of work with the end of the Seven Years War.

But the worst of it was that first Bute's ministry, and then Lord North's ministry tried to raise money on the colonies to pay off the war debt. In a way, it was understandable, although incredibly stupid. Parliament was filled with men of property or those who represented them, and men of business, or those who represented them. Parliament wasn't, therefore, going to raise property taxes, and they weren't going to find the money in increases in the excise in England, so they took the attitude that this was what a colonial empire was there for. Really, really stupid idea. I suspect none of them had read Governor Pownall's 1758 letter.

The colonists had spent much blood and treasure for the old King in that war, and had been defending themselves (almost always without royal support) since the 1630s. To now be told that they would have to pay the debt which England had incurred spending money to prop up the King of Prussia, and that they would have to pay the cost of their defense, when the obvious object of English military expeditions had been to drive the French back into Canada and then take it away from them, stuck in the colonists' collective craw. They came up with some legally flimsy arguments, but morally, their attitude was justified. They had always defended themselves, and they had spent a fortune and given many lives so the crown could acquire new colonies. So they deeply resented being told they'd have to pay for what they had always paid for, or provided themselves, and that they'd have officers foisted on them to lead troops who were there to prevent them from expanding into the territories which they had fought for and paid the costs to conquer. To suggest that Americans simply didn't want to pay their taxes is simplistic and a shallow reading of the history involved.

Had that happened, Thomas, there would be millions more souls left on the planet using up resources and polluting the world with their wastes. The USA has helped and still enthusiastically helps rid the world of this pestilence upon the land.

You're right, Butrflynet.
But I thought you'd made one of your extremely rare (if ever) mistakes, buy accidentally sending a link about male dominance & submissiveness & scrotums, etc )
I shoulda kept right on reading. I see that now.
Apologies for the mix-up.

A stern message from the thread instigator: (Meant with no anger, hostility, etc, etc, etc, OK? )

Please dear posters, can we try to keep debate out of this thread as much as we can?

The idea was for folk like me & others to get quick answers on the bits & pieces of US politics that required a bit of clarification for us. Because we might actually be in the dark about aspects of your political discussions which are perfectly clear or obvious to you.

I do realize that, at times, it is nigh on impossible to give a completely "objective" response to any question about politics & you might wish to dispute, clarify, or enlarge on what has been posted. And of course that's fine. But could we try, as best we can, to keep political debating out of this? Tall order, I know, but that would be very much appreciated.

Most people here have put JTT on ignore, Olga - there's never any point arguing with raving lunatics.

On the Tea Party, though, you can get factual information (wikipedia hardly qualifies) by attending an event, as this professor did:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703382904575059293624940362.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_opinion

LOL - edit - just went to look at other updated threads and found this pearl by MerryAndrew coincidentally posted at the same time I was writing this:
http://able2know.org/topic/35573-240#post-3903740

You'll not see what I wrote debated in the least, Msolga.