The following text is from the World Book Encyclopedia, copyright 1969:

The Boston Tea Party was a raid by American colonists on three British ships in Boston Harbor on Dec. 16, 1773.  A band of citizens disguised as Indians threw the contents of 340 chests of tea into the bay.  This was one of the incidents that led to the Revolutionary War in America.

Many colonists were determined not to pay taxes to the British government.  Formerly, the tax on tea imported from England was so high that the colonists usually drank smuggled Dutch tea.  In 1767, the British decided to levy a lower duty of three pence a pound on tea, and to collect it.  More people bought the cheaper tea, but independence groups agitated for tax removal.

In 1773, the British government allowed the British East India Company a substantial tax rebate on tea shipped to America, to keep it from bankruptcy.  Soon tea was on its way to Boston, consigned to individuals who were given a monopoly on its sale.  Colonists feared the tea monopoly would put local merchants out of business, and that other retail businesses might also be made into monopolies.  (end of excerpt)

The King of England had given the British East India Company a monopoly on the sale of tea, so this, as well as taxation without representation, was a major factor leading to the Revolutionary War.  It’s clear our founding fathers viewed the tyranny of private sector monopolies, backed by the British government, as a threat to their liberty and prosperity.

As a conservative, I believe market capitalism gives citizens the greatest amount of freedom to conduct business.  But a market that’s “free” to create monopolies that can buy judges, politicians and elections, and eliminate competitive markets to the detriment of our nation, is a betrayal of the men and women who’ve fought and died for American ideals.

After the American Revolution, corporations remained small institutions chartered at the state level for specific purposes.  By law, they could not make political contributions, could not own stock in other companies, were required to serve the public interest, and could only exist for a limited time.  And owners were responsible for losses and crimes committed by the corporation.

Initially, government protected individual rights and competitive markets by limiting the power of corporations.  But Robber barons like John D. Rockefeller led efforts to change laws requiring corporate owners to serve the public interest and be liable for losses and crimes.

The American economy grew rapidly during the first 100 years and soon monopolies like Rockefeller’s Standard Oil began to threaten competitive markets.  Many corporations formed trusts that controlled market prices and destroyed competition.  Farmers and small businessmen demanded government protection from monopolies and trusts.

The Sherman Antitrust Act, fulfilling one of President Harrison’s campaign pledges, outlawed trusts or any other monopolies that hindered trade.  Fast forward to 2014, and the U.S. economy is again being controlled by government backed monopolies, a.k.a. Too Big To Fail (TBTF) banks.  The Congressional Budget Office says it will cost taxpayers 8.6 TRILLION to prop up failing banks.

The fourteenth amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside…”. The intent of this language is to confer citizenship on individuals, not businesses.

Even though businesses are made up of individual citizens, businesses did not have legal status as citizens until the late 1800’s.  That’s when Rockefeller and others filed law suits claiming their organizations were “persons” under the law.  The courts recognized their businesses as corporate citizens entitled to core Constitutional rights.  But if the framers of the Constitution considered political and business organizations persons under the law, why did Rockefeller and others have to sue states to change the law?

Most people have heard of the Supreme Court decision involving Citizens United.  Citizens United is a political action committee (superpac).  They argued that their campaign donations equate to free speech protected by the first amendment, so they should be allowed to buy elected officials with unlimited campaign contributions.  The Court ruled in their favor, but this violates the Spirit of our Constitution and Bill of Rights, which were created to protect the unalienable rights of individual citizens, not lobbying groups like Citizens United.

One objective of this website is to reestablish  the definition of citizenship as intended by America’s founders, i.e., only individual human beings are endowed by God with certain unalienable rights.

Some say corporate citizenship is justified because corporations are made up of individuals.  But union and corporate leaders making decisions about campaign contributions, do not necessarily reflect the intentions of individual members and employees.  And if unions and corporations were stripped of all Constitutional rights, individual members and employees would retain all their Constitutional rights.  In fact, their rights would be enhanced because they would not be competing with organizations that may not share their political views, and may not even be loyal to the United States.

Corporations, owned by foreign governments, have increasing influence over U.S. elections.  Thanks to the Citizens United decision, China’s communist Party can influence U.S. legislation.

The U.S. is not a democracy, but our legislative bodies makes decisions based on majority rule, so the U.S. is a democratic Republic.  Unfortunately, the most powerful minority in America has usurped majority rule.  This minority is made up of foreign and domestic multinational corporations, which by definition are not loyal to any country.  In fact, they have a fiduciary obligation to shareholders that prohibits loyalty to any particular nation.  And yet, they’ve been given core constitutional rights that give them a controlling interest in the political process.  It’s the Golden Rule: He who has the gold rules.  The result is socialism trending toward fascism.

Free trade agreements designed by multinationals are selling America off to Communist China.  A recent example is America’s largest pork processor, Smithfield Foods, which was sold to a Chinese State owned company.  Most recently, the Chicago Stock Exchange was sold to the Chinese group Chongqing Casin.  But the exchange’s CEO, John Kerin, said he doesn’t know who owns Chongqing Casin, and the Chinese government may be a stakeholder, as it is in most large Chinese businesses.

As the US and China work out a bilateral investment treaty enabling more Chinese state-owned enterprises to purchase American companies, the acquisition of Smithfield Foods serves as a preview of what could eventually be the norm.

The corrupting influence of corporate money on legislation is demonstrated by Obama’s finance reform bill, Dodd-Frank.  It was supposed to eliminate future bailouts of Too Big To Fail banks.  But in true Orwellian fashion, it did just the opposite.  Congressman Brad Sherman said it gives Obama authority to spend Trillions on future Wall Street bailouts, without Congressional approval.  This is accomplished by Dodd-Frank’s Resolution Authority, which institutionalizes TARP and provides Wall Street with a blank check.  F.Y.I., most of the original 700 billion TARP bailout went to foreign banks.

Politicians say banks and AIG paid back bailout money and taxpayers made a profit.  Technically it’s true, but they’re getting near zero percent money from the Fed, so in reality, bailout money was paid back with taxpayer money.  And the Fed’s QE3 is buying 40 Billion per month of toxic mortgage backed securities from Wall Street banks, so the bailout continues.

April 22, 2010, Rush Limbaugh cited an Investors Business Daily article saying “despite the commitment of nearly 20 Trillion in taxpayer funds to prevent another crisis, lending has stalled or shrunk”.  Between the Federal Reserve and Federal government, 20 Trillion taxpayer dollars are propping up the stock market.  That’s why it has nearly tripled in value since the 2008 crash, meanwhile, growth of the U.S. domestic economy is stagnant.

So why isn’t the U.S. taxpayer’s investment producing domestic growth?  While on CNBC, billionaire leftist George Soros said EU and US banks are the largest supplier of credit to emerging markets.  China is the largest emerging market, so bailed out US banks are financing communism while the U.S. economy is starved of capital.  The Wall Street Journal article “China’s Superior Economic Model”, demonstrates that many US leaders favor China’s totalitarian economic model.

The absolute numbers for big foreign banking systems’ exposure to China are as follows:

In spite of the 20 Trillion dollar commitment to prop up banks and the stock market, many say the US government’s unfair treatment of big business is driving investment to emerging markets.  I guess they think bankrupting the U.S. government to subsidize socialist banks and corporations isn’t enough, we need to cut their taxes as well.

But Republican tax guru Grover Norquist said, “corporations don’t pay taxes, they collect them from you and me…”.  Grover says corporations pass tax liabilities onto consumers by raising the price of their products.  He doesn’t mention that small businesses, which may be corporations, bear the full cost of regulation and taxation because they have limited ability to shift costs to consumers.

Simon Johnson is a former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund.  He’s currently a member of the Congressional Budget Office council of advisors and professor of entrepreneurship at MIT.   In a Senate Budget Committee hearing, he cited JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon and former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who say they expect another financial crisis in 3 to 7 years.

Based on their prediction, Johnson said Too Big To Fail banks represent a short term budget liability equal to 40% of GDP (5.6 Trillion), and CBO rules require this be scored in the budget.   Ranking Republican Judd Gregg replied “We don’t score a lot of things around here.”  In other words, they’re cooking the government’s books.

During a presentation on his book “13 Bankers”, Johnson said the few hundred people running the six largest banks have “captured the state” and have power to “extort” money from government.   Rep. Sherman said members of Congress were told the U.S. would be placed under martial law if TARP wasn’t passed.  Sounds like extortion to me.

During debate over TARP, Rep. Marcy Kaptur said “high financial crimes have been committed, these criminals have so much political power, they can shut down the normal legislative process of the highest law making body in this land.”   Wall Street tyrants and their bipartisan cronies have eliminated a core Constitutional principle, i.e., no taxation without representation.

The 2014 Federal budget is a prime example of taxation without representation.  The following text and next paragraph are excerpts from a USA TODAY article:  The nearly 1,600-page spending bill includes all 12 of the individual annual spending bills packaged into a $1.012 trillion “omnibus” spending bill.  The bill will have gone from unveiling to law in just six days, while the normal appropriations process is structured to take months and allow for more lawmaker input.

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., holding up the thick bill on the House floor, criticized the House for voting on a bill “that nobody has read.”  McGovern cited a concern held by lawmakers in both parties that the details of the omnibus are likely to trickle out after the bill has become law.  “I’m willing to bet in a week or so we’re going to read an article about something being in the bill that nobody knew about,”.  Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, characterized the bill as a “monstrosity.”  She said “while Americans suffer the consequences of Obamacare, Congress is trying to rush through another massive bill before reading it.”

If representatives aren’t reading spending bills, they’re not representing the interests of their constituents, i.e., taxation without representation.  American citizens are being subjected to tyrannical conditions similar to the pre-revolutionary colonies.   King George III had given the British East India Company a monopoly on the tea trade to save it from bankruptcy.  Taxes were used to extract wealth from the colonies and grow other parts of the British empire.

Now, the US government and it’s corporate partners are extracting wealth from America and subsidizing China’s totalitarian regime.  Multinational corporations and unions prefer the centrally planned, communist economic model.  I consider this treason.  Click here for a brief history of corporations in the United States.

When enough citizens are empowered with the truth, it will be possible to restore representative government.  This was true when our nation was founded.  Without publications like “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine and others, our founders would not have had the groundswell of support  necessary for revolution.  The first step toward liberty is informing the public.  Knowledge is power.

For more info and solutions, check the posts on globalization and Fast and Furious.  Another interesting source is the book Godonomics, which illustrates the Biblical principles behind private property rights and market economies based on moral principles.