Paul supporters hold Tea Party re-enactment in Boston

Paul supporters hold Tea Party re-enactment in Boston (Boston Herald:

The events in Boston Sunday marked the 234th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, when colonists boarded a British ship and dumped more than 300 chests of tea overboard to protest tea taxes.

Paul, a libertarian, trails in the polls but has attracted an enthusiastic cadre of supporters. He is the only GOP candidate to call for a prompt troop withdrawal from Iraq.

On Tea Party Anniversary, Ron Paul Raises Millions (Washington Post by Jose Antonio Vargas)

Rep. Ron Paul, whose rock star status on the Internet has singlehandedly fueled his campaign, is poised to break another online fundraising record.

His own.

Some might ask why re-enact the Boston Tea Party?! There isn’t a problem with Tea today…well I beg to differ! Have you priced tea these days?! Or Coffee for that matter!?!! Or anything else in the grocery store!?! And what about the price of fuel at the pump? OPEC price setting of pre-refined barrels of crude is only the first step in determining the cost of fuel at the pump.

But it’s not about the “Tea” — the “Tea incident” was simply the straw that broke the camel’s back.

From EyeWitnessToHistory.com:

Victory in the French and Indian War was costly for the British. At the war’s conclusion in 1763, King George III and his government looked to taxing the American colonies as a way of recouping their war costs. They were also looking for ways to reestablish control over the colonial governments that had become increasingly independent while the Crown was distracted by the war. Royal ineptitude compounded the problem. A series of actions including the Stamp Act (1765), the Townsend Acts (1767) and the Boston Massacre (1770) agitated the colonists, straining relations with the mother country. But it was the Crown’s attempt to tax tea that spurred the colonists to action and laid the groundwork for the American Revolution.

The colonies refused to pay the levies required by the Townsend Acts claiming they had no obligation to pay taxes imposed by a Parliament in which they had no representation. In response, Parliament retracted the taxes with the exception of a duty on tea – a demonstration of Parliament’s ability and right to tax the colonies. In May of 1773 Parliament concocted a clever plan. They gave the struggling East India Company a monopoly on the importation of tea to America. Additionally, Parliament reduced the duty the colonies would have to pay for the imported tea. The Americans would now get their tea at a cheaper price than ever before. However, if the colonies paid the duty tax on the imported tea they would be acknowledging Parliament’s right to tax them. Tea was a staple of colonial life – it was assumed that the colonists would rather pay the tax than deny themselves the pleasure of a cup of tea.

The colonists were not fooled by Parliament’s ploy. When the East India Company sent shipments of tea to Philadelphia and New York the ships were not allowed to land. In Charleston the tea-laden ships were permitted to dock but their cargo was consigned to a warehouse where it remained for three years until it was sold by patriots in order to help finance the revolution.

Amazing how history has a way of repeating itself …

BOLD emphasis mine. More information on the Boston Tea Party here (wikipedia.org).

Ron Paul, Presidential Candidate for 2008 raised $6M in 24 HOURS to help fund his bid for the Presidency in 2008 and show the world that he is a legitimate candidate despite the mass media’s treating of his Campaign for the Presidency in 2008 like doesn’t exist and therefore can’t report anything — with a few recent and bold exceptions of late!

However, as many have painfully been aware, this is not the first time that the mass media has treated an important issue as if it didn’t exist.

In the comment section of a nice article in the NYT article entitled Reinventing the Revolution, I thought this comment was rather interesting:

December 16th, 2007 9:08 pm

Here is what impresses me about the guy’s fundraising:
- More than 111,000 donors so far this quarter.
- More than 45,000 total donors today.
- Around 20,000 new donors today.

You can find more information @ ronpaulgraphs com.

The point is that there is a very wide support base here that is willing to penny up. It’s hard to say that anyone with more than 110,000 donors this quarter is only appealing to a fringe few. The fact that he’s pulled in more than 20,000 new donors today alone says that this movement is growing at a rapid pace.

These people can and will turn out to vote in the primaries. No other campaign has acquired such a diehard following. I predict that Paul will finish 2nd in both Iowa and New Hampshire because of the growing numbers and how dedicated his supporters are.

— Posted by John D’Agosta

And another interesting article in USAToday, by Kenneth P. Vogel, Politico.com. He writes,

Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, raised an astounding $6 million and change Sunday, his campaign said, almost certainly guaranteeing he’ll outraise his rivals for the Republican nomination in the fourth quarter and likely will be able to fund a presence in many of the states that vote Feb. 5.

Paul’s campaign spokesman late Sunday announced the campaign had eclipsed the $5.7 million that John Kerry raised the day after he locked up the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination – arguably the largest single-day fundraising haul in U.S. political history.

A couple sites to check out:

RonPaulGraphs.com
DailyPaul.com
Official Ron Paul Presidential Election Campaign 2008

Lots more out there of course, but these are a great start. I got a kick out of today’s headline at DailyPaul.com: “The Six Million Dollar Man – In One Day!!” while at the same time showing what we all know about the mass media’s coverage, “Hillary on ALL 3 NETWORKS at the same time. No Tea Party coverage yet.”

Interesting sense of humor if nothing else.

Sometimes, maybe, it just takes some folks getting up in arms about how things are going or not going to finally make some sort of difference, eh?

Ron Paul is one candidate that truly believes in the Constitution and the founding fathers’ ‘non-interventionist’ stance in the foreign arena (which does NOT mean isolationism) — something that so many candidates have forgotten in recent years since FDR. If you read anything Ron Paul has ever written, he does not deviate from that fact. His votes and discussions in Congress and in his home State of Texas back up his total belief in the Constitution and that we should be governed by The Constitution — not what those in the Washington Beltway have to say — at least when it conflicts with the Constitution.

From the Digital Journal’s posting: Op-Ed: A Founding Foreign Policy Posted Dec 11, 2007 by TheRationalAnarchist:

Noninterventionism was the policy of many of the founding fathers of the United States and it is a policy that should be readopted. Doing so will decrease the tax burden on all citizens and increase national security.

In his first inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson gave future generations strict counsel: “Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none… These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation… They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civil instruction, the touchstone by which we try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.” This speech, in its entirety, is one that every American should read; his advice was sound, especially regarding foreign policy. Many of the problems that America faces around the world today are a direct result of what Jefferson warned against: entangling alliances.

More in the article.