Back in 1773, the British India Tea Company complained that they were suffering economic hardship so the British government passed the Tea Act of 1773, letting them off the hook for paying taxes. The colonists of New England were furious that the government had given the company unfair advantage over smaller and local competitors. So the boycotted, eventually staging the historic Boston Tea Party on this very spot, an act that demonstrated they were tired of a governmentthat favored big business over its own citizens. I say that the situation we citizens face today isn't much different than what our ancestors faced in our country's infancy. In fact, it's much worse.
Do you know that 83% of the government's income comes from people like you and me and only 17% is from corporations? It used to be a 50/50 split. Why so unfair to the average citizen now? Because you and I don't have lobbyists fighting for our rights in Washington the way corporations do. Our politicians have taken so much money from big business for their campaign war chests that they have to listen to their concerns. They'll pay you and I lots of lip service that they care about our needs, but until we fork over the same kind of cash as the corporations do, we're out of luck. As it is now, we go to our jobs every day so we can donate money to bail out the airlines, the banks, and the utilities. Our ancestors at the Tea Party rebelled over a whole lot less than that.
The Boston Tea Party was famous for another reason too – it was one of the earliest efforts where women in this country organized to change public policy. I'm happy to say my running mate, Beth Coleman, embodies the spirit of these brave and resourceful women. I invite all women and men, boys and girls, to work with us in affecting positive change again today. Those colonists went down in history for standing up against a government that valued corporations more than its own people; work with us now to stand up to this corporate-loving government again.