The British Empire Answers the Tea Party of Boston Harbor, 1773

Queen Elizabeth I - The Pelican Portrait

In this portrait of the queen, aged about 41, she is treated almost like a religious icon. Elaborate symbolism and rich detail show off her status and royal qualities... The mother pelican on her brooch is a traditional Christian symbol of Christ's sacrifice. It was believed that the pelican fed her young with her own blood...

Queen Bess Island pelican rookery affected by oil

(June 3, 2010) Today, driven by strong winds and weather, oil impacted the Queen Bess Island Pelican Rookery which resulted in 60 birds, including 41 pelicans being coated with oil...

And so it was precisely on Queen Elizabeth II's 84th birthday, April 21st 2010, 3AM Greenwich Mean Time, that an explosion occurred on British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon...

The Queen was born at 2.40am on 21 April 1926 at 17 Bruton Street in Mayfair, London.

The rig was in the Mississippi Canyon area of the Gulf of Mexico when the blast occurred at 10 p.m. CDT Tuesday (0300 GMT Wednesday).

Subsequently, millions upon millions of gallons of crude oil have been spilled into the Gulf. This then is the British retort to the Boston Tea Party of 1773. 237 years separate these events, yet they both implicate differing forms of corporate welfare. The former was a rejection of the favorable tax policy instituted on behalf of the East India Company, which had been given a monopoly of tea importation to the American colonies...

In an effort to prop up the financially troubled East India Company, Parliament passed the Tea Act, granting it a virtual monopoly over the British tea market and allowing direct sales access to the colonies (colonial merchants were cut out of the loop entirely). As a consequence, East India Company tea cost the least of any available tea, foreign or domestic. Following the retention of the 3 pence Townshend duty on tea in 1770, colonists had generally boycotted British brands, turning instead to contraband Dutch brews. An estimated 90 percent of all tea consumed in the colonies was of the Dutch variety, so patriots could sip cheaply while avoiding the despised revenue duty altogether. Now, even with the Townshend duty added, East India tea remained the least expensive. Because the tax seemed "hidden" in this manner, colonists viewed the Tea Act as an underhanded way to foist the tax, and Parliamentary taxation power, onto the colonies.

In 2010, though not a monopoly, BP is the leading producer of oil and natural gas in the United States and the largest investor in U.S. energy development. As such, BP stood to receive the greatest benefit from the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which gave tax and royalty relief to companies drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, as reported in the L.A.Times article: Oil companies have a rich history of U.S. subsidies.

Moreover, BP stands to recieve corporate welfare as a result of the situation it has created in the Gulf. Hans Bader explains in OpenMarket.org...

President Obama, the biggest recipient of campaign cash from BP, is using BP’s oil spill to push for a global warming bill that is chock full of corporate welfare and environment-destroying ethanol subsidies. And the bill is one crafted by lobbyists for big companies like BP: “For years, BP has lobbied for climate change legislation, until recently running around with the U.S. Climate Action Partnership.”