Pirates vs Government Controlled Business

It is a curious fact that nothing is new and that every major event has a correlating story from history. The art of reading the tea leaves is not just the revelation of a possible true or false prophet, but also an important factor in this essay because in American History, The East India Company is the ultimate example of the merge between government and business. On December 31, 1600, Queen Elizabeth I signed a royal charter giving the Honourable East India Company a 21 year monopoly on trade with the East Indies.

This innocuous beginning in the early days of expanding global trade mutated into one of the most insidious mergers of government power with private business savvy that history has ever recorded. The more the government powers demanded, the more the businessmen demanded--and both powers received in abundance. With the company's success important to practically every royal and Parliament member along with company men and investors, the booty was in danger of being divided into mere piddles.

It was then that the Crown made it perfectly clear as to who actually owned the company. With the East India Act of 1773 the Crown declared that the "acquisition of sovereignty by the subjects of the Crown is on behalf of the Crown and not in its own right." Big government now controlled the East India Company, and because the company traded and owned factories and warehouses worldwide, the Crown now controlled practically the entire globe.

The English taxpayer was then tapped as a source of revenue to continue expanding the company so that its financial return could be as large as men of power and wealth would require. As the Pirates of The Caribbean movies have taught every young person with the ability to follow a plot line, The East India Company had a problem determining whether they were The Law or the Monopolistic Merchant of the Seas. Keira Knightly's character, Elizabeth Swann, realizes this fact and rallies the pirates to fight for freedom on both counts. Pirates were fighting for the right to be...well...pirates.

It was the East India Company and its monopolistic power backed up by the Crown that caused a sort of pirate event in the American colonies--the Boston Tea Party. Private colonial shippers like John Hancock were the target of this corporate/government behemoth. The attempt to restrict colonial harbors to ships and cargo belonging to the East India Company occurred because the company was in dire straits financially. The company needed to make as much money as possible, to pay not only the Crown and its investors but also the large Treasury debt. One of the abusive taxes that so angered the colonists was enacted to repay the English treasury which was being used like a bank to keep the golden goose financially afloat. That, along with the ability to enforce being the only fleet able to enter colonial harbors, pushed the American colonists to the point of war. Entrepreneurs like John Hancock were declared outlaw smugglers--and while a smuggler is not quite the same as a pirate, each would have suffered the same fate.

Therefore it is interesting that once again America finds herself being squeezed by a new business/government merger in this 2008 Presidential Campaign. Each Democratic Party candidate has promised a federal government solution to a declared "broken" Health Care System. This ideal is promulgated insidiously by Democrats through the failing pension funds of Detroit auto manufacturers. A government program, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, was created to supposedly protect pension plans--but unless the bankruptcy-prone corporations are able to put money in the PBGC, the pensions will remain empty. Like the East India Company, the PBGC has attempted to pass on this debt to the American taxpayer, thereby releasing the auto manufacturers or airlines of their financial responsibility. (If not for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner 's (R-Ohio) leadership, taxpayers would already be saddled with this burden.)

The federalization of health care would also release the same corporations of the debt of their agreed benefits programs. Therefore, it should be clearly obvious that whatever program the Democrats are proposing would start out deeply in the red. So their promise that the envisioned program would actually save money is preposterous.

Upon the signing of the Pension Protection Act of 2006, Senator Kennedy (D-MA) said: "This bill says to millions of Americans who fear their pensions will disappear that help is on the way.” He hopes with every fiber of his own trust fund that the holders of the pensions in question will hear his siren's call and not pay attention to the looming shoals beneath the water. The huge debt will not just simply transform into fluid cash.

Senator Clinton (D-NY), in a speech for Detroit's International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said "The creation of a universal health care system is especially important to union workers in the auto industry, who find currently find their jobs in jeopardy." The article continues: "Such workers have been battling with their employers regarding increased health care in an environment with rising retirement and health costs." But unless the average newspaper reader knows why auto workers are having problems with rising retirement and health costs, the assumption will be that everyone's costs are rising because of sinister actions by insurance and retirement fund corporations. And then comes her hard sell to the American taxpayer: "If we don't have a strong manufacturing industry, it won't be long before we don't have a strong economy."

Bill Clinton made a telling speech at the 2007 TED Prize Award: Make a Wish Come True. He was talking about a medical group he was working with to provide medical services in Rwanda. Mr. Clinton is negotiating lower pharmaceutical sales for this group. He talks about working with non-governmental organizations (NGO's) such as the American Heart Association:

"We started a childhood obesity initiative with the Heart Association in America by negotiating industry-wide deals with the soft drink and snack food industry to cutting the caloric and other dangerous content of food going to our children in the schools. We just reorganized the markets. And then it occurred to me that in the whole non-governmental world, somebody needs to be thinking about organizing the world's public goods market."

So much for capitalism and entrepreneurship providing the means to get the desired product to the desirous customer. A new entity, a monarch of the world, will now direct products to their correct place while deciding what is proper food for each of us according to our age and health or activity level.

The former President then rambled into his work in the global warming farce:

"And that is now what we are trying to do in working with these large cities which generate 75% of the world's green house gases to drastically and quickly reduce green house gas emissions in a way that is good economics. And this whole discussion as if it's some sort of economic burden is a mystery to me...

..I think it's a bird's nest on the ground.

Considering the Clintons came to Washington practically penniless, their newfound wealth should raise more than an eyebrow, because every pirate knows that the Pirate Code is really every captain for himself!

And so I warn those drawn in by the Democrat's siren song of a secure future without want or care, with a word from the leader of the first anti-Federalist movement - Thomas Jefferson:

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.