Raskin, also a senior fellow at People For the American Way, writes in "Corporate Infusion: What the Tea Party's Really Serving America," that the "Tea Party movement dresses up its agenda in populist, constitutional and libertarian rhetoric but these gestures are almost always in service of a conservative corporate agenda."
A century ago, Raskin notes, populists fought "against the ‘coercive potential of the emerging corporate state,' in the words of historian Lawrence Goodwyn (Democratic Promise, 1976). They fought hard for the Constitution to be
a charter of democratic rights, freedoms and powers that could enable the people to achieve collective social progress."
Moreover, Raskin notes the "striking historical irony" of the movement's use of the Tea Party moniker.
Raskin writes:
The original Boston Tea Party was a mass popular movement against the special favors and subsidies that the British parliament conferred upon the East India Company, a rapacious corporation that cultivated cozy relations with politicians and an official monopoly on trade with the Far East. When the managers of the East India Company found themselves on the verge of bankruptcy because of their wild and predatory behavior, the Parliament bailed them out by passing the Tea Act of 1773, which exempted the company from having to pay any and all of the taxes that England imposed on colonial merchants, thus essentially extending the company's monopolistic favor to North America.
This act of corporate welfare and favoritism on behalf of a corporate giant with no connection to the towns and farms of the local communities --not unlike the sweetheart deals and bail-outs regularly cooked up in our time for major corporations-harmed local merchants and was an assault on fair trade in the colonies . It aroused an enormous public fury. Opposition to the bloated subsidies for the East India Company exploded in a spectacular outbreak of anti-British and anti-corporate civil disobedience on December 16, 1773 when patriots disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded three of the company's ships and poured the ample contents of the tea chests into Boston Harbor. This was the Boston Tea Party.
Today's 'Tea Party' movement arises in a moment of far greater corporate misfeasance and political corruption. However, it remains curiously silent on even the most shocking corporate crimes and depredations. These misdeeds have been made possible by deregulation, weak oversight, cozy relationships among government officials and lobbyists and executives, and the capturing of regulatory agencies by the regulated industries. A Tea Party that lived up to its honorable name today would have spent the 2010 election demanding that the government bring to justice the large corporations that caused far more harm to Americans over the last decade than the East India Company ever did.
United v. Federal Election Commission, holding that corporations have the same constitutional rights aa individuals to spend money to influence elections, has focused a national spotlight on the rulings of the Roberts Court in cases involving the interests of big business and led to charges that the conservative majority on the Roberts Court is being ‘activist' in favoring corporate interests.