December 16, 2022 is the 249th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, where the Sons of Liberty threw 46 tons of British tea into Boston Harbor.

This critical moment in our nation’s history began as a protest against corporate welfare. Help keep that original American spirit alive by supporting the CEA’s work to fight back against the modern equivalent of King George’s economic madness.

American children learn in school that the colonists were mad about the Tea Act’s new taxes on tea. That’s not quite true. In fact, tea taxes had been in place for many years. What the Tea Act did do was give the giant, politically connected British East India Company unique tax breaks on the tea it sold in the American colonies:

It was the “licenses to the East India Company to export tea duty-free” that infuriated the colonists. In other words, they weren’t mad because King George had imposed new taxes on them; rather, they were furious that the biggest company in the world at the time was getting a special deal that would put even untaxed tea smugglers like John Hancock out of business.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Two and a half centuries later, government officials in America’s states and cities regularly hand out tax breaks and other special deals that make King George III look sane by comparison.

But here at the Center for Economic Accountability, we keep that spirit of the Sons of Liberty alive by continuing the fight against wasteful government corporate subsidy deals across the country. Founded in 2018, the CEA is the only free-market organization devoted solely to this issue, and we’re needed more than ever before: As we were the first to warn earlier this year, 2022 ended up being the worst year in American history for giant corporate welfare subsidies.

Our nation’s communities can’t afford for 2023 to be more of the same. So, just like John Hancock, Sam Adams, Paul Revere and the other Sons of Liberty picked a fight with the most powerful government and the most powerful company in the world that night in Boston, the Center for Economic Accountability is taking on the combined might of modern-day Big Business and Big Government in America.

They couldn’t do it alone — and neither can we.

Please click here to make a tax-deductible donation to support the Center for Economic Accountability’s nonpartisan mission to “advance economic opportunity for all by promoting transparency, accountability and free-market-based reform of state and local economic development initiatives across America.”

Your support will help us continue our fight to end wasteful and ineffective corporate handouts, roll back the power of politicians and bureaucrats to micro-manage local economies and put an end to billion-dollar backroom deals.

We don’t have another 250 years to solve this problem.

Please consider making a donation today.

THE CENTER FOR ECONOMIC ACCOUNTABILITY IS A MICHIGAN NONPROFIT CORPORATION (EIN 83-3122559), EXEMPT FROM FEDERAL INCOME TAX UNDER SECTION 501(C)(3) OF THE INTERNAL REVENUE CODE AND CLASSIFIED AS A PUBLIC CHARITY UNDER SECTION 170(B)(1)(A)(VI). MORE INFORMATION, INCLUDING OFFICIAL COPIES OF OUR TAX FORMS, IS AVAILABLE FROM THE IRS HERE.