Tea Party Protestors Decry Government Spending Policies
Earl Neikirk/Bristol Herald Courier
A crowd gathers to listen to speakers at Saturday’s “Tea Party” on the steps of the Bristol Virginia Courthouse.
BRISTOL, Va. – On the steps of the courthouse Saturday, a small group rallied for political change.
Held during the city’s Fourth of July celebration, it was the latest local “Tea Party” protest – a continuation of the April 15 tax-day protests staged across the nation.
“We’re here all together because we are tired of out-of-control government,” said Brian Rieck, organizer of the event. “We do not want to be a socialist nation.
They set up a republic for us, and we want to continue to be a republic.”
Rally organizers also walked and rode floats down State Street in Bristol’s holiday parade. One float featured people tearing up paper and a sign reading, “They’re trashing our constitution,” while another warned: “You can’t borrow your way out of debt” and “Attn: Washington you have run out of money.”
Brandi Whiteaker, of Bristol, Tenn., wore a jail uniform with “debt slave” written on the back; she pushed her grandson Nathan in a stroller with a sign that read, “I owe how much! But I’m only 2 years old.”
“We are here because it’s time for people to start standing up,” Whiteaker said.
More than 1,300 registered tea parties were scheduled for Saturday across the country, Rieck said. Chief among the mission is to protest a government that is too big and spends too much.
The Bristol rally, which began after the parade and lasted more than 90 minutes, began with about 80 people in attendance. The crowd quickly diminished, however, as revelers drifted to the other holiday entertainment downtown, including a program at the park, a car show nearby and festivities at the train station.
Speakers at the rally addressed the issues of hate-crime legislation, health care reform and opposition to the separation of church and state. Among the grievances aired on the courthouse steps, read aloud by Rieck but also distributed to the crowd in a printed flyer:
* “wanton and reckless spending, far exceeding the capacity of the people to reasonably provide and without their consent;”
* “creating discord and upset among the people due to invented and exaggerated class differences to justify confiscation and redistribution of wealth;”
* “appointing officers known as czars, accountable to no one except our president;”
* “using federal grants and aid to create a dependent and slothful nation so that the many have become the parasites on the few.”
A larger tea party event, featuring local Republican politicians, is scheduled for Monday at Sugar Hollow Park, with a bring-your-own picnic beginning at 4 p.m. and the program starting at 6 p.m.
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Reader Reactions
If my memory serves me correctly, did not Todd Foster, Editor of this paper, chastise a month or so back, users of the “tea bagging” term with regards to the issue of tax protesters? Then now of all places, this term shows up in the Bristol Herald-Courier. That just about convinces me that the term was used by cable TV anchors and now local media to sensationalize this issue. People have a right to protest the actions of their governement, but not to be subjected to ridicule by the media for it. You are walking a very thin line by taking a stand on the news instead of just reporting it.
Tea Bagging! The author of this headline needs to be reprimanded! Tea bagging is a vile, disgusting sexual act. Google it and find out what it actually is! Go to Google Images and look it up. Trust me, you will not want your children to see such pictures!! The author of the article seemed to be biased against the Tea Partiers, but the article is pretty much what you can expect nowadays… But the headline is over the top! Where is the outrage?
Perhaps a more appropriately worded title of this article would have been in order…...............
“The crowd quickly diminished, however, as revelers drifted to the other holiday entertainment downtown”
Looks like most want to celebrate what is good in America on our freedom day. The so called tea party using distorted facts is finding that fewer are naive enough to be suckered in by those folks who are sour-grapes over the last election.
Good job Tea Partiers!
Did you ever wonder where the money for things like the subversion of the world’s immigration laws may come from? Also, recently I’m seeing an ad campaign, using money we don’t have, to sell us on a new health plan.
It seems to me as long as we allow people to print up fiat money there will be no place in the world where freedom can flourish.
If the Globalist oppose your efforts, paid for with real hard earned money, all they have to do is fire up the presses and shovel the money to any group that will oppose you.
Not only that but it seems they do it in such a way that the money to achieve THEIR goals is borrowed from them. Then we pay interest to a group outside of our country, like the Federal Reserve, on the creation and borrowing of OUR OWN money.
IN ESSENCE THEY BEAT US WITH OUR OWN STICK!
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