Thread: AZ: Tea party crowd protests bailouts, health reform,immigra

Tea party crowd protests bailouts, health reform,immigration

by Matthew Benson - Nov. 11, 2009 05:41 PM
The Arizona Republic

About 200 people gathered Wednesday on the state Capitol lawn to protest a government they believe has overspent, over-regulated and generally overstepped its bounds.

Bank bailouts, health-care reform and illegal immigration were among the targets of the crowd that assembled for the United We Stand Tea Party.

Phoenix resident Howard Kurr noted the hundreds of billions of dollars the federal government has spent in the last year to prop up financial institutions.

"It hasn't trickled down to any people," said Kurr, 72. "The status quo is totally stacked against regular people. I just feel so much is going in the wrong direction."

A string of speakers addressed the crowd, including several elected officials who may be on the ballot in 2010. Notable among them: state schools chief Tom Horne, who is weighing a run for Arizona attorney general, as well as Paradise Valley Mayor Vernon Parker and state Treasurer Dean Martin, each considering campaigns for governor.

The tea party was billed as non-partisan but clearly had an anti-Democratic Congress, anti-President Barack Obama tilt. Several attendees spoke of a general sense that their country as they've known it is slipping away.

"Government has too much control over the American people," said Phoenix resident Michelle Tremblay, 45, a veteran of the U.S. Navy. "Our country is just being torn apart."

The Capitol tea party was one of a series organized in the last year in honor of the original, Revolutionary War-era tea party. As such, several attendees Wednesday also spoke in terms of public revolt.

"There's about to be a revolution," Tremblay declared.

Kurr said he'd like to believe that public sentiment and innocuous events like Wednesday's are all that's needed to turn the country away from its current path. He, too, sounded an ominous note.

"I hope it can be done totally peacefully," he said. "I have my doubts."

www.azcentral.com

"It hasn't trickled down to any people," said Kurr, 72. "The status quo is totally stacked against regular people. I just feel so much is going in the wrong direction."

A very wise old man.