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July 4, 2009

Discontent brews at 'tea party'

Hundreds gather for second Joplin event

By Derek Spellman

dspellman@joplinglobe.com

Foes of bloated government and the Obama administration’s policies on energy, health care and spending staged a rally Saturday in Joplin.

Huddled under umbrellas and a Landreth Park shelter, several hundred people attended the area’s second “tea party” in three months. The demonstration coincided with similar ones across the country on the nation’s birthday.

Invoking the legacy of the Founding Fathers, speakers inveighed against government intervention in the banking and auto industries, widening deficits and growing federal power.

Some exhorted supporters to contact their elected officials and voice opposition to Democratic legislation on health care and energy. Some called for a resurgence of states’ rights.

“I believe we have a government that is out of control and ignoring the wishes of the people,” said state Rep. Jim Guest, R-King City.

Guest sponsored a resolution that purportedly reclaims Missouri’s sovereignty under the U.S. Constitution’s 10th Amendment and would have told the federal government to “cease and desist” all mandates “beyond the scope of ... constitutionally delegated powers.” The resolution, which did not detail the federal mandates that might be at issue, passed in the House but stalled in a Senate committee.

“Our 10th Amendment protection is slowly slipping away,” Guest told the crowd Saturday, saying he would raise the resolution again next year and that it would likely enjoy more Senate support the second time around.

Chris Yaudas, a Joplin woman who previously worked for a refining company for almost 30 years, criticized the greenhouse-gas emissions bill that narrowly passed in the House last month.

Yaudas said the bill, touted by supporters as a way to create “green” jobs and wean the country off foreign oil, is an energy tax in disguise that will lead to increases in energy costs, federal bureaucracy and government regulation.

“Call it what you want, the bill is an energy tax,” Yaudas said.

Mark Kinsley, of KZRG-AM radio, criticized the proposed Senate bill that would include the creation of a public health-insurance plan and carry a $1 trillion price tag.

John Putnam, one of the event organizers and chairman of the Jasper County Republican Central Committee, called for the people to “take back both political parties, Republican and Democrat.”

Scores of people — some carrying hand-made signs with messages like “Give Us Liberty, Not Debt” and “We the People Want Capitalism!” — crowded into the park shelter despite the rain to hear speeches that sometimes accused the Obama administration of eroding personal freedom and concentrating too much power in the federal government.

Local Democrats told the Globe in phone interviews that the Obama administration’s critics only voice opposition without offering any solutions. They also rejected claims that the administration’s policies were poising the country for socialism.

“They are a group of all talk,” said Jim Hight, president of the Newton County Democrats Club and treasurer of the Newton County Democrat Central Committee. “They criticize, but they offer no alternative.”

Hight said the Republican counter proposals for health-care reform, for example, essentially leave the status quo intact.

He acknowledged a number of the Obama administration’s proposals require a lot of money to be spent, but he said the administration now has to correct a lot of problems festering for the last eight years under former President George W. Bush.

“They just need to step back and look at the past eight years,” Hight said. “They’ll see that’s where the problems began.”

Doug Brooks, a Joplin psychologist who is a member of the Democratic National Committee, also dismissed claims that the Obama administration was setting up the country for socialism.

“We are not on the path to socialism,” Brooks said. “That’s a thing they often say to scare folks.”

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