TheSunNews.com wrote:
Sunday, Jul. 12, 2009
Protesters vent anger at lawmakers' free spending
By Aliana Ramos -
[email protected]
Tired of watching lawmakers' seemingly endless spending, Billie and Jim Gunn of Murrells Inlet proudly stood with their protest signs at Grand Park Saturday.
"Tax and spend not the way to go! Tell Congress stop it!" Jim Gunn's sign read.
More than 300 people braved the heat and sun to listen to speakers at the second Myrtle Beach Tea Party and protest against more government spending, health care reform, taxation caps, school choice and illegal immigration.
A large crowd gathered on the grass across from Market Common for the Tea Party rally, Saturday afternoon.
"We would much rather be at home, but we very much feel that silence means consent," said Billie Gunn, toting a FairTax.org sign.
The concept was born out of a cable news commentator's call for a tea party to protest the financial-sector stimulus grants and inspired by the tax-resisting 1773 Boston Tea Party. Participants built TEA into an acronym for "Taxed Enough Already," emblazoned on hats and signs to demonstrate their irritation.
"I am here because I have an objection to outrageous government spending," Jim Gunn said. "Our leaders have put our country deeply in debt. ... This is getting out of control, and it is going to hurt our children and our children's children."
The public debt in the U.S. has grown from $5.6 trillion in June 2000 to $11.5 trillion in June of this year. Ara Adams, a speaker at Saturday's event, focused on school choice and education spending. South Carolina spent billions last year on education, she said. "I don't think money is the problem," said Adams, regional director for Conservatives in Action. "We lose one out of every two children; we are at a 50 percent graduation rate. We need to remind our legislators that they work for the people. The people don't work for them."
A study released by Education Week in June found the state has a 66.3 percent graduation rate. Adams pushed for school choice vouchers to allow parents to get tax credits to take their children to another school out of their attendance zones, or private schools.
The Myrtle Beach Tea Party, a grass-roots group of volunteers, was also collecting signatures at Saturday's event for a protest march in Washington Sept. 11-12. For more information visit
https://www.mbteaparty.org. About 60 to 90 people had signed up as of about 6 p.m., said volunteer Janet Spencer, of North Myrtle Beach. She got involved after last year's elections. "I was sensing our government was changing," Spencer said.