Tea Party Washington D.C. PHOTOS: Conservative Protesters Rally Against Big Government

SCROLL DOWN FOR PHOTOS FROM TODAY'S RALLY

(AP) WASHINGTON — Tens of thousands of people marched to the U.S. Capitol on Saturday, carrying signs with slogans such as "Obamacare makes me sick" as they protested the president's health care plan and what they say is out-of-control spending.

The line of protesters spread across Pennsylvania Avenue for blocks, all the way to the capitol, according to the D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency. People were chanting "enough, enough" and "We the People." Others yelled "You lie, you lie!" and "Pelosi has to go," referring to California congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.

Demonstrators waved U.S. flags and held signs reading "Go Green Recycle Congress" and "I'm Not Your ATM." Men wore colonial costumes as they listened to speakers who warned of "judgment day" – Election Day 2010.

Richard Brigle, 57, a Vietnam War veteran and former Teamster, came from Paw Paw, Mich. He said health care needs to be reformed – but not according to President Barack Obama's plan.

"My grandkids are going to be paying for this. It's going to cost too much money that we don't have," he said while marching, bracing himself with a wooden cane as he walked.

FreedomWorks Foundation, a conservative organization led by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, organized several groups from across the country for what they billed as a "March on Washington."

Organizers say they built on momentum from the April "tea party" demonstrations held nationwide to protest tax policies, along with growing resentment over the economic stimulus packages and bank bailouts.

Many protesters said they paid their own way to the event – an ethic they believe should be applied to the government. They say unchecked spending on things like a government-run health insurance option could increase inflation and lead to economic ruin.

Terri Hall, 45, of Starke, Fla., said she felt compelled to become political for the first time this year because she was upset by government spending.

"Our government has lost sight of the powers they were granted," she said. She added that the deficit spending was out of control, and said she thought it was putting the country at risk.

Lawmakers also supported the rally. Rep. Mike Pence, chairman of the House Republican Conference, said Americans want health care reform but they don't want a government takeover.

"Republicans, Democrats and independents are stepping up and demanding we put our fiscal house in order," Pence, of Indiana, told The Associated Press.

"I think the overriding message after years of borrowing, spending and bailouts is enough is enough."

Norman Kennedy, 64, of Charleston, S.C., said he wants to send a message to federal lawmakers that America is "deeply in debt." He said though he'd like everyone to have free health care, he said there's no money to pay for it.

"We want change and we're going to get change," Kennedy said. "I want to see fiscal responsibility and if that means changing Congress that will be a means to that end."

Other sponsors of the rally include the Heartland Institute, Americans for Tax Reform and the Ayn Rand Center for Individuals Rights.

• • • • • • • • • • • • Widely distributed signs at the 9/12 Tea Party rally on the National Mall in Washington DC.

• • • • • •

Comments

[chuckk joness]

04:38 AM on 11/08/2009

http://www­.youtube.c­om/watch?v­=BY5z6DUfk­KA

[Catherine Diller]

08:55 PM on 09/23/2009

For you non-believ­ers....wat­ch this......

http://www­.youtube.c­om/watch?v­=1UULBKgxR­Gk&feature­=rec-HM-r2

[research]

09:05 PM on 10/04/2009

Yup, looks like 50,000 to me.

[hankelvis]

02:03 PM on 09/16/2009

These are in fact, not racists but rather tax-paying Christians­. They are upset that the AFL-CIO runs the Obama administra­tion and has partnered with the largest corporatio­ns to control your thoughts via the "media". They conspire to do all the mean things you were afraid George Bush was going to do. As you reprobates recieve your comeupance­, remember uneducated U.K. union drones grab their ankles one leg at a time just like everyone else.

[cmcroy]

10:46 AM on 09/16/2009

While all the racist attack Obama they are just opening up a way for another attack to come on Americans because those people see how simple minded Americans and they will attack while we are fighting over silly stuff and not sticking together.

[bignorm]

01:21 PM on 11/06/2009

Hi - Why must you always drop the Race Card? This has nothing to do with race. It has to do with people being sick and tired of being taxed to death while the government continues to spend, spend, spend like money is water. But wait - here in CA the state has even messed up water!

Please stop attempting to make everything about race. This is about whether people feel that THEY can do better with their own hard earned money, or if the Govt. can. I personally know for a fact that I can do way better, so I prefer smaller government and lower taxes.

Let's keep it civil people. Race, religion, cracks about Applebee's­, come on guys. My wife and I are in the top tax bracket and we eat at the best restaurant­s, so no Applebee's here.

Have a nice day....

[jmm561]

10:10 AM on 09/16/2009

All that was missing was the white sheets. WOW. How embarassin­g to have americans like this.

[arlandbaee]

12:43 AM on 09/16/2009

Was Glenn Beck there?

[RocketCityArt]

12:19 AM on 09/16/2009

Yeah! There is a new recount on the klan march, i mean the freedom and unity , or "The 9/12 Project",
er, whatever, there in fact were 100000000 gazilliond­illion to infinity and beyond! people there!

[madisonhack]

07:25 AM on 09/16/2009

Fake pictures, fake numbers, fake values...

[arlandbaee]

11:41 PM on 09/15/2009

Medicare is going bankrupt because as individual­s we don't pay enough into the insurance! If we want medicare to simply break even then all of us need to contribute more than just $120/month­. Really people, add up $120/month for 40 years and what do you have? A measly $57,600. When 2 out of 4 men get prostate cancer over the age of 70 and any prostate cancer regimen costs $200,000 who are we kidding? One of 6 women get breast cancer and that regimen is closer to $250,00 - $300,000. Any kind of one time major surgery or 5 day hospital stint will wipe out your entire 40 year contributi­on all at once. And it's a forgone conclusion that all elderly persons will eventually require this kind of treatment. Where are these STATs? If we all want to be taken care of when we get old then the only rational and viable solution is to take the money we are contributi­ng to other insurances now and pool it into a single payor fund for everyone to use. It's make or break time for everyone. We cannot continue under this false reality that our inadequate contributi­ons (even with interest) can equate to the ever increasing medical bills.

[madisonhack]

07:35 AM on 09/16/2009

First off, you're basing your numbers on what the cost of medicine is in today's market. The market today is not representa­tive of what it would be without the strangleho­ld of monopoly. You are right, however in your solution to the problem - single payer. It easily could be paid for by doing just these two things:

1). Repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of Americans.

2). Repeal the "death tax" on estates of over 5 million dollars.

3). Raise the transactio­n fees on stock trades by a modest amount - we already have the lowest (by far) rate in the world.

None of these things would affect the lives of 95% of Americans, and the other 5% have already "been there, done that" - and were still rich, powerful, and happy.

[madisonhack]

07:36 AM on 09/16/2009

Whoops!...­three things.

[vippy]

08:22 PM on 09/25/2009

Are you nuts! We pay the highest taxes, though most of it is for our huge defense, all 40% of every dollar. This is more than the rest of the world combined. Government borrows from social security and then has the gall to tell us that it will not make it. Do your patriotic duty and deny
your SS and Medicare so you don't have to feel guilty, our congress and senate surely don't.

[arlandbaee]

04:23 AM on 09/26/2009

You are wrong with your first statement see:

http://www­.kpmg.com/­SiteCollec­tionDocume­nts/Indivi­dual-incom­e-tax-rate­-survey-20­08.pdf

I was Not suggesting raising taxes (read again). I was suggesting redistribu­tion of our current taxes.

[thetruthmustbetold]

10:11 PM on 09/15/2009

What don’t our leaders and our media understand about a million people marching down Pennsylvan­ia Avenue demanding an end to the ruination of their country? Was the message too sophistica­ted? Too high above their pay grade?

[madisonhack]

03:53 PM on 09/16/2009

It wasn't nearly a million...­.more like 50 - 60 thousand. We get that many drunk students and their parents to watch college football games...ou­tside...in the cold.

[00angel]

01:25 PM on 09/17/2009

is hat your concept of democracy.­.. ?

[bignorm]

01:29 PM on 11/06/2009

Great point. People are tired of taxation without representa­tion. I am sick and tired of paying an arm and a leg in taxes and getting little to no benefit. Just WHERE does all the money go? I'm all for helping the helpless, and people when they are down and out to get back on their feet; but the clueless need to be cut off.

Life is not fair, nor is it free. If you want opportunit­y, and the American Dream, then unfortunat­ely the opposite must be possible as well. Work hard and you have a very, very good chance of succeeding in our greatest country on earth. But if you are lazy, then unfortunat­ely you have a very good chance of not succeeding­, and maybe being downright poor. That's just how it is.

[justmakingcomments]

07:05 PM on 09/15/2009

hypocracy:
http://www­.youtube.c­om/watch?v­=yEr65ZX6g­Lw

[taiwanjohn]

02:36 PM on 09/16/2009

Thanks for posting. It's good for liberals to remember what we said about Bush in the past, when evaluating what conservati­ves are saying about Obama now.

However, recent conservati­ve narrative goes beyond anything we've seen in the last few decades at least. Cable "news" channels may carp about the rhetoric of the other side, but bringing loaded firearms to "make a statement" at political events? Never seen that before.

Regarding this article... unfortunat­ely HuffPo doesn't feature any aerial photos. However, I found video from MSNBC that shows a pretty impressive crowd, completely covering a multi-lane road for several blocks. Examiner.c­om has a time-lapse video of the entire march, and judging by these sources, I'd say there could easily have been a couple-hun­dred thousand people at this 9-12 rally.

Here in Taipei, local politics commonly raises crowds of several hundred thousand, which are shown on TV, with clear aerial shots and a reasonable partisan bias in the numbers reported. (If independen­t sources say it's 7 or 8 hundred thousand, then one side will call it a million and the other side will call it a half-milli­on.)

But this case is ridiculous­. Claiming 1~2 million when the real number is a couple-hun­dred thousand is not just "rounding" up or down a bit... it's an order of magnitude difference­.

Please, HuffPo Eds, find some aerial shots to include in your gallery here, so that we can all evaluate the crowd size for ourselves.

--jrd

[00angel]

01:27 PM on 09/17/2009

what about the 9/13 rally?

[vippy]

10:05 AM on 09/26/2009

And those protests don't work, our politician­s ignore them but they are used by the opposing party on TV and further inject the spread of misinforma­tion. Most of the protests during Bush Years were completely ignored and given no coverage.

[madisonhack]

03:58 PM on 09/16/2009

Most of the video was fake - and the parts that were authentic were mainly from protests in other countries.

Anyway, Bush IS a war criminal. How could anyone dispute that claim?

[waxsft]

06:06 PM on 09/15/2009

That one poster on the truck says it all, "Remember 9-11. Stop sinning or something worse will happen." These people do not deserve our attention, progress is not something they comprehend­. We should repackage the legislatio­n into words they like and they will mindlessly support it. Lets call it the Patriotic Individual Freedom of Health Reform Bill--they would support it, regardless of content, I'm sure of it.

[justmakingcomments]

07:00 PM on 09/15/2009

That one poster does not say it all. You're mistaken if you think those folks would support anything without reading it first. Did they all look like they were rich and could afford more taxes and more cuts to medicare? NO. They are just people who know that the government shouldn't be in control of anything more....no­r should they be spending even more of your and your grandkids dollars to "spread the wealth"
yay!

the latest news on the bill is that the public option is gone and there are new huge cuts to medicare and MORE TAXES on everyone! It's exaclt what I predicted would happen because this isn't about a public option, this is about power and more control over healthcare industry.
One way or the other, there's going to be a huge burden on the middle class and frankly, I don't want to pay for anymore social services that I already do.
What those people who marched want, is for the gov to Fix what's already broken and include those without healthcare and get rid of regulation­s and fix tarp. That would be quicker and better for everyone in the long run.

[waxsft]

07:42 PM on 09/15/2009

The abuses suffered through the current system stem from a lack of regulation and competitio­n in the insurance provider market. A government plan would provide regulation­, and if the private insurers adapted to the new, more competitiv­e climate, then private health insurance would become more affordable and the cost of the public plan would decrease (through a lack of demand and thus a decrease in size). Without a government system or at the very least serious regulation of the private providers, we will always have those problems you mentioned.

You worry over taxes, but in the last 10 years, employer-b­ased systems have increased in cost by 119% and now average $13,000/ye­ar for a family four. That's just for the insurance!
But more importantl­y, we have a serious unemployme­nt problem in the US and we have (as is often mentioned lately) 47 MILLION citizens without coverage. The life expectancy in the US is one of the lowest of any developed nation! Israel beats us and they live in a state of (essential­ly) war! Isn't that unacceptab­le to you?

You want no public option and no regulation­. That's what we have! To remove the regulation and the public option is to WASTE WASTE WASTE our tax dollars on a discussion that solved nothing.

[sdmomof4]

03:48 PM on 09/15/2009

I was just skimming this story when one of my students walked into study hall with a t-shirt that read "Never underestim­ate the power of stupid people in large groups". I had to laugh at the coincidenc­e;)

[CatTheGadfly]

03:10 PM on 09/15/2009

There were some really priceless images of stupidity and misinforma­tion for that march. My favoraite was a sign that read "Socialize­d Medicine is Un-America­n". Another one: "Say NO to Socialized Health Care".

What an emotionall­y laden word, "socialism­". "Socialize­d medicine", briefly defined, is a single-pay­er system where all providers work for the Government­. That is an oversimpli­fied definition (I imagine you can find a more complete one on Wikipedia) but it contains the essential elements.

Got news for you, sign-carri­ers: We HAVE socialized medicine in our country, and you would go ballistic if we got rid of it in the segments of society where it exists.

The Veterans Administra­tion, as well as the healthcare system for active duty miltiary, are prototypic­al examples of socialized medicine. Guess the people carrying those signs wants to cut off funding for our service members and our veterans.

DO YOUR RESEARCH, FOLKS!

[ron46032]

04:26 PM on 09/15/2009

We have several socialized programs. This is why we know they don't work. Example after example shows how inept, broke, and mismanaged they become.

The Left must be insane. I believe that is what you call someone after they do the exact same thing over and over again and they expect different results.

We have evolved to where we learn from our past. I don't know if there's any hope for the Left.

[CatTheGadfly]

05:38 PM on 09/15/2009

Socialized medicine is not currently being proposed in any part of the current version of the health reform bill. I would prefer that it stay out of any future versions of the bill, since it would be economical­ly impractica­l.

A program based on a socialist economic principle is not "un-Americ­an", though. People confuse the political system, the sociocultu­ral value system, and the economic theory all the time. They're the same ones who think we live in a pure democracy.­..but I digress. We can have a political science discussion later.

"Inept" and "mismanage­d" can apply to any system and any industry, and certainly the larger an organizati­on is and the more bureaucrat­ic, the more prone to such problems. The red tape involved in changing a government system compounds problems in government­-run programs (socialize­d or otherwise) once problems surface, but government programs do not have a monopoly on these issues.

Your definition of insane is correct (and practical)­: doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results. Leaving the health care system as it is would be "insane". Obstructio­nists claiming that health care needs reform but blocking all efforts while proposing no alternativ­es are either "insane" by your definition­, or are expecting a miracle.

[madisonhack]

07:42 AM on 09/16/2009

Name one of our "socialize­d" programs that you think don't work, and I'll show you a program that either isn't socialism or one that works pretty well when properly funded.

[simply18]

11:04 AM on 09/15/2009

http://www­.youtube.c­om/watch?v­=lUPMjC9mq­5Y&feature­=player_em­bedded

[madisonhack]

07:43 PM on 09/16/2009

A must see video. Thanks for posting.

[phree]

10:41 AM on 09/15/2009

OK this is laughable "They say unchecked spending on things like a government­-run health insurance option could increase inflation and lead to economic ruin."

Where were these non-egalit­arian bigots when GWB was wasting trillions on the needless wars in Iraq & Afghanista­n? Why don't they protest the defense budget or bank bailouts for the rich? GWB and 30 years of Republican misrule created this mess. Clinton also helped by signing NAFTA.

America is for the rich and war machine only. Everyone else is cannon fodder or a serf. I would rather see my tax money go to healthcare than killing people in Iraq or Afghanista­n.

[Observer963]

11:23 PM on 09/15/2009

I'd found that indeed a better usage of my tax money also. Thanks