A dozen speakers warm up Tea Party rally in cool outdoor setting
A dozen speakers, if you count Jake MacAulay who gave the prayer at the beginning, warmed a crowd of close to 50 to rally around the values of the Tea Party last Saturday in an outdoor setting that had temperatures in the 30s.
It was the Mille Lacs Tea Party’s Tax Day Freedom Rally and it was on a cold concrete slab under the south portion of the picnic shelter at Mark Park. Tarps hung at the sides to keep out wind, but some in the audience still huddled under blankets. The event was originally set for Riverside Park but that had flooded. Despite the unusually low temperatures for April 16, the rally went for 2 1/2 hours, ending at 1:30 p.m.
The messages heard in Tea Party rallies across the nation are a push for reduction of government controls and a call for lower taxes, along with holding up the worship of God, and the U.S. Constitution. The Tea Party has harshly criticized liberals and has even gone after some conservatives in Congress for not being conservative enough. One person in the audience yelled out at the rally that conservatives in Congress should get “irate.”
The Mille Lacs Tea Party, in the speeches and in the comments from Mille Lacs Tea Party cochairperson Sue Bican of rural Princeton, at the rally, supported that very conservative line. The Mille Lacs Tea Party started in Milaca, 13 miles north of Princeton, in March 2009, according to Bican. When it was breaking up within about six months of its genesis, she and Mike Puffer took over the leadership and have kept the Mille Lacs Tea Party going.
The event Saturday was called a Tax Day Freedom Rally based on April 12 this year being called tax day freedom by the Tax Foundation. The foundation explains that the income Americans on average earned from Jan. 1 until April 12 this year was equivalent to their total taxes for 2011. Therefore they could count on the rest of the year’s earnings to use for other things.
Legislators speak
Minnesota State Rep. Mary Kiffmeyer, R-Big Lake, in District 16B, was one of the speakers who honed in on the tax theme. She told of her family adhering to the idea that people should live within their means and not spend more than their income. Holding up a graph showing revenue and spending in Minnesota over a period of years, she said the trend is that the more revenue state government gets, the more it tends to spend.
Kiffmeyer also talked about her push for state legislation to require voter identification and that she believes the majority of Minnesotans support it.
State Sen. Dave Brown, R-Becker, in District 16, was another speaker at the rally. He promised that he would continue to buck any move during the current state legislative session to raise taxes, including in the form of fees.
State Rep. Sondra Erickson, R-Princeton, in District 16A, the third legislator to speak at the rally, spoke up for individual responsibility and nondependence on government. “We believe in limited government, but it is a fight constantly,” she said. “Individual responsibility gets put to the side so I have been making it one of my goals to always speak of individual responsibility.”
As chair of the state House’s education reform committee, “we have been looking very closely at individual responsibility and creating a teacher evaluation tool and a principal evaluation tool that we are holding educators, whether they are in the classroom or are administrators, accountable for addressing the needs of our students,” she said.
“There is a long parade of folks dependent on the government and although many are in need, many are not and people should learn how important it is to work rather than depend on the government.” Most of the tax money that is sent to the state offices in St. Paul goes for government programs, she added.
A.J. Kern
A.J. Kern, who lives in the Sauk Rapids School District, stressed what she said is the importance of having conservatives on school boards and urged people not to sit silently on the sidelines and allow progressives to lead.
When the nation is behind in science education there needs to be more science teachers with the full credentials of teaching the subject, she recommended. She told of knowing two science teachers who had attained master’s degrees but that those degrees were not in science. The master’s degrees, meanwhile, cost the districts more money to pay those teachers, she said.
She also cautioned taxpayers about what the district is paying to send teachers to conferences, Kern questioning if some of those conferences are for the betterment of the students. She recalled a bill of about $1,000 each for three teachers to attend one conference.
She also called for “getting rid of the ‘unconstitutional’ U.S. Department of Education,” and called for the Legislature to reject certain 7-9 percent federal funding.
As far as electing conservatives to the school board, she said that she was, as a conservative, opposed by unions in running for school board, and said incumbents keep getting elected with union support.
Bradlee Dean, founder and head of a nonprofit ministry titled You Can Run International, Inc., and part of an AM station Sons of Liberty show, took a lead from the song lyrics, “This land was made for you and me,” in his speech at the rally.
This was a follow-up to what happened at the start of the rally. First there was the prayer, then the pledge of allegiance, next the playing of a recording of John Wayne talking about the meaning of the pledge, and then a woman leading the crowd in the singing of the Woody Guthrie folk song, “This Land is Your Land.” Some additional lyrics were added that reflected the themes of the Tea Party.
Dean, in his speech, stated that “morality and religion are under constant attack by the media,” adding, “The writing’s on the wall. Hello.”
Dean decried people having the “audacity” to spit in the face of the call to follow Jesus Christ, and who instead insist on “Doing it my way.” A lot of people who are in hell did it their way, Dean said.
“Folks, if you’re lost, pick up the blueprint,” Dean continued, and suggested that instead of conservatives leading Tea Party rallies across the country, it should be “preachers leading.”
Dean said that it was a number of awakening preachers during the start of the American Revolution who inspired people to overthrow King George of England, who was exerting control over the English colonies.
Dean called for Americans to stand up to “tyrant politicians,” just as signers of the Declaration of Independence had done. Politicians today are doing “whatever you allow them to do,” Dean added.
Reading off the numbers of Americans who died fighting in many wars up through the second Iraq War, Dean said they died fighting for the U.S. Constitution and “that is why we are here to stand up and fight. Hold onto the Constitution for if the American Constitution fails, there will be anarchy throughout the whole world.”
Dean stressed that the nation is a Christian one with one God and not 10 gods, and warned that tyranny is successful when it can divide and conquer.
Bican, making commentary between the speeches, urged people to put money into “Christmas jars” that were set up at the rally and suggested others also set up such jars to put contributions in to help the needy or a church mission that helps needy families.
She also urged people to plant gardens this year “more than ever before,” including planting an extra row to give food to the needy and to also freeze, can and dehydrate produce to prepare for emergencies. A person can also do container gardening, she noted.
Allen Quist
The next speaker, Allen Quist, was adjunct professor of political science at Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato, and author of five books, including “America’s Schools: The Battleground for Freedom,” and was a three-term Minnesota representative in 1983-88. Reduced taxes, balanced budget, pro business, traditional family and limited government are things that Quist backs.
He warned of the move by some organizations including the United Nations to promote a certain global order. He has written curriculum modules to contradict Darwinism and oppose those who support that there is global warming.
International Baccalaureate (IB) is being contracted by some schools as a curriculum that the UN supports, Quist said, warning against that, and saying it tries to create “world citizens.”
(An IB web site states that IB “offers high quality programmes of international education to a worldwide community of schools,” and that there are more than 900,000 IB students in more than 140 countries. Another IB web site states that IB, founded in 1968, has “three programmes for students aged 3 to 19” to “help develop the intellectual, personal, emotional and social skills to live, learn and work in a rapidly globalizing world.”)
Agriculture/ environmental speaker
Don Parmeter, cochair of the National Water & Conservation Alliance and founder of the American Environmental Institute, spoke against federal regulation of waters, specifically the Clean Water Act. A Minnesota native who has moved to St. Paul, he has fought the federal water bill that former Eighth District U.S. Congressman Jim Oberstar had pushed.
Parmeter told the Tea Party crowd that if Oberstar, the longtime Congressman could be defeated as he was in the re-election bid that he made this past fall, then anything is possible.
Parmeter said that conservatives are spending too much energy reacting to the “environmental left,” and need to go on the offensive. He called for local and regional alternatives to federal control of water.
Kim Crockett
Crockett, with the Minnesota Free Market Institute, spoke in opposition to the power of public employee unions, stating that tax money goes into the pensions of the union members and is used to support their causes.
None of the old rules seem to apply anymore in America where a person works hard and saves to live the American dream, Crockett said, who wore a three-cornered hat known as a tricorne. Tricornes have become a symbol for some in the Tea Party of the American Revolution days as tricornes were worn during the 18th century by civilians and were also part of some military uniforms.
Many have lost their jobs during the latest recession and in the midst of it “government keeps expanding,” she said, with “public employees often getting paid more than their counterparts in the private sector.”
Crockett continued that taxpayers are paying more for government and “getting less.”
And by opposing the public employee unions, people are told they are “picking on public servants and attacking the middle class,” Crockett said. “This is strange, because we are public servants and we are the middle class.”
Noting the fight going on in many places over collective bargaining rights, Crockett said that there is a push back against the expansion of government.
At the same time, budgets for basics like roads and bridges and the public defenders office are getting squeezed, Crockett said.
Public employees “are not the bad guys;” it’s the power of the unions that needs to be broken, Crockett suggested.
“We’re not stingy people, but we do not believe in big government,” Crockett added.
Warning about Sharia Law
Speaker, Jeff Baumann, warned against Sharia Law, that has been followed in practice by some Muslims, resulting in harsh treatment to enforce the strict Sharia Law doctrine.
Energy speech
Speaker Alison Deelstra, director of education and communication at Minnesota Rural Electric Association, lives in the Princeton area and spoke of the rising cost of electricity with much of that having to do with government mandates such as using a certain percentage of alternative energy sources. “We’re not lining our pockets,” she said of electrical utilities, especially the electrical cooperatives that run electrical lines through relatively low-density population areas, she said.
Bican, after Deelstra’s speech, charged that the federal Environmental Protection Agency is “nothing but a front for socialism.”
Speaker had lived in Poland
The last speaker, Alexandra Matyja, of Prior Lake, told about her coming to America from Poland where she had spent the first 11 years of her life. It was under Communist rule at the time, and because of it many workers were just putting in time at work and not doing their job, she said. Also, she noted, there was a lack of amenities such as ample food at the supermarket. She told of waiting in line for hours for meat and that sometimes those who made it to the front of the line had to go home empty-handed because it had run out.
Out of the four apartments that she lived in there, she said, only one had its own bathroom with tub, and there were no daily showers.
In contrast to living in Communist Poland, Matyja said, life in America has been much better and she has found a high standard of living. “This allows us to live fuller and more fun-filled lives,” she said. “And that is why I love America.”
But she came to speak at the Tea Party rally, she said, because she is afraid of the “slow erosion of the American dream,” and afraid it is transforming into the “American nightmare.”
Symptoms of that, she said, include the “anything goes” and “instant gratification” attitudes. She also sees a tremendous increase, she said in “irresponsibility and disrespect for common decency,” adding: “What would have been considered shameful even a decade ago, is very normal today. It seems that more and more people want something for nothing. I see laziness and mediocrity being rewarded while achievement and success are being ignored, or worse, punished.
“Political correctness has been turned into a curse which divides the American people and intimidates those who still hold on to common sense and honorable principles. It is like a dark veil over our eyes, preventing us from seeing clearly and deciding rationally.”
Matyja called the country’s court system a “joke,” reasoning that it too often protects the perpetrator over the victim.
Matyja says she sees socialism being pushed on Americans in many ways and at many levels and doesn’t recognize the America now that she came to in 1963.
Quoting an excerpt from the book by Joseph Farah titled “Taking America Back,” Matyja said that people should read and study the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, “and understand the American concept of freedom – a truly revolutionary idea. And fight for it. Don’t be intimidated by the conventional wisdom of the day. Be smart. Be right, Know your facts. Know the truth.”
Matyja said that she is “very afraid that one day we might wake up to find ourselves not in the wonderful state of Utopia, but in the bleak reality of Ethiopia. God save America.”
